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As Steve mentioned the other day, we've been thinking about opening some sort of general chat room. After looking over the on-topic use guidelines on irc.freenode.net, it looks like it's fine for us to setup a channel there, so I did: #redmonk.

I'm a not a huge IRC user, so I don't know all the conventions and whiz-doodles for setting up or admining such stuff. So, if we're doing something screwy, by all means tell us and we'll fix it. And, it should go without saying that if you have some suggestions, send 'em along.

What's it For?

Potential screwyness aside, what's our intention for #redmonk? Put abstractly, we want to do more to help foster and provide for the RedMonk community. That is, it's just another channel to do what we do: analyze, advice, and have fun.

More specifically: we don't have any in specific, just discussion, but not so much about RedMonk, but about the things we cover, write about, or should be paying attention to. Of course, if you'd like to ask us questions, or try for some free advice from us or people in the channel, we'll see what happens ;>

I'll be hanging out in there while we try it out, and if we keep it up, I'm sure I'll keep hanging out there. As a side note, I'm posting this towards the end of the day, so if you go check it out now, the room may be empty. Check again tomorrow if that's the case. As you can imagine, our after-hours online time is driven by what we're doing in our home life ;>

And, of course, you can still talk to us in all the current methods: phone, IM, trackbacks, blog posts, email, etc.

How Do I Use It?

First, you'll need a client. The rails site has a nice list.

This tutorial, among other's I'm sure, is a nice and light intro.

If you need some help, contact me, and we'll figure it out.

Alternatives

As a side note, we talked about using Campfire, and we'll look more into that if it makes more sense usability and function-wise. While Campfire is probably more usable overall, it has a cap of 60 people and costs money. We'll certainly consider it if it's the best option for our purposes, but IRC seems like the perfect medium to try out first.

Technorati Tags: chat, irc, redmonk