The discord is an audio chat (not possible here), but questions can be asked and answered here too. It’s better for the deeper more technical ones for sure, and the follow up discussion.
The first beta will be the same format as the alphas. The reason we are calling it closed (not quite the right term) is that without more UX support the early ones will be tricker for the general public to dive in to, so it’ll be really the forum OGs here that will be taking the strain.