Future Features (2006-07-24)
From CouchsurfingPhoenix
Copied stuff from here to wiki.couchsurfing.com
Workshop on future features
Held at eisenstadt on the 24th july
From the workshop on building strong local networks came the idea of implementing regional coordinator. Those persons would be responsible for facilitating the entry of new members (like greeting them couple of days after they joined and after the ambassadors). The mission of those will be more detailed in the corresponding workshop. Anyway what came as a new feature is the creation of a regional local page that would give info on the place and couple of tips.
Travel guide
Mimimize cs icons. There is no need to implement thousands of icons. We want cs to be simple and easy to access for any new members.
There also should be a reflexion on who could access personal data in cs 2.0 and this should be based on the level of trust. marcus brought this subject to the group and we should just get some more thinking on it in the nearest workshop.
We would like to see also a feature that would unable the user to access info on personal topics like if you are known to be a huge fan of whatever artist out there and if there is a post related to him then you shall receive some message for that purpose.
We would like a wiki page to be created and written by ambassadors and sent to the most active users. This shall be updated every week or so.
casey and marcus brought up the idea with promitheus that the couchsearch mode shall be reconfigured in order to bring up the persons who actually received less couch requests and this based on the number of couch requests someone would receive over a week. The more you got requests the lower you will be in the ranking as the probability of your couch being busy is greater..
COUCH PLANNER was one of the big idea and was developed by the group: When searching for couches, the user should be able to add in his “shopping cart” any persons worth to be host and then be able to send them a request. Templates were also developped in discussion as to avoid impersonal requests too. The couch planner then would for each host selected before giving an answer like : - yes - maybe - no with a certain degree of probability so that everyone in the cart do know where the guest will actually land.
From the couchsurfing university, we thought it would be good to be able to search people by interests. Like I want to learn the guitar, who can actually host me out there and provide some lessons..
CALENDAR it has been in discussion for years now and marcus thought it could be nice that the couchsurfing request that we all receive in our personal mail box should be in a format recognizable by google calendar or outlook..
Couchsurfing API programming.. implementing google maps for the host accomodation. Casey also brought that this could bring cultural differences as in north america they don’t really want people to know where they precisely live.
superyami suggested to implement a Tracking surfer tool. this will allow to know who is travelling or surfing near your places so as to get in touch much more easier.
Super advanced couchsearch function
A Survey to get to know more about each users and gather in a database the abilities and skills of everyone.
Feature that would enable people of trust to have a visibility on telephone numbers on profiles and in the meetings posts.
Sponsorship infrastructure to be developped to possibly get to help travellers with good spirits out there. - for example , tool for visualizing needs and donations / micro sponsorship : http://www.oikoumene.be/magichat
SUBPROJECTS: casey was thinking about implementing means to bring the trust on couchsurfing.com by adressing every groups with this format : Interestgroup.couchsurfing.com Ex was taken: you are a paraglider but don’t feal like actually surfing a couch at some stranger´s place. Here comes the paraglider.couchsurfing.com and you get along paragliders all over the world ready to host you.
Add printable material to meeting page including contact person details.
Birthday reminder for friends
Printable little black book : Being able to save on some pdf format a compilation of details on every persons in your contact list and friends so as to not lose anything in case of crash or website being updated..
Features like jobs seekers, house swap or meeting places.
CANCELLATION button that would unable the person who actually planned some trip to cancell every request down so far.
Personal contact notes on profiles to prevent everyone to search personal details by actually surfing their personal pages. You could imagine having the phone number of each person in the photo icon of the friends list.
Safety Features for woman travelling alone .
The workshop will resume on the 25th and update will be made soon.
additional points raised on 25th:
Jabber Instant Messaging/Chat Functionality:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jabber
Visualization of Networks such as :
http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~jheer/vizster/vizster.wmv ( short film presentation )
Extend to broader Reference Maps?
http://www.oikoumene.be/referencemaps
links to other tools and related texts:
http://del.icio.us/deliciousdante/referencemaps?setcount=100
