Smalltalkers can now more easily connect thanks to the efforts of Janko Mivsek, Peter Hatch, and Rado Hodicak. This was posted to comp.lang.smalltalk this morning:

I'm glad to announce that a Smaltalk IRC Network is born. As you probably know, an IRC server run by Pete Hatch exist for a year or more already. To improve robustness and availability of IRC regardless of any internet related troubles, we decided to add two more servers and connect all of them together in IRC network. So, now you can connect to those three servers:

irc.parcplace.net (US, run by Pete Hatch, nickname pete) irc.4096.sk (Slovakia, run by Rado Hodicak, nickname rh) irc.eranova.si (Slovenia, run by Janko Mivsek, nickname Misolin)

After you connect to one of those servers, join a general channel #smalltalk . You can open your own channel like #squeak, or a channel for your project, for your group, etc etc .. And what is IRC chat good for?

1. staying in touch with Smalltalkers around the world
2. feel of community
3. fresh news, rumors, stories are heard on IRC an nowhere else ;)
4. real time "help desk" for your problems
5. good communication media for your Smalltalk group
6. remote XP like work
7. and many more.

If someone likes to join the net with his own server, he is welcomed. And specially squeakers are very welcomed too :) It is my desire to join all Smalltalkers to communicate together and being on the same IRC net, even on separate channels, is definitively a step towards that goal. So all of you are invited to join :) Janko

This really great - a lot of the BottomFeeder work was helped out via the IRC - it's been the primary means of communication between Dave Murphy and I.