As the year winds down, we’re taking a moment to reflect on some of the key things we’ve built, improved, and shipped together in 2024. It’s been a big year - from no product to having a product, zero signups to more than 50,000, just an idea to a validated and loved product. This year has been all about building a learning experience that our students love.
To celebrate, I’m excited to share a NextWork Recap of 2024—a look back of what we’ve accomplished as a team and community. This changelog isn’t just a list of updates; it’s a tribute to the team’s growth, feedback, and the challenges they’ve tackled head-on. It’s also a thank-you to our students who have learnt on NextWork this year. Whether you’ve been here since day one or just joined, thank-you for all the love and support.
Overarching 2024 Goals
- ✅ Signups
- Goal: 10,000
- Results: 50,000+ (exceeded by +370%)
- ✅ Loved product
- Goal: 50+ testimonials
- Results: 300+ testimonials (exceeded by +500%)
- ✅ Retention
- Goal: 36%+ retention after first project
- Results: 47% retention after first project (exceeded by +30%)
Product Fixes & Improvements
Polishing Season (Dec ‘24)
- Update Highlight feature so that it’s on click rather than every time click + drag.
- Remember the last used Highlight colour of a student
- If you’re not logged in, Highlighting prompts you to login/create an account.
- Add loading state for download documentation button
- Ability to refresh student’s projects with latest updates from the master copy.
- Upload modal has a on-hover border indicator.
- Added a checklist component for projects to check all resources are deleted.
- Ability to hyperlink anywhere in the project - no more scrolling!
- Added text as a code-block type for copying descriptions, titles, etc.
- Ability to create url’s to nextwork.org that prefill search box.
- Remove orange colour from in-review state.
- Update Mission Accomplished success state to new graphics.
New Features
Build Season (June - November ‘24)
- Project Portfolio
- Advanced Secret Missions and projects
- Ability to search all NextWork projects
- Create your own saved list of projects
- View saved projects in a daily/weekly schedule
- Improved onboarding experience
- Ability to highlight your own copy of a project
- Simplify feature to help understand difficult concepts
- Ability to edit task answers
- Add tasks for text and images into projects
- Add contents menu for project steps
- Make contents menu responsive
- Add progress bar for project progress
- Automatically generate documentation for projects
- Ability to zoom in on images
- Automatically apply background to photos for projects
- LinkedIn post copy ready to copy + paste for each project
- Content writing + publishing workflow
- Content generator to make first drafts of projects easier
Community Wins
Build Season (Jan - Dec ‘24)
- Over 136 counties represented at NextWork
- 14,000+ community members
- NextWork community members creating branded swag for events
- Launching City Meetups
- Instagram, Tiktok, Substack, X, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube channels have all gone from near zero presence to combined, over 100k followers. Entirely organic content, zero paid.
Thank you to everyone for all the incredible hard work that has gone into building NextWork this year. For such a small team, we have achieved a lot in six months. Let’s get the world learning.
