May 2020 Community Update!

Hello Community!

I hope you are all doing okay and managing the increase in stress weve all been experiencing. Things are starting to open up where I live, so people are beginning to venture out. People are a little worried and taking precautions and also seem hopeful that things will get better.

I was talking with some friends yesterday from NYC. We were talking about how they went through 9/11, Hurricane Sandy, and now COVID. They were saying how NYC is resilient. They get smarter and stronger through crises. It reminded me of when people go through a crisis. They often grow through the pain and learn important lessons. I believe that we collectively are growing through this worldwide crisis now. I believe we are learning to look out for one another and that we, too, will get stronger through this.

Weve all been hard at work across domains. I have some updates to share. The first major update is that weve recommenced work on our new app. This will be a react native app, which means itll be much more responsive and way less buggy than our current app. It wont be anywhere near as glitchy and will be much easier to use. Weve been hard at work on it for quite a while and just engaged a team to help us finish the last half of it up. They are estimating that well have it done in the next 3.5 months.

In digital health, they sometimes talk about apps like 7 Cups as a sort of digital medicine. You can think of listening, growth path exercises, shout outs in forums and group chat as different types of medicine that can help us better cope with challenges we face. Different challenges need different types and different doses of medicine. For example, if I struggle with panic attacks, then I need a lower dose of active listening and a higher dose of cognitive-behavioral therapy exercises and mindfulness activities. We give (listen) and receive care through the Website and through the app. The app being less than positive makes it more difficult for people to give and receive care. Needless to say, I am really glad that we will have a new app out in the next 3-4 months. A big thank you to you all for hanging in there!

Weve also been working closely with ambassadors to better understand how we can make quality improvements. One thing we thought through was the 80/20 rule. The basic idea is that 20% of something often has 80% of the impact. Here are a few examples:

20% of the people own 80% of the land
20% of books result in 80% of the sales
20% of the songs are played 80% of the time

This is sometimes referred to as a power law and a strange number of things follow this pattern. I suspect that quality does too. ie, 20% of the things we do to address quality will have 80% of the impact. The key thing is to figure out the 20%! Unfortunately, that part is harder than it looks. Nevertheless, we put our heads together and we focused on new listeners as being a good area to start. We are adding a new button (right under the conversation window) that says Need Help with this chat? that will lead people to the listener support room. We are also going to experiment with pinned messages and small ways to highlight the top 3 things that result in great listening. We will run several experiments here. Additionally, we also want to do listener phone verification as well where listeners will need to use their phone to complete sign up. This is a longer project and will take more time.

Another area of focus is on the new leadership training track and certification. We have a great listener track that you can find here. Listeners work through our practices and coursework to earn different levels of certifications (Active Listening 1, Active Listening 2 - all the way through 8). We are working on doing something similar for leadership development skills (or a certificate program in organizational leadership [Im still working on title/naming]). I plan to spend the next week really focused on this work and will share more soon. You can see a quick video here that @Hope asked me to create a couple of weeks ago. Broadly, the track will consist of personal development, professional development, advanced helping skills, principles of servant leadership, and how to build community.

We will likely use a group or cohort learning model where we work through one part of the program as a community together. Itll likely end up being similar to what we did with the Get Together learning marathon where we worked through one chapter at a time and there was a certificate awarded at the end. There will be certificates on a module basis and then an overall program certificate on organizational leadership at the end. Our goal is to help build leadership skills to help you, your career, and our community.

Another area of focus has been on accessibility. Many of you noticed the little blue man in the corner of the site. We have worked on a number of updates that make that blue man less and less necessary, but we are not all the way there yet. We hope to be in a place where we can make the blue man optional or a setting in the near future, but we have more work to do. Broadly, accessibility consists of making the site more user friendly to people with disabilities. For example, if Im blind then I might use a tool called a screen-reader. It reads off certain parts of the site to me. Before, our chat send button would have just been read, by a screen-reader, as button. Now it will be read as send. Weve made these updates on hundreds of buttons all around the site. We have more to do, but have made lots of progress.

Also, I wanted to say thank you to all of you for the recent encouragement and rallying! What we are collectively working to do together is very challenging. Patience, grace, encouragement - these attributes are like turbo-chargers that help propel our community forward. Thank you for being such an awesome group of people!

Glen

H

Heres the latest from our Translations Coordinator, @SoulfullyAButterfly!

With the Translations Project Revival, we have had lots of volunteer translators who have shown great dedication in helping globalize 7 Cups. We are currently standing at around 81,000 available translations for 44 available language projects! The good news is that we are mostly halfway done with the general project.

Our most recent bat-call from the community saw us getting an overwhelming amount of support and interest - if you are still waiting for your application to be processed, please do not worry as we are onboarding every single day - we appreciate you sharing our enthusiasm.

We are at our final touches for languages including Chinese (Simplified and Traditional), Spanish, and Portuguese (Standard). If you would like to help out in polishing these projects before its finalization and launch, please PM @SoulfullyAButterfly - we are looking forward to completing these projects!

Our designated leaders (@Shirley7Cups representing both Chinese teams, @wonderousMoon5570 representing the Hindi team, and @bouncyVoice4149 representing the Spanish Team) have continued to support the Translation Project by helping support their respective teams and guide them towards accomplishing goals. We are very proud to announce that @KACOSMIC stepped up to be a designated leader for Portuguese (Standard) and have helped immensely boost the projects progress!

If you are interested in stepping up to be a designated leader for other language teams, please PM @SoulfullyAButterfly

As we continue bringing well-deserved acknowledgment for our Translators, we have recognized that celebrating every small effort matters too. We are awarding these awesome designated leaders with the Featured Leader badge for their exceptional dedication. Our Chinese Translation Teams have also made immense progress and we have the privilege of celebrating the dedication of @AddictedTeaLover98 (who has proofread over 3000 translations and @Violiness (who has helped proofread all of the project!).

It is the minute efforts that help build bigger celebrations! Apart from badging translators (allowing access to collaborative rooms and more), we have decided to recognize our proofreaders with the Translation Microscope badge - this will help facilitate our final proofreading marathons!

We look forward to continuing to enjoy globalizing 7 Cups whilst celebrating our teamwork. Keep an eye out for more celebrations and recognition, proofing parties, team meetings, and fun gatherings!

We are proud of all of our community - where there is teamwork and collaboration, wonderful things can be achieved!

Laiba/Hope

I am proud of the accomplishments of the sub-community, forum, teen and Internship leadership Team. We have accomplished a lot in the past month and it is exciting to share the news with all of you.

The sub-community team continued its strong events celebration streak into May under the leadership of @Tazzie (our Sub-community ambassador).Various events were hosted to celebrate/raise awareness towards many important events. Mental Health awareness month was celebrated through a variety of thought provoking forum and group support discussions. Additionally the sub-communities hosted events for appreciation week, mothers day, National Fitness Month and many more. You can view the event master post here! Additionally, the sub-community leadership board was rearranged to reflect the current roles. Tazzie and team have started with the planning of 7 Cups upcoming birthday! Find more information here! Last but not least, Tazzie has started a series where the focus is on appreciating and acknowledging the work of our community.

In Forum news, @Lucy2 joined the forum team as a forum mentor leader. Our forum Needs Reply Team has been working hard under the leadership of lucy2 in ensuring that people posting in the forum feel heard. Additionally, @Anomalia & @Mel (Forum Ambassadors) along with the forum leadership team have been hard at work ensuring that all flagged posts are timely reviewed and appropriate action is taken to ensure a safe forum experience for everyone. Moreover, 14 forum supporters were onboarded to increase support in different forum areas. Lasty, @River (Forum Mentor Leader) has been focusing on checking in with the forum leaders and providing support to all the wonderful people involved in supporting the forums.

The teen community has seen a rise in engagement in group rooms especially in the teen listener room. A refresher post was made to highlight the correct purpose of the Teen Listener room. @Mel and team have been working with the teen community to improve their teen listener room experience and to provide more opportunities for growth as a listener. More time has been allotted to the timely review of safety reports and safety concerns to ensure that the teen rooms remain a positive space for all. All this is of course a work in progress, we will continue to work hard and provide more opportunities for the teens to take part in. Additionally, the first batch of teen sharing circle leaders and discussion leaders received their badges! Teens have stepped up to take the lead on sharing circles and discussions, we are very proud of their accomplishments! Moreover, Mel, Tazzie and team continue to focus on providing supportive and engaging opportunities for the teens. Lastly, two more Adult-Teen Listener interviewers were onboarded to ensure fast application processing for our adult-teen listener role.

Our Internship applications have almost doubled in the past few months. It is exciting to see such a rise in interest.Our Internship Leadership Team remains strong and continues to provide support to our Interns. 83 Interns completed their Internship trial and became active interns since the last community update. 12 interns successfully completed their Internship. We have added a final reminder email to ensure that all interns are aware of their internship end dates to further facilitate a good internship experience. The internship team is focusing on ensuring the best of support for all of our interns. Additionally, the internship sub-community continues to provide support to our interns along with a few fun activities to engage in.

Obs

In May, 3 Support Room Mentors (LavenderPeach, PamHarley003 & GentleFlameofCaring), 5 Chatroom mods, 4 doorkeepers, RS joined the Group Support Team. It is good to see how everyone is stepping up and joining hands to make Group Support Rooms a better place for everyone. Also, Support Room 24/7 and Community Room are linked to Newbie Hub subcommunity now.

From Listener Chat Rooms, PenguinPower31 stepped up as Chatroom Mentor Leader and will be leading the Listener Discussion Team. Also, I introduced the Listener Learning Session. It is a session I am hosting in the Listener Community Room to discuss some of the Listener topics.

Also, we updated the criteria to become Listener Chatroom Leaders as well as the criteria needed to keep the badge. This is to make sure our leaders are accountable and taking the role seriously, expecting them to stay in the chatrooms a bit more than before and our listeners team get all much needed support.

In Quality news, we updated the criteria to become a Quality Mentor. We updated it to make it more inclusive and consistent. It will allow better coverage for all Quality Projects. We also added detailed and clear guidelines on how to attempt Active Listening Tests 1-4. These tests are an opportunity for the listeners to test their skills and get feedback to improve it.

We also revived the QnA project. Q&A team approves and rejects hundreds of questions weekly submitted by members and guests on 7cups. When they submit a question, members of the QandA team approve, correct or reject them. They then go out to the community to get answered. These are real questions and helpful answers support someone in need.

I am proud of our community and thankful to our community leaders for all their dedication and commitment to support the community.

At last, I like to share a story in brief.

A father called his two school going sons and asked them to build a wall. Everyday, after school both kids used to put one brick after another well aligned. After a couple of months of work, they built a big wall. Their father was impressed and told his sons, Now never say you cannot be successful. Not able to create a big wall in a day isnt failure. It is the matter of one brick a day.

In other words, it is about moving from 0 to 1 and then 1 to 2. It is about taking small steps and after a while when you eventually look back and notice how far youve actually come. It is applicable for everyone - mental health recovery, getting in shape, taking the stairs of a building or solving the challenges of a community.

One step a day is the key! <-- great wisdom Obs!