Hi people.
I have not come here to talk about CS history and its negativity, this site stands as testimony to that and needs little added to it. I have come here to talk about a plan for the future and its abundant potential positivity for the community. If you are interested in the community and finding solutions to the problems it faces, then this project is for you.
Most of us are naturally positive, altruistic and open, it is our nature as humans. Many of us normally chilled people have become incensed and even outraged, at the state of the organisation at the heart of our community, its actions or lack of them and the dubious legal positions that leaves them and us in. This is a bad situation that we have all been painfully aware for far too long and that must change. Now is the time to make that change! Are you ready?
The plan is to create a new site and organisation (Couch Surfing Community org) that will initially supplement CS.org and CSI, filling their numerous gaps. Our belief, is that we have many times more resources, than is needed, within the community, to form a totally fresh organisation, owned and run by the community and for the community, open and accountable to the community. With the establishment of this additional organisation for the community, we expect it to grow and move forward, benefiting the community in countless positive ways, with the desired outcome of advancing way beyond CSI, making it mostly irrelevant or even taking it to the point of replacing CSI entirely.
The key is this plan is in its community ownership and community involvement. We are currently investigating how best to legally bind this project, it’s organisation, website(s), etc to the member base. (If you can assist with this then please get involved now) We feel that from this base we can build an organisation and website, that dose the community justice and facilitates the community to do the many good and positive things, that have long been desired.
A few of us techies have made a start. www.couchsurfingcommunity.org This is a quick and effective, off-the-shelf environment. It provides a free forum to collect, associate, focus, discuss and decide, the form of the project and the site it will create, the structure of the organisation and the projects it will work on.
We have successfully collectively collaborated to produce a great deal of talk on this site and elsewhere, this has taken a great deal of our time and energy. You are being asked now to spend a little time and energy to at least join this site and support the project and its mission, which you will shape. If you still have any passion for the community or a subset of it or even individual members, who have enriched your life, please join couchsurfingcommunity.org/register
If you have any skills or knowledge that you would like to contribute to this project then please email us us@couchsurfingcommunity.org
We are currently particularly looking for legal and organisational skills and knowledge to prevent the same legal and organisational bungles that the original bunch of techies made. Contributions made now to a successful project will probably be the most beneficial act you will ever make to help and support the cs community.
We are also calling on the wealth of technical skill out there, we know that there are numerous highly skilled individuals in our community, who have excellent skills and or ideas. If you are one of them and have a desire to help CSC move on from this technical and organisational hell, then please spare a few moment to join this project and any groups that take your fancy. There is a fair amount of work to do, building a new site and making the temporary site more useful, your community needs you now! Join Now! If you would like a free linux or windows server and sub domain for your country/city to get a local tech group going and work directly for your local community, as well as for the global one, then contact us, with a phone number and we can get you going in minutes.
Legal, organisational and technical are not the only skills we need. Communication is an important part of any endeavor. As the current members are techies, who are not built to produce nice texts, we could do with a copy editor or two. If you have a passion for communicating and CS then again please email us us@couchsurfingcommunity.org
If you are willing to actively contribute to any area of this project, then please email us directly us@couchsurfingcommunity.org Large and small contributions are all valid. Even if you only have a little time to spare, you contribution will still be valuable.
I’m known for using music to reinforce my posts. On this occasion i feel that there is only one song needed for this project…
Bob Marley – Rastaman Vibration(Positive Vibration)
LnP
Why not organize the same effort to support BeWelcome?
Hi Tim!
I’ve read and reread the post and I can’t honestly find 1 good solid reason to support this or yet another hospitality exchange network website/service when there are already more than enough out there.
Why start something else from scratch when you can join and help existing projects that share the same openness you are looking for and are already mature?
I don’t want to put this down (any initiative for change is good) but the way you’ve put it in your post, it seems pointless to me.
Care to elaborate on the goals and how to reach them? Maybe I’m missing something…
Ricardo
Hi Ricardo
Your first question is one I hear surprisingly often, ‘why something new?’.
Whilst this is a ‘new’ site it is not a new network or community. The organisation behind CS is rotten from the core. Many people feel csi poses a real threat to the survival of our community. I think that the CS Community deserves a secure future, with a truly supportive, open, accountable, etc organisation to provide for it.
The idea that if something is broke then buy/get a new one, is not my approach, as an engineer. To give an example my 16Gb pen drive stopped working a few days ago. The problem was it was full of dust. A quick brush-out of the inside restored it.
Also the commonly touted idea that if you are not happy with csi(a public charity) then leave the community. If I have a problem with my country/city/family, should I find a new one?
Both of these ideas are folly, if either the problem is solvable or it is less than the benefit.
I feel that both the problem of csi is less than the benefit of being a community member and that there is a solution, the community simply organise ourselves and provide a better organisation.
Added to that, that during the year that I my account was deleted, many many people, including ambs of all descriptions made me feel very much a very welcome member of the CS Community, regardless of having an active account or not.
I and hundreds if not thousands of aware members, strongly feel that these problems need a solution. CSC.org I feel has excellent potential to be that solution.
To answer your second question and as I’m writing this on a mobile, can I ask you to look at ‘The Project Plan’ page, on http://www.couchsurfingcommunity.org This page sets out the objectives. The primary objectives are to create a site and organisation that are owned, created and managed by its members. I have further objectives, but this is not my project, it is our project. So I am not going to limit its scope by dictating the objectives, based on my ideas, but I do hope to enrich it with them, if that is desired.
I’m not going to comment on the other networks, based on the comments above.
I hope this help you in finding a reason to support this project. If not please can you tell me the sort of reason you are looking for, if creating a suitable org for our community is not enough? Maybe I’m missing something. Nobody is perfect, which is why I strongly believe in collective collaboration.
LnP
Tim
Hi Tim,
Interesting initiative: good to hear that there are still people working on things like this.
I fear, however, that you won’t get the community to move over to a new site. BW tried, they failed, and I don’t see many reasons why this alternative should succeed.
If you do, please let us know. But for now I’m sad to admit that I share Ricardo’s skepticism, even though I much applaud the idea of getting rid of Casey and friends in some way.
Hi Niels
Thank you for your positivity and good to be able to speak to you after being deleted for so long from cs and now having a MDST gagging order on me on cs.org and specifically in the brainstorming groups.
I hear your fears on getting people to move. I know well the examples of WB and T and even this site. As a member of both I feel that it is disappointing that these have not done better. However i am strongly optimistic that this project is positioned to achieve positive change, be it on a small scale or a very big scale.
This project has been positioned in the most positive position i can find. It is not a new network. It is not designed to benefit single individuals either with power or money, on the contrary and key to its approach, it is designed to maximise and share the collective benefit with all individuals, common ownership and control. It is not specifically designed to take over from CSI. You will have read me on numerous occasions, stating that i would prefer an inclusive solution. However if this project produces an organisation that becomes dominant in the community, by the wishes and actions of the community, then so be it. This project is not born out of hate, it is born out of love. I love the community. I love technology. I love organisation. I love a good mission. And I love being told something is not possible or probable and proving it possible.
As the state of affairs in cs becomes more and more pathetic and the core of the organisation looks more and more completely unrecoverable, even with several minor miracles. This supplementary organisation is being pushed, by circumstances into a role of being a potential back up organisation, in case the worst case scenario, that has been often talked about, of Casey or the NH state justice department pulling the plug. Support of this project as a backup, is now more than ever simply a highly responsible step, for key individuals that care for and love the community, to take.
If the mere presence of this project, makes stone’s wheels of cs product development, turn a little faster, or the organisation to make some attempts at doing their right thing, then great. But i know that this project has the potential to do far far more than that.
What this project needs now, is key, skilled individuals, to get solid foundations laid to support solid and healthy growth and the solid and healthy structures that will support the many facets of a solid and healthy CS Community.
Talking of needing key skilled members would take me off topic and i’ll reply separately on that and more after this post.
Again, thanks for your positivity and honist oppinion.
LnP
Tim
I have found recently myself in the rather disturbing position, of agreeing with ulf. I’ll explain …
Ulf spouts a lot of immature, ignorant, insulting, not-so-kewlaid, spindoctor nothingness, at great length, most of which lacks sufficient meaningful and contiguous series of words to reveal anything at all.
One thing he does say though is that brainstorming is just a place for people to bash the organisation. I seem to be seeing what he is saying.
Like so many thing in CS I wouldn’t believe it if I hadn’t see it with my own eyes. I believed that Margaret, Norbert and the rest of the gang, actually wanted to change something. So after many conversations with Margaret in particular, I believed that many people would readily support such and initiative. I was surprised then, when Margaret starts a thread and not one bit of the substance of the project was actually discussed. With most of the focus on a non-issue, Trademarks. To clear this up, CSI has a registered trade ‘mark’ of the current graphical logo. ‘CouchSurfing’ is not a registered trade ‘name’ and is NOT owned by CSI. Even with this specific topic having been discussed before, it seemed better to discuss this than the substance of the project. Even with direct private requests for individuals who have demonstrated that they have great knowledge to help, even if in private, have been ignored.
This leave me with only a few possible explanations, either they harbour mal feelings towards me and would rather hold that against me, even thought that will obstruct this positive project or they are blocked by their own ego and don’t want to see a project that I’m involved with, succeed or is it that, in fact Ulf is right? and that most of the active members of BS are only interested in talking and not actually interested in the positive progression of CS and the community. This is understandable, when you consider the addictive nature of forums, especially, when they have almost become part of the family. I know it is not easy to lose an addiction, even when it is harming you. But I can find few other credible reasons for the reaction or lack of, from the brainstorming groups.
Even at a time when everybody in these groups seems to have lost all hope and even once optimistic people are very pessimistic about both the potential to influence CSI, with either, political or legal initiatives. I can only assume that these people enjoy banging their heads against a wall and even allowing the wall to be bashed on their heads by Ulf etc. Maybe it would be better to rename the group Brainstorming – Sadomasochism.
To tag onto this that Margaret had followed much of the behind the scenes conversation, between MDST and myself and is fully aware, that CS strategy has made a development, in that it is now openly censoring members and restricting their freedoms on CS.ORG. This type of development is the sort of thing that would normally be headline news in BS, but she hasn’t even mentioned it. (Why?) Added to the fact that I am specifically bared from being a member of the brainstorming group that she moderates, without the moderators, being consulted or even notified. This has given me great doubts about her real agenda. Are you a sleeper Marge?
So come on guys who’s right? Me or Ulf? This playing field is fairly clear, you are either for the community or you are for the corporation. Think about it, decide and make your choice public. I know I have not been an angel, I’ve done my fair share of bashing of both LT and BS members, but you also know that I have done more than that. You know I created a technological solution to the problem of lack of site improvements, that empowered the community to make improvements for themselves. You know I was quickly deleted for this ‘participation’ and my web servers blocked from accessing cs.org, by csi. You also know that I’m now using my knowledge of both the problems and the community to achieve as much positive movement for and from the community as possible, with the minimum impact to the mental, emotional and karmic states of the community as a whole and individuals(ie without needing to get radicalised, angry or into fights with ambashidors, trolls and the organisation).
In your post you said something that I’d like to strongly pick up on. “If you do, please let us know.” I am not directing, this at you, as you are already supporting the project, but this attitude of ‘you do it and let us know when its done , is very very common. It is part a human characteristic and symptom of most societies. In a way it makes me laugh a lot. How can we hope to make the world a better place if we can’t even make our community a better place? I understand apathy, but I also deeply understand the power of action, on a personal and collective basis. Action is the only thing that changes anything. So to everyone in the ‘wait and see’ camp, I ask you: Do you want positive change? Do you have the minimal courage needed to stand up and be counted? I know where I stand and what for. It is up to you to have a fresh look and decide where you stand, what for and what you are going to do about it.
LnP
Tim