somebody on mastodon asked me if I was willing to setup a matrix bridge for this slack, I don't use matrix, but is someone interested in setting it up?

I can set up what's needed on the Slack side. I'll do that tonight.

what is a matrix bridge?

Matrix is another chat system, and a bridge allows you to use a Matrix client to interact with Slack (IIRC)

The publicly hosted Slack <-> Matrix bridge requires creating Matrix-side rooms for each Slack channel of interest, which is a bit of pain, but I'm happy to do it if others are interested in it. I believe the Slack-side part of this is already approved. Would we want to post links to the Matrix-side rooms anywhere, or just leave it for other Matrix users to discover?

I can announce it in the newsletter

ah cool! and what’s the benefit/value of using a matrix client for slack?

Matrix allows you to use the client of your choice, rather than being locked into what the vendor supplies as you are with Slack. It also supports unlimited conversation history as a standard feature, which may be of interest to this group, since we've had issues with Slack history in the past.

@J. Ryan Stinnett That is fantastic! Thank you for setting that up. I will mention I have mentioned this on our website (https://futureofcoding.org/community#matrix-bridge), and credited you (though let me know if you'd prefer not to be thanked). I'll also mention this in the upcoming podcast episode where I talk about our survey results and what I think we should do about Slack. If I'm curious to try out Matrix, is there a particular client you can recommend?

Thanks! I joined the "general" room in Matrix and explored it a bit. How does the bridge map Slack accounts to Matrix and back? Is there anything I can/should/must do to be considered the same person on both sides?

@Ivan Reese Great, thanks for adding them! 😄 For Matrix clients, I would suggest trying Riot (https://about.riot.im) first, as it's the reference client and most similar to Slack. (Disclaimer: I am part of the Riot core team.) There are many other clients (https://matrix.org/clients/) as well for different platforms and UI styles, including terminal-based for those who prefer an old-school IRC-like experience. To use a Matrix client, you will need an account on a Matrix server. It's a federated system, so you can create an account on any server. Riot will guide you through creating an account if needed. The matrix.org server is free and open to the public, but you can also self-host your own server or use someone else's if they have open registration. Some day (soon I hope) there will be a matrix:// URL scheme, but for now there's https://matrix.to/#/#_slack_futureofcoding_general:matrix.org, which shows an interstitial page explaining how to reach a given room in several popular clients. It might be good to linkify the aliases on the community page to point there.

@J. Ryan Stinnett OK, that's probably not much of a problem for this group. I didn't know you were working on Riot, although I use it regularly. Nice work!