This weekend the BeVolunteer General Assembly took place in Essen, Germany. Congratulations to the BV volunteers for their diligent efforts toward establishing the principles of openness, fairness and democracy in the hospitality community. The minutes of the Assembly are available here.
Special congratulations to Thomas Goorden for his election to the BV Board of Directors. I was very gratified to have a voice in this democratic process, and happily voted for Thomas.
Among the accomplishments of the assembly was a new wiki page highlighting the differences between BW/BV and other Hospex networks. It’s worth checking out here.
From the wiki link it shows that the same guys were voted again to the BOD except for thomas.
So the new BoD are
o Claudia
o Frank
o Jean-Yves
o Pierre-Charles
o Thomas
Also isint the BOD even more of a clique than the LT?
Do people have to be vetted to join?
BW is more like HC with spam checkers and all the strip big brother checks and balances like HC.
It has past 1 year since BW came into existence . Had the member ship numbers gone up or down?
Has BW reached the user friendliness of cs yet?
Is there really any democracy in the decision making?
If a board is made up of 10 people with real outdated idea? Would democracy be of any use at all?
Lets take exiting portal like facebook and myspace. Did the word democracy make them exiting or was it something else?
Has the participation increased of decreased?
There are no spam checkers. I don’t know what “checks and balances like HC” you mean, Neo.
There were no other new candidates apart from Thomas. I don’t think this is a problem. There are 5 BoD members now. One issue with BoD membership is that you have to attend weekly meetings. Another one is that it’s not that extremely important for the goings of BeWelcome.
The democracy takes mostly part in the volunteer teams themselves.
Facebook and MySpace are there to make shitloads of money. Hospitality Club exists to make some money for Veit, for the rest of his life (through his Google AdSense account, monthly tax-free guaranteed income..). CouchSurfing exists because it keeps Casey and his crowd provided of all conveniences (think Money for nothin’ and your chicks for free).
BeWelcome is there because volunteers of HC and later CS became disgruntled with the workings of HC and CS and decided to try to set up something more equitable, transparent and democratic. Even with only 3500 members, it’s already a remarkable feat that it can exist.
@Neo
You raise important points and I’m sure there are others with similar questions. I’ll try to answer them as best as I can.
I agree that there is currently probably too little diversity (especially new volunteers) in the BoD. That’s part of the reason I joined. However, it is quite easy to become part of the BoD, all you have to do is become an official BV member. For that, limited experience as hospex volunteer is required. In this case, there were simply far too few people applying for the positions to create a real election like feeling. On the other hand, it might also indicate that the BV volunteers are quite happy with the previous BoD, which would be rewarded by re-electing them. Obviously, if everyone is aware that reelection is very likely because of this, there won’t be too many “disgruntled” candidates.
You are right, it does resemble HC a bit more in that respect (although CS has been been acting very heavy handed lately as well). It is definitely an area I want to pay some attention to the coming year and as you might now, I’m very keen on a completely transparent system. BW will always need some kind of spam and security checking, the real question is what the best way to do that is.
Up. I think I heard a number of about 15 new member profiles per day.
I think so, yes. In fact, I find the search feature to be much better already (for instance). But, of course you can help improve it, there is a great feature and bug tracking system in place that you can access.
I don’t understand this question very well. Perhaps it depends on what you mean by democracy? Any BV member could pose their candidacy (simply by putting their name in the Wiki) and all BV members were able to vote. That’s pretty damn democratic in my book.
Does BW need this kind of system? I think it is good in many ways, primarily because it provides a system to prevent or repair possible abuse by the BoD. It is obvious that the BW BoD behaves more professionally and has a lot more accountability than the CS LT or Veit. Of course, that not that hard to do
But also remember that European non-profits like BeVolunteer are obliged by law to have board elections. The reasons are exactly the same: to prevent abuse. That’s also a good indicator of why HC isn’t a non-profit and CS is based in the US. The real question you should ask yourself is if you want your hospitality service to be a non-profit or a commercial organization like Facebook. The election system automatically follows from that choice.
Again, I’m not sure what you refer to. I do think the BW volunteers have been doing a great job the last year, but I’m not sure if that answers your question.
Thank you thomas .Again it is the majority who makes the decision so change may be a long long way off.
I was referring to www. bewelcome. org /stats
If 10 people at BW decide that (like HC) there is no more changes needed in BW. And BW goes by the majority vote would that means BW would also stagnate like HC for years?
If this is the case, we should see that many people logging into BW everyday and also the new joiners should be in their 100′s.
www. bewelcome. org /stats
The Board of Directors on BW does not have that much power in like other boards generally do. BW is quite a decentralised system.
Whether you’d consider it ‘democratic’ depends on your definition. I would say its highly democratic (though could always be better) in the sense that is is both ‘representative’ with a BoD and ‘participatory’ with volunteers who participate in everyday decision-making and set the agenda for the board.
The reason the board was re-elected was because most people were happy with the current people on the board and others like me were happy with them being on the board and me just participating in other areas of BW.
But hopefully BW will become more participatory as time goes on. And hopefully we can get more diversity of volunteers. Thats something i’ll be working on.
“Again it is the majority who makes the decision so change may be a long long way off.”
If every small decision had to be approved by a majority of the entire community, progress would be very slow indeed. Most democracies, like BV/BW, reserve community-wide votes for fundamentally important decisions, like electing leaders, who are then trusted to make smaller decisions for a term. But they will be held accountable for those decisions by the Community, and replaced if necessary.
Even so, the pace is slower than it would be under a top-down dictatorial organizational structure. But BW/BV has a philosophical leaning toward quality over quantity. Protecting the integrity of the network has a much higher priority than aggressively increasing membership.
The website and its user-friendliness will grow over time as volunteers make that happen, but hopefully nothing fundamentally important to us will be sacrificed to achieve that. I like to think that the name BeWelcome conveys the idea “You are welcome here if what we have interests you”. And what we have is, most importantly to me, a community of equals.
My personal experience as a developer in BV has been that:
1. As an initially unknown outsider, there was no bias whatsoever against me. I was evaluated according to my contributions and then given more responsibility based on my performance and having already vetted colleagues vouch for me. Whether I was friends with an insider, or whether I was inclined toward hard-partying, were not factors at all.
2. I have significant latitude to inject my own creative ideas into my work, while at the same time there is a clear understanding that the needs of the Community, as determined by democratic process (consensus and occasional votes) take priority over individual interests. I am happy to make creative contributions to BW/BV, because they don’t take exclusive ownership of them and there is no one monetarily profiting from them, as in CS.
Thomas has proved that an outsider can join BW/BV and within about a year reach the highest level of responsibility. My belief is that this could not have happened in CS, where competence, professionalism and integrity matter less than deference to Casey Fenton as the supreme unaccountable head of CS, and at least tolerance of, if not participation in, his personal lifestyle choices and questionable behaviors. I even believe that professionalism counts as a negative in CS. People who demand high professional standards tend to be ostracized in that organization.
For some of us, the inefficiencies inherent in a democracy are of small consequence compared to the alternative. I have observed the elected leaders in BW/BV working very hard day after day, making enormous contributions while working at full-time jobs and in some cases raising a family. They get nothing out of their service except the satisfaction of helping to create something of real value, and the joy of camaraderie. A leadership position in BW/BV is not a status symbol with associated perquisites. Rather, it’s taxing volunteer work on behalf of a Community and the set of ideals it holds in common. I appreciate what they are doing and will continue to support them any way I can.
At the same time, I strongly support diversity and decentralization, and so do not think that BW/BV is the only or necessarily the best solution. For example, I’d like to see more localization (geographically and according to special interest) in the hospitality community. But BW/BV is a valuable alternative to the CS and HC models, at least for me.
On the cs wiki
Current revision (16:50, 9 June 2008) Babso (Talk | contribs)
(removing advertising of small unknown site. it is advertised on the exchange url, along with many other small sites. not affiliated with toni either as the edit suggested)
Note from a non-voter:
As mentioned here before: People don’t vote because they are satisfied with the work of the former/new BoD. I’m one of them. But I know it wouldn’t be hard to get the right to vote (by becoming an official member of BeVolunteer). In a way this is bad behaviour by me, because the BoD really deserve respect for their work (and maybe more support by more votes).
As a Volunteer for BV/BW for some time now, the BoD (or better the title “member of BoD) never really matters to me for practical work. This may sound weird, but while trying to do my part, I was never confronted with any kind of “because-i’m-a-member-of-BoD” or other top-to-down-bullshit. In the process of developing a hospitality exchange network, that makes a difference, it was working with equals.
midsch
For CS-Wiki: I’ve tried to fix it (wow, my first contribution there for months …).
I signed up for BeWelcome, but I wouldn’t get active in the community unless it shucked the dry, business-like atmosphere for the chillout vibe and emphasis on fun that marks the best of the Couchsurfing experience.
Christopher, I am very glad that BeWelcome is not a “chillout vibe and emphasis on fun” thingy because I think it simply wouldn’t reflect the aims of that project well enough.
If you opt for party – Couchsurfing will do the trick (at least last time I checked the activities in Barcelona there was some party almost every day…)
hmm. agreed. the emphasis on ‘fun’ is fairly shallow, what’s wrong with an emphasis on ‘responsibility’?
the frat-boyish on attitude harbours a reckless way of travelling, disrespectful to the environments you travel through, less about cultural understanding, more single minded party-on and party-forth.
i love a good party, i’ll happily admit, but i don’t beleive for a second that my partying is going to change the world or spread inter cultural understanding.
Christopher Culver ah isint that that cheap skate American who is going all over Europe dissing everyones culture.And feels couch surfing is meant to partying and freeloading
Although I am not an BeVolunteer member yet I also went to Essen to see this democracy in action. I was amazed by the willingness of the people to create a democratic, open, participatory and transparent network.
Obviously there is still a lot of work that needs to be accomplished to empower volunteers, to make the website more user-friendly and to make it really member-driven. But what has been accomplished in the past two years is already major. Besides, changes are implemented rather quick and there is a really good vibe among members to make this network happen, and to make it as horizontal as possible.
The potential of BeWelcome is simply enormous: finally we have our own network, one run by the volunteers and not by some enlightened pseudo-king with a self-chosen clique around him. Let’s roll
I am happy to see that BW is doing good.
One thing I keep in mind though, is that running a website with 3500 members is a lot easier than running one with 500.000. I’m not implying that BW cannot do that, I’m just curious to see what happens by the time they get to the size of CS.
I think BW stands a good chance to pull the organisational side off, since they had the benefit of learning from CS and HC’s mistakes. Of course they have the same advantage on the technical side of things.
That said, I feel the same thing: for some reason CS seems more of a community than BW. No idea why though
Thomas, I wish you all the best on the BoD (whatever it is youre gonna be doing there
)
500.000. lol
how many of these members log in evey day?
It is not good to over exaggerate walter.
How many of 500,000 are delete profiles
how many of them are inactive profiles?
Is that really relevant to my post? Even if it is 350.000 users, the user base size difference is huge, and brings its own challenges with it. That was my point, not the number I used
I see walter has NO DENIED james theory. What does that mean
?
500,000/350.000 how about just stating the REAL numbers walter.
remember you saying the site down error was due to the members logging into the site
democracy for organizations sucks.
BW will grow alot slower, but at least its legally on solid ground.
i agree that there ought to be some form of oversight, but democracy the way it is implemented now is just dellusionist hippie bullshit that will not work well in the long term.
If a board is made up of 10 people with real outdated ideas? Would democracy be of any use at all?
If 10 people at BW decide that (like HC) there is no more changes needed in BW. And BW goes by the majority vote would that means BW would also stagnate like HC for years?
If the BoD is pushing (or blocking) a major issue against the will many BeVolunteer members the BoD can be replaced by a new one at any time (upon request of at least one quarter of the BeVolunteer members a General Assembly and new election can be held).
So the BoD has really no power to act against the will of the official members of BeVolunteer.
democracy for organizations sucks.
BW will grow alot slower, but at least its legally on solid ground.
i agree that there ought to be some form of oversight, but democracy the way it is implemented now is just dellusionist hippie bullshit that will not work well in the long term.
Yes democracy can tremendously slow down many things. However, if you have a look at every day work of BeWelcome volunteers you will see that many many things are rather decided in an ad-hoc or non formalized way. However every member has at any point the power to ask for a formal and democratic decision. Thus we keep our flexibility and creativity while have at least the option for democratic decisions.
Of course some decisions are heavily debated and therefore take a long time – but in the end this just reflects the diversity of opinions and directions to go and therefor it is good that those discussions get the time and space they need.
@Philipp
You can use blockquote tags to differentiate between your text and quotations…
The truth is some decisions get debated forever the who org just stagnates due to the majority of debaters not having the experience of vision of what makes a successful social network.
This is extremely evident from the discussions on the forums.
Most of the members have past baggage and just cannot accept an open system .Most still believe in the strict censorships of HC (spam checkers etc).
So either till the members change their views or a fresh majority come into the system with new exciting ideas the org will stagnate indefinitely( 1 year on there is no excitement on the forums what cs started back in 2004/05)
Could you maybe be a bit more specific? It would be extremely helpful to know which issues you consider as crucial for a successful social network and which issues are currently blocked in one or the other way. Maybe this helps to fuel the process with new ideas.
– hope the blockquote worked this time – wrodpress is just not the most intuitive thing to use (no help, no preview, no edit after submit, ..), feel free to edit my posts for readibiltiy