The moment you’ve all been waiting for…

After several weeks of designing, voting, designing some more and setting up shop, we can finally open our doors to the KOA Merch Shop! We’ve partnered with Spreadshirt to give you the best shipping options from warehouses in the United States (for our friends in the western hemisphere) and Europe (for everyone on the other side of the Atlantic) while also providing a nice cut to KOA. Please remember all donations will be reinvested to improve your KOA experience.

Huge thanks to Dawn, Ariheen and Red Wolf for being the brains and pens behind the designs, and to Shaur for assisting with the admin of setting up an online shop. We really couldn’t have done without you.

We love feedback! Any thoughts, questions, queries, or concerns — please send them through our Contact Form using the category ‘Merchandise’. And don’t forget to post a snap of you in your new swag on the snapshots channel of the Discord server!

A quick look at a few changes around KOA’s digital team!

Firstly, a big welcome to Jessica as our new Head of Web Development — she has already been instrumental in a few key changes we’re making behind the scenes and will be making more visible adjustments as we move forward!

You may be familiar with the current setup of engineers and website team, but with new projects and new blood coming into KOA there’s a few changes we’re making to make our teams more practical and efficient so we can get the best KOA experience to all our members.

1. Engineers
   Team Lead: Tekrus (Head of R&D)
   The engineers we know and love! Nothing’s changed, and they continue to blow us away with their skills working on bots, programs and new features around KOA and the Discord. We have them to thank for managing Horace, delivering our pom bot and the clan data tools.
2. Web Producers
   Team Lead: Jessica (Head of Web Development)
   A new role! The web producers are a subdivision of the website team that are focussed on building web features using HTML, CSS and Javascript and liaising between the engineers and content crafters. Ideal for beginner coders looking to cut their teeth on some projects to build their portfolios. They’ll be working on the COTW section, Resource Library and making sure the website runs smoothly!
3. Content Crafters
   Team Lead: Joshua (Website Manager)
   Our beloved writers, graphics designers and KOA artists fall to this camp. They will continue to contribute copy to the website, writing articles, contributing design features to tech projects, developing new merch designs and generally keeping things quite pretty (e.g. thanks Art for adapting Belle Lehr’s designs for this new post!) .

For updated and in-depth role descriptions check out our applications page, or reach out to the relevant team lead to toss your hat in the ring!

Thanks to everyone who joined us a few days before Christmas for a very merry Town Hall meeting! Many an exciting project was discussed including some well-earned promotions, the announcement of a new sector, upcoming Horace and bot features and (gasp!) a podcast tailored specifically for the members of KOA!

If you missed out on the Town Hall, never fear, the minutes are here! Please peruse at your leisure for all the details. Look forward to seeing you all at the next one!

Happy Day of the Sun!

Quote of the Day: What would life be if we had no courage to attempt anything?

• Vincent Van Gogh

Challenge of the Week

Champion of the Week: @jwebdev

Our Next COTW: Keeping Your New Years Resolutions

KOA Newsletter

Challenge of the Week: Keeping Your New Years Resolutions

Book of the Month: Throwback Month Choose from past Books of the Month!

 KOA Ongoing Challenges

 Dev December by @StevenTNorris

 Hustle-n-Bustle December Edition by @HannahHannaB

 Phone Detox: An Introduction to Solitude by @Pedro2cb

 KOA Community Events

KOAI Solstice Event

When is it? January 3rd, 8PM UTC. Check here to calculate when that is for you: http://bit.ly/koaisolstice20 The winter solstice, the longest night of the year in the northern hemisphere and the longest day in the southern hemisphere, happens on December 22nd. In celebration, KOAI is hosting a gathering of storytelling in early January! We call on you to help bring myths and tales from your culture, or cultures that you’re studying and/or are interested in, and come and share them with the community. This event will be hosted in a voice channel (edited)

Interested in being a story teller? Contact @Art, KOAI Witch [he/him] for more information and to let him know you’re interested, and in the mean time check what time you’re going to come in, and create a brief outline of the story you want to tell We look forward to seeing you there! Haven’t joined KOAI yet? KOAI is KOA’s international server focused on learning more about the various languages and cultures of our world. Join here: https://discord.gg/PSmvrup

KOA Movie Night

When is it? January 5th, but the time is up to you! Please use the following link to let us know what times work best for you: http://whenisgood.net/movienight2020

Prepare your snacks, grab your drinks… and get ready for KOA’s first movie night of the new year! We’ll all be hanging out in a voice channel and watching a movie as a whole group. More information will be provided when a final time is decided upon. If you’re interested in joining us, be sure to keep notifications on for this channel as I’ll be following up with a poll to vote on a movie along with a finalized time. I look forward to seeing you all there!

The Future of Newsletters in 2020

Newsletters are getting a Facelift!

• In an attempt to consolidate and simplify our news at KOA, we’ve decided to use our News Page on our site as our one stop shop for all things new in the KOA world. Each of our department heads will specifically keep it updated, and all longer updates will continue to have their own separate posts, not pinned like the newsletter at the top of the page.

 Other News

Community Improvements:

• Led by @erschmidt, Academics is our brand new sector to discuss studying techniques and all things academics.
• Meditation is finally a club and is joinable in #front-desk!

Engineering Updates:

• Our Community Pom Tool is nearly complete!
• We’re beginning to work on a brand new bot to run Trivia Events in the near future. More on this soon!
• Our Podcast is now in production. Thank you to all who have been sending in their feedback and ideas to make this awesome.

That’s all for this week! Make today count and be well.

You know them, you love them…

*said with the same intonation as “Yaaaaaaaaaas”

We’ve finally released our updated clans page which lists all our clans with short descriptions, member counts and application forms all on the new KOA website. From here our website will send the applications over to the clan leaders which will make the whole process of applying for and being accepted into KOA clans much more efficient.

We’re also happy to announce that we have a new KOA clan: The Wolf Pack led by Queen Wolf with a focus on health and fitness! If you’re aiming to work on that summer bod, try a new physical activity or just want to eat a bit better, this is the crew for you!

The new version of Horace is out, thanks to everyone who has contributed!

What’s new in this update?

• CI changed from Travis to Circle to ease the life of our developers.
• Horace no longer reacts to every single message in accountability station, only those containing checkmarks.
• The raid command now informs everyone about who started the raid, time for that extra accountability!
• New info terms
  • Notion
  • Pom War
  • Donations to KOA
  • disturbedman
• Bookmark feature
  • You can now react to a message with the bookmark emoji and Horace will send it to your DMs for easy saving.
• Horace will now inform users if they’re trying to pin something with his pin feature and the channel has already reached the pin limit.
• Added reactions to COTW messages to confirm that the commands have been understood.

Horace is an open-source Discord bot built by and for members of the KOA community. For details on how to get involved, click here. For the full run-down of existing features log in to the Discord and type !help. To suggest a new feature, visit Horace’s GitHub profile, check it’s not already on the list, and click New Issue.

The new version of Horace is out, thanks to everyone who has contributed!

What’s new in this update?

• Users can now pin messages in channels without the help of guardians and helpers! It currently requires 5 people to react to the message with a 📌 emoji. (Thanks, Erschmidt)
• The info command can now give a list of the available search terms if no terms are provided. (Thanks, Maestoso)
• You can pin your own posts in the accountability station by reacting with 📌 to it. (Thanks Mark)
• Deleted messages will be sent to the moderation channel, so guardians and helpers know what has happened, even if the message is deleted. (Thanks Tekrus)
• Horace will again greet people with sun and moon emojis, if their message contains either “good morning” or “good night” in the citadel. (Thanks Zaphoo)
• Profanity filter! Messages containing bad words will be sent to the moderation channel, to notify the guardians of naughty behavior. (Thanks Tekrus)
• Good reads command has been added to get a link to the Goodreads page. (Thanks Zektorm)
• The focused raider is back! React to the focused raider message in choose your roles for maximum focus. (Thanks Mark)
• Horace now reacts in accountability station, and he even has some clever ones, can you find them? (Thanks Mark)

Bug fixes and minor updates:

• A typo has been fixed in the info command for search. (Thanks, Maestoso)
• Clan info has been updated to reflect new leaders and that The Wolf Pack has left the KOA clan regime. (Thanks Tekrus)
• The profanity filter is no longer case sensitive (Thanks Marisusis)
• Reflection posts will now only trigger if the word “reflection” is one of the first 5 words in a sentence in the COTW channel. (Thanks Marisusis)
• A new alias (!r) for starting a raid has been added. (Thanks GRK)
• Deleted messages will now be sent to the moderation channel, even if they contain attachments. (Thanks Zektorm)

Horace is an open-source Discord bot built by and for members of the KOA community. For details on how to get involved, click here. For the full run-down of existing features log in to the Discord and type !help. To suggest a new feature, visit Horace’s GitHub profile, check it’s not already on the list, and click New Issue.

Hello friends — and welcome to the brand-spanking new KOA website!

After a full week of blitzes, sleeping late, waking early and playing about we finally have a working version of the website to show you all! It is our hope that this space will serve as a lynchpin for the entire KOA community and serve as a central meeting point for all our members: whether you use Habitica, Discord, Goodreads, all or none of the above. Please consider this your playground: a place designed to be malleable to the needs and wants of the community. Any suggestions, bugs or thoughts please use our Contact Us form to get in touch or just say hi!

This would not have been possible without the assistance of a few people:

• Alex — For overseeing, approving and guiding from designs to reality.
• Tekrus — For doing the back-end R&D magic he does so well.
• Draco — For receiving many a long email from me and making things happen quickly and painlessly.

A quick shout-out as well to Hiroyuki, Mark and Dawn — for being on hand for odd jobs that were a huge help!

Keep an eye on this page for any updates about Horace, Weekly Updates, new website features and the like. For now, features you can expect in the coming weeks are:

• An updated Clan List and easy to use application process.
• An interactive Challenge of the Week archive.
• More detailed book of the month archives. Our first is The Bullet Journal Method! (thank you Hiroyuki and Shannon for your hard work on this!)
• General tweaks and updates for functionality and cleanliness.
• An updated Expanded Guide to KOA!

Golden Rule: If you see something that should be there but isn’t, or something that is there and shouldn’t be — please submit a Bug Report!!

Thanks everyone for your unwavering support these past few months, and we can’t wait to unroll a bunch of new features for you all on this new platform for KOA to match you on your journey to becoming your best selves!