Minutes 5th Dutch Ambassasors meetup

Minutes Amb-meeting Haarlem zo 27-9-2009

Present
Menno (city amb. Amsterdam), Klaas (city amb Haarlem), Gius (city amb Groningen), Henry (country amb), Maikel (city amb. Oss), Linda (city amb Den Haag), Jelly (city amb Amsterdam), Liza (country amb, chair), Floris (Wognum), Sanne (city amb Utrecht), Pieter (Leiden), Gerard (Bergschenhoek, Rotterdam region), Sytse (Arnhem), Jasper (city amb Utrecht)

Absent with notice
Konstantin (city amb Eindhoven), Rose (country amb), William (Breda)

1. Introducing each other
a short introduction round

2. CS newsletter
Henri: had contact with Meredith from CS homebase in SF a while ago about a plan to have a newsstream on the website. It is a pilot, other countries are already involved.

We want to be involved, we were working on a newsletter anyway. We made a group of people who will work the plans out.

Tasks
editing, scouting (finding people and info), journalists

Interested
Sanne, Maikel, Jasper, Sytse, Linda & Floris

3. CS NL Foundation
Floris was thinking about having a foundation. He made a list of benefits and downsides on which we added some things.

benefits

 * looks more professional
 * possibility for sponsorship
 * possiblity for referencing for jobless people who want to volunteer
 * contact with local gouvernments might be easier
 * improves legal status (responsiblities)
 * possiblity to get insurance

Downsides

 * extra costs of administration (how much? tens or hundreds or euro's?)
 * boring work
 * more responsiblities
 * might look overprofessional which might not fit with the general atmosphere on couchsurfing
 * couchsurfing international doesn't back it up (or is this a benefit?)

other ideas

 * Would it be possible to do it on a European base?
 * We decide to do more research
 * Floris, Linda & Henri will do this.
 * Next meeting there will be a report about this.

4. New ambassadors / application procedure
Liza made a presentation about the procedure that just finished, you can find it on the CS NL google group

The future of this procedure is unclear

When the new round starts Liza will notify people in active cities without an ambassador.

5. CS NL outside of Randstad & Bigger cities
Jasper: Couchsurfing is slowly spreading outside of the Randstad, but is still mainly focussed on cities. Do people agree with this problem and know a way to solve it? Answer to both questions seem to be yes. We also agree that it is a task of us to help travellers to get out of the beaten tracks.

Menno, but also others, already have plans for meetings in the countryside

The news letter might help extra to promote lesser known places.

It also might help to drag people from smaller places to big cities, when people in the big cities know them it is easier to visit them.

Idea: organise several (like every 3 months) 'invasions' to small places and see how that works.

We will start a topic about this (countryside invasions) on the CS NL group, several people will come with ideas and are free to organise them.

6. Groups reorganisation
Reorganisation is almost finished. The 'Holland'-group will be put in a subgroup 'archived subgroups of the Netherlands'

We have some NL-subgroups left which are not province-groups. We decide to not put them in a new subgroup. The list of subgroups of the Netherlands is not chaotic anymore so it is not a problem that those subgroups are there.

Not every province group the right moderators yet. The people involved in the reorganisation will fix this soon.

7. New developments in CS
Some people gave some updates in the current situation.

Events powerpoint
Maikel made a very usefull powerpoint presentation about how to use the events-page You can find it here

Greetings
At this moment the following Dutch people are greeting new members (local, national or globally):

Klaas (local)

Maikel (national/global)

Henri (priority for local, National)

Liza (local and national)

Giuseppe (local)

Linda (local, just applied)

Other greeters (not at the meeting):

Astrid from Eindhoven

Shilp from Delft

Erik from Arnhem

The following people said they also want to greet:

Pieter

Jelly

Sytse

Floris (locally)

Event approvers
Henri (priority for NL)

Guiseppe

Action list

 * Sanne, Maikel, Jasper, Sytse, Linda & Floris: working out the idea of the newletter
 * Liza: noticy active cities without active ambassadors when the new application round starts
 * Floris, Linda & Henri: to more research about what it means to start a foundation
 * Giuseppe: put the Holland-group in the new to make 'archived groups of NL' subgroup
 * people involved in reorganisation groups: find moderators for some groups
 * Pieter, Jelly, Sytse & Floris: join the new member welcome group

isin: CS Organisation Netherlands