Community Update: Gliding into the New Year 🎉

Announcements
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Hello Gliders!

It’s been a while since our last community update, and it didn’t feel right to head into the holidays without one last hurrah.

In this final community update for 2024, we’re covering:

Let’s get into it.

Replay: Gliding into the New Year :spiral_calendar:

Earlier this week we held our third annual Gliding into the New Year event with Glide CEO David Siegel. As always, it included a look back at milestones of the past year, and a look ahead to what’s next.

Here’s a quick rundown:

  • We spent more time visiting our customers in person this year. Going on-site with Hunter Douglas, Westland Real Estate Management, Health-Ade Kombucha, Illy Coffee, and many others gave us a better understanding of how companies use Glide to quickly build & deploy custom software.

  • Glide Experts played a major role in helping businesses succeed with Glide. As of this year, ~34% of Glide’s revenue can be attributed to teams that work with a Glide Expert. We also won the Up-and-Coming Partner Program of the Year award from PartnerStack.

  • The Glide platform has become a complete, all-in-one solution built around the pillars of Data, Layout, and Workflows. This journey began when we introduced a concept called “dark apps” in Glide’s earliest days. These are apps created by a business for internal use. They’re critical for business operations but never go to an app store.

  • We started 2024 with more investment in Glide AI. Following that, we obtained our SOC 2 certifications; refined our design system & added Dark Mode; released new high-density Data Grid and Table collection components; improved Big Tables performance, including the addition of Live Updates; added inline data references to Text components; and launched our AI Custom component, letting non-technical users create complex, custom UIs through conversational prompting.

  • Our most powerful advancement this year was turning Custom Actions into Workflows. These powerful backend automations can be triggered via schedule, webhook, email, and user interactions. Workflows are currently in beta, and will launch on January 8th.

  • Looking ahead to 2025, we’re going to help customers get started with Glide more quickly with a new onboarding experience & pre-built solutions. We’re also responding to changing market demands as AI becomes more capable. Specifically, we’ll focus on intelligent automation, combining workflow automation and AI flexibility, with pre-built solutions packaged as Glide AI agents. To support the critical business functions running on these solutions, we’ll continue our investment in Glide’s platform reliability, security, and safety.

For more year-in-review details, check out our post on the Glide blog:

Note: We weren’t able to get to all of the audience questions during the event. Look out for another thread after the holidays addressing the Q&A.

Recap: Glide Experts Accelerator :mortar_board:

Our first-ever Experts Accelerator cohort took place over six weeks from November through early December. In that time we:

  • Fast-tracked 120 Glide Experts through Glide University certification
  • Held weekly sessions with guest speakers and networking breakouts
  • Tasked every participant to submit 3+ Glide app demos

Highlights from the Experts Accelerator
Highlights from the Experts Accelerator1920Ă—1080 139 KB

What’s next for the Accelerator?

53 members completed the Experts Accelerator cohort. You can spot them here in the Glide Community thanks to their new group badge:

Accelerator Badge
Accelerator Badge535Ă—535 4.67 KB

Recordings of the Experts Accelerator guest presentations will be made available to everyone in early 2025. You’ll find them in Glide University.

Accelerator feedback was overwhelmingly positive, so the most well-received elements of the cohort will roll into our Glide Experts partner program.

That includes:

  • More sessions with guest presenters
  • More networking breakouts
  • More group demos with live feedback

P.S. There are currently ~200 recorded demos from Accelerator members waiting for review. In January we’ll move these demos out of the Accelerator and into the new Community Showcase.

Community Showcase coming in January :hammer_and_wrench:

The Community Showcase will be a central portal where Gliders can submit their demos and gather feedback from others in the community.

Access won’t be limited to Glide Experts, although Experts will get special recognition for their status.

Look out for a preview release and more details in January.

Note for Accelerator members: Don’t worry - your demos won’t be made public without your consent! All Showcase users will have control over who can see their submissions. They’ll be set to private by default.

More Glide Community plans for 2025 :sparkles:

While Glide Experts are at the core of our community, we also know that our community includes a much wider range of Glide users who aren’t building solutions for clients. Instead, they’re putting Glide to work inside their own businesses.

We talk to these users every day, and from those conversations, we know that the Glide Community plays a huge role in how they learn to use our platform.

With that in mind, we’re expanding peer learning opportunities so that you’re not just learning to use the platform, but also learning what to do with Glide.

Specifically, we’re planning for:

  • More events featuring practical, real-world use cases of Glide
  • Structured build challenges to test your Glide skills
  • New peer groups based on experience level, industry, etc…

Keep an eye on the Announcements category for updates.

Recognizing our Community Contributors :medal_sports:

The Glide Community wouldn’t exist without your participation.

Everything you do – asking questions, making suggestions, helping others, sharing tips, and yes, even dropping a reaction on a post – contributes to the value of this community.

That’s why it’s such a powerful resource; because it’s a collective effort of Gliders helping each other.

So, to conclude this final update of 2024, I’d like to give a special shoutout to members who have repeatedly shown up this year, starting with…

Community Leaders

Our Community Leaders are prolific contributors and moderators who keep this community running smoothly. Thank you for all you do!

Top Contributors for 2024

Discourse (the platform we use for the Glide Community) awards points for all types of participation. These members topped the leaderboard over the past year.

Congratulations to…

On a personal note…

You all are why I joined the Glide team in 2022, and you’re all why I love hopping online and showing up every single day.

Thank you for an amazing 2024. Here’s to an amazing 2025.

See you in the new year. :v:

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Thanks for another great year! Blessed to be a part of this community!

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