Collaborating with IRC

What is IRC?• It stands for Internet Relay Chat

• It is communicating with real people in real-time.

• “IRC is the net's equivalent of CB radio. But unlike CB, Internet Relay Chat lets people all over the world participate in real-time conversations. IRC is where the Net comes alive!” - http://www.mirc.com/irc.html

• It’s a way to meet people, whether professionally or socially.

• It’s a way to collaborate with groups of people in real-time.

IRC History• “IRC, or Internet Relay Chat, was first started in August of 1988,

when Jarkko Oikarinen, an employee of the Department of Information Processing Science at the University of Oulu, had some spare time on his hands and tried to figure out a means of communication based on BBS (Bulletin Board System). His hope was to allow USENET news kinds of discussions and groups in addition to real-time discussions, but as we can see, IRC has outgrown all of his expectations.” - http://www.ircbeginner.com/ircinfo/history.html

• “IRC gained international fame during the Gulf War in 1991, where updates from around the world came across the wire, and most irc users who were online at the time gathered on a single channel to hear these reports. IRC had similar uses during the coup against Boris Yeltsin in September 1993, where IRC users from Moscow were giving live reports about the unstable situation there.” - http://www.mirc.com/irc.html

How can IRC help me?

It can take you from this...

to this...

to this!

How can IRC help me?

• Recent tests have shown that using IRC can increase intelligence by 50% or possibly lower it by 150% depending on how you look at it.

• It can help you get quick answers to questions without having to wait for a response from an email or internet forum.

• It can provide an effective way for team or group collaboration.

• It can provide a way to network with other professionals in your field.

• It can provide a way to work at home. Some jobs rely solely on IRC, IM messages and email as a way to communicate with their employees.

• In a recent job posting for Automattic (the people behind WordPress) they mentioned that they “coordinate about 95% of their projects on a private IRC channel, which is archived and searchable, 4% via email, and the rest on direct IM, usually AIM and Skype.”

Words of Caution

•It can be addictive if you're not careful.

•You can run across a great deal of sex-talk, sleaze and garbage if you're not careful.

IRC/Channel Etiquette

• Asking Questions

‣ Don't ask to ask, just ask.

‣ Be patient and wait for answers.

‣ Ask intelligent questions! Make sure you give all the pertinent information so people can help you. "My mouse isn't working, PLEASE HELP!" This is an example of a bad question. A better question might be, "My mouse stopped working after I spilled my drink on it. Does anyone have any suggestions on fixing it or should I just get a new mouse?"

• Private Messages – It's a general rule that you shouldn't send private messages to users unless you know them or unless you've asked them if it's ok first.

IRC/Channel Etiquette

• Avoid having people sending you RTFM and STFW messages by searching the net and reading the manual before asking your question.

• Read the channel’s guidelines – Freenode has some general guidelines (http://freenode.net/channel_guidelines.shtml) to go by.

Common Terms• IRC Network (Freenode, Undernet, EFNet, QuakeNet)

• IRC Channel

• User Modes (Operator, Invisible, Registered, etc.)

• Channel Topic - The topic of the channel you are on

• Common IRC Commands

‣ /join - Join an IRC channel (/join #channel-name)

‣ /msg - Send a private message to another user (/msg users-nick Your private message)

‣ /whois - View user details (/whois users-nick)

‣ For a more complete list go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_IRC_commands

Freenode.net

• Freenode is one of the largest IRC networks that caters to the open source development community.

• Freenode stats as of February 27, 2007

‣ 19,116 listed users

‣ 16,422 unlisted users

‣ A total of 35,538 users on 24 servers

‣ 37 flagged staff members

‣ 14317 channels formed

IRC Channels at K-State

•#KSU on Freenode

•#k-slug (Kansas State Linux Users Group) on Freenode

•#kwag (K-State Web Authors Group) on Freenode

Popular IRC Programs

• IRC Programs for Windows:

‣ mIRC - http://www.mirc.com/

‣ Trillian - http://www.ceruleanstudios.com/

‣ Chatzilla - http://www.mozilla.org/projects/rt-messaging/chatzilla/

‣ Opera - http://www.opera.com/

‣ X-Chat - http://www.xchat.org/windows/

‣ Gaim - http://gaim.sourceforge.net/win32/index.php

• IRC Programs for OSX:

‣ Colloquy - http://colloquy.info/

‣ X-Chat Aqua - http://xchataqua.sourceforge.net/twiki/bin/view/Main/WebHome

‣ ChatZilla - http://www.mozilla.org/projects/rt-messaging/chatzilla/

• IRC Programs for Linux:

‣ X-Chat - http://www.xchat.org/

‣ Irssi - http://www.irssi.org/

Additional Resources

• KWAG IRC Help - http://www.k-state.edu/kwag/irc-help.html

• IRCHelp.org - A Short IRC Primer (http://www.irchelp.org/irchelp/ircprimer.html)

• IRCHelp.org - An IRC Turorial (http://www.irchelp.org/irchelp/irctutorial.html)

• Evolt.Org - IRC Primer (http://evolt.org/evolt_irc_primer/)

• mIRC - IRC FAQ (http://www.mirc.com/ircintro.html)

• free2code - Basic IRC Tutorial (http://www.free2code.net/tutorials/irc/22/basic_irc.php)

Sources

• Collaboration Photo - http://flickr.com/photos/criminalintent/152443312/

• Tin Can Photo - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Tin_can_telephone.jpg

• Outlook Photo - http://flickr.com/photos/popkid/322309876/ • Dog Smile Photo -

http://flickr.com/photos/82213449@N00/68584790/