Revamping the ambassadors model and system

Revamping the Ambassador Role

Goals:

1. make the ambassador system more personal
2. motivate us all to make more friends through the system.
3. get people more involved in volunteering couchsurfing.com more quickly.
4. to increase the quality of the couchsurfing community by getting locals more connected.

Would you like to make more friends now?, the proposal

In order to get more of us ambassadors more into que couchsurfing spirit from the get go, we need to get users to meet mroe online. That is the hole point of couchsurfing in the first place. While we have a tool that provides us with many discovery opportunities online, taking it to the real world is the ultimate objective.

The vision is to use the greetings function and concept as a door to make personal connections instead of a simple cold greeting. This woudl be optional, obviously but it would be encouraged with a few features and a philosophy.

The system would allow people to connect immediately, by having multiple greeting options, including, "attempt to greet a new couchsurfer in your area personally" option. Ambassadors would go and meet strangers with tons of information about couchsurfing and be ready to answer questions and just be the best possible representation of the couchsurfing community.

Ambassador would email the new user with a few options to personally greet the person. The user woudl have the following options:

• High Five! Just walk by a person, high 5 them, and watch each other jsut be, in silence, for 5 minutes. then start a random conversation.

• Are you beautiful inside? answer that question and everything that goes with it, in the most possible wa

• answer a questionnaire with relevant questions and go talk about it

• Scavenger hunt: create a scavenger hunt and go for it, da vinci code style. Go have fun!

• Create and hide away a Time Capsule. Create an amazing experience, using the best of your creativity and make it a timeless experience by getting a time capsule and writing all of your heart into it.

• Create an awkward moment. Secret Agent missions. Get black outfit and dark sunglasses and go play secret agent in the night.

India situation could be used as an example (hate to say testing ground!) for this: they have very active local community in Mumbai, with some of the core Mumbai members trying to make a difference in other parts of India as well when they are travelling there. There are a few good candidates for Ambassadors who would be more than willing to greet and meet the new members and correct any misunderstandings the newbies might have, and have done so even without "official" endorsement from CS. Speaking for them (I believe) - let them get some more ambassadors to do exactly what was proposed here! Anu 12:41, 23 November 2006 (EST)

Support

• JoeEdelman -- I love this idea and will code it up if someone doesn't beat me to it.