Hello everyone! 
I’m new here and I’m wondering if there’s an official discord for JustinGuitar?
Discord is a fun place to hangout and you can easily steam audio and/or video in a voice channel, which is great for things like jam sessions, open mics, or just chatting.
Anyways, I’m excited to be part of this community!
Cheers,
Talk_Tonight
Hello and welcome to Community! No there isn’t Justinguitar discord, not official at least. All life happens here around the Community where you can post about anything in General Chatter category, you can post videos or audios of you playing for feedback and tracking progress. Also we have every 5-6 weeks online Community Open Mics hosted on Zoom so I suggest having a look in a relevant category 
Good to have you here and speak to you soon!
Cool deal, how do the open mics work? is it more for advanced players or is it a mix of all skill levels?
Check out this post Justin Guitar Community Open Mic events – How They Work, Access & Eligibility
It reminds me of 90’s internet chat rooms… totally disorganised free-for-all with the same old questions and discussions happening again and again because there is no proper history or searchable topics.
Yes, I hate Discord with a passion. Give me a good forum any day of the week.
All skill levels 
In addition to the ^^^How They Work^^^ which covers the criteria used to access the events, including eligibility, I would also suggest reading the post as well.
https://community.justinguitar.com/t/the-community-open-mic-events-category/2816
which also covers how the JGC OMs started and why.
And look out for the Call For Interest posts, which come out shortly after each “show” :
https://community.justinguitar.com/t/open-mic-011-call-for-interest/120335/73
Cheers
Toby
Although I don’t dislike Discord, it is exactly this argumentation that keeps me from launching one for JG, let alone even proposing the idea. That + it is harder to maintain order 
In my experience, chat rooms tend to become the death of strong communities like this one, which is why I’m not in favour.
Several years ago I was part of a number of local and not-so-local communities which were active and pretty vibrant but, at the same time, useful and focused.
I estimate we would normally get an average of 2-3 posts per day per community. Sometimes we had hardly any posts in a given week, and other times we had 20 or 30 posts per day, depending on what was going on at the time.
And, because it was a posting community, not dissimilar to this one, the conversations were grouped, relevant, easy to navigate, and long lasting.
Then people started using chat. Very soon, no-one used the community forums any more. We went from 2-3 focused posts a day to 50-60 totally unfocused ones.
Conversations became ephemeral, rambling, undisciplined, and difficult to follow. People asked the same questions all the time because it was impossible to point them to where they had been previously answered, and people thought it was fine to post stickers, memes, and other nonsense which ended up polluting the stream to the extent that the more useful conversations were pushed out.
Many important contributors and people including some who were instrumental in organising, moderating and running the communities, were sidelined or even alienated.
Eventually, most of those communities died because their original purpose (communication and sensible discussion of important community issues and events) wasn’t been fulfilled by the new chat communities, simply because chat communities are REALLY BAD at that.
And before someone says it, yes, I include Discord in that. I’m a member of several Discord communities and rarely use them because they are simply dreadful for anything other than having a real-time chat. And that goes for all the other chat-like tools I have used including Slack, Wire, Viber, Google Hangouts/Chat, MS Teams, WhatsApp, Signal, Line, Messenger, Telegram, etc.
These tools have a place and that place is where you want or need to have relatively immediate, ephemeral real-time conversations.
The trouble is, if you give people the option to use these tools alongside the tools like this forum they will use the chat tool in preference even when it is inappropriate. As much as you try you will not be able to stop conversations gradually, and irreversibly, moving to chat. And that then is the death of the community.
So my vote is a strong and informed NO to Discord, or any other official chat capability for this community: it’s not needed and I strongly believe it will be the eventual downfall of this wonderful community.
Cheers,
Keith
I would also say, go look at the recordings & after show chat of all the previous events. Great to see each event, and the mixture of first time performers vs seasoned veterans and everything in between.
Your experience mirrors my own, literally word for word. I used to be on the staff of a huge forum-based community with hundreds of thousands of active members. We totally ignored Discord for years, for all the reasons we’ve mentioned. Then out of the blue, the admin inexpicably changed his mind a year or so ago, overrode his staff, and added it anyway.
Boom. Forums were practically dead within a month. We staff were left trying to moderate free-for-all chat rooms with 50,000+ daily chatters all going over the same old things endlessly, filling the chat with memes, ignoring the rules and posting all manner of objectionable content, etc etc… it was literally an impossible task, and contributed to my finally leaving that community for good.
This community is far smaller of course, but it would inevitably experience the same kind of issues. We seem to be doing just fine with the way things are currently done in regard to posting performances and open mics, so there really is no reason to change anything anyway.
If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it… and certainly don’t replace it with something far worse.
I tend to agree with these thoughts. I have been one of the leaders of an online gaming community Oldageplaystationers. We had a vibrant community based on a forum, we did have an IRC channel that a few regulars lived in. As more ways to connect came about, the traffic at the forum reduced, but no other option gained a clear foothold, and the members ended up getting segregated to their own favorite method of communication, but we lost the sense of cohesion and community. Now I would say we exist in name only and the forums were recently taken away due to lack of participation and the effort needed to update. I am a member of several discord communities, but I don’t understand why they are popular just seem very random to me.
This is a very vibrant community here, difficult to keep up with at times due to the volume of traffic, but well organized and allows you to find on what you need. So I would encourage staying focused on this great place, wasn’t part of the old place, but this tool seems to have great functionality. Phil
@Majik Yeah, I never really thought about it like that. I like discord because of the live voice chat, as well as a place to share memes and other off-topic stuff. Forums are absolutely a way more organized way to have conversations on particular topics, and since post don’t get lost to the void of chat scroll you can actually see how people respond to varying post and is good way to develop a since of community.
Your comment did a great job illustrating how people will just use what’s convenient to then at the time, regardless if it’s the right or best place to do so.
As much as I enjoy live voice chat and all, I’d rather have vibrant forum and no discord. I think both forums and discord have their purpose, but now you’ve illustrated how discord can be destructive to a forum, so I totally can see why you’d have to pick a lane a just stick to that one, and for places like JustinGuitar that have a wide variety of topics but all centered around a particular theme, especially so when a lot of the post are going to be about needing help and/or inupt, a forum is without a doubt the best option.
This topic has it all, @Majik and @Goffik explained why we don’t go for a chat room with JG
It is logical that this topic pops up once in a while and it does here as well.
You are, of course, welcome to do your talking here as well
I use Discord quite a lot while gaming and the social aspect does more for me than the gaming itself. I’m a “talker” myself but on this Community I try to be to the point…though… I don’t post as much as others but I tend to be a long poster:D