About a month ago, CC moved its daily communications to Slack, the team messaging service popular with communities around the world. You can read more about our decision here.

What a month it’s been. We’ve seen our daily community grow to nearly 500 users, with an average of 110 people posting every day. We’ve also seen significant growth in the geographic range of our community, with dedicated channels for different regions like #cc-europe (55 members), #cc-mena (20 members), #cc-africa (22 members) #cc-latinamerica (19 members), and others. In many of these channels, communities are using their local languages to communicate and collaborate.

In addition, our IRC bridge has allowed users who prefer those tools to connect with each other without leaving their preferred tool, seeing the messages in our #general channel from their IRC clients.

One of the reasons our new tools have been so impactful is that they are free to use, registration is open to all, and we empower the members of our community to organize themselves. We’re making use of 21 Slack channels, and this system has made it simple for people to align around projects and themes. From #cc-opened to #cc-developers, you can select a community that supports your interests and give direct, real time feedback to your community members.

It should come as no surprise that commoners love chatting. We’re sending nearly 4,000 messages per week, with over 80% in public channels and direct messages to one another. We’ve also used Slack to send approximately 300 files, passing documents back and forth in order to collaborate on projects. In addition, channels like #cc-music, #cc-reads, and #cc-certificates allow commoners to engage with each other to talk about specific subjects that matter to them.

CC has never had so much daily activity in our online communities. We’re excited to report that this experiment has been a positive experience, connecting people all over the world to each other, and to the commons.

We hope you’ll be a part of the conversation. Join us on Slack!