Happy New Year! Plans for 2016
Written by amnesiac84 9 years agoAs the year is almost at its end, BeVolunteer and the Board of Directors wish all members and volunteers of BeWelcome a Happy New Year!
We would like to use this moment to update the community on what's going on and what can be expected this year. We appreciate all the energy and time that members give for BeWelcome, be it for volunteering on one of our teams, giving us feedback or by simply hosting or being a great guest!
What's on our agenda?
Behind the screen, we're working on several improvements for BeWelcome:
- As of last year we're hosting our own mail server, which we're fine-tuning.
- We're working on some legal issues. For one, we are required to have the Terms of Use in French. We therefore updated the Terms of Use, translated them into French and got them revised legally. We have translated the new ToU into more languages (visible on beta). The updated Terms will be valid from February 1st, 2016.
- We've sent out a questionnaire to all of our volunteers. We, the Board, are interested in what makes our volunteers volunteering and what ideas they have to improve volunteering for BeWelcome. We hope to be able to plan our actions on the results of the survey as much as possible.
- Speaking of which, we're planning to update the Help BeWelcome page once more. It should be easier for those interested to start volunteering for BeWelcome. Only with a strong base of volunteers and BeVolunteer members is it possible to remain an independent, open-source and democratic hospitality platform.
What to expect in 2016?
Some real good things are to be expected in 2016: - Seek the Duck, a yearly local event in Toulouse (France), is almost a tradition in BeWelcome. Many people join the activities spread over a long weekend.
- Seek the Pig is announced. Inspired by Seek the Duck, it will be organised in Lyon in March or April. If you feel like joining, don't forget to fill in the Doodle
- We're working hard on a new design for BeWelcome, as well as some updated code to run the project. A lot of the new design will be visible for testing in 2016, and if everything goes well, we'll have our new website running by the end of the year! If you think you have the skills help us building it, please join the Redesign team.
- With our current growth, we will probably welcome our 100,000th member in the course of 2016! Having one hundred thousand members is quite impressive for an open-source, independent network, built by volunteers.
We wish everyone a joyful and enriching 2016! May you all have great life experiences, with or without BeWelcome. We'll do our best to enable a hospitality experience for everyone, wherever in the world you are.
Kind regards,
BeVolunteer's Board of Directors