Minutes of the General Assembly 2008
Saturday, 6th June, 2008
10:00 CET Welcome all members present, check technical equipment and welcome online participants
There are enough members present and participating to take formal decisions; None of the members that are not present in person has delegated their vote to any of the present members, all voting will take place online.
- members present:
- guests:
- Merce
- Ingo
- Erga (later)
- Astrid (BW: lotte23)
- online:
10:15, BV budget
- approval of 2007/08 financial report
- expenses:
- server: 993,63 Euro
- Bank: 88,04
- Domains: 64,47
- administrative: 28,12
- Income
- Advertisement: 323,77
- Donation: 1.360,00
- expenses:
Balance: 514,51
- approval of 2008/09 budget
- Expenses:
- Debt: 540,- money used to rent HCvol Server
- Server: 1.399,39 (GOAT/ MULE and BULL + 2 SSL certificates
- Domains: 64,00
- Bank: 79,90
- Administrative: 50,-
- Expenses:
Total: 2.133,29
- Incomes:
- Donations: 2.160 (we expect about 180,- per month, 07/08 was 88,-/month)
- Advertisement: 200,- (we hope for Amazon or another solution)
- Incomes:
Total: 2.360,00
- Ideas about the debt to the Monnai-money:
- use it for organizing Monnai II
- surplus of Monnai II could be used as a fund to start future camps - details to be discussed later...
- Ideas about the debt to the Monnai-money:
notes:
- Point out on the donations page that IBAN transfers are better for BV because PayPal charges comission! This should go into trac later on... Fabzgy 08:42, 7 June 2008 (UTC)
- Create a Page with explanations to the Monai Money. Where does it come from? What are we are goingto do with the money? etc.
11:00, Presentation of BoD Candidates
Candidates
This will probably be my last year on the Board, if elected. First of all because I want to offer some continuity during the next year, which will probably be our most difficult one yet. But I am also in favour of change and new ideas, so I hope we can find motivated members who want to take over some of the administrative tasks. If elected, I will do my best to find sponsors, do more to communicate with the world outside BeWelcome, and try to be a contact point for volunteers. Looking back to the previous year, I believe we have come a long way, but it hasn't been easy. But we have creative and diverse members, and together I believe we can accomplish a lot. I want to be part of that
I still wants to see BW growing and really starting it's activity. If elected, I will do my best to help new people to become volunteers, and if I see there is enough fresh new serious motivated volunteers with enough motivation to join the BoD and spend time for BoD weekly meetings and actions, I will be please to be replaced. In anyway, I will be active in the programming area
BeVolunteer has concentrated on the running of BeWelcome in the last period and apparently neglected its own development a bit. While it is very desirable to ensure that all volunteers can take part in democratic decisions, we have to take care that we will always have enough volunteers to ensure the future of BeVolunteer. If elected, I would like to work on ways to make membership in BeVolunteer and a longer term commitment to volunteering more attractive. Finding a solution to this will be the challenge for the next period and I hope there will be a lot of feedback on this from all of you.
I believe that BeWelcome is not yet at the level where its structure and maturity are strong enough to feel that the boat can follow safely, so I still wish to work on it; I am applying to an administrative work with the aim to make easier the involvement of new persons in the BoD. Even if I wish to participate in BV and BW volunteering, at the measure of my possibilities (for example I would love to work more intensively on exploring new fields for BW, especially openning doors to other kind of people), I specificly apply to the BoD to assume administrative and legal background. As a consequence, I hope that new people will join the BoD to bring new energy and new ideas and give another step to the future!
BeWelcome will enter a crucial phase the coming year: Will we reach a tipping point in number of members? I expect that many of the problems facing similar organizations will come to BeWelcome as well. As a member of the board of directors I want to work on the (political) foundations of the organization itself: Vision, transparency, responsibility, safety, etc. I will also try to translate academic findings on hospitality and trust networks into actions that truly improve our network. I see myself more as a communicator the coming year, listening to members and non-members alike, blogging from the "inside" of the BoD and trying to sort out the different great ideas that people have. On a practical level, I hope to be able to sort out some things that have been left hanging, like the blogs, the BeVolunteer (Joomla) homepage, etc.
see also: http://www.bevolunteer.org/wiki/General_Assembly_2008#Election_of_the_board_of_directors , where questions asked were answered by some candidates (questions had been put up a bit late, so not every candidate has had the chance...)
after that online vote is starting; deadline Sunday, 11am. CET;
11:05, One Year plan for BeVolunteer
one year plan
After some brainstorming we decided to try to do the following for BeVolunteer and BeWelcome in the coming period:
BW: growth estimates
- current state: about 15 new members signing up every day (4%-8% are rejected due to fake data, double signup etc.)
- inactive member procedure
- crucial number of members or date to start with it: (most present say we should start as soon as possible, autumn)
- six months of inactivity
- check activity about 2-3 weeks after a newsletter
- send out message
- personalized sender should be possible (local volunteer)
BV: growth estimates
- current state: we are 47 members of BV, two members have left BV during the last year
- (to what extent) do we want BV to grow?
- we do not need to have a large group, but we do not want to shrink either
- how should we promote BV?
- encourage team coordinators to join
- encourage team coordinators to explain the concept of BV to their team members
- procedure with inactive BV members: already part of rules and regulations: http://www.bevolunteer.org/wiki/Rules_and_regulations#NEW:_Procedure_with_inactive_.27active_members.27
- make BV members (and their tasks) more visible within Bewelcome (groups features!!!)
Financial estimates and goals for BV
- Suggestions to improve financial situation
- Should we try to apply for the European Voluntary Service (EVS). Who is going to do that?
- Fabzgy will help to organize this from Nov. 08 with Pierre-Charles.
- We need more information about what it takes to be a tutor, how much administrative and documentation is needed on their sides
- we need more information about the costs for food and housing (would BV have to cover this?)
- Once we have this info the GA wants the future BoD to make the official / final decision
- BW shop
- A few designs of T-shirts are available on spreadshirt
- we will move them to the official BeWelcome shop
- we would like to integrate that shop in the BW site
- we will have T-shirts with small donation for BV (approximately 5% of the price) and bigger donation (approx. 10% of the price)
- mugs, badges and other stuff can / will be added, too.
- we may have more then one shop in order to provide fair-trade shirts and let people have a choice where they want to buy our stuff
- Sponsorship
- optimizing donation process: create possibilities to have regular donations (e.g. 5 Euro every month) by one member (easier to plan for BV)
- Creating national BV branches to get a maximum of benefits (tax deductibility / Spendenbescheinigung / Gemeinnützigkeit in Germany)--
- Anja will do it for Germany!!!
- 7 members are required,
- 50% should be present to vote at GAs;
- 3 as a minimum for the BoD / Vorstand
- Anja will do it for Germany!!!
- Advertising (other than Google) should be decided by the complete community, not only BV members;
- Other
- Should we try to apply for the European Voluntary Service (EVS). Who is going to do that?
lunch break
16:00, Project estimates for BV
- Do we want to start new projects, do we encourage people to start new projects within BV?
- under what circumstances can we develop new projects
- volunteer resources
- project outline
- it is always possible to start something outside BeVolunteer and have it incorporated later on
- it always depends on who would do it...
- BeAcademy
- we need to contact the people who were involved with it in the past and see what is going on and what is planned
- there are no other projects of BV at the moment
Other goals for BW
- group features: see brainstorming on Sunday, 11:30
- planned trips
- change the way how hosts and guests get in contact
- you can subscribe to a 'who is coming to my area?' page
- you can invite people coming
- this process will need a lot of cooperation between different teams and the community
- maybe an additional task for the Amsterdam Collective...
- change the way how hosts and guests get in contact
- forum
- more input is needed to really improve the forum
- weed out bugs and missing data in the geo database
- blogs
- replace the official news with blog entry to make it possible for more volunteers to contribute
- wordpress doesn't offer more than our blogs, if we improve them a bit more
- categories need to work for blogs
- wordpress is already being integrated into BW code
- chat (Ajax Chat)
- as soon as you connect to BW, you are in the chat
- maybe have thematic rooms
- members are verified, no anonymous chat (bw account name is shown in chat)
- maybe one public chatroom for not (yet) members - problem of anonymous posts and a lot of crap goin on; + members with signup problems have an immediate contact
- real life events
- posters for the start of new university terms
- press kit (Robin), media contact person (Anja e.g.)
- connect to other real life events (annual student meeting etc.) and inform participants on BeWelcome - have a kit ready for that...
- cooperation with other local communities
Other goals for BV
17:05, Approval of Website admins
- currently there is a database with a lot of sensitive data, so there is always a risk of abuse through sysadmins
- who has access:
- sys-admins
- Callum (only GOAT volunteer server)
- Friedrich
- Jean-Yves
- Hannu
- Tobias
- Programmers with access through SVN (alpha)
- Andreas
- Felix
- John
- Matthias
- Micha
- in future Philipp
- BW-admin
- Hannu (not in the future)
- Jean-Yves
- (new: Matthias)
- sys-admins
- we need somebody to check on BW-admins: Matthias
- all admins need to sign the NDA
- documentation in the wiki
- working routines for granting rights will be put in the rules and regulations
- update: Admin Team
17:20, license for Wiki content
- Decide upon a decent license for the Wiki Content. So far we don't have any license. See Forum (restricted to BW Volunteers)
17:30, license for BW content (Gallery, BW Wiki (Travelguide), Forum Posts, Profile Pictures
- there will be a forum discussion on BeWelcome to settle this.
Sunday, 7th June, 2008
11:00 polls are closed
11:30 results of the polls
- The financial report (07/08) has been approved
- The budget for 2008/09 has been approved
- All of the five candidates have got more than 10% of votes.
So the new BoD are
- Claudia
- Frank
- Jean-Yves
- Pierre-Charles
- Thomas
12:00 appointment of new BoD
Thanks also to all the members of last period's BoD.
11:30 meeting of new BoD
candidates who cannot be present, please try to be online at that time!!!
distribution of tasks / delegate positions
future way of working together
This meeting has been postponed to the following week. We will arrange a time for an online meeting.
12:05 brainstorming about BW group structure, local group structure etc
Please note that this is not a dedicated BV topic. So no polls for BV members only!!!
Fabzgy summarized the discussion in the BW Forum talking about local groups / Local Volunteers and their implemention in BW. Based on this discussion the members presented on the GA will try to define some ways BeWelcome could go in future and give them as a poll to the BW-Volunteers.
Pietshah started the discussion about BeLocal and tried to structure the discussion from the beginning on. This finally did not really work out as we imagined it. In almost all of the threads two topics - which are very crucial has been discussed. We need to take a decision in these issues before we proceed in any way.
Do we need Ambassadors/Local Volunteers? [1] [2] [3] Please read through the above mentioned discussions and if you want to make your point clear about the topic do it in the threads mentioned above.
Option A: BW stays in the mainstream of CS/HC and creates his own Local Volunteers/Amabassadors. Maybe with a democratic elections of the local community.
Option B: BW tries to develop an algorythm to meassure activity of users so visitors figure out easily who is active in the local community and open for questions. Maybe introduce a new criteria in the search "sort by activity of members". The rest of the Local Volunteer tasks get organized in groups. Everyone has the power to do everything.
Option C: Shifting away from the concept of 'important person' to a point where you can get help and information (e.g. 'Access Point' 'Info-Tag' )
We should first define the different task at hand locally:
- different tasks to be covered:
- mails to members
- providing information, and advice
- security / emergency person (eg. esp. for female travellers)
- organizing local meetings etc.
Do we want to create new local groups (next to CS/HC groups) or should we try to get all these groups together? [4]
Philipp summarized some of the points BW Groups should support, GA also brainstormed and added a few points:
- tools for local communities should be open and usable as non member (but with the option to have member only stuff as well)
- they should ideally integrate with existing solutions from other networks
- local groups and subgroups
- everybody can create those but they need to be approved (not local subgroups)
- mails from the group, can be turned off;
- common mailing list vs. announcement mailing list
- hierarchical announcements: either define a radius, where you want to be informed or define 'Germany- Bavaria- Nuremberg' (outside group system)
- 'report this group' button (e.g. racist groups etc.)
- group admins or not?
- a solution to the problem of too many groups : after for example 6 months inactivity, the group members are informed that they should post something or it will be put inactive
- alternative: "sort groups by activity"
- searchable keywords for each group
- guest / temporary subscriptions to group
- city groups are not really groups, but pages open to everybody, but they have group features and you can subscribe or not.
- every member who lives in a city is automatically 'member' of that group; in addition you can subscribe to other city pages
- local subgroups can choose their settings (private or not, moderator or not etc.)
So essentially we will build:
- forum (mail notification / rss feeds maybe reply by mail)
- calendar / events page (mail / rss notificatio / ical export)
- possibility have access public / bw members / invited only
- possibility to use / link to cs/hc/g/... membernames / profiles
- possibility to use openID as login to public stuff
- Travelguide (shared with other sources)
lunch break
after lunch
- continuation of any brainstorming
- brainstorming on newsletters /blogs
- news on the mainpage should be substituted by blog entries (more people can have access, so it would make the page livelier and more dynamic)
- newsletters should be sent out about every 2 months, preparation in wiki, so that many people can contribute; Robin is willing to help set up a structure (Newsletter should be translated, always! )
- How BeWelcome is different from other hospex networks - create a Wiki page for that
- implementation of verification process
- start working on the summary for the BeVolunteer Joomla Page
- wrap-up of the GA
- CLEANING (otherwise we would have to pay!!!)
