A Major Bee Update

Big news: Bee is fuller than ever before. There are now hundreds of activities across Vermont on the app, from volunteer days and live music to pickup games and community suppers. If it’s happening in Vermont, chances are it’s on Bee.

Getting involved in your community is easier than ever with Bee. All you have to do is open the map, find an activity, and tap to join. You'll be surprised by what you find. Your town has way more going on than you might think. And Bee is the place to find real, local things happening near you, so you can spend less time online and more time with your community.

But there’s more. There are a few new features included in this update:

• Save activities: Interested, but not ready to join? Save any activity and come back to it later.
• Easier posting: Just send the details and the app handles the rest.
• Paid activities: Bee now includes select paid activities up to $50. Filter by any mix of free, by donation, and paid.
• Improved date filters: Quickly find activities happening today, tomorrow, or any other day that works for you.
• Search: Search by title, description, location, or organization name.

So how does our small Vermont team keep hundreds of activities on the map? That part has a name…

Meet Honey

Honey is Bee's AI helper, and she is a big part of how we’re able to find so many events. She buzzes around Vermont gathering activities from library calendars, town sites, community boards, social media, and the details users share with us. Then she organizes them so everything is clear, complete, and easy to find. The result is simple: more of your community's activities, in one place, with less digging. This frees up our team to do more work supporting non-profits, funding community activities, and creating new technology to connect and empower Vermonters.

How Honey Works

We know AI makes a lot of people uneasy right now, and that’s fair. Before Honey launched, we surveyed our team about how they felt about using AI, what gave them pause, and where it actually made sense. That input shaped how we use it responsibly. It was a conversation we had together, and it’s one we’ll continue having

AI is developing fast, so as we stay current on where it’s heading, we welcome the important discussions, and we keep a close eye on how Honey is actually working. As we learn, we adjust. If something is not serving communities or our values, we change it. We’ll be releasing more on how we think about and use AI in the coming weeks. 

Updates for Guides

Posting on Bee is now faster and easier than ever for Guides, formerly known as Hosts. We rebuilt how you submit an activity so it fits the way you work, whether you are posting one activity or an entire season of recurring events.

Here is what changed.

Two Ways to Post

Quick Entry is for when you want something up fast.
All we need is:

• Activity title
• All the activity details you have in whatever order it comes to you

Honey picks it up as a chat and checks back on anything that is missing or unclear, and posts your activity once it is ready to go.

Form Entry is closer to what you're used to, with a handful of upgrades that make it more flexible:

• Location is now a simple address field instead of a map, so you can type where it is happening and move on.
• The organization field is editable, which means you can post on behalf of any group you are helping, not just your own.
• There is a new price field, because paid events up to $50 are welcome on Bee now.
• Photo, description, and date and time all work the way they did before.

Form entries open a chat as well, and that chat does more than confirm your post. If your activity is already on Bee, you can use it to update the existing listing with anything new, like a changed time or a new location. You can reopen that chat anytime and get notified the moment your activity goes live.

Go See for Yourself

None of this works without the people behind it. Thank you to the Vermonters, the Guides, and the local organizations who make these activities real. Every listing on that map is something a neighbor is building, and Bee just helps you find it. This is community, and we get to grow it together.

So open Bee, find one thing happening near you this week, and go be a part of your community. Stop scrolling, start showing up. Your town is more alive than you think. Go see for yourself.

Reach us anytime at bee@shock.ngo.