I’m the president of the Boston Wort Processors homebrew club. Since about 2019 we’ve used Slack as our main venue for club discussions and announcements. I’d love to hear from other club officers and members on your experience using Slack, Discord, or other platforms for club communication.
What do people like / dislike about Slack, Discord, or other platforms? Do you have any tips or tricks for a club officer related to club communications?
I like that Slack is cross-platform, has an app, and has useful features like polls, channels, DM’s, private groups (officers only thread). I dislike that the free version sunsets threads more than 90 days old. It’s pretty easy to invite a prospective member to join the slack, but it could be easier if people could simply add themselves via our website.
My club (Foam Blowers of Indiana) uses Discord. It has web and phone interfaces and seems to work well for our uses. We set up new (channels? threads?) for special events and focuses. Our Discord site is for members only, so getting new members signed up is just another hurdle.
I am active in two clubs in Northwest Arkansas. We still tend to rely on email, Facebook and text. One of the clubs tried to move to Discord but too many of our members did not want to adapt to a new to them technology.
Hi Matt, AHA is offering clubs right now a free private dedicated community area inside AHA Forum (Discourse). Function wise there is alot to like plus then your members can expand to ‘open’ AHA Forum areas already related to homebrewing vs communicate on an island. The Forum also has single sign with AHA Membership (saves time for those already AHA members), yet membership is not required to be on forum.
I have a limited view on this, but it sure seems like Discord has much more momentum than Slack (at least outside of work environments where I understand Slack has more usage). I am subscribed to 6 different Discord “servers” (2 are brewing related). I recently setup a Slack account because a local club was using that. Another local club has their own website with forum software, but it does not get much traffic.
I have a little visibility into the admin side for Discord and only end user visibility for Slack. I don’t see any features of one that really stand out as much different. Discord seems to have all the features you list for Slack.
I would rather delete my Facebook account, but a lot of groups use it for a reason. Most people already have an account and it Facebook provides lots of useful features for a group (events, messages, chat board, sharing pics and videos, etc.). I see some push back from “yet another messaging app” and people that don’t like “new” technologies. In my various groups, there are people that are email-only, or Facebook-only, or Discord-only. I worry that having too many options can divide up the community.
I wanted to create a Discord account to access information, etc for another hobby. Was impossible to do. I was continuously asked (aka, stuck in a loop) to verify I was human by finishing a puzzle, matching a shape, etc. Never was able to create a Discord account. If this is the nonsense expected with/from Discord, no thanks.
That’s a bit strange - I registered for Discord a while back and it was like a 2 second process.
I’m now in 13 different groups (and hey send me an invite to yours if you use discord). I think the big advantage for me is that doesn’t run the risk of crossing over with my work slack account.
I’m in multiple clubs that use Slack and Discord. Slack requires payment (and it’s not inexpensive) if you want to keep old content. For that reason, I prefer Discord.
From my point of view, Discord is more user-centric: you have one account, and then can join any number of servers. So for someone who is already using it, the friction to join an additional server is lower.
Slack is more organization-centric: you have a different account (and possibly different integrations with corporate identity providers, etc) for each instance.
Once you’re in, the interface is extremely similar: channels, threads, has a web and app version, DMs, private channels. More bling in a Discord, for good or ill; it did start out targeted at gamers.