[Energy] VOLUNTEER COORDINATION

energy at lists.occupyboston.org energy at lists.occupyboston.org
Thu Nov 10 16:03:53 EST 2011


Thanks, Kevin for focusing on volunteer coordination.

For all other working groups besides, Volunteer Coordination WG, please 
make sure your WG has told Kevin WHO YOUR WG VOL COORDINATION contact 
is.  This is REALLY IMPORTANT.  We can't help you get volunteers, if we 
don't know who your WG Vol Coordinator is.  We need to make sure that 
these volunteers are actually being on-boarded and "cared for".  We've 
had WAY too many volunteers get "lost" because email-LISTS is the only 
avenue we have to send you vols... (as opposed to an actual individual 
or a main WG email that someone is checking every day. When we send them 
to those lists, everyone on the list assumes that the other guy is 
taking care of the volunteer inquiry.  And then no one gets back to 
them.  I helped avoid a lot of that dead-ending by telling the inquiry 
to get back to me if no one contacted them "soon".  But it's not a great 
solution.

If you're not part of the Volunteer Coordination WG, no need to read the 
rest of this. Just get your WG Vol Contact to Kevin, so he (or I) can 
post them all on the Volunteer Coordination page.  If you have different 
needs than are already listed on the Participate page: 
http://wiki.occupyboston.org/wiki/Participate, send them to Kevin, so we 
can update them.  Or do it yourself.  If you haven't listed your needs, 
and posted a contact for who is coordinating vols in your group, then 
it's not fair to blame us for not coordinating vols "perfectly".  We 
need your help so we can help you.

Kevin,

May I suggest a couple of modifications to your email below outlining 
your approach for gathering of volunteer needs?
My aim is to allow volunteers and working groups to "self-manage" as 
much as possible.

Currently, the "volunteer" link from the main page goes to the 
"Participate" page on the wiki, allowing you the ability to change/make 
updates.  That appears to be an excellent (aka existing) fulcrum for 
adding links to the volunteer coordinators for each working group, and 
subsequently for groups that have a long list of detailed needs, to the 
Vol Coordination wiki page for specific to those WG.

Lefty (IT) will be making up a main page for all of the lists of working 
groups to choose from with an easy/automated way for vols to submit 
their "applications".  But until that's available, perhaps this approach 
would work. It's the path that I started working on and may provide a 
short term solution.

1. Database for contacts.  Keeping a central "volunteer contact 
database", using a popular format like Excel, and which allows several 
people to have access has obvious benefits.  I encourage you to 
integrate it in with the original volunteer contact database that 
IT/media were maintaining in the early weeks with at least 1,000 counts, 
if we can locate that.  I never found it.  So we (Theresa/Lisa/I) 
started from scratch.  To download the contacts from the 
volunteeroccupybos at gmail.com box, please write to me privately for 
instructions.  Theresa had intended to download those, and sort through 
and catalog the skills, but had not gotten to it.  She may still want to 
help with this.

2. Skills/Interests.  See attached for what we were using at the 
InfoTent in the early days to gather info about what specific interests 
new volunteers had. In a private email, I'll also send to you and Martin 
(the media working group volunteer coordinator) the file that Media was 
maintaining in the early days on their own.  There are names/contact 
info in that, that I didn't want to send around to all of the groups.  
We didn't get to the point at the InfoTent of getting that all 
coordinated, because the InfoDesk suddenly disappeared and all of my 
documentation disappeared when Paul moved the InfoDesk to the InfoTent 
and left me without my books, clipboards, and piles of volunteer 
signups.  That being behind us, I'll move on.

3. Integrating the volunteer contact database with the "daily digest" 
contact database and using the master to link the to the updated 
volunteer list seems an excellent idea.  In an ideal world, we'd have a 
"sign up" for mailing page where people could choose the various 
mailings.  But in the meantime...we work with what we have.

4. Wiki Vol Pages.  Each of the WG's already have wikis.  They can have 
their own WG Vol page, as well, which will allow people an easy way to 
update needs lists. And it will allow the Volunteer Coordination WG page 
to link to all of them.   You or someone/anyone can summarize those and 
put those into the main "Participate" page as a way to lure new 
volunteers to the detailed working group volunteer pages.

I do hope you're able to implement a process whereby the WG Vol 
Coordinators "automagically" update their wiki pages w/vol needs every 
so often, or I suppose maybe you're going to do that updating.  Either 
way, I hope that the info is available publicly so that vols can manage 
themselves as much as possible.  When things get busy, and when we get 
back to recruiting wholesale, there can be hundreds/day.

I also maintain an online database that allows organizations to list 
their needs and match between orgs.  But that may be excessive for the 
job that we're talking about here at this one site.

I'm off to update the WG Wiki pages with the WG's email contacts... and 
will be back to you when I've run out of things to do on that, so see 
how far you've gotten...in the hopes I can help further.

Terra


On 11/10/2011 10:24 AM, Kevin Maley wrote:
> Hi everyone,
>
> Just wanted to provide some context here.
>
> To address volunteer needs, last week I began encouraging visitors to 
> the Info Tent to leave their e-mail addresses, and beginning Sunday 
> started sending out a "Daily Digest" who's core purpose is to direct 
> volunteers to Occupy Boston, with news updates/calendar of events as 
> dressing around the volunteer needs.
>
> We have had a number of Occupiers request to receive it as well, and I 
> add them to the e-mail list as the requests come in. Aria I can add 
> you onto it for tomorrow's send off, as well as anyone else who wants 
> to be on. Media made the decision to put them on the website on a few 
> days ago, which I think is a terrific idea.
>
> To help figure out next steps on the digest and other volunteer 
> efforts, a group of us are meeting tomorrow at 10am by the media tent 
> as a kind of ad hoc volunteer coordination group. We will be 
> discussing ideas such as adding a feature to the website to 
> auto-subscribe to these e-mails.
>
> I will make sure everyone is kept in the loop on the outcome of this 
> meeting. For now I really want to emphasize that *if you are seeking 
> volunteers* for your working group or other Occupy Boston needs, 
> please send me a 1-3 sentence description (very brief) with contact 
> information. I can include that in a daily digest and hopefully direct 
> people your way. We are also looking to highlight events (such as an 
> FSU lecture).
>
> I would also encourage people to get the word out on the daily digest, 
> especially for external audiences, so we can get as broad a reach as 
> possible and therefore increase impact. Please let people know for the 
> time being they can e-mail InfoTent at OccupyBoston.org to request 
> subscription
>
> thanks
>
> Kevin
>
> On Thu, Nov 10, 2011 at 9:56 AM, Aria Littlhous <aria at littlhous.net 
> <mailto:aria at littlhous.net>> wrote:
>
>     I believe it is automatically generated once the text goes on to
>     the website, that means the people responsible are Meda. OBIT, on
>     the other hand, would be responsible for putting a sign up form on
>     the websites side bar.
>
>
>     On Thu, Nov 10, 2011 at 9:44 AM, Theresa E
>     <theresa.m.earle at gmail.com <mailto:theresa.m.earle at gmail.com>> wrote:
>
>         Who sends out the daily digest?
>
>         On Thu, Nov 10, 2011 at 9:34 AM, Aria Littlhous
>         <aria at littlhous.net <mailto:aria at littlhous.net>> wrote:
>
>             It would be great if people could figure out how to sign
>             up for the Daily Digest from their home/computer station.
>
>
>             On Thu, Nov 10, 2011 at 9:20 AM, Katie Gradowski
>             <katie.gradowski at gmail.com
>             <mailto:katie.gradowski at gmail.com>> wrote:
>
>                 sorry!   didn't read that carefully.   you clearly
>                 already know that!
>
>
>                 On Thu, Nov 10, 2011 at 9:18 AM, Katie Gradowski
>                 <katie.gradowski at gmail.com
>                 <mailto:katie.gradowski at gmail.com>> wrote:
>
>                     It's through the info tent.   You can email Kevin
>                     at infotent at occupyboston.org
>                     <mailto:infotent at occupyboston.org> to sign up.
>
>
>                         Can OBIT tell us how many people are receiving
>                         the DD now? So we can check numbers later?
>
>                         THANKS.
>
>                         Aria
>
>
>
>
>                     -- 
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>                     katie.ob at occupyboston.org
>                     <mailto:katie.ob at occupyboston.org>.
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-- 
Terra

*~*~*~*
Terra Friedrichs
978 808 7173 (cell)
978 266 2775 (desk)
978 266 2778 (home/messages)

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