The Thailand Collective has begun!
The first monthly update is here!
December 16th, 2007
Welcome to the first edition of The Thailand Collective Newsletter - the news update to keep all valued members of this community informed about the CouchSurfing Collective and what the participants are achieving in their four months together.
WHAT IS THE THAI COLLECTIVE?
Our fifth Collective has officially started, with a group of committed volunteers starting to come together to improve the CouchSurfing website and grow our community.
Specifically this Collective has the aim of building eight sustainable volunteers teams, who will operate on an on-going basis beyond the Collective and cover areas of the organization in Technology, Volunteer Coordination, Public Relations & Marketing, Member Communications, Design & User Interface, Events & Outreach, Member Disputes & Safety, and Member Services.
With membership numbers fast approaching 500,000, it is imperative for CouchSurfing to create a framework that will give us a solid foundation to meet our future needs. This Collective will provide training and support for the new team supervisors while they continue to develop their expert teams.
WHO ARE THE PARTICIPANTS?
This is the first Collective we have organized by selecting participants through an application and interview process, which we are confident will ensure this is our most productive Collective ever. We received over 200 applications and were astounded at the caliber of professionals who were willing to dedicate their time to improving CouchSurfing by building our new expert teams.
All participants were chosen largely because they possessed three important qualities:
- professional and/or extensive practical experience in their selected fields;
- proven ability to manage projects; and
- a history of leading teams.
Introducing the team:
Collective Management
- Mattthew Brauer, United States - As CouchSurfing's full-time General Manager, Mattthew (or "Triple T") is responsible for organizing many of the ongoing projects of the organization and this now includes ensuring the objectives of the Collective are met. Prior to CouchSurfing, he had seven years experience in website development and online marketing. For the past three years he has also owned his own web design and development business. His previous CS accomplishments included negotiating the Air New Zealand sponsorship of the NZ Collective.
House Management
- Shelley Meabon, United States - Shelley is well prepared to take on the challenging role of providing for the participants' physical and psychological welfare. She served as a team facilitator for Notre Dame branch of Americore in Seattle managing the group living situation for Americore volunteers with very similar responsibilities to her role as the CouchSurfing Collective House Manager. No stranger to Thailand, she also spent time volunteering for the YMCA in Thailand helping build a school for the Lumphun District.
Volunteer Coordination
- Jim Stone, United States - Our full-time Volunteer Coordinator is seeing to all the needs of current and future volunteers and overseeing the organization of them into the expert teams. Jim has been involved with CS practically from the beginning being one of the first members. Before taking on the official role of Volunteer Coordinator, he volunteered for CS for three years, and was directly responsible for overseeing and improving the verification system, which dramatically increased the percentage of verified members adding to the safety of our community.
- Susan Franke, The Netherlands - Susy came onto our radar while visiting the Collective in Rotterdam and took no time at all in getting quickly involved in helping design and implement our current volunteer system. She regularly communicates with potential volunteers and will be getting them involved as seamlessly as possible in the right places during the Collective.
Member Services
- Dodie Butler, Canada - Dodes prides herself on being "quality and detailed oriented" while having vast experience in project management - with the in-depth resume to back it up! She's been very on top of the pre-planning involved with the Collective and was on of the most excited of all of us to get started in Thailand.
Events & Outreach
- Cameron Mills, United States - Cameron's dedication to CouchSurfing has seen him quit his job to devote his full efforts to help grow our Events and Outreach area. He's organized events all over the globe for various groups and has extensive experience as a project manager for a Fortune 100 company.
- Laura Gamse, United States - Planning events seems almost second nature to Laura. Aside from organizing a sketch comedy syndicate with a network of five universities from scratch (while being a new student herself, no less) she's also developed style guides for organizations to follow and established an ability to put people into action.
- Diamond Braganza, England - If there's anyone that can write a book on how to make a successful event it's this guy. Diamond has been organizing events in the London area every two weeks for almost four years! We're excited to see him pass on his knowledge to other CouchSurfing meeting makers all across the globe.
Community Communication
- Mandie McCrea, Australia - Mandie was selected for her superb communication style and her professional experience in developing communication systems where little to none existed before she arrived. She is passionate about creating transparent communication in organizations and has over seven years experience in managing staff and projects in customer service and communication for commercial businesses, government departments and non-profit organizations.
Public Relations & Marketing
- Shonali Shetty, India - Shonali has extensive experience in establishing new public relations and marketing campaigns and taking them quickly to the next level. She's worked on accounts for Hard Rock Café, Vodafone, and a number of other projects as both designer and coordinator.
- Charish Badzinski, United States - One line in particular stood out in Charish's resume: "[Experience in generating] corporate communications for local and regional businesses including strategic media relations, Web, collateral, and public relations plans as a freelance communicator." The rest of her resume shows us that she's not only great in her field but experienced in setting up systems where few or none already existed.
Member Disputes & Safety
- Rachel, United States - Rachel has long been a dedicated volunteer for CouchSurfing, helping out tirelessly on dealing with disputes and safety concerns raised by members. She will be continuing her passion for safety related issues in Thailand. We all want the community to be as safe as possible for all users and we're glad to have Rachel with us at the Collective to help make things even safer.
Design & User Interface
- Sebastien LeTuan, United States - Seb is one of the original founders of CouchSurfing and has a broad range of experience in design, specifically in user-end experience. He'll be focusing much of his time in Thailand on making the site easier for everyone to use.
Technology
- Weston Hankins, Mexico - A skilled system architect who has previously had leading positions in several different organizations which he gave up to live a life of discovery and passion. He's an avid Mexican traveler who shares the CS mission and we are extremely excited to have such a motivated person supervising our tech team!
Casey Fenton, United States - The man with the original vision, the one who started it all... CouchSurfing's original full-time employee, Casey Fenton, is now focusing on creating software tools for our emerging expert teams. He'll be joining us with all his expertise and passion for CS and contributing towards everything as much as he can, as always.
- Andrew Otto, United States - A passionate and highly skilled system administrator that enjoys sharing knowledge. Andrew has experience as both a developer and sysadmin in the field and feels completely comfortable with our current technologies. Look forward to new features everyone!
- Andy Sanderson, United States - Has been a programmer analyst in the database systems group of a supercomputer center in California for the past 5 years showing great team skills and positive results. He is eager to live more CS experiences. We are eager to have his talent in our team!
- Jeffrey Knurek, United States - With experience in Web development for several companies in Sweden, including Ericsson, as well as companies in Hawaii, Jeff will help enrich CS user experience. He's already been active tackling bugs and communicating tech issues to users through the Cockroach group.
- Naz Gassiep, Australia - Web programmer expert and e-business entrepreneur, Naz has proven his great passion for the CouchSurfing project and his determination to provide expert solutions to the CS Community. He's a bottomless knowledge source for all possible random subjects too!
- Douglas Deleu, Belgium - Douglas has a master in Multimedia & Virtual Reality and has been doing freelance work around the world. He's an expert in multimedia and has good knowledge of Web 2.0. He'll be here to bring even more front end technical UI upgrades!
- John Lubotsky, United States - A support lead and webmaster for an ISP in California and a volunteer of multiple non-profit organizations, John has also been a CouchSurfer for years. He shares the CS mission and objectives and will be creating a strong and stable foundation for the CS architecture including documentation.
WHERE IS THE COLLECTIVE?
The current Collective group is located in a house in Kata Beach, Phuket in Southern Thailand for the month of December. We will move to another location to accommodate the larger group of Collective participants that will be joining us from January onwards.
The scouting task to find our location was accomplished by Nina Lewis and Alisara Na-Takuatung. Alisara found the wonderful house we are staying in and negotiated the rent with the property owner. Alisara continues to go beyond the call of duty to provide us with advice about southern Thailand.
The house suits our needs perfectly for December, including a great price, plenty of space, and high-speed internet. It's a short walk to the beach and is next door to a local t-shirt printing shop, a barber shop and convenience store. And for the animal lovers of the Collective, we also get to share the compound with two dogs, Mikee and Dohdoh.
HOW...
...CAN YOU HELP?
The new expert team supervisors will be spend much of the next four months building their teams and will need other dedicated and skilled volunteers to participate in their teams. If you have skills you feel would be useful to any of the teams being developed, please check out our volunteer application.
...CAN YOU GET MORE INFORMATION?
We will keep the Frequently Asked Questions page for the Thai Collective up to date with information on a regular basis so please refer to this area first if you have a particular question. If your question is not there, then you can submit a question to the Collective group from this page.
WHEN CAN YOU EXPECT TO HEAR FROM US AGAIN?
We will send you an edition of The Collective Newsletter monthly. The Collective running for four months until 1 April 2008. Expect to hear about great progress each month as the team supervisors push ahead with developing their teams.
For up to the minute information, please follow one the expert team links above or visit Collective participant blogs.
Happy Surfing!
-From everyone at the 5th CouchSurfing Collective, Thailand
