Slack is a communication tool that the LITA Forum Planning Committee would like to experiment with at this year's Forum. It's a simple yet powerful tool for communicating with other Forum attendees, and is available now -- so that you can start connecting with your colleagues even before the Forum starts. Slack lets you post longer thoughts than Twitter, create channels for discussion, find people with similar interests, and (of course) gives you that all-important backchannel. For an excellent description of how Slack was used by attendees of another conference, see http://www.theverge.com/2015/9/18/9349425/slack-future-of-conferences-xoxo-festival.

Give it a try and see how it works. We'll ask about it in the end-of-conference survey, so please provide your feedback then (or in Slack itself!).

Unfortunately, Slack doesn't provide an automated sign up mechanism; people need to be invited to join it. If you're interested in joining http://litaforum.slack.com, please provide your email address below and we will send you an invitation. If you have questions about this experiment or need help signing up, please contact francis.kayiwa-at-gmail.com.

More social events for the Forum can be found at the Forum Wiki (http://litaforum.org/wiki/)

For those unfamiliar with Slack there is a tutorial and introduction to it here which is only available after you created an account. (https://litaforum.slack.com/getting-started/users)

-Francis Kayiwa (2015 Forum Planning Committee member)