New Rubin Observatory Project-team-only Slack workspace to support commissioning

[rblum5 (Bob Blum)]

The LSSTC Slack workspace is a valuable resource for the broad Rubin community as a forum for discussion and collaboration – it is a common venue shared by Rubin Observatory staff and the Rubin science community to exchange information and enhance coordination.

Some changes in the LSSTC Slack workspace usage are needed to support the Rubin Observatory Project during the upcoming phase of on-sky commissioning with ComCam and LSSTCam. However, we expect that the channels that are most widely used by the broad Rubin science community will continue with “business as usual” and will NOT be affected.

As announced at the Rubin Community Workshop 2024, a separate Project team Slack workspace will be in place by the start of ComCam on-sky commissioning. Membership in the Project team Slack workspace consists of Rubin Observatory staff and approved in-kind contributors (SITCOMTN-050).

Starting on Friday 4 October, a subset of channels used for Rubin Observatory commissioning activities will transition from the LSSTC workspace to the Project team workspace. Full utilization of the Project team workspace will begin on Monday 7 October.

The transition process has begun, and many Project team members have received invitations to join the Project team Slack workspace.

Be assured that the LSSTC Slack workspace will continue to exist as a shared resource for the broad Rubin community. No information will be deleted. Some channels in the LSSTC workspace will be archived, and thus will not accept additional posts, but their history will continue to be available for search. No channels created and maintained by the Rubin science community, including the LSST Science Collaborations, will be affected.

Rubin Observatory staff are part of the Rubin science community. We expect that many Project team members will continue to regularly participate in the LSSTC Slack workspace to interface with the Rubin science community as part of their formal roles and/or to collaborate with colleagues on their science analyses. Policies and guidelines for information sharing during commissioning are described in SITCOMTN-076.

The status of the commissioning effort will be shared frequently with the world (e.g., digests, news stories, and technotes, as well as posts to the LSSTC Slack workspace and the LSST Community forum.

Questions regarding the Slack transition should be directed to #slack-transition-questions.

[ireyes (Ignacio Reyes)]

Can/should community brokers join the commissioning slack workspace?

[gnthibault]

I am external to the LSST/Vera C. Rubin observatory, even if I know few people from the project. I wanted to know if it was possible to get an invitation. In particular, I would be interested in getting in touch with lsst community that develops, and uses tom toolkit module for fink broker: GitHub - TOMToolkit/tom_fink

Checked this introduction to lsst slack, but there doesn’t seems to be specific informations about this topic:

Slack: a messaging tool across the project and science collaborations

The LSST and LSSTC are releasing Slack as a tool to foster communication within and across the LSST community (project and science). This single organization will enable people in the science collaborations and the project to chat with one another without needing to log into multiple clients and organizations. Over the coming weeks we will be rolling out Slack to project teams and to science collaborations. You should expect to receive an invitation to join the LSSTC Slack community in your ema…

Thank you in advance for your help

[leanne (Leanne Guy)]

Hi Ignacio. No, the community brokers will not join the new staff slack space. Brokers are 3rd party services and are not commissioned by Rubin Observatory; brokers are responsible for their own commissioning. Many are already successfully commissioned as evidenced by their highly successful work with other surveys such as ZTF, etc. What Rubin will do however is to integrate the Rubin community brokers. This work has already begun and there is a slack channel in the LSSTC slack workspace dedicated to these efforts. This channel will continue to be the place where we carry out broker integration work in the lead up to first alerts. The integration activities are described in rtn-010.lsst.io.

Reminder that Rubin will never send any proprietary nor embargoed data to brokers.

[JulienPeloton (Julien)]

Hi @gnthibault ,

I’m pleased to see interest in utilizing tools from Rubin community brokers; however, I believe this isn’t the right thread for that conversation. The Forum category Fink - Rubin Observatory LSST Community forum seems more relevant in this case, and do not hesitate to post here your requests/questions