OpenExO Dec 2023 Platform Update

On December 22nd, the OpenExO Platform received its largest update since December 23rd, 2022. So, there’s nothing to do about it but say this is a huge update!

The OpenExO Platform has seen substantial growth in 2023 since the changes in late 2022 to our new platform and membership model. It’s been a busy year!

There is a lot to go over!

New Subscriptions Implementation

We have completely overhauled the platform subscription system. The previous “low-code” Stripe Pricing Table solution was causing numerous problems for our members. The new fully integrated system has many fewer clicks and redirects and should be much easier for members to navigate the new user subscription and onboarding flows. You will see the flows as the 3, 2, 1 style countdowns now. Overall, this should be a major experience upgrade.

Many other behind-the-scenes changes as well to make administration and support of our growing community much easier for the member experience team. Here is a bullet summary:

• Saved billing information
• Invoice history, downloadable invoice PDFs
• Promo code support
• Ability to handle multiple price types (fixed/one-time and standard recurring)
• Multiple currency support
• Laid Foundations is set to accept alternate payment methods beyond Stripe in the future (cryptocurrency, NFTs, and more).
• New subscription and invoice-related admin controls
• All existing subscribers have been migrated to the new system

New and Improved Tool Hub

We have laid the foundations to assimilate the hodge-podge of tools and resources with the new Tool Hub. You can link directly to the page at https://web.openexo.com/tool-hub/

This is considered kind of an experimental soft-launch at the moment. It contains apps ExOPass Powered/ login/ connection, Tools, and things we like. Have been directly vetted and have relationships with - sometimes affiliate relationships to help support the platform.

Onboarding Improvements

We have been told consistently that when people join they don’t know what to do next. So, we created new onboarding paths for our existing users and new ones to help. These are in a countdown format and are integrated with all the new signup processes. They are available directly from the main platform landing page at openexo.com. We added options to:

• Create an ExO
• Make my Company an ExO
• Learn About ExO
• Help an Organization Implement ExO

The ExO Heroes

We have had a LOT of fun and very positive response to the creation of the new ExO Heroes. That effort has been led by our team member, Michael Jonsson. You will find the Heroes in a great many places now, and they are very active on social media, in Discord, etc. They have become a fun, fresh, and important part of our overall look, brand, and identity. Keep reading, as later in this update, you’ll learn more about how the heroes are very web3 ready!

Learning Hub

A few months ago, we launched our new learning hub at https://learn.openexo.com with an eye toward dramatically improving our members' digital education experience. It's gone very well! This was paired with the launch of the ExO Sessions, which you can find on the calendar weekly at https://web.openexo.com/calendar

Along with this new release, we have also updated the learning hub with new and updated versions of ExO Foundations in English and Spanish (German will be posted next). And we hope the Casper-sponsored Enterprise Blockchain course will launch very soon. We've been delayed on the blockchain course for various reasons. But it's coming. Also, not seen but done by the Learning Experience team was the amazing delivery of OpenExO's new enterprise LMS delivery of training. That was amazing work. We'll share more about that in time.

Sunsetting Circles & Marketplace

The usage of our current implementations of circles and the marketplace was extremely low. And, we have not been able to provide anywhere close to the level of support and improvement that these needed to function well and improve over time. We had plans for a 2.0 marketplace and even a 2.0 Circles potentially but these are on hold for now, we can revisit something similar later in the future. This decision streamlines our offerings so that we can better support our members and reduce instances of confusion or disappointment (which was often the case with these features).

• Circles and Marketplace menu items have been removed pending re-imagination of them in our platform

Dashboard and Menu Cleanup, Landing Updates

• The sidebar menu has been optimized
• Removed Circles
• Removed Marketplace
• Added Events
• Added a Join Discord link to be easier to find
• Created a New 404 error page

User Account Management

• The main user account dashboard has been cleaned up to hopefully feel less cluttered and confusing, with clearer instructions on “next steps” for a user if they do not know what to do.
• A variety of contextual landing pages has been updated with some additional call-to-action links/funnel pages and ExO Heroes images.

Experience Points!

We had two VERY fun seasons of gamification learning with the ExO Angels games. About two years ago, OpenExO set out to learn how to implement gamification using Octalysis. That eventually saw the formation of the ExO Angels as a team of community volunteers that eventually became their own (non-OpenExO) business. Based on the successes of those experiments, we have our first iteration of an on-platform rewards system in place, which we are calling XP.

XP Is Not to be confused with XP from the Experience Game. The Experience game has ended. XP is also not directly linked to the EXOS cryptocurrency. XP are not crypto tokens, EXOS or otherwise.

Platform members can earn points via interacting with the platform (viewing pages and feed items, commenting, bookmarking, upvoting, supervoting, earning badges, referring members, connecting your social accounts, following community profiles / being followed) as well as the ability for us to manually credit or debit points to any account via the admin.

Doing similar actions in the same 24-hour period results in fewer earnings per action – encouraging trying out different actions and keeping active daily. We can easily adjust the base point values for each type of action however we want.

The purpose of this XP system is as follows:

1. An experiment to increase time-on-site and overall engagement
2. Support “social farming” efforts as part of the ExO Heroes project
3. A pre-cursor to a more in-depth, fully tokenized + gamified rewards system that will come after we complete our EXOS blockchain migration to the Casper network

XP earners will have a chance to receive a free ExO Heroes NFT drop as well as an air-drop of our new Casper-based token supply after we do the blockchain migration.

ExO Heroes NFTs!

The OpenExO platform is a fully web3-capable and compliant platform. It has been since December 2022, during the last major platform relaunch. However, with this latest release, we are stepping things up!

The ExO Heroes NFT has its own Twitter: https://twitter.com/ExOHeroesNFT. Check it out! It’s growing faster than any other account at the moment!

NFTs are access tokens to the platform and tied to members' ExO Pass. You can think of it as your passport to web3 if you'd like. Use of these features is optional but encouraged.

• Claim ExO Hero NFT Landing Page: https://openexo.com/claim-hero
• To join the list for receiving an NFT, all you have to do is sign into your ExO Pass, go to your “Wallets” section, and register/verify your Ethereum wallet address. That’s it.
• Free user signups will get a random chance of receiving an NFT
• Basic users will get a higher chance of receiving an NFT
• Your XP may or may not be a factor (TBD)
• Premium and Pro users are 100% guaranteed an NFT drop as long as they register their wallet address.
• The actual launch date for creating and distributing the NFT collection is still up in the air.

Watch the claim hero page or be active in Discord, where all the updates are released as announcements and in the channel #exo-heroes-nft.

If you love NFTs or this will be your first-ever NFT, you will want to first read the helpful blog post, “How to set up a MetaMask”: https://openexo.com/blog/post/how-to-download-and-use-metamask as you will be needing that to set up the wallet to hold your Hero safely.

OpenExO’s First EVER Exponential Leadership Program

We are REALLY excited, after all these years and all this community building to offer a premier executive leadership program in February 2024 in New York. This will also be the first time in nearly TEN years that Salim Ismail has MC’d such a program since the good old days of Singularity University Executive Programs! Visit https://web.openexo.com/executive-program/ for all the details.

OpenExO’s India Reimagined Report

If you missed it, we released a research report on the NIFTY50 in India that has been very well received and was well done.

Building Competitive, Sustainable Exponential Organizations. Insights and Recommendations along with Future Readiness Assessment of NIFTY50 Organizations

Link to the report: https://web.openexo.com/india-reimagined-exponential-report-2-0

In Conclusion, Monster Release! Epic Year! Onward to an Exponential 2024!

There is a LOT going on, and we provide a myriad of ways to keep tabs. Here are just a few, and we really appreciate follows, likes, subscribers, and shares on social media. It makes a HUGE difference to our community when you share.

Remember, everything we do is one step toward Transforming the World for a Better Future!

YouTube - https://youtube.com/openexo

X - https://x.com/openexo

LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/company/openexo

Discord - https://discord.gg/c2xUGftkQT

Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/OpenExO

OpenExO Platform - https://openexo.com

ExO Insight - Member made! https://insight.openexo.com

OpenExO Feeds - https://openexo.com/feedsis set to accept alternate payment methods beyond Stripe in the future

You can find the latest platform updates on our blog.