Self Organizing Volunteers

The CouchSurfing Wiki, an informal workspace which anyone can edit.

Self Organizing Volunteers in CouchSurfing.

In relation to Volunteering and Collectives, see also Volunteer signup.

People like Dante would like to self organize with other CouchSurfers.

Find volunteer answers to your questions available to other volunteers: searchable volunteering database

Using a platform where everyone can see what needs to be done, and can self organize with others that have common interests.

(attempt on wiki: Volunteer Profiles)

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a CS MailingList thread Dante finds interesting :

http://groups.google.com/group/csc-nz/browse_thread/thread/8a060febde8589f6?hl=en

Extract of " J. Mattthew Brauer " message: I have any idea for a way to for CS to connect volunteers with volunteer opportunities that would require very little oversight and would be appropriate for anything from collectives

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Dante: "Having people ordering me what to do will not work :) I STRONGLY HOPE that WE CAN WORK AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE OPENLY".

Programmers will hopefully be able to get the source code, start making improvements and send back patches. People sending in good patches will be allowed in the core team of "committers". There is also work being done on an open API, so that things can be developed outside the core group of CS programmers. We will probably use the GNU General Public License if we get enough support for this.

Designers are allowed to join in on the CouchSurfing Groups or on the Wiki (e.g. see New CS Logo Development). It would be great to use the Creative Commons ShareAlike Attribution license for all CouchSurfing graphics and text, but we need more support for this.

See License and users who support this and whose content on this wiki is available under free licenses. We can extend this into a list of available CS Copyleft License code or designs.

Control

I hope that if there is any “official” CS body, that it will keep limited coercion powers,

or preferably , that anyone involved in CS will only have FUNCTIONAL and temporary decision making powers , and if possible , this only applying to hes/her own work , and not limiting the freedom of action and creation/experimentation of others.

No judging body

All options staying open, every experimentation possible (or limited by technical constraints?), and all work and solutions created being available to all, for free.

User having the option to fully customize their CouchSurfing experience and CouchSurfing navigation.

Details:

1) Find volunteer answers to your questions available to other volunteers: searchable volunteering database, e.g. check http://couchsurfing.com/amb_volunteer_interest.html

I would be happy to find the results of your questions (first and second interest for volunteering for CouchSurfing – and why not a third and fourth ...)

Available on the website for those CouchSurfers that allow these informations to be seen by other CouchSurfers that have expressed an interest in volunteering.

Note as to defining volunteer: everyone wanting to be a volunteer can be a volunteer? Such as everyone wanting to join hospitality couchsurfing can become a member and view other members profiles.

And making available tools to connect more easily with other volunteers.

For example: a tool making it possible to make a search in the public volunteers data base selecting specific interest for volunteering, specific geographical aspects, for example within xxx kilometres from xxx city, ...

NOTE: the technology solutions for self organizing volunteers very much corresponds to already existing search tools on couchsurfing , and also corresponds to ideas discussed about technologies that could be used for a self organizing couchsurfing university. It could also be connected to CouchPlanner, Nomadic Activism , and Network Visualization Tools , etc

Individuals having expressed their volunteering interests could then use this data pretty much in the same way as the hospitality features and profiles of CouchSurfing, and believe it could help project development cooperation ( for example , I am in Europe , and am looking for other people sharing an interest in working on CouchSurfing University tools in Europe, and meet them , etc

I like to imagine this can make it easier for the volunteers to self organize between themselves , and would encourage the creation of informal decentralized ( or even unreported or unofficial ) virtual collectives, that would naturally start working around common ideas and projects.

Of course, we can already use the forums to do this. But somehow, I feel the forum would only be one of the many tools that can be made available for cooperation around ideas.

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Some mails in relation to volunteering I received form the collective:

Dear Dante,

Thanks! We have received your interest in participating on a deeper level to make CouchSurfing 2.0 possible. Your help in this project is crucial and we would like to thank you for stepping up.

More involvement of the members is a cornerstone in the rebirth of CouchSurfing. A human resource team is currently organizing the structure and the tasks that need to be done and we will contact you again when we determine the best way to utilize your skills. Please know that we have received a lot of offers of support (thanks so much!) and it may take a while to be able to integrate everyone.

Primary Interest: Enhancements: CS University Secondary Interest: Management: Human Resources

Thanks again, The CouchSurfing Collective