Welcome to the first Aragon community update!

We’ve had a lot going on in the foreground and background of the community since I first joined as Community Lead last year and I’m excited to share some of what we’ve been up to.

Rocket Chat Update

As you may know, Aragon switched from Slack to Rocket Chat in late 2017 as a result of AGP-5, a community-led effort to migrate to an open source chat system. Then earlier this year, the Rocket Chat team pushed out a big update to their server software that introduced a bunch of bug fixes and new features. Over the summer, we updated the Aragon Chat server to use the new Rocket Chat software and it’s like a totally new app now!

If you haven’t had a chance to check it out yet, we invite you to join Aragon Chat, introduce yourself in the #intros channel, and take part in building Aragon with us. You can join via the web using a browser, or if you prefer, you can use the Rocket Chat iOS or Android clients on mobile, or the Linux, Mac, or Windows desktop apps. You can also join using the Franz multi-chat client if you like to be in multiple different chat communities at the same time. Just enter https://aragon.chat when prompted for the Rocket Chat server URL.

New #check-in channel on Aragon Chat

Speaking of Aragon Chat, we have a new #check-in channel! As part of our ongoing efforts to increase transparency and make it easier for people to participate in the Aragon community, anyone who is contributing to the Aragon project in any way is invited to post an update every Friday with 3-5 bullet points about what Aragon related work they did that week. Developers, designers, community organizers, documentation writers, content creators, and all other contributors are welcome.

Check out the latest weekly updates from Aragon community members in the #check-in channel on Aragon Chat, and if you’ve been contributing to Aragon in any way, please feel free to post your own updates as well!

Community repo on GitHub

Continuing with the theme of making it easier to participate in the Aragon community, we recently set up a Community repo in the Aragon organization on GitHub. This repo is intended to be a place where Aragon community members can share any ideas they have related to improving Aragon community infrastructure.

Need a new channel in Aragon Chat? Have an idea for a new collaboration tool? Think we should change the rules of the Aragon subreddit? Open an issue in the Community repo and let’s discuss! Be sure to “watch” the repo to follow along with new discussions as well.

Aragon community forum

Sometimes GitHub isn't the best place to have nuanced discussion about an issue. So after you create an issue in the Community repo, you can optionally start a thread with the same title as your issue in the Aragon Research forum under the Community category.

Put a link to your issue in the first post of the thread with a prompt to start a discussion. Then you can share the link to the forum thread in other places to attract attention to the discussion and draw more people in to help with the issue and have a productive conversation, hopefully leading to the resolution of your issue.

You can also open a thread about any other topic that you want to discuss! The Community category in the forum is a great place to have long-form community-related discussions that aren’t well suited for Aragon Chat or GitHub.

Wiki updates

One of the best resources that people new to the Aragon community can use to get up to speed is the Aragon Wiki. This is our main repository of documentation about all things Aragon. I spend a lot of time in the wiki documenting various aspects of the community. Some notable recent updates authored by myself and others include:

A glossary of Aragon terms. Have you ever wondered what the difference between Aragon Core and the Aragon Network is? The Glossary has your answer!

A page for third-party Aragon projects. If your project is building on Aragon, we invite you to add a link to our Third-party Projects page.

We moved most of our developer documentation from the wiki to our new Aragon Developer Portal.

Updated Video Interviews and Presentations pages. The Aragon team has been keeping very busy not only #BUIDL’ing but also sharing what we’ve been working on in conferences, meetups, and interviews around the world.

If there is ever any important information about Aragon that you feel should be documented, including updates to existing pages, you are welcome to create an issue or submit a pull request to have it added to the wiki.

Welcoming Aragon DAC to the community

Eagles and Unicorns unite! Join us in giving a warm welcome to Aragon DAC.

Over the summer we had the pleasure of announcing the second independent team working on Aragon: Aragon DAC! Part of the Giveth Galaxy, Aragon DAC is a Decentralized Altruistic Community focused on Aragon development. To learn more about Aragon DAC, you can read the announcement blog post.

Aragon DAC will start with two campaigns on the Giveth platform: the Development Campaign and the Community R&D Campaign. If you want to follow along with their work or even jump in and help, join the #aragondac and #aragondac-community channels in Aragon Chat and introduce yourself.

Join a community of freedom fighters and visionary builders

With all of these activities happening in the community, there are plenty of opportunities to get involved. Whether you’re a developer who wants to join the Aragon DAC or a writer who wants to contribute to Aragon Monthly, whether you’re a designer who wants to do UX research or a community organizer who wants to help with meetups, or anyone else who wants to support the project, we’d love to have your help as we build the future of governance.

Come on by the Aragon Chat, introduce yourself, and share what you’re passionate about and how you’d like to help. We look forward to meeting and working with you!