Our New Discord Community

By Jennifer Cornick

Sunday Writers’ Club wanted to build a community of writers in Vienna.  Our community of friendly local writers has grown to include writers from all over and it can be hard to stay in touch with friends across time zones.  We wanted to make it a little easier to support each other from Sunday to Sunday, so we made a Discord community. Discord is a messaging platform.  It makes it easy to stay in touch with each other, have wide ranging chats, and support each other through our writing experiences.  It is different from Whatsapp because all the conversations are contained in dedicated channels on the community server.  Need some feedback on a couple of paragraphs, post it in #story-snippets and then people can chat with you about it in #story-discussion.  Were you served one of those coffees where the foam is literal art, post it with a picture of your pen in #food-and-pens, just make sure your pen or keyboard is in the shot.  Let the Sunday Writers’ Club community know what you are working on with a photo of your notebook posted in #notebook-pictures.  Was a doorway you passed on your walk this morning beautiful, post it in #inspiration.

How do I use Discord?

First, you need to download the app on your phone (through your app store, e.g. Google Play, App Store).  And follow the steps to create your account.  Or, if you don’t want another messaging app on your phone and would rather have Sunday Writers’ Club support you on your desktop, click here to create a desktop account. Use the Sunday Writers’ Club invite code to access the server.  And that is it.  You are now a member of the Sunday Writers’ Club Discord Server.  If you run into problems, you can let Jen know.  She will do her best to help you out. Once you are in the server, it is as simple as writing.   Just type out your thoughts or take a picture.    You can respond to messages in the chat.  And get notifications when people respond to you. It makes keeping track of conversations easier among such a large group of friends.

Meet Schroedinger

We wanted to create a virtual café experience, just you and more than thirty of your closest friends meeting for a coffee at one of Vienna’s famous cafés.  So, we hired Shroedinger!  Named after Vienna’s famous theoretical physicist who theorized that a cat could become a zombie (just kidding, he said it would only be a zombie if it was unobserved.  If you looked at it the cat would choose a state to be in, either alive or dead). He is the traditional Viennese café waiter you get to carry around in your pocket.  And he will treat you like any other coffee house waiter; he will serve you up a virtual Wiener Mélange and mostly ignore you. Although, if you ask him very nicely, he might help you out with a prompt or two when you get stuck, it might even be about a zombie cat.

Your Friendly Neighbourhood Moderators and Administrators

We aren’t leaving you alone to float in this vast digital space with only Shroedinger as your guide.  Keith, Paul, Jasmine, and Jen will be there to help out and make sure things go smoothly. We ask that you be kind to each other.  It takes a lot of courage to post paragraphs for feedback or a picture of handwriting.  So, whether it is feedback or an emoji under a picture, we ask that you be aware of people’s feelings. At the top of each channel will be a guide for what can be posted where, like the examples throughout this post.  This might take some getting used to, so Keith, Paul, Jasmine, and Jen will float in and out of conversations to help people out with this.  

Chat Soon!

We look forward to seeing all of our members on Discord and chatting to everyone about their stories as they take shape on all the days in between Sundays.
Jennifer Cornick

Jennifer Cornick

Sunday Writers' Club Member

Reading is not my hobby, I am pretty sure it forms a vital part of my autonomic nervous system. I am never without a book and I will read anything, including cereal boxes. My journalism has appeared in Metropole: Vienna In English, Impact Hub Vienna, Ted x Vienna, and the EU Observer. Find out more about Jennifer by visiting her blog: The Curiosity Cabinet  
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