[Inpycon] Chat platform-Zulip for Pycon

[Puneeth Chaganti]

Hello!

> Discord doesn't have threaded/topic based conversations. One of the
> reason we chose Discord last year was because it is free to use and
> has no restrictions on the search history. Zulip/Slack has a limit to
> the number of previous messages for their free plans. Though it states
> they are free for open source communities you need to check with them
> for the same regarding PyCon India. If that works out we can go ahead
> with Zulip and make it a common chat platform for the upcoming years
> as well.

I'm an active contributor to the Zulip project (and definitely biased
towards it). I can confirm that they do indeed offer free hosted plans
for Open Source communities. They also provide a full data export, in
case we want to self-host at some point.

Given Zulip's threading model, I feel it can improve the situation of
using a different communication channel each year. I haven't used
discord, but with Slack's threading model, it makes sense to create
different Slack workspaces for each year's event. Getting started with
Zulip can take some getting used to, but the organisation it "forces"
on the participants would allow the same Organisation/Realm (slack
workspace equivalent) to be used year after year, while still being
navigable and non-overwhelming.

- Puneeth