Thailand CSC

Announcing the Thai Collective
This issue we have very exciting news to share with you: As you read this, we are making preparations for our 5th and soon to be most productive CouchSurfing Collective. The Collective will be held in Thailand for four months starting December 1st, 2007, and we are now accepting applications for a small number of very specific volunteer positions. We hope you will apply to represent the interests of all CouchSurfing members by joining us in Thailand! But first we need to tell you a little more about the purpose of this unique Collective.



A Collective for Volunteers
As members, we all enjoy hosting and surfing with each other thanks to the day-to-day efforts of many hard-working volunteers, including the CouchSurfing Ambassadors and the Volunteer Leadership Team. Yet we now realize that we haven't given these volunteers nearly enough support. That's why we've decided to make some important improvements to make volunteering much easier and more rewarding.

The first step was the hiring of our second and third paid employees this June. The job of our new full-time Volunteer Coordinator, Jim Stone, is to see to all the needs of current and future volunteers and to organize them into expert teams. Mattthew Brauer, our new full-time General Manager, has been hired to organize our many ongoing projects and to help prioritize tasks for these expert teams. These two have freed up Casey Fenton to Coordinate the Technology Team, whose focus is to create software tools for these teams. Now we are ready for the next step, which is to recruit a small group of our most motivated volunteers who will build and supervise these expert teams. These team supervisors will also have the option to stay at the Collective in Thailand.




A Collective for the Future
In the past we've used Collectives to accomplish critical short-term goals. This time we're using it to build the long-term future of CouchSurfing. The Collective will allow us to bring this small group of present and future team supervisors together under one roof to plan and build their volunteer teams. With the help of our new project organizer and volunteer needs manager, these team supervisors will keep CouchSurfing the best and easiest way to connect with surfers and hosts worldwide as well as maintain an always free to use service for our members.

We're now looking for highly skilled and experienced members who wish to become volunteer team supervisors, whether or not they can join the Collective. Supervisors will have the opportunity to attend the Collective and enjoy free meals and accommodation. However, these positions are long-term volunteer commitments extending beyond the Collective. Does this sound exciting to you? If so, apply to join us in Thailand for a fun and amazing learning experience with CouchSurfing's most talented members.

We're committed to making the Thai Collective the most productive and most accountable use of member donations yet. This includes a focused mission, specific job descriptions for each participant, and high standards of achievement for each position. The positions include the volunteer team supervisors, a few software developers to assist their needs, and a Collective House Manager. You'll be hearing more from us about the Thai Collective in the coming months.

To read about all of our plans and needs, please visit the Thai Collective FAQ page on CouchSurfing. Please note that you cannot reply to this message, however you can pose questions on the FAQ page.

Jim Stone