Welcome to the forums! I would be very excited to see some form of activity outside the dev team only section, but I doubt that will happen anytime soon. Sad Panda, as they say.
If you feel that you have any form of skill that you can contribute to the project, feel free to make an application. Or just do what I did and ask a lot of questions (an application is better though), but we love input. Don't feel too bad. Almost every member of this team is still very much in school, so it's not like we're trained professionals. Just a handful of guys who want to do something cool.
But if you want to remain active, remember this: We are almost all bronies. We love and tolerate the excrement out of you, no matter who you are. I myself was very shy starting, prepending every post with some form of disclaimer hoping I wouldn't offend anyone. There is very little chance of anyone here hating you if you make a reasonable post so don't feel bad.
Also, I know exactly how you feel about being ignorant of social expectations. I have found that it works best just to ignore them and pretend you're charismatic. As it turns out, pretending can be as, if not more, powerful than actually being charismatic.
So yes!
Welcome to the forum!
Feel free to ask questions, participate in forum conversations that haven't been posted on in weeks, and help keep our forum alive!
Please don't leave us