BeWelcome News

The wonderful city of Lyon will be the location of the next BeWelcome UnConference on April 4 - 6.

Already 21 BW members confirmed their presence and others have shown an interest in joining this BeActive meeting. If you are in Lyon around that time, or want to take a trip to the centre of Europe, then please sign up for either the Lyon UnConference or the International Pillow Fight (or both).

There are already several UnConference Topics on the provisional agenda and we are expecting local…

You might have noticed that BeWelcome was down for a couple of hours. I'm not a tech person myself, so excuse the non-expert explanation: The company hosting our server had some maintenance work between 4 a.m. and 5 a.m. CET. After this the DNS Server hosted by a different provider did not reboot on its own.

The problem has been solved now thanks to planetcruiser :)

We are working on finding a more stable solution for the future.

While we are preparing for the next extraordinary General Assembly (eGA) to elect a new Board of Directors (BoD), the minutes of the first eGA can be read now.

The chat sessions to interact with the new BoD candidates will take place on 23.03.2014 at 19:00 CET and on 25.03.2014 at 21:00 CET in the BeVolunteer chat channel: http://webchat.freenode.net/?channels=bevolunteer. Be welcome to join!

Edit: The minutes are available now.

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Sun and blue skies here in Belgium :) Nature is awaking and preparing for spring and summer. Perfect mood to get things done!

Tonight we'll have another public BoD chat meeting (interim Board of Directors) at 21:00 CET. Please register with your BW username.

You can already check out the agenda. Preparing the next extraordinary General Assembly (eGA) for new BoD elections will be part of the meeting, but more general issues are on the agenda, too.

Sunny…

Saturday February 23rd saw the successful conclusion of the first 2014 extraordinary General Assembly (eGA) of BeVolunteer. Under the democratic principles which BeVolunteer was founded and governed by, the electing members felt that an assembly was required to address the recent series of volunteer resignations.

As such the Board of Directors (BoD) promptly set up the assembly that was called for. With a number of consensuses being reached, the work done clears the path for further progress to…

After only three months with the new Board of Directors, BeVolunteer, the organization that runs BeWelcome, has its first extraordinary General Assembly (eGA) next Saturday (22/02). There has been dispute about how to steer BeVolunteer and about the functioning of the BoD. Over the last months several BoD members have resigned from the BoD: sitatara, who also resigned from other positions and volunteering in general, planetcruiser, guaka, who also resigned from volunteering, and one volunteer…

With two members of the Board of Directors resigning and an upcoming extraordinary General Assembly, times are getting tough for the rest of the BoD. In tonight's meeting we hope to tackle the crisis and prepare the events ahead, but we also need to take care of every day BoD tasks.

We will meet on http://webchat.freenode.net/?channels=bevolunteer at 22:30 CET. If you want to join, please join with your BeWelcome username. You can already check out the agenda of the meeting.

The idea of the…

The site was just updated to support the new ToU that became active at the same time.

Additionally to the changes for the ToU some bugfixes and updates happened:

• The editor for forum posts etc. was updated to the latest version (some options where disabled at the same time that were rarely used)
• The suggestions feature now has a <a href="/suggestions/results">list of results</a>. So that you can easily browse through the history of suggestions.
• The first suggestion was already…

We want to start the new year with a public meeting of the Board of Directors (BoD). On Tuesday 7th January, 2014 at 20:30 CET we will meet on http://webchat.freenode.net/?channels=bevolunteer. If you want to join, please join with your BeWelcome username. You can already check out the agenda of the meeting, but we will probably still add some points by next Tuesday.

The idea of the public meeting is that you can read our discussions in real time. However, in order to ensure an efficient…

2013 was a very positive year for BeWelcome - membership doubled, activity on the website increased markedly, new features were introduced, and the website massively improved. More importantly, this increased activity also resulted in a lot more real-life encounters, hospitality and cultural exchange.

All this would be impossible without the volunteers of BeWelcome who are busy administrating the website, answering to feedback, communicating with members, the media and the public, designing and…