I was in the LCA2016 IRC channel and at LCA2016 in person. I really wish we could have CCC [1] levels of "audience participation" because it allows people to interact with the conference who may not normally be able to attend. The live streaming was really well done but I think there needs to be One True Chat Channel for LCA2017. Maybe that means using Slack or similar and swallowing a bit of FOSS pride for a while.

[1]: https://events.ccc.de/congress/2015/wiki/Congress_Everywhere and yes, they use IRC. LCA's audience is a bit different

Because such comments are at this point inane and uninteresting. As has been mentioned ad nauseum, Slack and friends are winning because IRC is a pain and lacks really basic creature comforts like offline messages and anything but text.

I'm downvoting them as I see them for this reason. Anyone saying "Why not IRC?" to the question of "Slack alternative?" is being willfully ignorant at this point.

Same goes to those who accuse people of astroturfing absent evidence other than "$ideaILike is being downvoted".