Gitter is our preferred method of communication. We used it for GSoC 2015 and found that it worked for students too. Anyone can use it and it's nice and easy to use.
Our sources are in GitHub and you will need an account there to be able to contribute to them. Once you have a GitHub account, you can enter a room and contribute to the chat.
- The main Gitter chat room for HPCC Systems. We recommend you use this one at first.
- Public Gitter chat room showing all channels available for HPCC Systems. You may be asked to use a project specific chat room during the coding period.
We also have two IRC channels:
- #hpcc-dev at irc.freenode.net. This is the development IRC channel used by the HPCC Systems platform development team.
- #hpcc-gsoc at irc.freenode.net. This channel has been setup specifically for students who want to discuss GSoC projects with mentors.
For more information about IRC channels see: https://developers.google.com/open-source/soc/resources/irc.