Byte Size: Version 3

Welcome to our first Byte Size of 2023! In these regular updates, we provide details of our latest activities to reflect the important behind-the-scenes work that our developers and designers are doing. It's not always clear how much effort goes into producing the VH projects you love, so Byte Size exists to show you the activities needed to maintain ongoing projects.

Existing Projects

• Activist Hub: The online tool that allows you to track how many people you have inspired and influenced through outreaching efforts has been improved. For enhanced clarity, admins and regional organizers are now displayed at the top of the members list in the group/chapter settings. Previously they were either hidden or displayed as a member when having joined the group.

• Vegan Bootcamp: Going vegan has never been easier thanks to Vegan Bootcamp’s online community and free educational programs which take you step-by-step towards a vegan diet and lifestyle. As such, we’re constantly improving the platform and most recently we’ve updated our reCAPTCHA which does not require user input and has the added benefit of shortening the sign-up form. 

• Animal Support Bot:  Our very own support bot on Reddit, which uses artificial intelligence to debunk common anti-vegan myths, is now officially running on our own servers. For improved efficiency, it will now spin up “on-demand” for replies to posts rather than run continuously and store the language model in-memory.

• WatchDominion.org: To improve the user experience and make captions easier to find, we have migrated our video player to Video.js. We’ve also added the option to embed the player using an iframe and added Lithuanian and Portuguese captions, bringing the total number of languages for captioning to 35. Through our contact with the creators behind the official Dominion site, we have added a video download link below the video per their suggestion.

• Playground: Since our last update, Playground is now up and running. It is a live website that allows any animal advocate or organization to submit a request for help on a project or task, and prospective volunteers can view all opportunities and apply to work on a specific project. Users can filter by category, job type, and sort by latest.

Upcoming Projects

• Open Sanctuary: Lots of exciting developments here! To accommodate for the highly specific data requirements of different sanctuaries, we’ve focused heavily on customization. From a central dashboard, admin users will be able to add, edit, and filter animal residents as well customize specific data points to monitoring their well-being, as well as upload documents and medical history. Admin users can also add staff members and volunteers and assign them different roles, tasks, and levels of access for different responsibilities.

• Today for Animals: One of our new apps to be released this year, TFA gamifies and awards daily acts of taking steps for the animals. This project draws its inspiration from a winning idea submitted and voted on through Pitch FTA. Since then, our team has been hard at work conceptualizing and designing this app, and we’re excited to share that we’ve recently started development. Keep an eye out for a sneak peek.

This list covers in-house projects only, but our team has also put a lot of hard work into projects for external organizations. For more updates, please follow us on Instagram and LinkedIn and sign up for our newsletter. There are plenty more exciting updates to come, so watch this space and thanks for reading!