The Bush Divers Invitational: Nepal

This was my first community event. It was much fun. I encountered some issues that maybe someone can help me with: (1) I joined the discord channel, but a message appeared that said something like that I don’t have the privilege to talk on the channel (or something to that effect), so I could only listen in. How can I get permission to talk on the channel? (2) I joined right at the published event start time and thought I’d be given time to do the start up and go through the checklists, etc. But to my surprise everybody took off right at the published start time, even though the OP says that one should do a cold start. Is that always like this? Is the published start time the takeoff time, rather than the cold-start-spawn-in-time?

Thanks again to the event organizers!