Paris Collective Short/Middle Term
From the CouchSurfing Wiki, an informal workspace which anyone can edit.
Four weeks long in probably some kind of university/school building. Like the Eisenstadt CSC but longer and more focused on effectiveness and achievement of tangible results. On such a short period of time, work would need to be limited to short projects e.g. editing or adding text to some pages and probably little actual implementation. Though those objectives are secondary, such a Collective offers great opportunity for less tangible but still useful activities i.e. brainstorming about up-to-date issues or even gathering and social networking. Those latter might sound of little use and effectiveness to CS but they are the basis on which to grow local/regional work teams – basically the idea is that you work better and harder if you are teamed with people you actually know and met in real life.
Most importantly with such a short term project, planning will be KEY!!
Another option is to have a Long Term Collective
Why only ONE month and how to handle such a short period?
One month might sound very short - it is indeed! Basically the idea is that it has to be totally planned and structured in advance so the organizational team is built already, the contents and goals are set and the only need will be to integrate CSers that show up in this kind of organizational 'grid' and get them to work.
This does not mean that flexibility would be forbidden. As we see it, there needs to be a fixed organizational pattern constituted of the whole organization team. Contrary to Eisenstadt, NO organizational goals, structure, etc. should still be under a building process after the start of the School Gathering part of the Collective. This might sound like a bit of a top-down system where only the ‘core’ organizational team holds power. Remember, nothing would prevent CSers, wherever they actually are coming from, to volunteer and grab a hold of projects before the start of the CSC. They would even be able to lead projects during their time at the CSC.
A longer collective would be more ideal. Our issue is, contrary to the NZ CSC, Europe has less backpackers(with the exception of a few students). The members in charge of organizing an EU CSC are corporate workers. Standard European firms won't allow them to get more than a one-month summer vacation.
An alternative solution: Have organizers for one month and then replace them by another person. Their stays must overlap for at least one week so they can train the next person...
CS is still going under a 'trial and error' phase as regards organization anyway. So this summer might be an opportunity to check if once planned in advance it is possible to hold a short Collective - or not! - But then we'll know better at least. You learn by your own mistakes, right?
Quoting a comment from Larry : Any idea as to compensation for volunteers? I'd love to volunteer but wouldn't be able to take a few months of from work and still pay all my bills. I'm sure this goes for others too.
Issue - Length vs Participation
The number of CS members that wish to volunteer is huge however it might prove difficult for most of them to actually attend meet-ups and Collectives, especially if those get long and require them to stay for several weeks. It means positions in CS would be restricted to those that can afford to actually come. Some members might have a lot of spare time they could spend working on CS online at home, but little opportunity to show up at gatherings. How can we solve this problem and eventually find a means to involve people coming even short-term? Could this be done online? This issue could be a subject for a workshop or one more goal to set for the Collective…. To be discussed! Please discuss this in the "discuss this page" part of the WIKI!!!
