Why do I have to search by location?

If you're not new to the site, you may be asking yourself why you're now being asked to search by location. Great question! The short answer: it was a little too easy to hop into whatever local online meeting anywhere in the US and Canada was happening next. That meant meetings sometimes getting more people than they're used to handling, creating unintentional disruption to the experience for the regular participants. And the problem was growing as more people used the site.

So now you start by entering a location. It defaults to searching a 100 mile (or km) distance radius for that location. After that, you can use the filters like you always have, but a location is ALWAYS required. Many in the audience will note "but anyone can still search any location and join local online meetings there!" and they would be correct. The point is: that now takes concious effort rather than it being default behavior. And don't worry, the site remembers your last location searched--even between visits--so if you tend to join meetings around a given location (like your city or state/province) you won't have to be searching often. The next meetings starting in the location searched will be at the top of the list, as always. Don't forget each meeting page has a convenient Add to Calendar button!

This was a growing problem with people learning about the site just from word-of-mouth. Imagine if suddenly there were a LOT MORE people using it? And hmmm, it's probably just a total coincidence that the site has taken on SMART Recovery brand colors. To be continued....

Those aren't pillows!

Travellers rejoice, SMARTfinder now automatically detects that your device has changed timezones since you last visited... whether you travelled by train, plane, or automobile.

Kilometers and kilometers of LOVE

Users visiting the site from Canada should now find all meeting distances calculated and shown in kilometers. Please leave feedback if it is not working for you, or if you are seeing "km" unexpectedly.

Oh boy, this is a big one!

A completely redesigned (mobile-friendly!) SMARTfinder with support for in-person meetings, searching by location, filtering on tags, and more! Apologies to Canadians for showing distance in miles... support for kilometers is coming soon!

Highlights include:

• Mobile-friendly layout that resizes and adjusts for your screen size
• Easy tap-to-join button for online meetings (where Zoom details provided)
• In-person meetings
• Distance away shown when searching by location
• Google map of meeting location
• Link for getting directions
• New filters
• Online-only or In-person-only (or both!)
• Maximum distance away (when searching by location)
• Meeting tags (ex. "Family and Friends")

Creature comforts

Highlights include:

• Showing common timezone names like "Pacific" instead of "America/Los_Angeles"... you're welcome :)
• White calendar icon on the blue "Add to Calendar" button... because OCD.
• Timezone detected now saved server-side, so the URL can be shared with others without causing them to see meetings in the sharer's timezone

v1.0 launched

Highlights include:

• Find any online local meeting, with start times converted to your timezone
• Filter by a specific day
• "On Hiatus" meetings not shown
• Join Zoom meeting when URL provided
• Add meeting to your calendar