Author Archive for matrixpoint

Couchgate

Published by matrixpoint on December 3, 2009 in Uncategorized. 15 Comments

Kudos to Pickwick for calling out Casey Fenton and his cohorts in the wake of Brian’s resignation letter. It’s the smoking gun that many of us who suspected fraud have waited for. It coincides with another smoking gun revealing climate science fraud, now called “climategate”. Although Casey Fenton is a small fish compared to the corrupt climate scientists who have tried to hijack the noble environmental movement, the hospitality movement is our smaller, but just as noble movement and it’s up to us to protect it from corruption and exploitation, from predators and parasites.

I support Thomas in his assessment of Casey’s attempt at damage control. I found out first-hand that Casey Fenton is not a straight shooter. Like the climate scientists, perhaps the only thing Casey and the others who control CouchSurfing are really good at is self-serving manipulation, propaganda and spin.

I agree with Margaret that CS cannot be changed from within. I just don’t see Casey giving up his power and privilege in the interest of the well-being of the community. As Margaret points out, a declining income stream would be a catalyst for change. It will dry up with the weakening economy and exposure of the fraud. Pressure could also come from an article in a major publication based on the history Robert calls for.

Aside from attempting to clean up the mess in CS, there may be a sufficient critical mass of disillusioned volunteers and members to begin a new chapter outside it. I don’t know the best strategy, but I agree with Kasper that BeWelcome should be reconsidered before attempting more elaborate solutions.

Democracy in action

Published by matrixpoint on June 8, 2008 in BeWelcome and networks. 24 Comments Tags: , , , , .

This weekend the BeVolunteer General Assembly took place in Essen, Germany. Congratulations to the BV volunteers for their diligent efforts toward establishing the principles of openness, fairness and democracy in the hospitality community. The minutes of the Assembly are available here.

Special congratulations to Thomas Goorden for his election to the BV Board of Directors. I was very gratified to have a voice in this democratic process, and happily voted for Thomas.

Among the accomplishments of the assembly was a new wiki page highlighting the differences between BW/BV and other Hospex networks. It’s worth checking out here.

The beginning of the end of CS 2.0

Published by matrixpoint on August 23, 2007 in Casey Fenton, Collective, Crash 2.0 and employees. 2 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , .

“It just feels bad to be asked for help and promised something in return by the captain after he set the boat on a riff and than when the ship is running being told: ‘What do you want here? This is the captains lounge. I’ve hired professional help now. You are just a stupid little member. Now stop whining, go down to where the swimming pools are and have fun.’ ” – Torsten (from the Brainstorm group).

As someone who was present in Montreal during the week of the crash, I can add some detail to the Captain’s behavior in those days.

We have been told that the particular combination of events leading to the crash (“The Triple Storm”) was highly unlikely, but even if accurate this excuse for the disaster obscures the fact that the organization’s extreme dependency on Casey in the technical area was a great vulnerability to the organization, and a disaster waiting to happen.

I believe this dependency was not due to the lack of willing, trustworthy and qualified members to spread the responsibility among (and thus provide redundancy and checks and balances), but to Casey’s intention to maintain control of the website and thus, in part, I strongly suspect, justify his privileged (and salaried) position. i.e., If others were doing all the work Casey was doing voluntarily, then it would be harder to justify being the only salaried member of the organization.

If the major crash was unavoidable (we’ll never know for sure), certainly many of the chronic server problems since then, that at times put members traveling in foreign countries at greater risk, were really a direct result of Casey’s policy.

A few days after the crash, Casey terminated the Couchsurfing Project. He did not discuss this with any of the members at Montreal that I talked with: people who had traveled from great distances at their own expense and on their vacation time to answer the call for community participation. It was as though in Casey’s mind, CS was the website and with the website gone (in his opinion) there was no CS.

But most of us there understood that CS was not a website but a community. The Community still existed and needed to come together for each other more than ever. Especially, there were members out on the road, traveling in foreign countries, using the website to make contacts with hosts as they went, many on a low budget who couldn’t afford to just start staying in hotels. It was the beginning of summer, and many others had made vacation plans based on CS. These people needed our help and support. Casey abandoned them.

I was stunned by Casey’s behavior. Not knowing him, I just assumed that there must be factors I did not know of, and gave him the benefit of doubt.

There was a leadership vacuum immediately following the termination, as Casey was absent for much of the time. Members were dazed and directionless, wondering if they should just go home. I organized some meetings, as did Heather. I proposed that the first order of business was to take care of the members. I suggested that we set up message boards on some free site so that members could at least communicate with each other. All agreed and we got to work right away.

Once we were set up, there was only one problem: how to let members know about the message boards? We knew that the home page of couchsurfing.com was still working. So all we needed was an announcement with a link to the message boards put on it. It took about a day to find Casey and get him to put the link in place. No one else could do it because Casey was the only one with the password to the servers.

The next order of business was to get the website back up. While Casey was still out of the picture, we made a group decision to bring back CS any way possible, however long it took. This was the true beginning of CS 2.0.

We knew that the software was not lost, only the data (i.e., members personal information and friendship links). So, the website could be restarted quickly, but members would have to re-register and re-establish their friendships. If this was the only obstacle, I could not understand why Casey would shut down the organization, unless perhaps, he was burnt out and just wanted to be done with it.

One thing very crucial here is that Casey did not offer the community access to the software. We could have quickly (in a matter of a couple weeks at most, which is how long it took anyway to restart the site with salvaged data) brought the site without the data. There was a tremendous, self-organized offering of support from programmers all over the world. They even formed themselves into teams and began extracting member data from Google’s caches. This was the community I was proud to belonged to and wanted to support.

It was clear that Casey considered the software to be his own property, not the property of the community, and he was not willing to just give it to us. The Captain had abandoned the ship and took the steering wheel with him, being willing to let the ship sink rather than give up control and let others save the ship.

In this crucial meeting, I personally committed to take the responsibility to rebuild the website myself, if necessary, but was sure many would help in the effort. I would have done it free of charge and claim no ownership of it. Also, I would have always been accountable to the community, and followed their guidance and stepped down if they asked me to. But I was a new member, and did not have a reputation within CS. Heather, who was an Admin, argued that “we have to get Casey back on board”. She held sway. I did not know at the time that she was romantically involved with Casey (or so I have been told), as this was kept discreet.

Over the next few days, pleas were made with Casey to come back, led by Heather, although, at least, the group insisted that the new CS must be different from the old, and that there should be much more emphasis on member participation. Casey agreed to this. In Heather’s word’s: “CS should not be about just one person”. Heather even expressed that the crash was a blessing in disguise, and urged that the recovery be delayed if necessary to ensure that fundamental changes were made and that CS did not just return to business as usual.

Casey tentatively agreed to explore the possibility of reviving CS, and when he began to have success recovering the data, resumed control over the project. I was relieved at the time, because Casey’s return meant that I could go on the vacation I had planned. But now I realized that those few days were the one chance for CS to become a truly community-based self-governing organization. The seeds of the demise of CS 2.0 were planted almost as soon as it began.

John

Follow the money

Published by matrixpoint on August 22, 2007 in BeWelcome, Casey Fenton, Donations, Finances, Leadership Circle, Transparency and employees. 2 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , .

To anyone who is trying to sort out what is going on in CS and who to believe, I suggest you apply what many consider to be the “First Rule of Investigation”.

“Follow the Money”.

Something very significant happened to CS during the year since CS 2.0 was launched as a volunteer-centered community-based enterprise. The corporate income drastically increased from a level where there was barely enough to make ends meet, to a big surplus, with the reasonable expectation of much more to come.

It doesn’t take much imagination, knowing human nature, to construct various scenarios that would explain much of what has happened in CS. It’s a certain fact that Casey, at the very least, from early on, was leveraging his position in CS for his own personal profit.

“Site design by Casey Fenton Consulting”

used to appear at the bottom of all emails to members and (if I remember right) every page on the site, with a link to his personal business. Now, this, in itself, is not necessarily a problem. Whether it is or not has everything to do with with impressions given to and agreements made with people who signed on to do do full-time volunteer work for what they thought was a noble cause, for a community built specifically on the value of freely giving without expecting a financial reward, and who literally saved CS from termination.

Things are going well for a young rapidly growing volunteer enterprise, there is tremendous community spirit, creativity, new initiatives, large numbers of highly talented people wanting to get involved. And then suddenly, the rug is pulled out from under them. Some of the most active and committed volunteers are made to feel unappreciated and all but shown the door. Announcements come down about new paid positions for Casey’s close associates.

We are told paid employees are needed to do the necessary tasks that volunteers won’t do, because they tend to do things on a whim. I, myself, had spent 5 months doing nothing but things that needed to be done, fixing hundreds of bugs, postponing my “whim” project (which would have greatly benefited the community, I believe, but never happened). I did all this in spite of the LT, who for the most part, were unresponsive, non-participating, prone to arbitrary assertions of executive authority without understanding the situation, and even at times seriously undermining worthy, community-based projects.

We are told democracy can’t work in an organization like CS and that voting is impractical. Aside from any philosophical arguments, the plain fact is that democracy and voting are happing right now in bewelcome.org, and very successfully, I might add.

These kind of statements defy logic and reality, so why would they be made? Just look at the result: concentration of power and money in the pockets of Casey and his hand-picked associates. A paid developer will be hired, who will do what he or she is told, to replace the 6 highly qualified computer professionals who used to work for CS but are now working for BW, where their individual creative ideas, personal ideologies and cultural diversity are welcome and valued.

We question all this and are branded “whiners” and “CS-haters”.

I would never have given a good part of a year of valuable service to CS if I had known where it was headed. When I started having concerns about what the Admins were up to in their secret meetings back in December, I wrote a long, detailed, thoroughly documented letter to them. It was entitled “Request for Information from the Admins” (approx.). It was posted in a CS group named “CS Core Volunteer Communication” (approx.) created specifically for the purpose of allowing for communication between volunteers and the Admins, who previously were unavailable for communication as a group, and could only be communicated with through a liason.

I specifically mentioned problems with responsiveness, participation and arbitrary assertions of power. I expressed concerns about accountability. I said I was in CS to work freely for the community, and was not willing to work for Casey and/or the Admins if they were not accountable to the community.

The only response I got from the Admins was, from one of them, “Your letter is too long, so I’m not going to read it.” (approx.) This is when I became very concerned.

I started paying more attention to the NDA issue, which was very troubling to me, and I had only accepted it provisionally with the assurances that “it is being worked on and will be fixed soon.” (approx.). It was already going on 6 months.

I wrote another letter to the Admins after about a month or two, reminding them I was still waiting for a response from my first letter, and amplifying my concerns, which continued to be validated.

There was no response from any of the Admins who were in power before the crash.

Now, in retrospect, knowing what they were working towards, I believe I may have been allowed to continue to work for free under false pretenses, while the LT was planning to use the increasing revenue which I and many other volunteers were helping to generate, to pay some of themselves, without my permission or the permission of the other volunteers.

If this is what really what happened, and the total absence of meaningful response to my two inquiries was not just sheer incompetence or negligence (and how can I know when so much is kept secret), it was an ethical breach and I and the other volunteers have every right to feel mislead and disrespected. We certainly have the right to challenge the LT without having our credibility and integrity questioned.

So, to you new investigators, I suggest, follow the money and judge for yourself.

John

My last post to CS

Published by matrixpoint on August 21, 2007 in BeWelcome, Culture of Appreciation, Leadership Circle, Volunteer coordinator, tech team leader and volunteer coordination. 4 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , .

“I agree. I’m also Anu’s #1 fan :) ”

And I thought I was! :)

Although I have moved on to support the hospitality movement through BeWelcome.org, where a true democracy exists and no one is making money off the generosity of others, where volunteers are respected and treated with honesty and fairness by other volunteers acting as leaders with the consent of the community, I sometimes check in at CouchSurfing to see what my friends are up to and to check on the community I love and gladly worked for as a full-time volunteer until it was led away from the CS 2.0 vision by the current management.

Not well, I would say.

I feel that trying to influence the power elite of CS is futile through any other than legal means, but I feel compelled to speak up on behalf of Anu.

I worked very closely with her for more than six months. During this time, she demonstrated excellent qualities of self-motivation, leadership, responsible communication, and technical competence. But more impressive was her tireless devotion to the community, always advocating for it, always nurturing it, always defending it (even with anger at times). And above all, most impressive was her direct honesty and integrity.
She was the obvious choice for Tech Team leader, in the minds of Kasper and I, and I believe she had the support of Joe by that time. We were the 4 core volunteer developers who together did the bulk of the technical work on this website during most of the year following the Montreal Collective, where CS 2.0 was launched.

Anu was blacklisted by the CS elite, and passed over as leader of the Tech Team. After many months of devoted work on behalf of the community, the wishes of the Tech Team on this matter were completely ignored, not even consulted.

Anu has been unappreciated and treated with disrespect. This is unconscionable. Myself and other volunteers of the Tech Team were mislead and treated with disrespect.

When I resigned as a volunteer, I had strong suspicions about the motives of the CS elite, but I gave them what benefit of the doubt I could and was willing to support CS as a corporation providing a service to the hospitality community. After what I have seen and what has come to light since, no longer can I support it under the current management.

Casting dispersions on Anu’s integrity is going too far. She deserves an apology.

Calling people who gave heart and soul to this community, but now feel mislead and betrayed by the CS elite, and are angry about it, “CS-haters”, is reprehensible.

This is in the style of the Bush administration, which brands all critics of its policies “unpatriotic“.

Let me out of here. I’m deleting my profile.

John

Appreciation of Culture

Published by matrixpoint on August 19, 2007 in Culture of Appreciation, Leadership Circle, Open Source, Participation, Transparency, couchsurfing and volunteer coordination. 2 Comments Tags: , , , , , .

I can’t let Anu’s announcement pass by without an expression of appreciation of Anu and the culture she represented, much to my own personal enrichment.

When Anu visited me some weeks ago, we went to a bakery named “Sweet Finnish” in Boston, and met the Finnish owner. I got to hear a short conversation in Finnish for the first time. The owner had set up a posterboard with pictures and factoids about Finland. Very well done, and very interesting to me, considering its emphasis. Here are some quotes:

In 1906, Finland became the first country in the world to adopt universal suffrage that not only gave women the right to vote, but also run for office

Finland is one of 10 countries in the world that has a women president chosen by direct popular vote.

Independent since 1917, Finland is the only country in Europe that has never had a king or an aristocracy.

Finnish teenager’s skill in math, science and reading were rated the best among the 40 countries assesed in 2004. Education is free from Kindergarted to higher education including Medical and Law School.

Finland was ranked the most competitive economy in the world.

Finland was, for the 3rd year in succession, rated the least corrupt country in the world by Transparency International.

The openeness and transparency of Finland’s companies were ranked the highest in the world.

Linus Torvalds developed the Linux operating system while studying at the University of Helsinki.

Linux was the only serious competitor to Microsoft Windows.

Unlike Microsoft, Torvalds made his operating system open source and available free of charge.

Many consider Linux more secure and reliable than windows.

(All this — in a Finnish bakery! Makes me want to live there, except for the cold winters.)

This was so interesting because it suggests how Anu may have acquired some of her enlightened qualities and principles (though surely she’s much more than merely a product of her culture), and why ultimately, volunteering for CS (under the current management) turned out to no longer be right for her. They are against democracy, have strongly favored secrecy over transparency, and have taken a stand against open-source.

Perhaps the CS management should send a delegation to Finland and tell them democracy can’t work, since it’s known to crush minorities. That it is impractical and dangerous to let citizens vote for their leaders — only chaos can result. They might also want to inform Linus Torvalds that open-source is a dangerously insecure way to develop software. American corporate culture, Bill Gates-style, is the way to go. (Although, word is, even Microsoft is starting to explore open-source possibilities).

People that think like this couldn’t possibly fully appreciate the tremendous gift Anu was to the CS community and the hospitality movement in general. But some of us know better, and we hope she doesn’t let their lack of understanding and appreciation for her, personally, and the excellent Finnish cultural qualities she brought with her, to weigh on her.

John

Reflections…

Published by matrixpoint on July 17, 2007 in Casey Fenton, Crash 2.0, Donations, Leadership Circle and Participation. 15 Comments Tags: , , , , , .

…two months after resigning as a CS volunteer, in the form of responses to two calls for an egalitarian CS community in the CS Brainstorm group.

Hello Abrahim,

I appreciate your efforts to bring this issue to the attention of the community again. You obviously put a lot of thought into your post and recognize the critical importance of this to a community which shares the values that we do. I hope I’m proven wrong, but I feel certain that the kind of movement you are proposing would end up going nowhere in CS.

Just over a year ago, there was an excellent opportunity to redirect the course of the CS community away from being under the control of a small elite group, unaccountable and unanswerable to the community at large. This opportunity coincided with a major crash of the servers followed by Casey‘s termination of the CouchSurfing Project. For most of the last year since the community-led rebuilding effort, some volunteers worked towards an egalitarian community, which they thought was consistent with the stated CS 2.0 goal of decentralized participation, while the former administrators of the website redefined themselves in secret. A few months ago, the elite group re-emerged in the form of the “Leadership Team”. These self-appointed leaders are really rulers (if you consider CS as a community) or managers (if you consider CS as a corporation). Leaders generally lead by consent of the led. Rulers need no consent.

Since the Leadership Team members were each chosen (or at least endorsed) by Casey, the owner of the Corporation, and by extension felt entitled to govern the community that has formed around the web site as they saw fit, some of us who hoped for a different CS realized that our cause was lost and moved on, in some cases to alternative hospitality organizations which do have an egalitarian community.

The Leadership Team has clearly taken a stand against democracy. They have taken upon themselves the role of guardians of the CS mission, as they define it. Their “constitution” is as much about protecting their power as it is about protecting the mission. They don’t seem to be aware of the hazards of this stance. It is an easy mistake to make, since they are generally good people with good intentions and a noble mission. But the structure itself is inherently flawed and prone to abuse and corruption. This has happened countless times throughout human history whenever too much power is concentrated in the hands of too few people, even in organizations started by the best people with the best intentions.

As one example of how easy it is for a self-reinforcing group with no accountability to the people they claim to serve, consider the mission of intercultural understanding that they purport to promote and protect. The very essence of intercultural understanding is respect for diversity. Yet, the structure of the leadership team requires unanimous agreement among themselves to make important changes. The implication is that, knowing that one person could bring the effectiveness of the Leadership Team to a complete halt, extreme care will be used to select only those people that will not disrupt the consensus; in other words, people who will not create “divisiveness” or “conflict”, but conform to the established groupthink. This is perhaps the worst possible environment for promoting diversity of values, opinions and ideas, cultural or otherwise. Yet it seems they consider themselves to have a special insight and virtue which entitles them to be the guardians of the CS mission.

I have already seen cases where extremely valuable volunteers have been blacklisted because of what seems to me are mostly cultural or gender differences, or because they had an ideology not in sufficient conformity with the elite’s ideology.

Besides being inconsistent with the CS mission, the LT policies are inherently non-viable according to the lessons of nature, where diversity is the primary guarantee of adaptability and survivability in the face of changing environmental conditions and random events.

Another inconsistency: in a community which is as much about freely giving as anything, truly built upon the generosity of people willing to give without expecting a financial return, how is it that the owner, who should be exemplifying the spirit of the community, is the only one getting financial benefit for his contributions? If someone is to be granted an exception to the otherwise universal policy (so far) of voluntary work, voluntary donations and voluntary hosting, shouldn’t the community, who provides the money used to operate the infrastructure, have a say in this? I’ve heard all the counterarguments to this, but nevertheless I’m certain that CS could be run entirely by volunteers. The fact that it isn’t has not been a community decision.

Without going into details now, there is now doubt in my mind that the lack of participation and responsiveness of many of the so-called leaders in many areas at many times is a symptom of the structural problem (lack of accountability to the community) and the attitude it fosters. (For example: over a year and counting and still no acceptable NDA, something of such grave importance to several volunteers that they stopped volunteering because of this fiasco). Likewise, the chronic server problems and the slow response to member requests for bug fixes and feature enhancements are also traceable to the same problem.

The only possibility I see for CS to become an egalitarian community is for the community to obtain ownership of the Corporation. In other words, buy out Casey. But I don’t think this is realistic considering that perhaps 99% of the users of the CS website are reasonably happy with the free service that it provides. The number of members actively involved in the community (beyond hosting and surfing) are a small percentage of the total membership and of those, only small percentage of us are really concerned with such philosophical and political matters as we’re discussing. There are some other hospitality communities where self-government is considered as important an objective as intercultural understanding, and inextricably linked to it. For me, it is more efficient to start over with one of those communities. Indeed, I was given no choice. Casey himself stated that if we don’t like the way CS is run, then leave and come back later [after all the structural changes now being implemented are locked in - he has veto power over any proposed structural change in the future]. Don’t get me wrong, I like a strong, assertive leader, and even encouraged Casey that way, but any leader without accountability to those led is a dictator, even if a benevolent dictator.

I recommend you think of CS in terms of the Western culture notion of “corporate entity” and all the concepts of ownership and entitlement that go with that, rather than a diverse community of equals with shared values. That may save you a lot of heartache. For me, it is best to think of the new CS as a social website like Myspace combined with a travel website like Expedia. Then, Casey is just a dot.com entrepreneur carefully protecting his investment and his personal vision and getting his just reward financially. No problem with that if you’re a fan of Western corporate culture! (Just be clear about it to potential volunteers: your free work and ideas are welcome, but Casey is the only one who financially benefits from them, and you have no say in that.) We are all free to use what the CS Corporation offers and to go elsewhere if we object to the way it is managed. Thankfully. Just the mere fact that this post will not be censored is a credit to the LT — they ARE doing some things well!

John

   

Responding to David Lee Frazer’s commentary on the “Wolf Pack Psychology” of the LT in another thread:

Hi David:

The following is meant to be taken partly in jest.

I don’t think “Wolfpack” is the best analogy to descibe the LT, although it’s imaginative. I just don’t see Casey as the alpha male of the pack. Brute force is not his means of holding power.

“Monarchy” is a better analogy: King Casey and the Lords and Ladies of CouchSurfing. But most monarchies do not justify their entitlement to power as virtuous protectors of a noble mission. It is enough for them to claim hereditary entitlement, or royal blood, in many cases, or else “might makes right”.

“Religion” is an even better analogy. Pope Casey the First and the College of Cardinals. The Global Ambassadors would be the Bishops, from whom the Cardinals are chosen. The other ambassadors complete the priesthood, and the rest of us are the bleating flock, who are shepherded by the wise and learned Bishops. Very good description, actually. Can you imagine an election for the Pope by the flock ever happening?

Those of use who resigned as volunteers could be thought of as the Protestants and have gone on to find a more tolerant and open cultural milieu. Among other things, we didn’t like the idea of the CS Corporation claiming custody of our creative ideas like a Church claiming custody of our souls. We even had a heretic among us, who was shunned after enormous contributions (Kasper).

The Roman Church began with a noble mission but which over time, due to the inherent structure it shares with CS, erred in many ways. The leaders acquired an attitude of condescension and hubris, thinking themselves infallible, not needing checks and balances. They became enamored of their wealth and power, drifting far astray from the example of Jesus, who wanted neither. Protecting their power became more important than the original mission. Anyone who is ignorant of this danger of concentrated power, or thinks themselves immune to it, is surely vulnerable.

All men having power ought to be distrusted to a certain degree. — James Madison

If I claim to be a wise man, it surely means that I don’t know. — Kansas

You know that those who are regarded as rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant. — Mark 10:42-43

John