Newsletter

BeWelcome June Newsletter 2014

Dear %anonymous%,

You are part of a growing community of more than 60,000 members! While the current rate of growth is organic and consistent, we are also improving the platform so as to enable more hospitality experiences for you. In this newsletter we would like to give you an update of what has been happening on BeWelcome over the last few months.

Site updates

Following member feedback, the ’Member Search’ feature has been updated to make it easier to find members you want to stay or connect with. Take a look at the member search, and find more information on these changes here.

Requesting a place to stay is about to get easier for members thanks to the development of a hosting request feature. Members should see the first version of this great new tool soon, as well as improvements to existing tools. Like most things on BeWelcome, progress will be quicker if more people can volunteer to help. If you're a talented coder looking for a new project or a member that has been looking for a feature to cut your development teeth on, this would be a great time to help. You can find information for developers on our trac development page.

Since last year, we have a Suggestions Tool that allows members to suggest, discuss and vote on cool ideas and features to improve our community and website. Why not add your views to our ongoing discussion about Improving Blogs? Or rank some of the already voted suggestions to give our developers a pointer what you would like to have implemented next?

Activities

After the addition of the Activities tool, it's now even easier to find activities and join them. You can also check for forthcoming activities near you or even create your own. Its easy to do, but don't forget to post your activity in your local group. There are also several activities and events that are currently trending amongst our members and open to join:

Seek The Duck 2014
Toulouse, France – An annual hospex gathering with many activities take part in including picnic's, wine tasting, museum visits, BBQ's.
Mont Royal Summer Camp Vol. 8
Traben-Trarbach, Germany – Mont Royal Summer Camp is a full week of fun activities for everyone, parties, music, culture and camping just above the Moselle valley. Taking place annually it attracts around 200 people.
Commemoration of D-Day, 70 years later
Tourlaville, France – An undoubtedly moving activity that is currently in the making.

Recently, our members successfully organized the following activities:

Community News

  • The security bug Heartbleed did not affect BeWelcome since we do not use that particular version. If you use the same password on multiple websites, we would still recommend you change it.
  • BeWelcome has a new website server called LION, replacing PUMA, which increasingly had reliability issues. Apologies for any recent downtime, and thanks to the team of volunteers who worked hard to make the move to the new server possible.
  • At the Act like a local event in November '13, Thorgal67 gave a presentation about the history behind BeWelcome, the future of hospitality exchange, and the role of BeWelcome as a sustainable hospitality alternative.
  • Mikael designed a great BeWelcome sticker template – you can download it as a zip file.
  • In March Yepkio examined anonymized data of BeWelcome for statistical purposes. Here are his provisional Hospex data science results and Bewelcome charts
  • BeWelcome supports a project for and about cancer survivors. rideTHEbattle, who is a cancer survivor himself, together with two fellow filmmakers Timmmaay21 and zachCman will cycle across America's Great West to show the world that life after cancer can be beautiful. Here is a video in which they present their project. On their way from Chicago to California and back they want to meet locals and stay with them through BeWelcome. If you feel like hosting the three of them don't hesitate to get in touch with them.

Donation campaigns

Last year we launched a BeWelcome BeActive campaign which raised 500 euros. Once that fundraising was completed successfully, the Board of Directors (BoD) launched the annual budget campaign for 2014. The 2013-2014 BeWelcome budget is 3.410 euros. And because we love transparency, you can find all the information in the finances wiki.

So far, just over half of the funds needed for 2014 have been collected. If you want to contribute, your donation makes it possible for us to run BeWelcome without any need for external funding or advertisements.

Board of Director Elections

Every year the General Assembly of BeVolunteer, the non-profit association that runs BeWelcome, elects a new BoD. While this election was held from 3rd to 5th November 2013, new BoD elections have recently taken place following an Extraordinary General Assembly (EGA). Railslide is BeWelcome's new executive and spokesperson until the next Annual General Assembly at the end of this year. Get to know the full new board here.

Get active and update your profile

  • Complete and update your profile Would you like to meet other BeWelcome members? If so, you should provide them with a first impression by adding a profile picture and fleshing out your profile.
  • Invite friends to BeWelcome. Write a comment for them, so that they can be trusted by other members of the community.
  • Social Media you can like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter.
  • Chatroom we also have an IRC chatroom where you can talk to volunteers and other members. Please use your BeWelcome anonymous as nickname.
  • Join or start a BeWelcome group If no group for your region or interests currently exist on BeWelcome, you can create one.

Wishing you happy travels and enriching encounters,
The BeWelcome Volunteers

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