The Networked City team use Slack. The key features are:

• channels for general chat among team members, and for work in sub-groups around topics or projects. These may be public and open to everyone in the network, or private to a group.
• direct messaging one-to-one or in small ad hoc groups
• file uploads and blog posts

Slack is easy to use on mobile devices, and you can set up email notifications to alert you to conversations.

• The official Getting Started guide to using Slack
• Getting started checklist
• All Slack Help
• What is Slack and how does it work? From Pocket-lint

Sign in at https://networkedcity.slack.com/ if you have an invite, or email david@socialreporter.com for an invite for yourself or someone you recommend.

Choose something like firstnamelastname for your username so people can recognise you easily. Add a photo or other image to your profile.

Review the getting started checklist for some introductory videos

While you can use Slack through your web browser, it is better with desktop and mobile apps.

• Desktop apps here
• iOS app link and help
• Android app link and help

Here's what Slack looks like on the desktop

• You can be signed in to more than one Slack team, and these will show up on the left
• Channels and direct message options will highlight if there are messages
• Profiles and notification preferences are at the top. You can set yourself as away
• Add files with + at the left of the message slot. You can also add a blog post if your message is a long one (desktop only)
• View files top right. You can also find a directory of members there.

* Look through messages to get an idea of people's interests, then introduce yourself * Join any of the channels that interest you. You are automatically subscribed to #general * Check you have set up notifications to suit your preferences - details here * Get to know people!

• If you hit return while in the message slot, your message will be published. To create paragraphs use shift + return
• Adding @ before a username in a message will send them an alert. @channel alerts everyone. Please use sparingly.
• You can edit messages - mouse over the message in desktop to get message actions, touch and hold outside text on mobile
• You can star messages to keep track of important ones
• Add Google docs rather than uploading Word docs if you want people to read in the app rather than download. You can do this by pasting a URL into the message area
• Use + beside Direct messages to add one or more people to a private conversation. This allows you to create private small ad hoc groups rather than setting up a channel
• More tips here from The Next Web