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January 10, 2024

2023: The Year In Review

By Barry Rudesill

Every January, we sit down and reflect on what happened in the previous year and lay out our plans for the coming year. With that, this week we’ll start with 2023:

First, we mentioned in 2022 that we were asked to road-trip to a nearby state to speak with a gentleman about how The Trek could be used in working with prisons. For those of you who don’t know, prisons track “recidivism” or “a tendency to relapse into a previous...mode of behavior”. In other words, when someone is released from prison, some people choose to change while others don’t.

If you’re unfamiliar with recidivism, let me share a statistic with you. According to the article, “2018 Update on Prisoner Recidivism: A 9-Year Follow-up Period (2005-2014)”, released by the Bureau of Justice in 2018, “An estimated 68% of released prisoners were arrested within 3 years, 79% within 6 years, and 83% within 9 years.” I don’t know about you, but those numbers are NOT encouraging to me!

In fact, I (Barry) was asked to speak in a prison in 2023, and it was an eye-opening experience for me! (I’ve been invited to speak again in 2024 and I’m looking forward to getting that date on my calendar!)

Because of that, we are honored that The Trek was a part of those discussions, and we’re waiting to see what, if anything, will happen next. (We also want to find a way to open discussions in Wisconsin in 2024 to see if we can be of service to people in prison or who are being released in our home state!)

Second, we began doing an update to the Student Edition to fix some minor issues that we – and others – have found. When finished, these updates will include: the ability to sign up as a Student Edition Facilitator only; a new “universal” Facilitator which will include both Standard and Student; a new Facilitator’s Guide for Student; tweaks to the videos; updated workbooks; etc. The goal is to have most of these done by the end of March 2024, with the final updates finished by June 1.

Third – and our last point for today – we completed a major overhaul of the server for security and speed. For the techies out there, we went from Ubuntu 18.04 to 22.04; complete with a number of back-end upgrades, as well. We also switched our Hosting Control Panel, closed unneeded ports, etc. Techs will understand that; but, for the rest of us, it just means a safer, more secure experience. (We DO still handle all financial transactions through PayPal, since they have better security!) We still have some final tweaks in process, but most of the “heavy lifting” is done.

By the way, it’s our goal to use these updates to prevent our “September crash”. Every year, our servers get updated in September – right at the start of a lot of Trek groups! – and those security upgrades always seem to break some part of our system. With these updates, we’re hopefully far enough ahead with our security that the mandatory upgrades won’t affect us in 2024...or ever again!

As I look at this list, it seems kind of...short, actually. But, as I reflect on how long each process has been so far, as I remember the meetings, conversations, late nights, and more, I really do feel like we've done a lot in 2023! Even more importantly, I want to encourage you to check out the blog for The Bridge page to find out even more about what we’ve been doing!

Thanks to all of you who helped make 2023 a success! Next week, we’ll chat about our plans for 2024 – we have some BIG ones – and then we’ll have some fun blog posts coming starting at the end of the month!

Until then, we hope you enjoy your journey!

- The Trek

January 10, 2024

2023: The Year In Review

By Barry Rudesill

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