We’re glad you’re excited about joining WeCAN and will be glad to have you on board. Since users become co-creators of WeCAN, and thus a part of a global WeCAN community, we need some way to ensure a personal connection. WeCAN is an unusual idea in a web space often dominated by anonymous bloggers and rabid opinion sharing. WeCAN is about concrete collaboration and deeply personal community, and as much as we operate globally through the web, we also work personally with each other. Both because we have to ensure that network users understand and feel ownership of the vision (otherwise it can become a lame duck), and because global communities based on collective participation just don’t work unless they are personal (trust us, we’ve tried), we require that new participants who wish to join contact and get to know an existing participant, who can invite you.

If you already know and/or work with a WeCAN participant, they’re probably just forgetting that it’s their job to invite you, so just send them a friendly reminder. If you just found us, you’re probably wondering how you’re supposed to find someone. It’s easy: go to the member directory, and search by using the map to find someone near you, or by entering tags into the search bar defining a common interest, shared background, and/or location. If possible, find someone you can sit down and talk with, but if there’s no one near you, try to find someone with a common interest or background (or just someone who’s work you find interesting). Hit the “Contact” button at the top of the person’s profile to send them a message. If meeting in person doesn’t work, see if you can talk over phone, but if not, online is fine. Just have a conversation and have fun with it – this is not an interview. Find out what the other person is doing, brainstorm some ideas of ways you could use WeCAN with them, and just make it clear that you want to participate, are open to working with lots of diverse people, and are ready to bring whatever you do, large or small, to the community. You’re new friend sends you an invitation, you set up your profile, and you’re ready to begin.

As WeCAN members, we’re supposed to help new folks get acquainted with the web system and the action ethic, and it’s not really stuff we can communicate effectively in text without personal examples and hearing what you need to know. So please, don’t be shy. Find us!