New Member Questionnaire

P2P Foundation Volunteer Member Questionnaire

Introduction

Hello, and welcome to our questionnaire for prospective members of the P2P Foundation. Please answer our questionnaire as fully as you can. The more you give us to work with, the easier it will make things for us to get a good idea of your interests and talents and the faster we can get working together. Your answers and personal information are kept private and are only accesible to core members tasked with accessing applications and helping new members. First, if you haven't done so already, please read the following documents in full. They provide a very comprehensive overview of our community. Before beginning, it's important to make sure that there's no misunderstanding or misinterpretation of what we're trying to achieve. Please take all the time you need to digest the material fully. We would rather wait as long as necessary to receive the questionnaire than to have you rush through it.

Please take the time to read through all the material below, and give us feedback.

• P2P Foundations Mission and Objectives
• 3 Types of Participants
• Term and Conditions for Participation
• A Note on Communication

These documents were specifically prepared to help fully explain our project, its development and your potential role in it. We refer back to these documents often in discussion, and they took a lot of thought, time and effort to prepare. The time we will take to consider you as a candidate will be at least as long as the time it takes you to read through these.

P2P Foundations Mission and Objectives

Please read through our Mission and Objectives. If anything isn't clear, please list it below. We would also appreciate if you would write a few words in response to these Founding Principles.

http://p2pfoundation.net/P2P_Foundation:About#Mission_and_Objectives

So what is Membership in the P2P Foundation?

Governance in the P2P Foundation is something that is constantly evolving according to the needs or our network and community. We take inspiration from Cooperative forms and the Open Enterprise Model. We currently recognise 3 classes of participant. Community(Users), Members and Core Members. Each has different needs, roles and degrees of responsibility. We aspire to developing clear governance as this helps all members of the community quickly understand how we organise and find ways to participate. Openness and organisational transparency enable people to self-organise and collaborate effectively. (AKA Stigmergy)

3 Types of Participants

Community

Everyone is part of the community, so this category broadly includes everyone from blog and mailing list subscribers to facebook friends and twitter followers. The Community participate and contribute to the work of the Foundation in a variety of ways but are not directly involved or responsible for the day to day work of the Foundation. At the same time they are essential to the culture and the mission of the foundation.

Members

Are those in the community who, supporting the mission of the foundation, have chosen to get more involved and to give of their time and expertise to forwarding our goals. Members are volunteers, their time and contributions are valued. When a member of the community first gets involved there is this application process after passing another current member will be assigned to help you settle and show you how we work together, how we discuss and develop ideas, make proposals and group decisions (Loomio), how we manage tasks (Trello), how we document projects (wiki) or how the blog works (Wordpress). Anything you need to know just ask. It’s important you listen too as next time you will be the one training new members. As a new member you can take part in critical dicsussion about Foundation projects and vote when decisions need to be made. However as a new member your vote is non-binding until you have been with us for 3 months. After 3 months having developed an understanding of our working methods and decision making processes you become a full member and your vote is binding. You will also be ready to train in at least one new member. We recognise that as volunteers, members usually only have a limited amount of time they can offer the Foundation per week. This can vary from person to person and can change over time. To avoid any misunderstandings it is important that time commitments are discussed so that we have a realistic idea of what you can offer and we can expect or ask of you, it also helps us manage tasks more effectively. If there is a project or task you would like to be involved in just be sure to reflect and ask yourself honestly if you will be able to deliver on the your responsibilities. If so great. Dig in.

Core Members

Consists of persons who have made a full time commitment to the work of the Foundation or play a critical role in it’s operation such as founders, employees and web site administrators. Core Members are also involved in managing the organisation budget. At the date of writing Nov 2014 the P2P Foundation is undertaking a review and updating our governance. Terms and Conditions for Participation As with any online community we expect all participants including Community, Members and Core Members to be civil and respectful. Abusive, racist, sexist, behavior are not acceptable. We want to promote diversity in our community and all members should feel welcome and comfortable to express themselves within reason. Abusive behavior runs completely counter to these aims and is not acceptable. We have a number of forums including mailing lists etc and we expect members to take action when forum participants may be behaving in an unacceptable manor. Members should privately alert a forum administrator or core member who are responsible for dealing with conflict or abuse taking place on our forums. We do not appreciate flame wars or trolling on our forums. Administrators and Core Members will aim to deal with conflict in a discrete and private manor for all parties involved. However this is often difficult when offenders are acting on public forums. Persons who have broken the terms for participation will be made aware of their behavior by an admin and given 24 hours to reflect on their actions and to make an effort to resolve the conflict for example by retracting statements. If the offending party does not accept these terms or continues with abusive behavior administrators can ban the offender from the forums at any time after the initial notice has been given. It is really important for us to let you know that abuse will not be tolerated and that we are commited to providing appropriate means for you and other participants to address and deal with conflict and abusive behavior. We want you to feel welcome so please alert us to any incidents where you feel you are being intimidated or are a victim of abuse.

A Note on Communication

We feel one of the most important assets you can bring as a member is a good comprehension of what the work of the P2P Foundation entails, and a commitment to ongoing , clear communication. As a small organisation we can't (and won't) waste valuable time following up with members to either - (a) get them to fulfill whatever commitments they may have signed up to. Or (b) calling their attention to any deviations from our Mission and Objectives. We absolutely realize that there's a learning curve, and we will provide you with all the tools you need including training so you can manage your work and participate fully as a member. However, we will not invest time if the basic communication channels are broken. Not answering emails, not participating in meetings and discussion threads, not following up on tasks and projects etc., all amounts to non-participation, and we can't afford to invest time and effort chasing after people for this. Important note Please don't leave any blank spaces. We'd much rather see something like, "I don't know" or "I'm not answering this one, sorry" than to see a blank. If something seems irrelevant to you, please help us improve the form. One more thing. The form is written in a largely serious tone, but with a little humor here and there. We're human, and we wanted to lighten it up occasionally - but please understand that we are serious about the completion of the questionnaire, and we will read each one very carefully. The main purpose of it is so that we can understand, and relatively quickly, if we will be a good fit or not - and specifically how. With that in mind, you don't have to stifle any urge to be yourself if you feel like making a joke here and there. This isn't a medical history. Thank you and, once again, welcome!