It was a recommendation to At-Large to consider the free tier for Slack at the time (around 2017 or so (time flies!)) given the advantages of group chat over Skype. ICANN At-Large Slack was created back in 2014 and used in ATLAS II.

The problem now is that Slack in the last year has changed the free tier to only search the last 90 days of messages and only have full access to past messages if you pay. There is a tier for non profits up to 250 users with full functionality - our ALS (Trinidad and Tobago Computer Society)  applied for this about 2-3 years ago and it has worked well for us.

I still believe in group chat but some analysis and tests will have to be done (Teams ? Signal? Jami ? )

Re: phone calls - this was an area where Skype shined - it was also free to call 800 numbers in the US so you could use Skype to dial the 800 number for Adigo to select the language channel ( since the Zoom audio channel was, until recently, was only broadcasting one Adigo channel in or in the case of f2f meetings, the uninterpreted audio)

A replacement for Skype to dial phone numbers ? Maybe Keepcalling? 
https://keepcalling.com/ - never used it as I never had the need before. 

Dev Anand









On Fri, Feb 28, 2025 at 2:22 PM Olivier MJ Crépin-Leblond <ocl@gih.com> wrote:
Bearing in mind this group had tested Slack, was Slack ever considered seriously, or did its shortfalls make it a dead end?
Also - a lot of young people mention "Discord" - again not an Open Source solution...

Best,

Olivier

ps. for someone who is using Skype to dial out to telephone numbers, what are the alternative softwares if Skype is retired?

On 28/02/2025 14:20, Dev Anand Teelucksingh via ttf wrote:
So, do we switch to Teams (and will it work for the At-Large Community?) Or another group chat solution ?

Dev Anand Teelucksingh


"It’s the end of an era. Microsoft is shutting down Skype in May and replacing it with the free version of Microsoft Teams for consumers. Existing Skype users will be able to log in to the Microsoft Teams app and have their message history, group chats, and contacts all automatically available without having to create another account, or they can choose to export their data instead. Microsoft is also phasing out support for calling domestic or international numbers."



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