The discord server was deprecated for various reasons, mostly due to the founding group and admins coming to the conclusion that even with various moderation tools and bots, Discord does not provide a safe space for students and thus we made the tough decision to shut it down and delete the server. There will be no replacement. Open Alliance is about building community, so we obviously spent a lot of time considering this, but above all else, safety of the students comes first.
Our guidance is for teams to really lean into their own Chief Delphi blogs. We understand it’s not the same, but it has been proven you can build a community that will engage with, and inspire conversation beyond just posting what you’re doing week to week. If you look at the number of posts in any of the big OA threads, it shows that many will treat this as a conversation, but that needs to be fostered by the team posting the blog. Ask insightful questions, query for feedback on a prototype, post often to drive engagement. Another major issue is Discord is difficult to find and look for information, searching is not a great experience, and a proper CD blog is a much better way to communicate your information, which is the ultimate goal of the alliance.
The long and short of it is we want OA to be something that teams can take and run with, and we encourage teams to explore what that means for themselves. We would like to reiterate that if you create a discord, we ask that you don’t label it as an open alliance discord. Of course we understand teams are free to do as they please, but we’d appreciate if everyone could respect our wishes there.
Looking forward to reading everyone’s blogs this year, all the best!