Resource:How to organize a community office for your student organization

About Student Organization

                         We gained sufficient knowledge on being met with Miss Jahannie Torres. She has very good knowledge on the student organization to be setup with a community office in the campus.She shared her experience with us and explained us the resources needed for the organization. Co-working sessions, Leadership decisions, Maker-space, Entrepreneurship,etc. Such types are aligned among the team members,  which can be done in the Community office. The needs are drawn from the students who are the contributors for the same by making use of the community office. The workspace is useful for a community office which doesn't costs much and is useful to carry out the ideas and to uplift them with a simple paper work and a little stationery.

Platform helpful in organizing the things with ease

                       Slack is one such platform, where the team can have a wide discussion about their projects. This comes handy with built-in-storage feature which enables the team to co-ordinate their activities on a daily run. It can be integrated with almost wide-spread social networking platforms and their connectivity through slack will maintain a good communication even when they are away from it. Moreover, it is available for free with limited features which suits best for a small organizational setup. It has an efficient feature which can differentiate between individual and community discussion and creation of different channels for various departments or teams .It is made available for Android, IOS and even for popular operating systems on PCs.

There are still more available platforms besides Slack. They contain far or less semblance with the Slack and the list goes here: 

• Convo
• Asana
• Workhive
• Social Cast
• Hipchat

Issues to be considered

• Makerspace area to be considered if the participants involved are more that cannot be accommodated in the makerspace, timings are to be taken care in making them attend at different sessions.

• Dynamic working should be taken proper care. Suppose, there are people from different passions and background talents then they are to be mingled with suitable teammates to increase the productivity.

Office environment

The announcements of competitions and proper organization of it will never disappoint the team members and they are given a boost in their working hours which avoids them from feeling routine and seminars on necessary things will cultivate them with updated stuff.

• Personality tests, workshops about time management tools, Training on tools available in makerspace and presenting them with little decorated certificates for their performance in the sessions.as a token of appreciation. This helps in maintaining a team spirit and longevity to achieve big.

• A bit canvasing on other community offices will leave you some knowledge for making your own office.

 Funding

• Majority of the funds are alloted to student organisation directly to it and distributed among the sections of the office according to their importance.
• Funds could be earned from local business bodies rather than approaching directly a enterprise, as community office doesn't need a huge sponsorship.
• There is nothing to worry about the distraction of the funds in this office setup, as organizers themselves are the contributors and engaged.

Electing Members:

            An orientation about the organization before setting up the community office will get us a response from various classes of people and based upon their classes like their social-activity, Group participation, Problem solving.

Conclusion

• Collecting feedback at the weekends to make a track on the activities which are held through the week and implementing the feedback in the medium like google forms which will help us in maintaining a consistent progress.

• There is nothing to worry about the piece of land to work on, neither the stationery to be adjusted in the office. Besides, one can use of the technology in a more surprising way.

• With the help of community platforms one can create a virtual Community office which resembles the one with tangible objects but with more ease and comfort. The advantage of a physical community office is that it can bring us appreciable opportunities to discuss through and the physical office can be achieved by organizing meeting at one of our friends apartment.

Written By:

Tejdeep Bokki, Avinash Yagnapu