Hi all,
Over the past week or so I've been trialling Matrix.org[1] as an
alternative to my IRC client. This was partly due to my own curiosity,
and partly because a few people keep suggesting Slack (my objections to
Slack are, I think, well known :P).
Overall I'm pretty impressed with Matrix, at least enough to ask for
more testers. The rooms are "plumbed-in" to the IRC rooms, so it
doesn't matter if you're on Matrix or IRC, you'll see the same content.
(and not via a single account). Indeed, I've been on a Matrix client
for the last week and only a few people have noticed :P. A few other
good points to Matrix:
- Open source (of course :P)
- Federated (our channels are on the main matrix.org server, for now)
- Persistent by default (for all you people without IRC bouncers)
- End-to-end encrypted by default, except plublic rooms
- Plenty of clients (Riot.im is nice, WeeChat plugin for CLI, etc)[2]
The only downside I can see is that only registered IRC users can
private-message a Matrix user - unregistered users get a polite message
about need to register first. This doesn't apply to channels, only PMs.
I don't feel this is too bad, registering to IRC is trivial, and most
support should happen in the channels anyway.
I'll stress that there is no need to change anything if you're happy
with IRC, those channels are not going away. But if you've been itching
for something a little more flashy, or just an easy way to have a
persistent connection, Matrix may be of use.
I'm announcing this here before I do it on -users to see if anyone
wants to play / help me find issues. If you do hop on Matrix, I'm
gwmngilfen:matrix.org 
[1] https://matrix.org/
[2] https://matrix.org/docs/projects/try-matrix-now.html
Greg