http://chicagobioinformatics.slack.com

Mission: To facilitate the exchange and self-organization of bioinformaticians in the Chicago area!

The chicagobioinformatics "slack" channel is a simple platform for students, postdocs, staff, and faculty to discuss bioinformatics.
You can use this channel to do the following:
- Promote local meetings, reading groups, student activities, and meet-ups
- Initiate journal clubs, hack nights, or larger events and find co-organizers
- Share and discuss recent bioinformatics papers
- Suggest conferences, or announce your attendance at future conferences
- Ask for help, and help others
- Introduce yourself to the bioinformatics community in Chicago

How does it work?
Sign up at chicagobioinformatics.slack.com. You must use an email account connected with a supported research institution. If your institution is not yet supported, please get in touch.

Slack is an efficient and versatile tool for communication in bioinformatics (nature). You can install it on your smartphone, install the desktop application, or use it through your Internet browser. 

What to I do next?
- Make use of this unique chance and exchange ideas with others
- Appreciate Chicago's bioinformatics community
- Be polite, and invite new people to chicagobioinformatics.slack.com
- Within chicagobioinformatics.slack.com join the channels that you like – be they meet-ups, papers, random, introductions, or bioinformatics-help. Or suggest new ones!
- Update your profile and add a picture so that you will be recognized (optional)

Am I welcome?
Yes, if you are interested in bioinformatics in the Chicago area. We also welcome beginners. Additionally, you don't need to consider yourself a "bioinformatics" person either. 

​We equally appreciate all areas of "bioinformatics", be they high-throughput image-analysis, medicinal informatics, biomedical data science, or computational genomics. 

We believe that bioinformatics can't be be separated from biology, and thus we especially welcome biologists and medical researchers who are new to  bioinformatics.

Wait ... I'm already part of a slack team!
You can join multiple slack teams!
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Will I get an unlimited account?
No. This is a free account. Such free accounts suffice for slack teams like ours, which are focused on the present and near future. Note that in contrast to a commercial account, you can thus not use this Slack team for archiving documents or sharing large files (which also won't be required for the purpose of this team).

Who are you?
The chicagobioinformatics slack channel was started by Daniel Cook, a graduate student at Northwestern. However, we are seeking administrators from all research institutions around Chicago. Please get in touch if you are interested! 

Can I forward the invitation to others?
Yes. Please do so. Note, however, that we presently require team members to sign up with an email address connected with a research institution in the Chicago area. Please see our section on supported email addresses for further details.