Calling out for volunteer Community Managers 📣

[sam (Sam Saffron)]

The current epidemic has left many schools and doctors scrambling to create communities for distance learning and collaboration.

To assist during this disaster, Discourse is offering 3 months of free business or standard hosting to:

• Schools using Discourse to collaborate between teachers, parents and students

• Doctors and Health workers using Discourse to share knowledge and tactics for dealing with the epidemic.

Software is only part of the problem:

• We need to get the word out .

• Many of the communities forming have no background in Discourse or community management and need assistance moderating and configuring communities.

• Some communities may need custom setups which do not fit into our standard / business hosting and may need to self host. In some cases we can provide a free digital ocean droplet for 3-6 months.

For our part, Discourse can easily offer the software and hosting, but our time does not scale infinitely, we can not act as community managers for 100 new communities.

If you are looking to volunteer your time , configuring, managing or setting up a Discourse instance for health workers and schools please raise your hand in a reply.

All schools and health workers that contact us will get a link to this topic, and can then contact you if they need help.

Please, avoid extended discussion here, if any clarification is needed shoot off a PM to @sam. If any meta discussion is needed please open a new topic.

Keep it to simple replies like:

I am willing to donate my time to help with XYZ, I live in country XYZ

If you run out of time and can no longer help, please either delete your reply or flag it for deletion.

How do you connect to people in this topic?

If you would like the communities help running your project please read through this topic and pick a few candidates based on time zone and the expertise you they have. Feel free to start a private message with a few of the candidates to discuss next step. If you are not sure what to do, include @sam on the message and I will try to help out.

To start a PM click on the avatar of the user and start a message.

You will need to be trust level 1 on meta for that option to show up, so browse around for 10 minutes and you should become trust level 1.

[itsbhanusharma (Bhanu Sharma)]

I am willing to donate my time, I live in New Delhi (India) but available to address anything discourse related globally (Primary languages English/Hindi)

[dunebuggie (Shreyas)]

I am willing to donate my time to help with community management, and in any other way I possibly can. I live in India.

Thanks for doing this, team. Technology isn’t really the answer to all the problems, but I really think whatever little steps we take, matters.

[erlend_sh (Erlend Sogge Heggen)]

I’m available to help. I’m in Oslo, Norway.

[CrisYe]

I can help with the meta. I live in Hangzhou China, I can help with the global issuse

[Ahmed_Gagan]

I am willing to help with site management, I live in country India

[pacharanero (Marcus Baw)]

Hi, I’m Marcus Baw, I’m in the UK and I can help with community management, bulk onboarding and configuration issues/setup. I’m a medical doctor as well. I’m part of thepavilion.io Discourse services co-operative, which can also help out during the crisis too (to the limit of our collective availabilities).

[Stranik (Evgeny)]

I’m available to help. I live in Nizhny Novgorod, Russia.

[evantill (Eric Vantillard)]

France
Bonjour, je peux aider pour des installations et de la gestion de communautés

[amalik (Amalik Amriou)]

Hi there
I’m Amalik, I live in France I can help with community management, site management and maybe more (French & English).
Thanks for doing this !

[anon48433008]

US EST have basic install knowledge, putty on deck, can search and read when needed and admin experience

[hellekin]

I’m currently confined in the Basque Country and available to help with setting up and configuring Discourse instances in French, English or Spanish, and can assist with community management preferably for communities in France or Belgium (my collective is based in Brussels). I will happily assist people who want to do this in Basque.

I’m also interested in forming a French-speaking community manager collective to cooperate on these issues.

[tobiaseigen]

Based on Bainbridge Island, near Seattle in the pacific northwest and happy to help out in communities in my locale, but also speak German and French and have interest and connections to Germany, France and several sub-saharan African countries. Tend to work USA east coast hours.

Stay safe everyone - this coronavirus is not a joke.

[xrav3nz]

I’d love to help with the technical side of setting up your Discourse instance (installation, configuration, plugin/theme installation, etc)! I am in Toronto, Canada.

[Justin_Vega]

I am willing to donate my time to help with community management. I live in the United States. Further information can be found in my profile.

[marianord (Mariano Rodriguez)]

I’m willing to donate my time to help with installation, setup, community management, mentoring. I live in México (Spanish, English, French)

[Thomas_G]

I am willing to donate my time to help with community management, I live in Greece and I speak Greek, English and German.

[habeycole (Abiodun Olumide Daniels)]

I am willing to donate my time to help with community management. I live in Nigeria.

[pfaffman (Jay Pfaffman)]

For those who do need to self-host for some reason and will use Mailgun, I will provide free Professional Installs (2-container setup, at least most of the plugins provided with CDCK Business hosting, and incoming mail server). I’ll also include free automatic rebuilds when they are needed for 6 months.

In a former life I was a teacher and later a professor in a college of education in the United States. I am familiar with the challenges faced by (and imposed by) school technology staff.

I can also help with configuring oauth and SSO with district servers, or configure Google authentication on my domain (so if your school uses Google email, you won’t need to get help or permission from your technology staff).