Ambassador

The role of the Ambassador is to embody the spirit of CouchSurfing in their travels and when they are hosting and meeting up with other travelers.

• Ambassadors attempt to maintain a link between CS Admins and Founders and the CS community. They participate in discussions regarding the direction of the Project and offer support to members.
• Ambassadors also sometimes volunteer for specific tasks that require input on a regular basis. They can help with translations, answer Contact Us questions or welcome new members.
• Ambassadors may also be responsible for certain areas or regions of the world, acting as “go-to” people for other Ambassadors and CouchSurfers.
• To facilitate their work, Ambassadors also have access to special pages and other system information.

There are four The Levels of Ambassadorship- City, Country, Global, and Nomadic

For more information about Ambassadors and how you can become one see the Ambassadors page on Couchsurfing.

See also Tech features for ambassadors

Activity ideas for Ambassadors

• To Start most ambassadors will organize a traditional meet-up in their local community. Common activities include the bar crawl, pot-luck, bowling, trivia night, etc.
• Sleep Around challenge yourself and other locals to surf other couches in your community. Try setting a modest goal of 4 couches in one month.
• Regional Meetings organizing local CS meetings is a regular task for City Ambassadors. Try taking this concept one step further. Talk to ambassadors or other active members in nearby communities to organize a big regional meet-up.
• The Invasion get to know your local community and travel at the same time by organizing a CS group to travel to a nearby location. Time your travel to coincide with a CS meet-up in the town you are traveling to. This works best when two active CS communities are close together, such as New York City and Boston or Amsterdam and Utrecht.

Tips for Ambassadors

• Make sure that you are a moderator of your local group if you are a City Ambassador. If not, contact the current moderator. If there is no moderator for the group you should contact Mikky.
• Flag posts that announce upcoming events.
• Set up a calendar to post in the Details section of your local group. Here's how:
  1. Go to Google Calendar and click "Create New Account" or sign in using your group's exist Gmail account.
  2. Enter all of the regular and upcoming events into the calendar
  3. In the "My Calendars" box click the little downward-pointing triangle next to your calendar and select "Share this calendar" from the pop-up menu
  4. Under the "Google Calendar" button click "Get the code"
  5. Copy and paste the code in your groups Details section with an indication that to add an event they will have to log in and provide the password and username underneath
  • For an example see groups Vegas Baby! or Nashville.
• Take pictures at local CS events and upload them to a Flickr account. Flickr allows uploading by email. You can then post a link to the Flickr page and the upload by email adress to the details section of your local group
• Find ambitious CouchSurfers who qualify for ambassadorship and encourage them to apply.
• Ever wonder what the "Heard From" tab could be used for of wished the "Greeting" tab would list new users by state/province/region well try this:
  1. go to the Amb tab
  2. click on Heard From
  3. choose your region
  4. Choose your country
  5. choose your state/province/region, and there you have a list of new members with their city
• Interactive Maps

G'day all, Google has the calendar feature as well as maps and a picture host, Picasso. So with one google account, you can have the calendar, maps and an image host. Also set up a wiki for your City and encourage people to fill it with local knowledge and advice. All these things should be linked to the details section of your City group to make it easy for new people to gain the most from your knowledge and from the CS experience in your City. Beni MC - City Amb for Brisbane.

• Hey ambs, add your tips for other ambassadors here

Other ideas/links Ambassadors may find helpful

• Help CouchSurfers in an emergency by setting up a "Last Minute Couch" sub-group or by setting up a simple automated system as follows:
  1. Set up a Gmail account with the following address format 911CS[name of area or country]@gmail.com
  2. In settings, under the "General" tab setup a vacation responder. In the message you can include name and contact information for CSers who have agreed to be on the emergency directory as well as all ambassadors in the area. You may also want to include information about hostels in the area, in case they cannot find a host nearby. make sure to turn the vacation responder off before saving settings
  3. Now, return to settings to turn the vacation responder on. This is necessary because of a bug with Gmail
  4. In settings, set up a filter to forward all incoming messages to the addresses of you emergency directory members.
  5. Put a notice in your area's group details that in an emergency couchsurfers should send an email detailing their situation and whatever contact information they can provide to the emergency email address you just set up.
• Establish a CouchSurfing Zone.