Slack — Consolidation Plan

One front door.
Eleven channels instead of twenty-eight.

You asked for a request channel and for the channels to be consolidated. This is the whole plan — what opens, what merges, what closes, and what the process is from Monday. Nothing here deletes a conversation, and nothing moves without a week's notice to the people in it.

Where we are today

Counted this morning, not estimated.

channels currently open

have ever been closed since 2022

say anywhere what they are for

were created in the last ten days

The count is the symptom, not the problem. The problem is that roughly ten of those channels are all places where somebody can ask for work — and none of them says it isn't. So the same kind of request lands in a different place depending on who is asking and what they remember, and the only person holding the full picture is whoever happens to read all ten.

Two of them have already gone quiet on their own: one has had nothing since 4 June, another nothing since 1 July. Nobody closed them, so they still show up in everyone's sidebar and still look like valid places to post.

The rule everything follows

A channel exists for one reason, and that reason is written at the top of it.

If a channel can't finish the sentence "this is where we ___", it doesn't survive the pass. That single test is what takes 28 down to 11 — and it's also what stops it climbing back to 28 by Christmas, because the same test applies to the next new channel anyone proposes.

The channel map

Eleven channels, each with one job. Everything else folds into one of them.

Keep — these earn their place 11 channels

#requests new

The front door. Every ask from anyone — a report, a field, a fix, an idea. One place to post, one place to look for whether it's been picked up.

#all-anc keep

Announcements only. What shipped, what changed, what's coming. Read it and you're current. Discussion goes elsewhere.

#crm merged

One CRM channel. Day-to-day CRM questions and conversation. Replaces the three channels that were all doing this at once.

#creative merged

All creative work. Design, video, marketing. Splits back out only when the volume in here actually justifies it.

#ai-help keep

How do I get the AI to do X. Learning and technique, not requests for work. Genuinely different from #requests, so it stays separate.

#social keep

Not work. Leave it alone.

the five account & pursuit channels keep
Westgate · Prudential Center · Capital One Arena · Chicago Fire · Bank of America Stadium

One venue or one pursuit each. These already pass the test — the reason is in the name and the right people are in them. This is the pattern to repeat for the next pursuit, not the one to consolidate.

Fold in — same job as somewhere else 6 channels

#crm-talk → #crm

Two CRM channels running side by side is the one you named. Keeping the busier of the two, renamed plainly.

#nail-the-ai → #requests

In practice this became a place to ask for things.

#creative-marketing → #creative

Ten days old and splitting an audience that hasn't grown yet.

#creative-video → #creative

Same.

#it-services-feedback → #requests

Feedback and requests are the same message with a different label on it.

#projects-ai-automation → #requests

Same.

Close — finished, duplicated, or private working space 12 channels

#reports-temp-ai

Named "temp". Nothing in it since 4 June.

#systems-walkthroughs

Training now lives in the training library where it's searchable. New walkthroughs get announced in #all-anc.

#sync-external

Overlaps the two channels below it and nobody can say which is which.

#external--ai-services2

The "2" is the tell — it duplicated something that already existed.

its third variant

Created the same day, same purpose again. Three channels doing one job.

three test channels

Mine. They should never have been visible to anyone else in the first place. Closing them is on me.

four two-person channels

Working channels between me and one other person. These are direct messages wearing a channel costume — they go back to being direct messages, and anything in them the wider team needs goes to #requests instead.

Nothing gets lost

Closing a channel in Slack is not deleting it. Every message, file and link stays searchable forever — it just stops appearing in the sidebar and stops accepting new posts. Anyone can still find an old thread by searching for it exactly the way they do now.

Before any channel closes it gets a final post saying where the conversation moved to, so somebody landing on it from an old link knows where to go. And there's a week between the announcement and the closing, so if a channel turns out to matter to someone, it stays.

How a request works from Monday

This is the part that has to be true for the rest of it to hold.

You post it

In #requests, in your own words, with whatever you'd normally attach. No form, no template, no ticket number.

It gets picked up

The request and everything attached to it is logged the moment it's posted, so it doesn't depend on anyone happening to be watching the channel that day.

You get it back

Confirmed in the same thread when it's done — not in a different channel, not in a direct message you have to go find.

The reason for a single channel isn't tidiness. It's that one channel can be watched properly and ten cannot. Everything that came in through one of the ten yesterday still landed, but it landed because someone read all ten. That doesn't survive a busy week, a holiday, or a second person joining.

Rollout

Four steps over ten days. Nothing closes in the first week.

TODAYAhmad

#requests opens

Created, everyone added, and the one-line instruction pinned at the top so nobody has to ask how to use it.

FRI 28 AUGJireh

You announce it

One post in #all-anc saying #requests is the way to ask for something from now on. Coming from you is what makes it stick — coming from me it reads as a suggestion.

FRI 28 AUGAhmad

The merges happen

#crm and #creative consolidate. Each channel being folded in gets a final post pointing at its new home. Members are carried across, so nobody has to join anything.

MON 1 SEPAhmad

The closures happen

The twelve on the close list go read-only, a week after everyone was told. History stays searchable.

MON 8 SEPBoth

One week's review

Anything nobody missed stays closed. Anything somebody did miss comes back, no argument. Then the rule from section 02 applies to every new channel anyone proposes.

Two things I need from you

The announcement has to come from you

One post in #all-anc on Friday. A process change announced by the person who does the work is a preference; announced by you it's how we work. That single post is the difference between this holding and drifting back in a month.

The rest of the ANC Slack needs the same pass

This plan covers the 28 channels I can see. The wider ANC Slack has its own list that I don't have visibility into, and it will have the same duplication in it. Send me that list — or point me at it — and it gets the same treatment in the same week, so we end up with one clean structure rather than a tidy half.