maine lake talk
Maine Lake Talk is a new platform for supporting easy and time-sensitive communication between people across Maine (and beyond!) who are working to protect our lakes and waterways. The kinds of conversations we hope to facilitate include things like:
- New suspected infestations so that nearby lakes can adjust their protection methods accordingly
- Shared information about programs we’re hosting that are helping to support our lakes (e.g., kids’ paddles to learn about plants, effective tips for CBI programs, etc.)
- Upcoming events to support lake communities that neighbors might wish to join
These are just examples. As more people join, more conversations will get started. To have a multi-way, real-time communication (think a combination of group texting and bulletin board), we’re prototyping a communication platform called Slack. It’s an app designed for casual communication that is used by many organizations around the world.
We’re using it to facilitate real-time communication among Maine lake activists, advocates, volunteers and community members. It’s essentially an instant messaging system that lets you talk to all members at once (via Slack “channels” that are focused on different topics) as well as to individuals via direct messaging (DM) for person-to-person communications.
We hope Maine Lake Talk will help you connect with others, find answers to your questions about lakes, share phenomena you see around your lake, and find out what others are doing in, on and for lakes around the state. This is a prototype we're trialing in summer of 2022, so please try it out and let us know what works well and less well. We want this to serve you,Maine's lake and waterway stewards and advocates.
If you’d like to give it a try and see the lake topics of interest that people are discussing, there are a few steps to complete:
- Read the list of Community Agreements and commit to positive interactions with your fellow community members!
- Answer a few short questions here. This is to help assure our community members are real people!
- Once we receive the answers to your questions and confirm your eligibility, you'll receive an email invitation to Slack. From there, you can install the Slack app on your devices or computers, or use your web browser to view the channel. To familiarize yourself with how to use Slack, we've compiled a how-to for this group here.
Once you’ve been approved to join, you will get an email invitation from Slack.
We look forward to seeing you on Maine Lake Talk soon!
Join here
- Read the list of Community Agreements and commit to positive interactions with your fellow community members!
- Answer a few short questions here. This is to help assure our community members are real people!
- Once we receive the answers to your questions and confirm your eligibility, you'll receive an email invitation to Slack. From there, you can install the Slack app on your devices or computers, or use your web browser to view the channel. To familiarize yourself with how to use Slack, we've compiled a how-to for this group here.