A new community chat platform for UKNOF
UKNOF is here to help our community of network engineers run their
operations more smoothly. A tool that’s often useful for both infrastructure operations and remote participation at industry events is a real-time chat platform.
This has been provided on a somewhat ad-hoc basis during UKNOF’s 15-year history, mainly over IRC using the #uknof channel on terahertz.net.
While IRC has its place (& will probably never die :-), it’s also clear there are many modern alternatives. We wanted to serve the community better with one of these, and in a way which would be inclusive and appealing to more than just IRC die-hards.
A new chat platform is also timely for our pandemic age:
- to better enable remote participation at virtualUKNOF meetings
- to help co-ordinate operations while the Internet’s infrastructure
is under unique pressures - co-ordination of UKNOF volunteers
- to provide a community gathering place
After some internal review, we decided this would be best provided using
the
Mattermost chat platform, which has many modern features like mobile app, encryption, and rich media support; is based on a cross-platform open-source code base; and does not lock us into any single provider.
The new Mattermost server, https://chat.uknof.org.uk was tested out by the UKNOF meetings Crew for internal co-ordination during the May virtualUKNOF, and it worked very well.
We would thus like to open up this service to the entire UKNOF
community, you can sign up for a Public account here:
https://chat.uknof.org.uk/signup_user_complete/
and find various client apps here:
https://mattermost.com/download/
A REMINDER that the UKNOF Respect Policy:
applies every bit as much to our Mattermost (& IRC) chat as everything else that UKNOF does online and offline, and you are bound to this by signing up to any of our activities or platforms.
We realise there are many chat platforms out there, and we’re never
going to please everybody whichever is chosen, but believe it’s better
to provide something that’s going to be the best and most cost-effective
use to the most people. The IRCers among you will have also noticed that we have as a temporary migration measure bridged between #uknof and the “UKNOF” Channel on Mattermost.
If you need help getting up and running, please contact admin@uknof.org.uk.
Our Mattermost server is being operated by the same UK-based provider that operates UKNOF’s other cloud infrastructure, Mythic Beasts, and you can expect the same high standards of engineering and privacy from them that you have for other UKNOF services. Like most UKNOF activities, this service is funded for open community public benefit by our Patrons, Sponsors, Friends and event attendees. We hope you will find it useful, and find a way to join them in supporting this and our other activities at UKNOF.
Keith Mitchell
UKNOF Board
