Forum

 Can I suggest a few features?

- I would love a twitter feed or Status Update feature instead of the ''Who is Who' Section on the home page because  the homepage can appear rather static/immutable.. and needs more dynamism!! The feed could include automated to include  links to new flickr pictures / new members profiles / members birthdays / new forum topics and general comments.

-  I would like an Events Page as well. By allowing members to create BW events, it will draw in new members, get members meeting each other, new experiences.. 

- Give new reasons for people to join by adding a carpool or hitchhiking  feature (which is linked back to the status update feature). Similar to:

http://www.liftsurfer.com/# ;

There is a need to generate personal stories about events, experiences enabled by BW, experiences that will ultimately end up on blogs, pictures, twitter, stories, video etc that circulate the globe and get people interested in joining in!

Hope you don't mind that its a features suggestion rather than an organizational suggestion!

Michael 

Just to remind you guys: tomorrow is the next BoD meeting so today is your last chance to propose topics or give feedback!

Hi guys

I'm hoping this thread is still good for posting input :)

My input is the following: our policy on signups/message sending is blocking activity from members. As we're struggling to get members active, I think it's a very bad idea to put obstacles in the way of new members trying to do stuff in BW. It will quite simply just put them off.

The problem is the following: we have about 241 messages frozen in the system, blocked because the member was pending at the time of sending. As far as I can tell, these are normal messages (I've sorted out the spam I could find), that just got stopped because the member was pending. Now, the system will show the message as sent to the sender, but the receiver will never get it. To any pending member, this just makes the site look dead.

Personally, I would REALLY favour letting pending members message other members but run all messages through an advanced automatic spam filter - perhaps just the first 20 messages or so. We avoid the current problems we have while still stopping spam. If this isn't a satisfactory solution, we need to come up with something else, because the current situation simply isn't acceptable.

Regards

Peter

One more point raised by Peter (and in fact the most important one I think):

 The "real" (by opposition to spammers) members who have wrote a message when they where at Pending status have had their message frozen so never delivered.
Peter suggess to send them a collective letter (some kind of dedicated letter) to explain them the problem and apologize for it.

This is indeed something to do and we have all tools for this except the content of the message. 

In my opinion, it would be better to send the message once the bug (allowing pending member to send messages) is fixed

Maria has asked me to report on the following volunteer teams I used to coordinate:

Volunteer management

This team currently doesn't exist any more. If any volunteer has a problem, feel free to contact me directly. In my function as current Chairman of the BoD I can most likely help you and/or get the right people involved. Apart from that, every volunteer and member is encouraged to welcome new ones and team coordinators (where existent) are the contact persons for team specific issues.

Media

The media team switched to the task focussed work structure about a year ago. It is not currently coordinated by anyone. Some nice new features here could probably be a tool kit for better social media campaigning. For example twitter links or such. Also the press page is not complete - but I am not aware of any media request lately (being a journalist, I would myself simply contact the organization with my questions and not rely too much on media page information as it would most likely be outdated).

In general: we are currently going some way between team and task structure, a hybrid form of collaboration. Nothing wrong with that imo, but we should try to make it more productive and effective. 

Hi, I got those questions by mail:

1.State of your team (number of members, activity, new guys)
2.Current activity
3.Plans
4.Problems/Suggestions

(Speaking for "Translation")

1- We get a new guy every two weeks on average. The applying procedure is quite simple, through the "translation group", that is linked on the bottom of each page. So I don't think we have much of the "I want to help but I don't know how".

After I activate the new tranlator, if it is a language without too many translators, I send him the profiles of the other translator(s), in hopes that it will build up a "team spirit", eventually reactivating an idle translator.

2-

The current state of the team is quite visible there. The last query. I estimate the activity level quite low, since sort-of-new features like "groups" are still untranslatd in some languages where we have quite a lot of translators, like Russian or Spanish. On another hand, sometimes one translator takes it on himself to put the website up to date in his language and everything gets done in one day. Like in Croatian a month ago. Also, only half of the translators are in the "translator group".

3-

Since there is no mass mailing tool available, I plan on manually sending a reactivation mail to all translator that is not in the group. But I haven't summoned the energy yet.

4-

I suggest the following:

More coordinators (JY is always very "internationalization concious", but he's already involved in stuff that require his attention, and we don't want to wring volunteers too much. Pausanias has already shown continued interest in the project and is very language minded)

(that might already exist) A "revision system" that allows to come back to a previous version when a translator changed a good translation to a bad one ; a page to see all "recent changes" and a messenging system that sends to the [LanguageName] translators the changes that happened in his languages this week. This feature would allow us to automatize access to translation rights. Which in turn would multiply the size of the team, and would not affect the quality of the translations, if it is done like this.

In the newsletter I just received I found that you are searching for a bank that is:

• affordable
• international (branches in different countries)
• willing to open an account for a non-profit organisation
• socially responsible (does not invest in e.g. weapon trade and such)
• has online banking facilities

I think the GLS Gemeinschaftsbank in Germany (me and a lot of social projects use this bank) would be the right one. It has an ethical philosophy. You can read more about it at the English Wikipedia.

I hope this is the right thread, because I couldn’t find any talk about banks.

I hope this was helpful.

Erik

Erik, Pausanias,

thank you for your help. We will definitly take a look at the banks you suggested!

Merci :)

Maria

Hey there, 

 sorry, I'm late, we were on holidays....

1.State of your team (number of members, activity, new guys) 

not so great, we have bikepunk as a 'new guy' and sylvisi helps out in OTRS. From the coordination side of the team things could be way better, Alban and myself are not as active as before anymore... If there is somebody interested, go ahead (I don't need to be coordinator for my ego, I would just continue doing what I CAN do, if there is nobody else around, so IF there is, just let me know...)

2.Current activity 

Bikepunk is busy with the FAQ-review, which is working quite well, as far as I can see. The OTRS needs some more consistent work. There is not a lot to do, but 1-2 more volunteers who check out the OTRS regularly are really missing. At the moment I do not manage to do this myself... 

3.Plans 

 Depending on new volunteers...

4.Problems/Suggestions 

 Reliable and consistent volunteering in the OTRS is needed. If you have any volunteers at hand who might be interested I can show them how it works. The OTRS should not depend on 1-2 volunteers!!!  

Hmm I am afraid that Philipp is right here (about this sticky thread to be a bit annoying).

I think that when it was created it was a temporary sticky (I am not sure). If so, may be we could remove the sticky option ?

I read the plea for funds in the January letter that was sent to us, and was wondering why was there a decision (can't remember when I saw it, but it was at least a year ago) about not having ads on the be Welcome web site.  Maybe its time to reconsider the decision at the next BoD meeting? , whether it will be discussed or not, I would be glad to be reminded what were the original reasons for the no-ads policy.

Amos