Date: Wed, 19 Jan 2005 02:07:51 +0100 From: Veit Kuehne To: veit Subject: HC democracy and strategy Hi friends, ah, how much fun to read all those long messages. This is a discussion that will come again and again, as long as the club will exist, and it is fun. I will try to share some comments on some of your points (impossible to say something about everything - I invite you to Dresden to discuss more and in detail over a beer if you wish!). Most of you have already perfectly expressed my own thoughts, so don't have to repeat them (thanks a lot!! - I will save and recycle those texts when the discussion comes up again in the future). Luckily I can recycle a text from myself I wrote for Jean-Yves some time back, here you go: > " Put online something not approve by Veit, you or some commitee (I > know Veit does'nt like this word but with 11000 members, may be we > will soon need more structure)" It is not the word. I really mean it. There will never be any "commitee" for taking decisions, as long as I am onboard in the club and am involved in it. And since I am quite young, it might take 50 years...:-) Seriously, since the beginning this is one of my most important dogmas for the HC: no official structure for decision taking. I will always discuss issues openly with the people involved and with knowledge to come to good decisions that are the best for the network. But the final decision will always be with me. I know this sounds harsh, especially when coming from a "democratic" network like Servas. But I see it as the only way to keep power struggles, manipulation, inefficiency out of the club. Who will chose any commitee? How to make sure they really think about the best for the club? How to avoid struggles between them? I don't want to waste any time and energy with that. The club from this angle really just is an internet platform to bring people together and we don't need any commitee to take decisions. No matter whether there are 1000, 11.000 or 1.000.000 members. The benefit is that we can take quick decisions and don't waste energy in power struggles. As long as I don't go crazy or stop listening to people's opinion, this decision making process will work. If you only meant that we need more structure in asense of organizing the work - I absolutely agree. I am more and more getting used to the role of organizing the specialized teams of volunteers who take care of HC issues independently. And of course I will not be involved in every decision there - so the above only holds true for "debatable" decisions. As more people become active, I can give up more control - just the way it should be. For example, I really trust Claudio in all those speed improvements and don't have the check or be involved in any way. Thank god! :-) >> Adding a few things to that: to understand my stand point you have to realize that I founded the HC exactly as an alternative to Servas - which in my eyes is hindered so much by it's pseudo-democratic setup. So I vowed since the beginning that the HC will never go down this road to inefficiency. If you want a democratic hospitality exchange network, become a Servas member, try to get your ideas into reality there. I promise you that it will be easier in the HC - because we try to implement good sound ideas as quickly as possible. All this democracy talk sounds so strict and harsh. It is important to realize that I am HAPPY to give up responsability. For message checking. For accepting members. For translations. etc. etc. That's the plan - get more and more great volunteers onboard and hand them over some part of our network. But I will not give up responsability for the HC as a whole for many decades to come (hopefully), that's why I am reserving the final word in any really important or debated decisions for myself. As Tijs wrote: "...a not-for-profit organisation does not need to be democratic, to be able to integrate new members and motivate more people to involve." That's the real challenge. How to get people to contribute, and here I always listen to all of you guys. I know sometimes I am overburdened, sometimes I make mistakes or let people wait too long. But I KNOW that this is not perfect and I am really striving to get better and better at it. I KNOW that the survival of the HC depends on our ability to motivate people to contribute. And you can trust me that I am smart enough to work on myself and my work routines where I see it is really needed. And integrating new volunteers in a good way really was a big problem in the last months. We are working on it. Another note: we already did one very successful semi-democratic feedback/decision thing: when implementing the new navigation on top we announced it in the News, presented several alternatives and asked for opinions. After that I took those opinions, weighed and counted them - and finally took the seemingly most popular. And that's what I always try to do: involve many people, listen to many opinions and then come to good decisions. It seems to be working. Also, I always try to listen to "normal" members, to look over their shoulder when they use the club, to read all feedback messages, so I never make the mistake to just take the opinion of you valued key volunteers ;-) And this, btw also solves the issue of "key volunteers" vs. "normal members" - all opinions are listened to. Maybe the key volunteers have more weight, but only because I know and see they also care a lot about our network, and WORK a lot on it to make it better and better. About Tijs' suggestion to present better why we are doing things, what we will do in the future: the problem with that is that it often depends on programming, that it is quite unpredictable at times. But I agree that we need to find ways to integrate new or future volunteers better, and this will be done in the Volunteers Group once a way to send messages to all members of a group has been programmed. Just a bit of patience - our communcation will improve. There was some talk about my MindMap. It basically is just a way for me to keep my thoughts and to do lists organized, and of course I cannot put it online. But many parts of it are online anyway - the Detailed Volunteer Info page is pretty much straight from my MindMap. Gerrit is also working with a MindMap that used to be mine ;-) So please trust me to efficiently manage my thoughts with that tool and to put those things onto the site that should be there. Coordinators: I will write some more about this job in other messages. Thanks for the list, Pierre ;-) Yahoogroup: Augustas, we had a YG before for key volunteers. Problem with it: there are so many issues that have to be discussed among always-changing volunteers (sometimes Pierre has to tell Gerrit, Valmi and me something, something Kjell me and Gerrit etc etc) that it really has proven more effective to use CC: Otherwise the email volume would rise and rise and we would spend all our days just reading HC mails and not actually working anymore. Last but not least, let me close with a little anecdote: when I was 18, I decided to run for city council in the town of Herzberg. I went 4 weeks every day from door to door listening to people's suggestions what should be done better in town and introducing myself. I filled a whole little book with suggestions and at the end I knew what the people in town REALLY wanted. Then, I was elected but being from a small party was the only one in city council so couldnt really make those suggestions a reality. NOW I have the HC and I CAN make many suggestions come true. So you dont have to fear for a moment that I will become stuck-up or arrogant in that sense - I will always listen and try to make people happy. That's what I love doing! Allright - although we have spent many valuable volunteer-hours on this discussion, it was probably good to have it. As I said, I will save some texts and use them again in the future. Feel free to discuss more and send me more thoughts, but I think it is better to continue this in real life. Now I will try to concentrate on getting all those 1680 messages in my Inbox answered so you have less reason to complain and many future volunteers see that we indeed care about them. You can help me by accepting the HC the way it is, taking a piece of it and working on it, trying to make it better. Thanks to those of you who have done so for months and years in the past! Greetings from the wonderful city of Dresden, Germany, Veit P.S.: I went through and entered all of you that had been included before via BCC: I think it is not good to send out such messages via a large CC: list - whenever one of us gets a virus, all others will be virusbombed. -- Please visit my projects and help me: * http://www.hospitalityclub.org - free accommodation world wide through hospitality exchange http://secure.hospitalityclub.org/hc/travel.php?cid=veit - my profile * http://www.bringing-people-together.net - 1,000,000 friendly people for the Hospitality Club * http://www.peacebus.org - to Iraq with my brothers, bringing children money+paintings, selling peace flags * http://www.AFSer.org - AFS Online Volunteers, support for exchange students using the net * http://www.trampen.net - die deutschen Tramper im Netz! German hitchhikers on the net * http://www.veit.net - personal homepage with lots of info about hitchhiking, travels, Mark Twain * email to veit-subscribe@yahoogroups.com to receive news from me every now and then ICQ:xxxxxxxx MSN:veitxxxx@hotmail.com Yahoo:veitxx AOL:veitxx send SMS to my mobile phone from the net: +49(0)xxx xxxx xxx. Fix phone: +49(0)xxx xxx xxxxx Visit me in Dresden, Germany!! See you in the real world!!! www.hospitalityclub.org - www.peacebus.org - www.AFSer.org - www.trampen.net - www.veit.net