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NA-MIC Project Weeks

Discord in Project Week 

For Project Weeks that need to be held virtually, the community uses Discord in addition to Zoom as the main chat communication device until further notice. 

What is Discord?

Discord is a chat app, similar to programs such as Skype, TeamSpeak, or Slack. Primarily built for video gamers, it supports video calls, voice chat, and text. It offers an efficient and semipublic, forum-style community platform and allows the creation of channels devoted to specific topics. For Project Week each channel represents an individual project that can be followed according to your personal interests.  Discord allows for the creation of servers and Project Week has its dedicated server.     

Discord can be downloaded for free from https://discord.com/ and is available for all major platforms. 

After Discord installation, please open the Discord server link that will be activated about one week prior to each Project Week. After clicking the link in a browser of your choice it will open Discord and ask you to “Join” the Project Week server.  After login, you should see Discord opening like this:

There will be several meeting rooms, project channels, and the lobby. Enter your chat message in the bottom message input field.   If the channel or the meeting room has a  

the symbol you may enter the channel by left-clicking onto it and joining the audio chat. If you can not find your project as a project channel please drop a line on the Discord lobby (top) - one of the server admins will see it and create the channel.  See who is online in the right Discord tab. You can mention the person by using the @ symbol in the message input field. You can send private messages in Discord, but please refrain from doing so. Use project channels or the lobby wherever possible so everyone can follow. 

How to change your nickname and avatar

Double click on your nickname in the right “users online” and select “Edit Profile”  Please set the Discord nickname to your real name and affiliation, e.g. “Simon Drouin (ETS Montreal)”. A real name usage policy may be defined for each Discord server.  

Typo? 

Fortunately, you can edit your messages in Discord chat like this:

Script formatting

Please use three backticks (```) to include source code in the text message. 

Example:

Result:

Screen sharing

Join a voice channel, e.g. one of the meeting rooms. Press “Screen” (lower left) to share one of your screens. 

To be able to look at the screen someone else shares, you need to click “LIVE”  and join the shared window stream (right to the name to that streaming in the voice channel)

Get rid of that annoying channel sounds?

Go “User settings” (see below) and switch all those off:

How to leave a voice channel

Simply click “Disconnect” next to your nickname (lower left). 

Blur your background?

This is easy. Go “User settings” (see below) and 

No sound? 

Go “User Settings”

Go “Voice & Video” and select the correct input and output devices. When you are done, click ESC (right top symbol on screenshot) 

Project history

Unless we switch to a different communication program, the Discord chat of each Project Week will be available either on the Discord Server or a separate server, whose address will be communicated here. This way it will be possible to continue projects in the next Project Weeks and check out the chat history of that project. However, it is the responsibility of each project’s first key investigator to update the GitHub project document.