Volunteer roles

OpenRoomID is run by volunteers. These are the roles the Project needs filled now, in rough order of need.

Terms. Every role is unpaid unless the role says otherwise. Travel and other legitimate expenses are reimbursed when approved in advance.

Independence. You serve as an individual, not for your employer. You disclose your affiliations when you apply and whenever they change. Work you contribute to the specification is licensed CC BY 4.0, and work on registry data is CC0.

Open now

Working group member

Decide the open questions and approve every change to the specification. The working group is small today, and it needs people who see the problem from other sides of the industry.

Open seats

Hotel operations: front office, rooms, or revenue
Distribution and technology: a booking site, channel manager, property system, or agent platform
Guests: a consumer advocate, accessibility advocate, or travel writer

You would

Read proposals and the public votes before each decision
Join a working group call and vote on resolutions
Explain the reasoning behind each decision in writing

Helpful background: Direct experience of one of the three seats. You serve as an individual, not for your employer.
Time: About one call and three hours of reading a month
Compensation: Volunteer. Approved expenses reimbursed.

Specification editor

Take the specification from Working Draft to Published. Once published, a version can never change, so the text has to be right.

You would

Tighten normative language, the grammar, and the examples
Keep the specification, the paper, and the reference resolver in step
Prepare a provisional registration of the rid: URI scheme under RFC 7595

Helpful background: You have edited an RFC, a W3C or OpenTravel document, or a comparable technical standard.
Time: About four hours a week for two to three months
Compensation: Volunteer. Approved expenses reimbursed.

Legal counsel

Give the Project a legal form that matches its promises. Today the name and domain are held by the founding sponsor. That has to change before large platforms rely on the registry.

You would

Advise on forming an entity of the Project's own, likely a nonprofit
Plan the transfer of the name and domain from the founding sponsor
Review the permanence commitments, which are meant to be irrevocable
Review licensing (CC BY 4.0 and CC0) and the privacy rule for residences

Helpful background: A licensed attorney with nonprofit, open-standards, or intellectual property experience. Offered pro bono.
Time: A few hours a month, more during entity formation
Compensation: Volunteer. Approved expenses reimbursed.

Reference library maintainer

Write and maintain small, dependable libraries so implementers never hand-roll the grammar.

You would

Build parse, validate, normalize, and resolve functions in TypeScript, Python, or Go
Share one set of test cases across every language
Review contributions and publish releases

Helpful background: You have maintained an open-source package that other people depend on.
Time: About two hours a week
Compensation: Volunteer. Approved expenses reimbursed.

Property system integration engineer

Connect the registry to the systems hotels already run, so a room list comes from the source of truth rather than a spreadsheet.

You would

Map roomID to the room record in Mews, apaleo, Oracle OPERA Cloud, and Cloudbeds
Build a reference sync that reads a property's rooms with the hotel's permission
Document the binding so any property system can adopt it

Helpful background: Hands-on work with a hotel property management system API.
Time: About four hours a week for a first integration
Compensation: Volunteer. Approved expenses reimbursed.

Registry data steward

Keep the registry accurate. Every record the registry publishes is permanent, so each one is checked before it is issued.

You would

Check property requests against street address and parcel records
Catch duplicate properties before a second code is issued
Handle corrections and disputes, and record each outcome

Helpful background: Careful with records. Experience with property data, hotel content, or public records helps.
Time: About two hours a week, varying with intake
Compensation: Volunteer. Approved expenses reimbursed.

Security and privacy reviewer

Review the resolver and registry before real properties depend on them.

You would

Review rate limiting, abuse cases, and how votes are counted
Review how residence addresses are kept out of public records
Write the Project's vulnerability disclosure policy

Helpful background: Application security or privacy engineering experience.
Time: A focused review of about ten hours, then as needed
Compensation: Volunteer. Approved expenses reimbursed.

Standards liaison

Build the path to long-term stewardship. The plan is for OpenRoomID to move to an established standards venue once it is in wide use.

You would

Open conversations with hospitality and web standards groups
Represent OpenRoomID where schema.org and industry vocabularies meet
Help name the successor that would take over if the Project stopped

Helpful background: You have participated in HTNG, OpenTravel, W3C, schema.org, or a similar body.
Time: About two hours a month
Compensation: Volunteer. Approved expenses reimbursed.

Pilot property

Be among the first properties with real identifiers. This role is for a property, represented by its operator or general manager.

You would

Provide your room list, or connect your property system
Post identifiers where guests can see them
Tell the working group what was hard

Helpful background: You operate a hotel, hostel, or other lodging property and can speak for it.
Time: About two hours to register, then minutes a month
Compensation: Volunteer. Approved expenses reimbursed.

Apply

Tell us which role and what you would bring. A member of the working group replies to every application. Your details are seen only by the working group and are never published.