Minutes 1st Dutch Ambassadors meetup

1st meetup of CS_Organisation_Netherlands

Present: Henri, Aldo, Paul, Pieter, Harold, Rose, Ramon, Liza, Jasper, Guiseppe, Esly, Maikel.

MEDIA There is a need for guidelines, what can we tell to the media. Which image do we want to spread? Some people would love some words (in Dutch!) which we can use in our media contacts. Maybe we should have one person in charge for media issues? Some people have the experience that whatever you tell, the media will end up with focussing on a free place to sleep. It can help to point to couchsurfing as a trend. But in the end, it looks like that members are not very much affected by the news. Many members who sign in during a media hype will not get active. It looks like the system is filtering itself!

SAFETY This is an important issue for many people. Ambassadors want to protect the members. How can we avoid that people have more profiles? The safety team can check this. There is always a (automatic) check before people can sign in. and, if someone makes a report, there can be a new (manual) check. If someone reports another member to the police, he or she will be banned (the victim should send the report of the police, as ambassador you can only support him/her by doing so, you can not report an abuser to the safety team). It turns out that in real life, the community itself also deals with ‘abusers’. You, as an ambassador, can always warn people to be careful. There are still people working on a kind of Black List, but it is not clear if and when this will be implemented. One of the changes made recently is that edited references do not get automatically back on top. This makes it more difficult for members with a bad reference to ask their friends to bring the negative comment down by editing their references. The most important safety check members can do by themselves is the verification check. If someone is verified, there is not a big chance that people are not trustworthy. Recent research concluded this as well. Vouching can also say something about the person, but is much less reliable. Only country ambs can see hidden profiles. In case you have doubts about a specific person (with a hidden profile for example), you can contact Aldo about safety issues with this member. At the moment, there are no suspected members living in the Netherlands.

MEETINGS We will make a list of big national meetings. Maikel will create a calendar for Dutch events. About monthly meetings, on the one hand it would be nice to choose different days in different cities. On the other hand, it seems not very likely that people from Den Haag and Groningen will visit each other (small scale) monthly meetings. Upcoming big events; - 2-4 Gig Swapping (Utrecht) - Queensday. Problem is to find enough hosts in Amsterdam. Organisation has no obligation to find hosts, you can promote people to look for hosts outside Amsterdam. Discussion will be continued online. - 21-6 Midsummer Night in Utrecht - Sinterklaas (Rotterdam) We can extend this by an online discussion!

WIKI Jasper created a wiki page about Utrecht. He will coordinate other pages for the Netherlands as well. But he needs input from others!

CS ZONES Paul and Aldo present CS Zones. This will be pages about places, maintained by ambassadors. It is very premature at the moment, but it looks very cool!

FLAG / STATUS Does this flag on your profile really mean something? It makes you visible. People can turn easily to ambassadors with questions and remarks. He or she can also connect active people in order to get things organised. (But being an ambassador is not necessary for this!). Ambassadors are mainly there because some structure is needed.

NEXT TIME Next ambassadors meeting will also take place in Utrecht. We will set a date (after Queensday) later. Liza and Jasper will host us in their new house. For this meeting, we should also invite other ambassadors, make an agenda and we prefer a calmer place (like a house!). It might be a good idea to have another meeting about the Queensday Meeting. But this can also be online… After the next meeting in Utrecht, we can go on tour! So organise a weekend in Groningen, Maastricht, Enschede and even Oss!

Points to be discussed next time: - Ambassadors communication and organisation - Goodies - Real life CS Promotion - Media Contacts - Big meetings and matching regular meetings.