Australia New Ambassadors Welcome Kit
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Welcome new city ambassadors! Being a city ambassador in the Australia should be a fun and interesting experience to be enjoyed. There are a few guidelines that ambassadors should try to adhere to, but like most things in life it is what you make of it. In order to help you along and hopefully make your job a little less confusing, this page is meant as a brief guide including basic information, contacts, guidelines, and ideas. Take a moment to look it over.
Starting out
Well, now that you've gotten your yellow flag you may be struggling to answer what would seem like a simple question, "So what exactly is a city ambassador?"
Description
Ambassadors promote the values that embody the Couchsurfing Spirit. City Ambassadors are also the voice and ear to their local community, and source of information for all the members of their local community.
Responsibilities
Most City Ambassadors contribute at least 10 hours per month but this varies greatly from person to person. We want to make sure all Ambassadors love what they do. Please always feel free to ask for help. You can contribute in many ways according to what interests you the most. The essential duties that City Ambassadors should participate in are:
- New Member Welcome- Once you become a member of the New Members Welcome group you can use the greetings page to greet new members. You can greet members from anywhere in the world. Be sure pay special attention to the new members in your area as well. You should tell them that you're a local City Ambassador and tell them about the city group and why they should join. Don't forget to mention the local meetings.One tool that has been set up that might help is the New Members welcome Kit that you might wish to add as a link into your Greeting.
- Contact Us Answers- Members frequently use the Contact Us page to ask a wide range of questions to the site. A team of volunteers answers these questions. You could be one of them. If you are interested contact Brie and tell her you want to be on the CUQ team.
- Local Events Organizing- Couchsurfing isn't just for backpacking through European capitals on the cheap. As a City Ambassador you should facilitate activity and the development of meaningful relationships in your local community by organizing or helping to organize local events. This can be done through you local group.
- City Online Group Moderation- If you are not already the moderator of your local group then you should ask the current moderator to add you as a co-moderator. If there is no moderator currently or if the current moderator does not respond within three weeks you should contact Contact Us.
Detail
The CS Australia Organisation Wiki provides an overview of where CS might be heading in Australia and provides you with the Roll Call of Australia Ambassadors and discussions of General Expectations and Considerations that might help in making you a little more familiar with the tasks at hand.
This Kit is designed to be read in conjunction with:
ALL ambs need to understand the Ambassadors Ethics Code and learn about general procedures, and communicate well. While this is the ideal and widely done, some of the education on general procedures and processes aren't quite as good as they could be, and this can be improved by creating better structured training systema for ambs.... (in the meantime a Wiki like this will have to do)
This section is presented to give you more specific information - the How To - to help you enjoy and particpate in your role as Ambassador. It is wordy however each word, each sentence and each paragraph is specifically detailed to provide the best info possible and will be updated and edited to keep it so. Without making a podcast of it I know of no other way to impart the following:
City Ambassadors are the one´s who are responsible for their local groups.
Each country has a private group that is called "XXX (insert country name here) CS Organization". In this group are all the ambassadors for the country on a city, country, or typically global level. EVERYONE is in there together. CS currently has 27 Global Ambassadors. Many of them have taken on different regions of the world to head up. For instance, in the United States Oh Donna and California Mark manage their XXX CS Organistaion. For Australia, California Mark also does until Hungry Steve returns. Global ambassadors moderate these groups.
By being an Ambassador you qualify as a member of the CS Australia Organisation Group {ask a moderator to add you if you are not a member already} along with being given automatic membership to the City Ambassadors group or the Nomadic Ambassadors Group as well as being able to join the New Member Welcome Group.. {again, just ask to be added}.
Please make contact with the current moderator of your City Group and express appreciation for their efforts to date and offer to share the burden, working together and having fun. It is intended at some time to have your inclusion as moderator to the group as automatic however presently it is manual and carried out by a current Moderator (whose name will appear in the group you wish to join)... any problems then contact Contact Us.
As part of CS structure your involvement, as a member and moderator to your City group is to: 1. provide visitors of the group a quick access to the ambassadors in your City 2. City Ambassadors are responsible in keeping their local community alive, providing info and more, this includes defining group guidelines, managing/raising poll´s and establishing Google events calendars if required ...see for more details.
By the way there is a nifty tool that is designed to help you see who joined a group and when the link to it is here
On welcoming new members.
One prime task of a city ambassador is to welcome the new members. In order to do so you have to join the New Member Welcome group http://www.couchsurfing.com/organization.html?gid=3581 Just write one of the moderators of the group an e-mail explaining that you are a new cityambassador and would like to greet new members. Please include a draft of a greeting you would like to use (once joined you can have a look at Other Greetings here).
There have been discussions about what is deemed to be a reasonable quantity of Greetings for a new CS member. Initially the new Member is placed in the International Arena to receive a greeting from anywhere in the world.
Once greeted Internationally the Member is then moved to a Country list and a City list.
If you were to look at your Country list (available only to those who are members of the NMW Group) you would find new Aussie CSer from all States, The City list will only show you those in your City. Bear in mind that if you live in a City and chosse to see the new members in "your City" then you won't see anyone else - the catch to this is that if your city is Sydney you won't see anyone who nominated their Region>>Country>>State>>City as Bondi (which is in Sydney but won't come up in your list!!)
Generally the Ambs for each city would be the best ones to specifically welcome New Members who live in that City or within that State (City Ambs need to realise that there are no Regional Ambs) so their area of interest should extend to the whole State. (presently SA and NT are not represented by Ambs and as such either the Country Amb or an agreed nominee should greet new CSers who register in these States welcoming them to CS Australia.
Be aware that the screens that show the new Members to be greeted in City and Country are 100 members long from top to bottom where the latest arrivals feed into the top and the oldest "fall" off the bottom. Try to ensure that the ones falling off have a minimum of two greetings knowing then that at least one should be from an Aussie Amb.
When you first start greeting new members you can draft your own greeting and save it (this greeting will then be copied and pasted directly into the "Send Mail" content section of an outgoing email to a new member when you chosse to "greet them". To see any existing greetings (and there are many to choose from) simply click on the "Edit my Greetings or you can "Create a new Greeting". Both of these options can be found on the Greetings page.
BE SURE TO ADD any new members to your city group if you have time.
Make sure that all the Greetings in your language are accurate and in accordance with the site’s mission.
A New Australian CS Members Welcome Kit has been set up as an additional reference for newly joined Aussie CSers.
Tips for meet ups & activities
No doubt your City already has a structured Meeting arrangement under the direction of the existing Ambs. Ideally you should contact them to find out what they have in mind, bearing in mind that each city has a specific group and as such each City has Gmail accountthat allows a Gmail Calender to collate and present the upcoming meetings and events viewable by anyone who wishes to see it.
Additional to this however is the more formal area of CouchSurfing that manages Meetings - keep in mind that few City Ambs post their meetings to this area keeping notices of upcoming meetings within the City Group page instead... it is advisable however to familiarise yourself with the CS Meeting Planner as it has a few additional tools such as being a repository for meetup up photos.... (on this, by rights, you should have the permission of anyone in the photos before uploading their image to the net...) There is additional info in The How to make a good meeting Wiki and have a look at this as a great example of communicating a formal meeting
CS offers a feature to upload meeting-photos, the only requirement is that the meeting was set up through the CS meeting page.
what you have to do: upload the pictures into a new folder on your profile (boring and takes very long, i know), then go to the meeting (you must be member of this meeting) and go to "my meeting settings". The last line there says "meeting photos" and shows all your cs-photo-folders. just chose the one with the meeting pictures and click on "update meeting membership" - done!
there is however a lot of room for improvement: 1) it is boring to upload every single picture to our cs accounts. 2) the number of pictures is limited by ninehundredsomething per person (not that much). 3) it only works for meetings that were arranged through the meeting page.
Be aware that if you are promoting CS there are cards that you can have made (or make yourself). Simply down load a file from here and print out your own.
Joining various groups supporting the CS Organisation.
If you are not a member of these groups, contact the moderator and ask to be added. This is not done automatically and sometimes new City Ambassadors aren't added to a group they should be in.
As you can see you are already a member of at least three groups. To an extent it is expected that you will periodically visit thes groups as they will provide updated info to you (such as in the Greetings Group) whilst your City Gropu might need your input in terms of moderation of response whilst the CS Organisation Australia group will hopefully encourage you to participate in setting a direction for CS Australia.
The main thing is to keep yourself informed of the continual developments in CS. Ideally these developments will be announced by the Communications Group in a CS Newsletter however in the meantime an more local newsleter is available here.
You should also, at some point familiarise yourself with the text in the FAQ page and Freq Questions answered as the information there is possibly the best to answer any questions you might have asked by new members. Additionally you can always direct them to the CS Tips page.
In the Ambassadorial duties you might see * Verification processing as one team you could join. Ambs aren't required to participate in the verification processing group. It's just suggested as a group that *might* be a good one to check in to. And processing verifications at this time means almost exclusively helping send out the letters to people with their codes in them. For more info on that interested members should contact OH DONNA to see if the need exists to add more people to that team.
Safety guidelines and conflict resolution
Basically the approach to any problems you might have would be to directly contact your Country Ambassador or a member of the Leadership Team using the standard Contact Us form. Most often a member of the Contact Team will then advise you of the next steps to take or of the answer you need. Familiarise yourself with the contents of the "Contact Us form" including familiarity with the range of items in the pull down menu lable "Communication Type".
- Dealing with crimes such as: theft, abuse, and/or any forms of harassment. What are the official procedures, whom do we contact, and in what order? # Be prepared! Read the Tips for Surfers and Hosts
- If necessary contact the local police / ambulance (in a vital emergency dial 000 or 112.)ADD LIST TO LINK OF LOCAL POLICENUMBERS
- If other couchsurfers are involved contact the Safety Administrator. Tell them as many details as possible about your experience. CouchSurfing will investigate and determine the best course of action. If necessary leave a negative reference.
- Serious absences, failure to show up as planned. What are the official procedures when surfers don't show up and/or don't get in touch after several days or a week from their scheduled arrival date/time? How do we interact with hosts, friends/family of missing surfers that request assistance? When do we contact Police or local authorities, etc? TO BE ADDED
- Dealing with Dating requests: see Handling Dating Requests
The "chain of command" structure
Of how we all fit together: ie: who our Regional, Country, Global Ambs are in our area and their respective responsibilities along with contact info for them.see also
As you can see on this Wiki there is a clear Roll Call above that defines who we are with links to our Profiles. Ideally it would be great to meet your fellow City Ambassadors so that you can establish a "collective" approach to the short term and long term plans you have for your city. In time you might hopefully meet others from Interstate and the odd passing Nomad (no, that's not fair, they aren't all odd!). In the case where you might be required to offer assistance to a CSer in trouble these contacts that you make will assist in providing to you essential contact information of your regional & country ambs in case of emergency.
For more info in regards to the LT (Leadership Team) you could start with this Wiki as well as the Leadership Team and then have a read of this
The CS Wiki page for your City/State
As stated above "Due to the ability of individual non-Ambassadorial members to edit wiki pages it is vital that City Ambassadors review wiki content periodically to ensure that the true intent of the page and the legality of content is being upheld. "
Ideally anyone can edit a Wiki page simply by establishing a login however the intention of these City/State pages are to promote CS and what it has to offer in your City and State fitting in within the bounds allowable. With this in mind the editing of the Wiki should be carried out by the Ambassador/s of each State/City or in conjunction with members who have volunteered to assist in the development and Maintenance. By "managing" the Wiki page it is then possible to manage the resources to ensure the pages content remain accurate and current.
The Wiki list above identifies all known Australian CS Wiki pages and the members who have developed and maintain them. Feel free to add yourself to the list of any you wish to edit/co-edit and should you create (or find) any others please also add these to the list to assist in their overall management.
What is an Exotic Couch and a TBM toggle (Travelling Bands and Musos) ?
From the discussions here and here"an exotic is in areas which are "underdeveloped CS related" where we have no or just a few couches yet, all around. But then a exotic couch could also be a couch on a houseboat on a river, or a place in the mountains, a wooden treehouse, things which we don´t meet in our day by day life, but those need to get choose really carefully. ... Mikky Mouth"
The idea of "exotic couches" doesn't have a great deal of use. All ambassadors, however, can mark a couch they believe in good faith to be exotic, as such. The only place this really shows up is under the sub tab of the Couchsearch option, that says "Exotic".
see Exotic Couches for an overview of some already identified that might help you determine what is and isn't exotic. When selected, you get a random array of them.
TBM (Travelling Band Muso) was designed to assist travelling bands, i.e. bands on the road. They had that icon to symbolize that they are touring and that they need a place to stay to be able to do their tour and for you as a host to know that you will be hosting a band - and thus have a very different CS experience ( heaps of people with a busy schedule and late night arriving and stuff )
The icons were given out selectively - Somehow it didn´t work out as planned and now everyone who plays an instrument can apply to become a TBM. Read here for more info And for a full list of TBMs see this link
Contact Us Answers
The Contact Us page is handled by a group of ambassadors, mostly Global and Country but some City Ambs as well. This group is highly trained to do this, and very dedicated. Most of the questions asked will be responded to anywhere from 1 minute to 4 hours from the time they are asked, so the response time is excellent.
Members frequently use the Contact Us page to ask a wide range of questions to the site. A team of volunteers answers these questions. You could be one of them. If you are interested contact Brie and tell her you want to be on the CUQ team.
For a discussion on "what it is to be an Ambassador" written by other Ambassadors you might like to read this
Other things that might interest you as an Ambassador
- - Get some media attention in your part of the globe, or even while you’re CouchSurfing somewhere! Visit the Get Media page… and if you get an interview about CS, tell us how it went! Once again, if you need help, ask your local community! City, Country and Global Ambassadors collectively work on this. You can see some of the media reports here
- - Help out by sending the Verification letters in your country! Make sure you have an information meeting on the “how to’s” with your CS Country Coordinators. You will also be able to verify members that have no credit cards if you meet up with them face to face and get a photocopy of their passport + another valid picture identification and current address in cooperation with your CS Country Coordinators. You will collect their verification money (check or money order) and send it to your CS Country Coordinators. Only after that you can mail them the verification letter to verify their address. (You might also send out verification letters for countries that do not have their own CS Country Coordinators and CS Country Secretaries). CS has a verification team run by Oh Donna.
- - Promotion: Create your own CS Business cards for distribution
- - Everyone is encouraged to be on the lookout for people that would make great ambs or be valuable on a working group, and encourage them to apply or join! The Australian Global Ambassador and the Country Ambs are there to assist and encourage all the City Ambs in nurturing new Ambs!
- - Collectives: Participate in your nearest CouchSurfing Collective if you have the chance. This is a great way to participate in the core of your network. EVERYONE is encouraged to apply for a collective if they have the interest and time, and think they have something to offer! Many of the people that work at the collectives are not ambs at all; they are just fabulous, talented members.
- - Help out and supervise the Translations made by CS Ambassadors. If you have time, you can most certainly translate parts of the site yourself! CS has a fabulous translations team, which can be found here. Anyone who would like to join can contact one of the Translation general group 's moderators.
BURNOUT
Couchsurfing Org is very much like all volunteer organisations where there is the need for members to rise to the occasion and volunteer some of their own, valuable time to the day-today running of the site.
As an ambassador it is possible to extend yourself too much as you juggle your home and working life with hosting or attending to "duties" that might be allocated to you from the Organisational groups you have joined.
To best deal with CS burnout we direct you to two discussions that might help here and here
You are part of a larger family of Australian Ambassadors. If you are feeling burnt out raise you hand and share the load. We are here to help you and will do so any way we can.
5 ways to Avoid Burnout
- Do what you love. Volunteering is meant to be fun. If greeting turns you on, greet. If you love to host, host. If you enjoy taking people out and about, do that! Whatever floats your boat: every contribution counts!
- Recharge your batteries. If you start feeling drained, take a break.
- Network. Share ideas, thoughts and frustrations with other CSers you get along with.
- Portion Control. Basically, don't bite of more than you can chew. You might get a nasty case of indigestion!
- Participate. Join the discussions and make your voice heard.
