The day I quit 3 other coders who had contributed considerable work to the CS code base quit as well. It was a sad day. However, we thought that opencouchsurfing.org would be able to put pressure on the organization to open up. We thought wrong, obviously.

Now and then I’ve seen people quit volunteering for CS, for reasons uncommon to most organization. Still, I thought couchsurfing would continue, and people would be reasonably happy to volunteer within the framework provided.

Currently, with so many long-term volunteers quitting in such a short time span I’m wondering: what can we do to really open up couchsurfing – even if just a tiny wee bit? (And I prefer to wonder openly.) And is it possible to do this all together? Apparently the people who were against opencouchsurfing in the past seem to be sharing several goals. Is there another way to peacefully make a positive difference?

All the long-term volunteers are or have been friends with members of the leadership team, can we do something with that?

Or can a consensus be found to start something new or revive BeWelcome?

(Feel free to contact me by email if you prefer, firstname dot lastname at gmail dot com – I’ll keep things private if you prefer so.)

Terrible, terrible news. I only hope this leads to CouchSurfing improving the trust systems. I hope they don’t use it to promote verification even more, or make verification compulsory.

It’s hard to assess in how far the CouchSurfing Board is meeting these requirements, apart from 4 (recommended) and 15 (essential): all 5 members of the board have American citizenship, are living in California, are in their thirties, there is one female member and 3 out of 5 are receiving a salary.

Most of the other points don’t seem to be available for public scrutiny (at this point it’s even unclear to me if there are any bylaws).  It would be nice if there were a bit more clarity about this charity.

I mention this here in the interests of collating technical data on how CS is built.

The site used to be available in the wayback machine, so it would seem that somebody at CouchSurfing International Inc has specifically requested that the site be removed from the archive. Is there any legitimate reason why such a request would have been made? Personally, I can’t think of any.

We will choose three Missions and CouchSurfers to star as the subjects in our documentary “Couchsurfing: The Movie” (expenses paid! sic). This journey isn’t just about sightseeing, it’s about traveling with a purpose!

Maybe the idea seems good to the regular couchsurfer, but the status and funding of this project is completely unclear. The website is hosted by Entrip while the project is co-produced and created by Alexandra Liss, also the owner of the websites. In her CS-profile she explains it a little bit herself:

I met Casey Fenton, who recently commissioned me to create the feature length documentary “Couchsurfing: The Movie,”– loving life right now and all the possibilities that this journey will lead to…

In her profile she also mentiones that she is busy with raising sponsorships. It is unclear though what type of expenses and funding are related. Casey mentions in the video that flight-tickets are fully paid, but do people also get some pocket-money? And what if you go hitchhiking? It is also pretty insane to see Couchsurfing Inc. promoting unsustainable forms of traveling such as flying – by the way. And how much community money is actually going into this project?

Let’s see when this project is to start though. First deadline was set for December 15th but now it is January the 15th, according to csthemovie.com. Still, the site is not ready yet and you cannot signin, upload or for example “Rate Missions and Vote”. (See also the beta-site which is a bit further developed).

The video is great though. It makes you laugh, guaranteed.

• * Caseysurfing.com – Easygoing consumerfriendly network run by a bunchfull of burning men buddies with no strategy for the future at all. As they eat up an amazing amount of donations and the market for virtual social networks collapses with the international cashflow a simple sellout isn’t an option anymore. When the fun is over, I won’t share the hangover.
• * Veitclub.org – The google-ad homebase of a single men gathering people who don’t mind censorship in communication. If the communication system is working at all. Estimated 2 years behind reality. Hard to signup for newbies and without technical improvements a living dead.
• * Senil.org – Surviving from the stoneage of postwar hospitality exchange still not yet at home in the digital age but muddling through anyway.
• * BeBehind.org – Some core volunteers still suffer from restrictive mindsets (courtesy of Veitclub.org), so progress in really opening up the network is small. Restrictions are still restrictions even if the code is GPL. The open source rebuilt of a common hospex-software is probably to slow to really suffer in the decline of big hospexnetworks, but may offer some software for other experiments (still a shitload of work).

Short but nevertheless also cynical theses for the future of hospex:

The hospitality exchange scene is and always was diverse. This won’t change, no, in the future the number of networks will probably rise and the importance of each one for the whole scene will shrink. I see two main future options / possibilities:

• * Hospex as a gadget/plugin in other (commercial) networks like f**kbook, MyShit, soon T-Couch, iHospex, MacSleep, Sleepbucks and others – nothing I’d really care for, but something that would definetly keep some idiots out of things I like. There’s nothing wrong with it, but please leave me alone.
• * Hospexnetworks with very specialized communities like gay boyscouts, polite gamblers, frustrated florists … A disadvantage of this kind of networks is the absence of bigger diffences within them, as there is always a common interest / category. So somehow it’s a bit limiting and cultural exchange simply fails with out differences. A solution could be megasearches between open parts of these networks, profile transfers and easy access. Besides smelling like violating privacy all over the place, it’s all theory right now.

And why this ranting?

I’ve spent and still spend some of my free time to volunteer for hospex networks, but from time to time it’s good to reconsider engagement. Right now it feels like being stucked between something halfdead, that is still working from an user-only point of view, and a luck of ideas/projects to improve/develop things.

So maybe it’s time to look for something useful to do in other areas?

http://www.bewelcome.info

The real background about this “democratic, transparent, legal” (sic) network.

It sounds like the game of army which kids play .

“We are the general’s (LT) you are the soldiers(ambassadors) you need to protect the our turf (the world).”

Ambassadors are CouchSurfing members who have applied for a special role within our community. The role of the Ambassadors is to be of service to CouchSurfing members and to be of service to the global community.

These are individuals to whom you wont n give a second glance . Either they are normal noobs or low down losers who have messed up lives.

So what we have is a game of army .Where the kids form virtual hierarchies LT, Global ambassador,Country ambassadors,United Nations , President of the US of A.

The games is still not old as people still love those virtual badges. Though we see the playground fist fights all the time . The supporters of the generals ie the playground bullies ULF and the new kids on the block trent collins (stating those mark his turf).And the other kids who still want to play the game and some calling out “NO FAIR !”

But this game is taken to another level .Where the kids who play General take away the lunch money of the other kids and have fun with it. The bullies show the other kids they cant get their money back and have to still play ball.

Now the kids playing general need to justify to the other kids why they are eating ice cream with the other kids money.The kids on top have to be smarter than the other kids and think fast. So they come up with “we are holding a collective to make the world a better place for you and me “. The other kids buy the story .

The lunch money is gone!! The local communities are poorer with out those funds which could have set up local center all over the world. But as control of turf is essential to the well-being of the gang this will never happen.

Researchers agree that most gangs share certain characteristics. Although there are exceptions, gangs tend to develop along racial and ethnic lines, and are typically 90 percent male . Gang members often display

their membership through distinctive styles of dress ,symbols –their “colors”–and through specific activities and patterns of behavior. In addition, gangs almost universally show strong loyalty to their neighborhood, but the primary attraction of gangs is their ability to respond to needs that are not otherwise being met gang membership gives youth a sense of belonging and becomes a major source of identity for its members. In turn,gang membership affords youth a sense of power and control, and gang activities become an outlet the control of turf is essential to the well-being of the gang, which often will use pressure tactice to control both its territory and members (NDA).

I’ll bet some clever bod thought this would stop our mirror blog. Wrong! It’ll take more than a little inconvenience to keep us pirates down. I’m pleased to report, that after a brief outage, the mirror blog is now back in full working order, with full post text.

So if you want to read the blog in your feed reader, subscribe to our feed instead, and get the comments!

We have won the battle, but I suspect this will not be the end of the war. As a Sun Tzu disciple, I have studied the enemy closely. I have anticipated their next seven moves. Fear not, their incompetence will not stand in the way of democracy and freedom. The pirates wil overcome their foolish attempts to quell free speech. Vive la revolucion!

Regarding finances, check for yourself, the finances of the first quarter of 2008 are available. Salaries are the biggest post on the expenses side. That doesn’t include flights and other costs of Collectives. Less than 10% of the income is used for servers and there was a surplus of almost 60.000 US$.

(note: meals and groceries were bought in Thailand!)

“I take it that back when CS was a more grassroots thing (correct me if i am wrong), all collective volunteers had to find their own way of getting to them. And that all the work was done pro-bono, even those who were working on improving CS on a full-time basis. In such a case, i wouldn’t think it’s fair that there are people on the payroll now, but those who helped cs in the initial startup days don’t get shit for all that they have contributed… “

CS never was very grassroots. PEople (like me) just tried to move it there. Casey has received a 2000 US$ per month salary ever since there was money coming in. It’s always been under control of Casey, and later Casey and his close friends.

I think paying some people is fine. Though, only people who are really needed, e.g. system administration to keep the site up 24/7, and further, let the community decide where their money is used. Whenever there’s a donation, add some checkboxes where you can give options where the money can go after the basics (administrative stuff, server costs, basic legal costs) have been covered (e.g. none, publicity, collectives, salaries for casey’s friends, food and lodging for groupies).

And don’t pay 2000 US$ per month plus expenses plus flights plus food and lodging. During a stay at a Collective it’s extremely easy to not spend more than 300 US$ per month…

Apart from the flights to and away from New Zealand (800 US$) I hitchhiked to the three CouchSrufing collectives I worked at. The laptop I bought to work on CS (1000 US$) broke quickly after I stopped volunteering, because of an extremely ridiculous non-disclosure agreement was “leaked” that does not allow working on any similar project (e.g. Wikitravel or other social networks).

BeWelcome will take time to grow. The BeVolunteer organization is already far ahead of anything else in hospex world in terms of flexibility, transparency and democracy. The software is about to follow. 3500 members is already a large pool of active people to connect with.

And note that BeWelcome now has (alpha stage) functionality where all members can verify members, for free. And it’s ID card or passport verification, not just address verification (which can very easily be falsified).

My idea about couchserfing was that it could be used as a vehicle to do much more than just hospitality exchange for college aged low-budget travelers. With so much money coming in and such a huge community behind it it would be extremely simple to set up much more sharing and society enhancing projects. E.g. a good friend of mine who also attended the New Zealand Collective is setting up groundcrew.us. If it would have been done from the inside of CS it would have been big by now. Though, on the other hand, I’m extremely happy that I didn’t accept Casey’s offer to host Hitchwiki.org with CouchSurfing…

Unfortunately, comments are not allowed on the blog. To be more precise, you must be logged in to comment. But registration of new users is not allowed. So in effect, only those with permission can comment. Let’s hope this will change soon.

However, as a quick alternative, I propose to create a mirror of the blog content, with the same open-comments policy we use here at OpenCS. It’s fairly trivial to set up, and would allow open debate on each post. What do you think? Please provide a +1 or -1 in your comment if you think it’s a good or bad idea.

My idea is to offer people a way to support CouchSurfing financially, while also supporting the ideals of OpenCouchSurfing. That’s the basic premise.

I think it could work as follows. We create one or more funds or trusts. These funds are clearly constituted. They exist to support the work of CouchSurfing, within certain conditions. Rather like the government supports universities in the UK, but the money comes with requirements. The universities must behave in a certain way to be eligible for the cash.

A simple example might be server costs. We could create a fund to pay for CouchSurfing’s server costs. So long as CouchSurfing International Inc submits invoices for these costs, the fund would reimburse the expenses. This is just a simple example.

The underlying concept is to give members a way to financially support CouchSurfing, while still upholding the principles of OpenCouchSurfing.

We could also provide a mechanism for members to display and verify their donations. For example, images which could be inserted into the user’s profile, showing how much that user has donated. This might help to spread the message amongst members. In effect, we would be creating an alternative to the CouchSurfing verification system.

This is very much an idea right now. It needs considerable research and discussion before being implemented. Please share your thoughts at this early stage. Can you see merit in the concept? Would you be willing to donate money through such a framework? All feedback will be appreciated.

I never thought the denominators for the trust value made a lot of sense for the friendship links on CS (especially when translated, I don’t really know how to best translate “I somewhat trust this person” into my mother tongue). Still, there seems to be a definite trend of linearly (in time) decreasing trust on the Quality of Service page. It would be interesting to compare this to values from before and do a deeper analysis. The “average quality” doesn’t seem to be changing significantly on the other hand, maybe slightly going up? Possibly because it’s actually visible to the receiver.

Joe Edelman wrote the QoS code, and wrote to me:

Wow, that *is* interesting!

So the avg trust is calculated among introductions added in the last
week that are reported as due to CS and in-person. So it’s not because
of virtual users, and it’s not because CS is accelerating and includes
less pre-existing friends.

The only confounding factor I can think of, is that it doesn’t take the
“date you met this person” field into account — a lot of people don’t
fill it out, or don’t fill it out correctly. So it includes
introductions that are finally being reported from the past, as well as
those that actually occurred that week.

We could be seeing an ever-greater percentage of weirdos from the past.
You know, those random people that blew through a collective, and much
later are friending everyone. And the people they are friending hardly
remember them and so don’t trust them. This would be a result of social
graph “fill-in”, perhaps as a kind of recoil from expansion last summer.

Or, perhaps it’s an accurate result, and as CS grows, people that meet
find they have less in common, since CS includes more demographics.

In that case, it could be interpretted as a *positive* result: perhaps
the ideal would be to take people who DON’T trust each other INITIALLY,
and give them POSITIVE EXPERIENCES such that later they DO trust each
other, or they start to trust other people from a new demographic MORE.

Let’s just hope this trend does not continue. If it would, the average trust would be zero by the end of 2010.

In the meanwhile, some active work can be done on designing and implementing a trust system from scratch on BeWelcome.

The data:

year   week introductions users  quality  trust

2008    16         6625   3890    1.526   0.370

2008    15        14238   7345    1.506   0.377

2008    14        14818   7591    1.490   0.379

2008    13        16520   8201    1.527   0.388

2008    12        13895   6952    1.500   0.387

2008    11        12252   6291    1.479   0.379

2008    10        12303   6490    1.493   0.392

2008    09        12796   6482    1.480   0.382

2008    08        11336   5875    1.483   0.376

2008    07        12484   6408    1.486   0.391

2008    06        11778   6215    1.469   0.409

2008    05        11201   5945    1.453   0.406

2008    04        10570   5998    1.479   0.415

2008    03        10757   5983    1.489   0.410

2008    02         9560   4872    1.503   0.410

2008    01        13972   6425    1.484   0.417

2007    52         7749   4279    1.476   0.414

2007    51         9332   5118    1.467   0.421

2007    50        10975   5500    1.480   0.422

2007    49        10309   5632    1.454   0.415

2007    48        10664   5500    1.454   0.413

2007    47        10335   5734    1.487   0.425

2007    46        10835   5762    1.492   0.429

Argument By Selective Reading:

making it seem as if the weakest of an opponent’s arguments was the best he had. Suppose the opponent gave a strong argument X and also a weaker argument Y. Simply rebut Y and then say the opponent has made a weak case.

This is a relative of Argument By Selective Observation, in that the arguer overlooks arguments that he does not like. It is also related to Straw Man (Fallacy Of Extension), in that the opponent’s argument is not being fairly represented.

Your argument conveniently omits the more relevant information:

American Red Cross
Top Person: Marsha Evans
Top Salary:* $651,957

Easter Seals
Top Person: James E. Williams Jr.
Top Salary:* $488,300

Cedars-Sinai Medical Center
Top Person: Thomas Priselac
Top Salary:* $1,503,080

On average these executives from other non-profits made:
$881,112.33

Mattthew Brauer mentions in his post:
~$24,000

Even if we take the lowest figure in that list MB is still only making 4.9%

Almost exactly a year ago, the OCS initiative was started. Initially, our hope was to entice the LT with concrete ideas and campaigns, to get them to address the various serious issues we had discovered at the heart of CS. Not much has changed however and most of the changes have not been for the better:

• CS is legally still in very dubious water. Still no 501c3 status, after… 3 (or 4?) years of claiming it?
• Casey still holds all the legal (and financial) strings and has decided to set up camp in Alaska next, which is essentially his home.
• Transparancy is down, censorship is waaay up. (Search engines have been blocked and CS has a permanent censorship/security team now, almost like during the cold war!)
• CSC Thailand can be declared a failure as well now, after the NZ meltdown. I haven’t seen anything positive come out of it, but we’re still waiting for the “memo”.
• “Not talking to anyone” has become the official communication mode for the entire organisation.

And so, with a heavy heart, I’m renewing the OpenCouchSurfing.org domainname by 2 years. In all honesty, I had serious hopes that it wouldn’t be necessary to have this website for more than a year. I (personally) was perfectly willing to “bury the hatchet” if there was even some semblance of progress. Alas, it is not to be. CS still makes me angry, especially for the obligation I feel towards its wonderful community to speak up about its numerous failure, shortcomings and shady deals.

Maybe now is a good opportunity to start thinking about OCS “2.0″. The way I see it, the signal to noise ratio on the blog could be better and there have been some points of discussion we could re-raise at this point. Anonimity, re-posting and privacy concerns come to mind. More importantly, I believe OCS should refocus its efforts towards a clearly understandable and easy to navigate website. Right now, I can only imagine the confusion of a random surfer on OCS. I still heavily support our “open for all” attitude, even with all the negativity that comes with that, but I think it can be channeled better.

So, in the spirit of transparancy and cooperation: Who would be interested in helping “revamp” and organise OCS? We’ll need to digg through a lot of information and restructure quite a bit, but I also think there is room for new activism. Things on my mind:

• An open call to ALL ambassadors for transparancy (and perhaps elections)?
• A good Q&A section, where we try to answer what CS doesn’t answer.
• Video?
• …

I also wouldn’t mind separating this “public blog” from a better structured blog with some editorial control that we could move to the front page. We could “rewrite” a lot of the current knowledge into practical, well researched and well written articles that would be aimed at the general public (including new members and press) and not just people with CS background knowledge.

SHE is a conference on Sustainable Hospitality Exchange that takes place during the last weekend of June. It will be based in the center of Amsterdam on a very accessible location. The place is an old and big squat that was recently bought and renovated by the residents. The financial cost for use is 500-750 euro.

She takes me to the place where I long to be! She moves me, does she move you yet? She moves me, yeah, she moves alright, she gonna move me yeah, alright! Check her out at wiki-space and contribute!

So you’re interested? Great! Initiative has taken place to start facilitating this process and to pull the first things together. A small group of active participants within the networks are securing a location in Amsterdam on behalf of SHE as we write and they invite you to help organising this event, scheduled for a weekend in June. Your input is essential and you are invited to constructively help facilitating it.

SHE wants to be a tool of knowledge about sustainable hospitality exchange mechanisms and networks. SHE also claims that “though this is not a party-event, we do aim to walk all naked in the park, to exchange local practices and to increase trust.” All sorts of help is needed to bring the conference about as a dynamic flow of excellence and experience. Be warned though as SHE “will be potentially the most pretentious social networking event of 2008!”

You know what? SHE already exists in wiki-space. Check her out and be creative!

Since my personal biggest frustration with CS is the communication, I guess that would be as good a place to start as any. A good question format for this purpose may be to give statements and ask people to rate whether or not they agree with them; anyone is welcome to contribute statements (would be nice if you could keep them somewhat serious, lol), or give me other feedback regarding this idea.

• Take responsability (either assertively or, using the other CS-keyword, aggressively)
• Make promises. The less tangible or the more gratuitous, the better
• Silence the criticism when you don’t live up to your promise (by adapting the ground rules; by moving the criticism; by deleting threads?)
• When the above doesn’t help: ignore the criticism
• When the above doesn’t help: spin
• If all else fails: ‘loose interest’ (i.e., abandon ship)

Many of you will find this a minor issue, and you’d be right. But today, Donna announced her intention to drop moderatorship of the CS Politics and Policy group. It is typical of the above style: if your blatant lack of skill / involvement to make a much-wanted change gets too obvious, simply drop your responsability and you’re done!

For some time now I’ve been having the impression that many ‘leaders’ and their groupies have distanced themselves more and more from the regular usership. This instance was particularly clear, but I’m sure there have been others as well. All these little kings and queens, much too busy with their self-created importance to bother about the actual cause they claim to work so hard for… it would be funny if it weren’t so sad.

Sorry for ranting, I don’t usually do that. In any case, I do hope that none of ‘us’ will be foolish enough to lift this problem off Donna’s shoulders. Would do her good to actually address a (self-inflicted) problem for a change (gosh, did that sound bitter? )

We want to avoid resistance from the established systems. So I think using the term Ambassador will cause confusion. However, a group of people could quite reasonably choose to elect a “community leader” or “community representative”. That idea got me thinking about creating a CouchSurfing member council.

A group of democratically elected representatives who have the permission of the community to address matters on their behalf. This could be a very powerful mechanism. These individuals could serve as a channel for members to interface with the CouchSurfing organisation.

I think most people agree that communication is the biggest operational problem facing CouchSurfing right now. A mechanism like a member council could help this process. If there was one person for each town / city, speaking on behalf of the community, the voice would carry a great deal of weight. Likewise if the system scaled up to regional / national representation.

Of course, there is a great risk that it would simply create politics for the sake of politics. But I do believe it could work.

Does anyone have experience of designing systems like this? Any experience in organisations of this nature? Would anyone care to share their comments / feedback / criticism / etc?

I think the first step is to identify areas or projects which can make a positive difference to CouchSurfing. A great example is the recent idea to create elected ambassadors. I think that was a great idea, and if it takes off, will make a really big impact on CouchSurfing.

I have more thoughts to share on that, but I will share those in a new post. I’d like to keep the focus of this post simple. What can we do to make a positive difference? Please share your thoughts, as a comment here, or as a whole new post. If you have any trouble creating a post, contact myself, Kasper, Anu or Thomas.

Let the brainstorming roll…

Yesterday the news at CS announces:

Buggin’ Out!

Fixes to the “location bug” brings back functionality better than ever!
20. March 2008 Once again, the shining stars on our tech team have successfully tackled an error in the system to get things back to normal on the site for you.

You may have noticed the site was offline for a short while today. This downtime was scheduled so the tech team could fix the recent issues experienced with correctly reflecting members’ locations.

Check out what features are back for you!

* Nearby travelers on members’ home page will now actually be nearby!
* When you search for a couch in a city, you can now effectively search for members within a chosen radius of that city. Let’s say you want to CouchSurf in Gdansk, Poland but there are only a handful of CouchSurfers there. You can once again search for a couch within, say, 20 km of Gdansk. Hurray!
* Location map on member’s profiles will reflect the correct location. Members will no longer randomly be placed in Africa… unless you live in Africa!
* Recent member login location will reflect correct location as accurately as possible. (Click here for information on why it may not always be right) If you were logged in during the downtime, you may need to log out and log back in to show the proper location.

A round of applause for the tech team volunteers- job well done!

First of all: Great, they finally not only do something with the code they also announce it. I’ve also noticed, some minor bug fixes have been done (months after reporting) and some small improvement are online, most of them asked for again and again in the last years. But nothing really impressing. And here the good news already stop.

So let’s “check out what features are back” for us: All the four points mentioned in the news are based on one single topic: IP adresses and their localisation. As even CS explains at the linked page it’s not accurate. There are several reasons for that, like wrong settings from your ISP, using of company firewalls etc. This caused a lot of CUQs and cockroach posts when I was doing this kind of stuff. And it’s simply not to fix, the whole idea is a mistake.

If it works properly IP localisation is a serious threat against privacy. Your company sees where and when you login (during work time? from somewhere else when you call in sick?), so you may loose your job. Your stalking Ex is able to track you. At some places the nearby couchsurfer feature is widely used to annoy females with inapprobiate mails. Exact localisation while travelling is a useful information for criminals interested in your unguarded flat (this is especially useful if you’ve got a verified adress and CS places the the google marker in search exactly at your home).

But the main point is: IPs can easy be faked/changed. There are several services in the internet who offer anonymous access to webpages, there is software like Tor to hide your IP and makes it very, very difficult to trace you. At the moment CS tries very hard to block IPs from those services/networks but it’s a ridiculous attempt and doesn’t work if you accept some reloads while using the software. If someone does the work to setup a profile for abusing CS, hiding the real IP is no big deal. And still CS calls this a security feature. As at least the techno crowd must know that’s not true, so insisting on IP-Localisation as security feature must be called what it is: a lie.

When you know an organisation is lying to you about a serious issue, how trustworthy it is at all?

PS – There is a lot to do about security at CS:
- encrypted login (SSL), especially because a lot of couchsurfers use the page from unsecure, public computers/connections while travelling
- really delete information, not only hide it (mails, profiles, …) but don’t hide useful information (profiles from thieves)
- don’t say it’s privacy VERSUS security,  it’s privacy AND security

Deleting posts from troublesome members or even about dangerous incidents is simply ridiciulous. It only creates an illusion of safety and this is especially dangerous for new members.

But, it is also easily undone. Here is what you do:

• Create a fake profile with an new, untraceable email address. (Plenty of fake profiles anyway.)
• Register for the groups that might be interesting and check “receive all mail”.
• Register the email address on the CS-uncensored group.
• Set up the email address so it forwards ALL mail to CS-uncensored.

Extra added bonus? A fully searchable, unlimited (in time) archive of all interesting CS group posts. It would be even funnier if we could get into Private Amb somehow.

Disclaimer: Of course, this post is just an idea that I wanted to float around. I can take no responsibility for anyone actually doing this. You might be breaking some CS rule, but I didn’t check that.

It does only raise one idea of how Hospitality Exchange Networks, in this case BeWelcome, could take a step into the real world. It s not intended to be the only way/step but one of plenty. It brings up reasons why BeVolunteer should be a part of The Other Campaign which is based on the Sexta Declaracion de la Selva Lacandona of the EZLN.

I m posting this on the OpenCouchsurfing Blog because most of the reasons I bring up here could be applied to Couchsurfing as well.

What is the Other Campaign?

The goal of the The Other Campaign is to create a diverse, plural and multiple world-wide network of subjects of social rebellion. The mission of the Network is the creation of another way of organizing our entire world – without exploitation, unequally, oppression or discrimination. It is explicitly anti-capitalistic and anti-systemic. Invited for participation in this network are: Truly left-wing parties without an official register of members, social movements, collectives, cultural groups, independent and critic media, civil organizations and Non Government Organizations. The organization of this network is fundamentally horizontally without any hierarchy or authorities. It refuses all uni-personal leadership. It encourages all members to take there own decisions and use there talents in their own way. The lax network refuse from the beginning all tendencies of homogenization or uniformity. It is intended to be a Network of help, solidarity and mobilization of all the members. This network should be able to create alternative ways of social communication. This is the point where BeVolunteer comes into the game. [1]

Why does BeVolunteer/BeWelcome fit in this description of participants of the other campaign?

The members of BeWelcome and all our Volunteers are creating an alternative way of bringing people together. We offer hospitality, and soon other things like bikes or books to share, without expecting money for it.

Lots of Volunteers working voluntarily for our common dream. It would actually violate statutes of BeVolunteer if any volunteer would receive money for his work. Voluntary work does not fit in the capitalist logic. In the pure capitalism you exchange your work force for other goods or money.
The organization BeVolunteer is a Non Profit Organization. An organization in the capitalistic way has to make profit to be competable with other concurrents.
BeWelcome is not a competitor to other networks. BeWelcome is more likely another option for people who care about democratic way of organizing an organization. (at least thats what I believe)

The members of BeVolunteer have all the power. This makes us, like the the other Campaign slower, weaker and lower but like this we guarantee that BeVolunteer is really driven by its members. The Board of Directors is based on annual elections and the members of BeVolunteer or lets say the General Assembly is the highest power. We refuse uni-personal leadership. Each year there are elections of the Board of Directors who are representing the members of BeVolunteer and managing the daily issues.

One of our goals is the intercultural exchange with people from all over the world. Thanks to that our members are aware of the consequences of the neoliberalistic policy in the world. We meet face to face with people who are suffering in the current system. We are desperate for a high plurality within our members to increase the possibilities of our members to really enter in a intercultural experience. One objective of the Other Campaign is to bring the political discussion into daily life. Democracy is not done with going to vote each 4,5 or 6 years not even with a vote every year at the GA of BeVolunteer. Everyday there are decisions to take. It s not always necessary to organize a huge congress or a manifestation to get people together for a discussion or for protest. That can happen everyday in the decentralized network of BeWelcome.

To be Part of the Other Campaign BeVolunteer has to subscribe the Sixth Declaration of the Selva Lancandonan. I don t know yet how you sign this declaratio but thats just a formality. The question right now is if BeWelcome/BeVolunteer or any other Networj wants to take this step into real life political campaigns or not.

[1] Carlos Antonio Aguirre Rojas, Chiapas, Planeta Tierra, Mexico 2006, S.165ff

PS: I hope it s readable – the Spell Check didn t work …

the only reason i am waiting, is because i see certain things which these people are planning to do half done technically and i know how easily they can be undone by people who know how to buck the system…and we do know of people who are VERY GOOD at bucking the system…

i hate cloak and dagger myself, and to be fair, the information has been liberally shared with all the people who were there in the meet over a phone call, so i do not really think it is only being given to a few privileged members….

but i do understand that some information on a forum like brainstorm might defeat the purpose…i myself am cagey about spelling out some of the stuff i would be involved in (when they are of the sensitive nature) on this forum as i know who are the people watching this group…

A couple of keywords caught my attention “Cloak and dagger” “Bucking the system”

What does bucking the system mean? And how does Cloak and dagger come into the couchsurfing equation.

wikipedia
Cloak and dagger is a term sometimes used to refer to situations involving espionage, mystery, or even assassination. The
phrase dates from the early 19th century.
thefreedictionary
cloak-and-dagger cloak-and-dagger – conducted with or marked by hidden aims or methods; “clandestine intelligence operations”; “cloak-and-dagger activities behind enemy lines”; “hole-and-corner intrigue”; “secret missions”; “a secret agent”; “secret sales of arms”; “surreptitious mobilization of troops”; “an undercover investigation”; “underground resistance”
Some of reference I found about “Bucking the system“. So I am not sure what cryptic message where hidden in those words.

Bucking the system: Andrew Wilkie and the difficult task of the whistleblower

Buck the System, Cosby Tells Teachers — nytimes
I want you to realize who you are and stop these people from grading you until they grade the system,” he said. ”How can you teach if you have no books? The system ties their legs and says, ‘Run.’ It ties their arms and says, ‘Defend yourself.’ ”

The post was very interesting because of the trust matrices involved and a the different in the perception of trust on a global scale.

Effect of Culture, Medium, and Task on Trust Perception Qiping Zhang

DISCUSSION
Most of hypotheses were confirmed except that the interaction effect of culture and media on trust perception.
The results of higher level of trust perceived by Americans than by Chinese actually contradicted with our hypothesis.
The theory of nationality trust and social distance provide a possible explanation. In our study, AA pairs seemed more willing to treat each other as a temporary in-group member instead of a “real stranger”, while CC pairs seemed treating the partner as an out-group relationship due to lack of longterm relationship.

The ambassador system is placed on the two factors perceived trust and reputation .It is perceived and not real trust as you can see the scales fluctuating so wildly. People going from best friend to no friend to being deleted from the friends list.

http://www.trustlet.org/ A trust metric is a technique for predicting how much a certain user can be trusted by the other users of the community.

But by the above interactions you can see the perception of trust.

A recent definition of trust has been put forth by Grandison and Sloman [Grandison and Sloman, 2000] who define trust as – the firm belief in the competence of an entity to act dependably, securely, and reliably within a specified context.

Related to trust is the concept of reputation. Abdul-Rehman and Hailes define reputation as an expectation about an individual’s behavior based on information about or observations of its past behavior

The cloak-and-daggercloak-and-dagger – conducted with or marked by hidden aims or methods; “clandestine intelligence operations“; “cloak-and-dagger activities behind enemy lines“; “hole-and-corner intrigue”; “secret missions”; “a secret agent”; “secret sales of arms”; “surreptitious mobilization of troops”; “an undercover investigation”; “underground resistance”

Got me thinking on trying to see if Kerckhoff’s Principle can be applied to member safety and perceived trust.

The following article relate to cryptography and they have been used before by kasper to highlight security concerns. In the code. I feel these laws are universal and can be used to highlight global social networking trust perceptions as related to global member security.

Kerckhoff’s Principle states.
“a cryptosystem should be secure even if everything about the system, except the key, is public knowledge”

The team moves on trust and this perceived trust fluctuates wildly as shown above. The weakest link needs to be located to gain trust.

Social engineering reloaded
Kevin Mitnick,in his book The Art of Deception, goes further to explain that people inherently want to be helpful and therefore are easily duped. They assume a level of trust in order to avoid conflict.

http://www.securityfocus.com/infocus/1860/2

“anyone who thinks that security products alone offer true security is settling for the illusion of security.”

Risky business: Keeping security a secret — zdnet.com
If you depend on a secret for your security, what do you do when the secret is discovered? If it is easy to change, like a cryptographic key, you do so. If it’s hard to change, like a cryptographic system or an operating system, you’re stuck. You will be vulnerable until you invest the time and money to design another system.

How to use cryptography in computer security –itmanagersjournal.com
Myth 3: Secrecy is important for security.
The prevalence of this myth may be attributed to the historical confusion between keeping your data secret and keeping your security algorithms themselves secret. On the contrary, the only worthwhile insurance of security comes from having your algorithm published and well analyzed by as many cryptographers as possible. The principle that security should not rely on algorithms being secret has been well-established for over a century, and various pithy restatements of it are often cited:
“Security should reside only in the key” (Kerckhoff), “The enemy knows the system” (Shannon), and “Anyone can design a cryptosystem which he himself cannot break” (Schneier).

wikipedia.org http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kerckhoffs’_principle
http://www.fplc.edu/risk/vol7/spring/kunreuth.htm

At this juncture, we need to move forward in one of two directions. One path that has been advocated by a number of researchers is to work toward increasing public trust in risk management. While it is much too soon to express either optimism or pessimism about the likely success of this strategy, it is a significantly challenging problem that at the moment appears to have no easy answers.

Now what we need to find out is, does it help making the system public knowledge .Or does it help having a system which is continuously leaking information due to the perception of trust.

Would a system be more secure with the system being public knowledge (only the system not the cases)?

Let us look at the key steps for coercive persuasion typically found in cults.

1. People are put in physically or emotionally distressing situations.
   As a former participant, I can testify that taking part in a collective is both physically and emotionally draining. Simply put, there are too many people in too little room. Sleeping in the living room, getting too little sleep regularly because of the continuous activity, general lack of truly private moments. Many people in the NZ collective needed a “break” (temporarily move out) because of how stressful is was at times.
   Possible solutions
   Separate the working environment from the living environment. Encourage realistic working hours instead of letting people work into the night. Lower the number of participants to suit the venue.
2. Their problems are reduced to one simple explanation, which is repeatedly emphasized.
   The simple explanation given in this case is “We’re all together in this monumental task”. CS as an abstract idea is seen as a supremely important goal and anything that stands in its way (criticism, the law, etc) needs to be pushed aside. “Nonviolent communication” (see previous post) is seen as the only reasonable communication style.
   Possible solutions
   Place CS within the larger context of hospitality networks, cooperate with other organizations on a structural level (seminars, shared initiatives, etc). Get outside experts and expertise that does more than promote the party line. Challenge entrenched viewpoints regularly, create a culture of continuous evaluation. Stop using NVC.
3. They receive unconditional love, acceptance, and attention from the leader.
   I’ll translate a part of a collective participants’ blog (“Doogie”) which I think speaks for itself:
   “The atmosphere is anything but serious or professional. Everyone is more than friendly with each other. At unguarded moment, when you least expect it, you’ll get a heartwarming energy hug or a ‘good work’ pat on the shoulder. It is impossible to be depressed here, because every little dip is countered with the best medicine: a good portion of well meant affection.”
   Possible solutions
   Make rewards realistic and conditional. In essence, compliment someone on a specific job done well, instead of broad emotional rewards. Be a bit more professional, perhaps the constant hugging is not such a good thing?
4. They get a new identity based on the group.
   The “ideal image” is the Burning Man persona: Carefree, the eternal traveler, unbound by relationships, jobs or anything similar, experimental and spiritual. During my time at the NZ collective I saw more than one “spontaneous dress up party”, where suddenly half of your colleagues are dressed in fur coats, bunny ears, half undressed and in various levels of intoxication.
   Possible solutions
   Keep the party out of the collective. Moderate the dressing up and make sure you have a better age/background mix in your volunteers. How many carefree 30 year old North Americans do you really need? Give some room for the “boring” people. (Note that I don’t really care about what one does in their spare time, but if a group is socially pressured into the same behavior I do object.)
5. They are subject to entrapment and their access to information is severely controlled.
   As a volunteer, a collective is financially draining (most participants are relatively poor to begin with), which quickly limits your options to staying at the collective constantly (24/7) or quitting altogether. You are bound by a very restrictive NDA, limiting your career possibilities and ability to communicate with the outside world. Criticism is kept off the CS website through social pressure (hence the existence of this website) and criticism is put on par with “hating” (which is pure indoctrination). Again, a lack of real outside expertise (social academics and more experienced people are actively being held outside of the collective). The collective is organized in a very remote location (New Zealand, Thailand), isolating people from their regular social network.
   Possible solutions
   Pay all of the participants or severely limit the duration. Organize it in a much more accessible location (Europe or North America). Kill the NDA. Make critical evaluation a highly accepted and rewarding activity on CS on all levels (instead of repressing it in the “brainstorm” group).

Any other ideas?

Collective Members Learn a New Way to Talk it Out

Communication is crucial, particularly when considering our growing membership. That’s why volunteers at the Collective are devoting their own time to learn from enthusiastic CouchSurfer, Johnny Colden about Nonviolent Communication (NVC). Collective participants who already have training in this communication technique have found it useful not only in CS member relations, but in their personal and professional relationships as well.

Now, this communication technique called “nonviolent communication” is something that some of the old-timers (like Kasper and me) have seen before at the New Zealand collective. To be able to understand CS, it’s good to try and understand this NVC thing.

The term itself is of course sheer marketing genius: You can’t possibly be pro violent communication can you? However, the odd thing is when it is being applied in a situation (like here) where there is absolutely no evidence of “violence”, except when you stretch (and pretty much redefine) the word to mean “angry” or “direct”. If CS has had trouble, physical violence within the organization or amongst volunteers certainly hasn’t been it. In other words, it is a great example of Newspeak. Oddly enough, NVC does endorse (physical) violence as a means of self-defense [3]. The enormous difficulty of defining self-defense is however ignored (something Ghandi was for instance much better aware off).

The origins are pretty ambiguous as well. It was invented by a guy called Marshall Rosenberg, who now has a “center for nonviolent communication” in… San Fransisco. His “supporting research” is mostly based on domination systems in primate communities [1]. That’s right: monkeys. Of course, this completely disregards not so subtle differences like self-awareness and actual language or any effect rational thinking might have. To the point however, the entire theory is based on the notion that we (still) behave like primates, which is a gross generalization at best. There is no scientific research whatsoever of the effectiveness of NVC in daily life, organizations or elsewhere, making it the same type of “theory” as “intelligent design”, which incidentally is also American in origin.

But what is it about? The goal is to “to observe without evaluation, judgement, or analysis”, “to look for feelings behind words that are expressed”, “to look for unmet needs, connected to these feelings; evaluating which needs are not (yet) being met instead of evaluating actions in ‘right’ and ‘wrong’” and “to make a request how another person could enrich life. Essential in this is that the other person is to be left free to honour or decline the request.” [2]
In essence, it promotes a “feeling” based language as opposed to “critical” thinking. Any kind of moral judgment is to be avoided, as is obligation (things you have to do) or any feeling of guilt. In nonviolent communication one would never say “you should” or even feel guilty for an wrongful action. At best, you can have a “sweet bad” feeling [1]. But, let’s listen to this:

They were not ordered around, for the simple reason that if the chief officials had been told what to do in the form of: you must, you have to, that would not have helped matters any. If the person in question does not like what he is doing, the whole works will suffer. We did our best to make everything somehow palatable.

Where that quote came from might shock you: Adolf Eichmann. If you think quoting Nazi’s is over the top, please realize that Rosenberg himself posits NVC as an antidote to certain lingual techniques described by the Nazis. The fact that there actually is quite some overlap in the ways of redefining language is a sad and somehow frightening irony.

Now, to be fair, NVC has supposedly had quite some success in places like Rwanda, Burundi, Serbia and Ireland, essentially in (war) conflict zones. It is easy to see how a non-judgmental language can help in solving such deeply rooted, civilian and truly violent conflicts.

The elephant in the room, the BIG question however is: What is nonviolent communication doing in CS? Why is it being used in an volunteer organization that has absolutely nothing to do with civilian conflict zones? The consequences of using NVC are highly disruptive for any kind of constructive or even pragmatic work. CS and Casey in particular has repeatedly shown an unwillingness to acknowledge mistakes, which allows those mistakes to endure and be repeated indefinitely, simply because feeling guilty is “violent”. Casey (and Matthew Brauer) repeatedly refuse to state an official answer on critical questions, because “every opinion is equal”. CS would much rather let the issues raised here on OCS hang in the air unanswered than to critically self-examine. It has repeatedly chosen an emotional process over rational thinking. (NVC ignores the possibility that rationality and emotions aren’t such separate entities or that they can coexist easily).

Nonviolent communication in the couchsurfing organization is actually “non communication”. NVC is a horribly ill suited way of communicating in an organization such as CS because it is explicitly against critical thinking and badly suited for any kind of self-improvement. It is a system of avoidance, useful only for being able to ignore any guilt or moral judgment.

It is hard to say what came first to CS: NVC or the avoidance culture. But it seems here to stay.

[1] Marshall B. Rosenberg, The Basics of Nonviolent Communication: An Introductory Training, two video-cassettes, Center for Nonviolent Communication, 2001
[2] Nonviolent communication on Wikipedia.
[3] Advanced Training, Day 1, with Marshall Rosenberg, Ph.D., raising your giraffe consciousness, 6 Jan. 2005, Center for Nonviolent Communication, 4 May 2005

As an happy/sad/ironic side-note, it’s typical to see that the guy that gave an NVC presentation in Thailand (Johnny Colden) put as his occupation on CS: “Dream engineer”. Sigh.

I feel that it’s time we started to take direct action to open up these channels of communication. I’m not suggesting we publish the information on this blog, I don’t think it’s the correct vehicle. I’ve started a discussion on how we might publish this information on the Google Groups mailing list. Please join the conversation.

“I think it was Matrixpoint who said that Casey really insists that he is not the true leader of CS…”

Actually, I don’t know that he ever said this. On the contrary, since I first appeared at the Montreal Collective, and during the following year as a volunteer, I found it very difficult to determine the organizational structure of CS and Casey’s role in it.

Everyone knew that the organizational structure was being revamped as part of CS 2.0, but the only public information I could find was an organizational diagram on the website that showed a central box labeled “Admins and Founders” or the like, months after I left Montreal. I was disturbed to see this for two reasons: 1. the complete lack of detail of the internal structure of this box, and 2. it’s central position, which was in conflict with the agreed upon decentralized organizational structure suggested by the tree model (see the logo of this website) that was created during the Montreal Collective.

There was no particular mention anywhere that Casey was the supreme, unaccountable head of CS. He was only included among the list of 4 founders prominently featured on the website. There were no by-laws to be found. The only information available about the Admins was a brief statement that they were volunteers who helped with important administrative duties involved in running the website. No information about how they got their positions or whether there was a term of office, etc. No information about performance reviews, etc.

As someone who had begun volunteering full-time with the intention of working freely on behalf of the hospitality community for years to come, I sought clarification as to who I was actually working for. I made it clear that my intent was to work for the Community, not for Casey and the Admins unless they were in some way accountable to the Community. Why in the world would I (or anyone) work full time so that Casey and his hand-picked buddies could live it up in exotic locations, unless the Community who provided the support for that had some say in it?

I got no meaningful response to two lengthy requests for information from the Admins beginning in December, 2006. That’s when I started reconsidering my commitment to CS and paying attention to such matters as the NDA (another whole story in itself).

It wasn’t until the following year (in the spring I think) that Casey finally revealed to the developers that he was the sole member of the Board of Directors. (According to Pickwick, Casey’s told a different story to NH government officials).

So, you see, Casey’s style was very indirect. CS 2.0 was supposed to be about members participating in the operation and evolution of CS, and the emphasis was **decentralized** participation. It was “The CouchSurfing Project”, not “Couchsurfing International, Inc., Casey Fenton CEO and sole member of the Board of Directors”. “Do-ocracy” was promoted by at least one of the Admins, and another Admin was generating most of the communication which included a call for member involvement.” No where was it mentioned that these Admins derived all their power from Casey and that he quietly controlled everything with absolute authority. He rarely took a public stand one way or the other, but rather allowed people to form impressions, whether they agreed with his personal agenda or not, that he did nothing to correct.

An example of his indirect style was when he made Chris Burley the new Tech Team leader near the end of the New Zealand Collective. Chris obviously was functioning as Casey’s tool, being used by Casey to shake up the development team (probably due to issues with Joe and Kasper). Chris had very little familiarity with the code or with ongoing initiatives. He only had Casey’s authority backing him up and used it to rule with an iron fist, announcing that no “personal ideologies” would be tolerated and all developer-initiated projects would be put on indefinite hold. (Developers were clearly now to be thought of as order-following employees, but without the pay, not co-participants in a project to make the world a better place.) Casey remained quietly in the background while Chris took most of the heat for Casey’s “house-cleaning”. Chris quietly dropped off the radar by the end of last summer, as if his usefulness as a tool had expired.

What was most disturbing to me about this incident was that not long before this Casey had finally talked with me on the phone (after a 3 month wait) for a few hours and we seemed to have reached a meeting of minds. I explained to him that I would begin no new projects until the NDA was fixed (as he had promised some nine months before). I told him that it was outrageous as it stood. He said nothing in response. But he actually invited me to participate in the formulation of the organizational structure that was in its final stages. I said, yes, I would very much like to be involved. The result of this call was that I felt Casey had heard my concerns and that I now was getting some respect as a full-time volunteer (of more than half a year).

So I was very shocked that Casey appointed Chris, without even consulting me or any of the Tech Team about it, especially since he had the opportunity to discuss it with me on the phone and had given me the impression that he wanted me to be in the loop when it came to organizational issues.

I was even more shocked when I sent him an email saying that although Chris might be a good choice based on his past general contributions (this was before his new personality as a “leader” emerged) but that he didn’t have enough technical knowledge to lead the team, and a least another co-leader who did was needed. Casey never responded to my email.

I was even more shocked when the new organizational structure was announced (completely done in secret), and that what little apparent accountability it seemed to include amounted to nothing.

I was ultimately shocked when the proposed NDA came out (after a year) that was supposed to be the “fixed” version, but it was 10 times worse than the original. It had the feel of the Patriot Act to me. I was utterly uppalled by the mindset that produced it, and by the way this whole drawn-out fiasco was conducted by Casey and his appointed elite.

I certainly felt the trust I had put in Casey as a result of the phone call completely betrayed, and I took the NDA as an indirect message to me that I was no longer wanted as a developer, since I had publicly announced I would no longer begin any new projects if the NDA wasn’t sufficiently fixed.

I would have much preferred that Casey had told me this directly, as I would have preferred that he shake-up the Tech Team himself instead of having a henchman do his dirty work for him.

This is Casey’s style: indirect, manipulative, pulling strings from behind the scenes, while giving a casual, no-worries, laid-back, often non-committal impression in public: a fun guy to party with.

In case any one is wondering whether Casey might have been justified in “cleaning house”, I can say that the 4 core developers made a huge contribution to CS, much more so than Casey, at least in the technical area, for most of the year following the Montreal Collective. (I suspect it was our very success that scared Casey, and threatened his absolute control.) Speaking for myself, the greatest problems I encountered as a volunteer developer were all caused either directly or indirectly by Casey or the Admins due to their arbitrary assertions of power without understanding the situation, extremely poor communication, and poor judgment. Working with the Community, on the other hand, was delightful and I still have those good memories.

John

• Casey might not be the most educated IT guru, but he’s definitely a guru and at this point he’s probably the only person capable of keeping the CouchSurfing website up and running.
• The entire CS “Leadership Team” and Board of Directors consists of Casey’s friends. They would be quite clueless if Casey suddenly disappeared.
• Casey is great. He might not have made the right decisions and I cannot agree with his attitude in many ways, but I am sure that I will feel happy if I will be able to give him a genuine hug again, maybe in 2009.

Still, even legally there is a problem with Casey in a paid position while being a member of the Board. And it would be totally useful if Casey’s ideas about transparency and volunteer participation would change a little bit. Though, also without it, with an estimated half a million US dollars coming in during year 2008 it’s unlikely that the ship will go down any time soon. And I am sincerely happy about that.

Thanks

For your information: this is an extract of the original post by Kasper (http://www.opencouchsurfing.org/2008/01/14/ill-communication/)

Thomas said:

It would be nice if Diederik could speak up about his experience and his own evaluation of the CS organisation.

@Diederik
A (small) word of warning: Speaking out against CS will almost automatically get you lumped in with the “OCSers”, even if you specifically state that you aren’t.

Well, to be honest, I probably already am. Some months ago, I had some posts, also on my own website. Seems that the communication went dead afterwards.

Let’s start at the beginning. I think this gives a better insight in my current feelings towards the Techteam, and in general: the leader of it, and Casey (ok, here comes my ban…)

My CS experience started at my former employer. Walter was a programmer then. I and Walter could (and still can) get along quite well, and I was invited in his house.
There were several great people, which had the same “frequency” (another word of saying we could get along, but that sentence would became corny ). I met Duke, Aldo, Tiina, Paul and some others I forgot due to the use of ethanol My current position then was system engineer, and I was asked for that position at couchsurfing.

That would become handy, because of the start of the Rotterdam Tech Collective. Some several others were there too. Anu* (love!), Weston, Naz (great friend), Chris where several of them.
I got introduced with Nicco and we had great chats about the code (I’m not a programmer, so having some insight is perfect for me), system engineering, the couchsurfing system etc, etc. At that time, there were several things an issue. Nicco and I (as the only admins, besides some Indian people) started to work.

We had an agenda, and could start.

Several issues were addressed quite quick. Most of them are not-to-be-disclosed, but several were visible from the outside:

• Lesser downtime because of an OSS loadbalancer
• Monitoring
• More webservers which run an *UP-TO-DATE* OS (Visible through the headers of Apache)(I believe that this was an great deal, yeah, check http://www.opencouchsurfing.org/wiki/Security_Concerns).

That time, the collective was already 3 months (or something like that) in the past. Several people came to become “sysadmin”, Nicco was degraded as leader, while Weston became TT-Leader (managing dev and sysadmin). Communication became less and less. From some times, we couldn’t reach Casey, which was our first contact for the code. At that time, my irritation began (my irritation towards the OCS was already there ). Could some parts from OCS be *INDEED* true?

(Anu isn’t really stupid, you know, and Daz is just Daz and should drop dead, etc etc ) At that time, it seemed to *ME* that some people were only busy programming, and not with management.

We had a great CSInterklaas weekend, and the Thai-collective started. We had several “incidents” before and after that (not-to-be-disclosed), and my irritation was at top. When I decided to resign (1 week ago) at the same time the poweroutage at the datacenter happened. Bad timing… Or probably not, because there were some more “incidents”.

This morning, I pulled the plugs from cs-sysadmins, cs-erc, cs-devel(|public). At my desktop is a Freemind scheme (http://freemind.sourceforge.net, go get it) with my thoughts, idea’s and remedies. I had the idea to post it in the CS-Sysadmin group for learning. If only someone would not only *READ* it, but also *REPLY* to it. Therefor, I decided not to do so. I have the feeling that I’m being ignored, so why should I put more energy in it?

From my opinion (an censored version of the mindmap):

• Where’s the communication?
  We are having more and more people, which asks more communcation to happen. The group only has 3 or 4 skype-meetings, and no real agenda. LT has, I believe that dev has. Why doens’t sysadmin have one?Miscommunications happen too often. Get a good IRC channel, AND STICK WITH IT. Use it like SVN, and make sure that you are the only one working on one problem.
• Weston should resign from being a techteam-leader.
  Weston is a great guy (as well as Casey btw), but he is a programmer (as well as Casey). I believe that Casey and Weston should either resign from sysadminning and start programming OR do resign from both, and become a real manager (that is: delegate and check).
• Get things prioritized
  Sticks with the communication part. Changing passwords is not an problem, but if changing OSes is having an higher priority, get that done.
• Have more communication between CS-Sysadmin and development
  Commit often
  Commit the build to the webservers *NOT* often, but on an weekly base, and *COMMUNICATE* what the differences are. This ensures that everyone knows what is going on, and can act upon unexpected behaviour…
• Learn from mistakes
  D’oh

Let’s end with some positive notes:

• I met all those great people. Some of those I want to mention: Nicco (thanks mate), Anu, Naz, Aldo (thanks a lot with the thinking), Martine (hug), Stijn, and all those others. Not to mention all those people that we hosted, will host, and I blatantly forgot.
• I still believe that CS works. It needs to change. An negative one here is that I don’t believe that that will happen in the near future.
• I still will be hosting with my girlfriend. We have a lively community in Rotterdam, which I love.
• I seem to understand better and better where this OCS is all about. I only hope that I won’t reach the cynical level of communication that some of OCS have. At the same moment I feel that I will become only more bitter.

I guess that the post shuld be called “Casey Love”, the feeling that you were loved, but the other end just decides to move on to the next one.

Love from Rotterdam!

Diederik (And Frank Sinatra… “The best is yet to come”)

p.s. When resigning from cs-sysadmins this morning, I saw the description of the group. Guess that this one is not NDA bound:

“Description: This group is free from political agendas and personal ideologies. It is a place to serve the one of the core needs(server administration) of the CS Organization in order to make sure that the members have access to the site at all times so that they can experience inter cultural understanding.”

Kasper: “major source of income”

Is that income needed? Surely a much smaller stream of new members, recruited in a better way, could raise the moderate amounts necessary to pay server costs, paper clips and a few postage stamps.

Current spending is mostly for
A) salaries, and I think we had much better quality work from the volunteers “no longer retained”;
B) the exodus to Thailand, and I have yet to see any actual WORK mentioned that was done there in the 31 days of December (other than picking the place for January).

So the money seems to benefit those who make the decisions. Thankfully we are a charity now and published accounts have to be more accurate and more detailed than hitherto. Which reminds me that there are still areas of concern regarding the charitable status:

1. The financial statements online are still not identical with the ones filed with the US tax authorities and the New Hampshire charities regulators.

2. Casey may have perjured himself by stating falsely to the Attorney General that from 2003 to 2006 the company had several directors besides himself. The major reason for that could be that the truth may affect the legality of his own employment.

a) New Hampshire law requires a minimum of five directors, so with Casey as sole director the company had no legally composed Board of Directors. For that reason alone contracts entered into during that time may be invalid, including the employment contract he made with himself.

b) Casey as sole director signed his own employment contract on the dotted lines of both sides of the contract. There could not be a more blatant violation of all ‘conflict of interest’ principles, and for that reason alone this contract may be invalid.

c) New Hampshire law does not allow the chairman/president of a charity to be an employee at the same time. So when Casey as chairman/president signed his own employment contract he violated that law, and for this reason alone the contract may be invalid.

d) If Casey’s employment contract is invalid, he will have received his salaries without legal grounds, and may have to pay ~$70,000 back to the company. (That, and the other ~$70,000 of accumulated profits in the bank should keep CouchSurfing going for a good many years to come, as a volunteer based charity, without ill prepared world trips for the management.)

At the New Hampshire Department of Justice the case has been queued for review by an investigator in early 2008. My advice to the new Board of Directors is: sort it out before they start asking questions.

To sum up: I don’t think money is a valid argument to continue this unhealthy growth pattern.

It’s so beyond anything that it’s very funny, and merely deserves to be laughed at.

The burning question is just: Who will be asked to sign this monstrous document?

We’re researching which visa type collective volunteers will need.

Later in the same paragraph:

CouchSurfing will ensure that all participants are in Thailand on the legal and appropriate visa, and that they are able to stay for the duration of the Collective.

The collective is due to start on 1 December, that’s in 6 days. Yet apparently they’re still researching visas? If I had volunteered to go to Thailand to participate, I’d expect to know by now what visa I need.

Volunteers are required to stay for a minimum of 2 months. To stay in Thailand for 2 months you need a visa, and you need to get that visa before you arrive. Visas on arrival are for 30 days and getting to the border and back can be costly depending on where the collective will be held.

I hope the volunteers are aware of the situation and have considered the consequences of volunteering for CouchSurfing, I fear most have not.

What was missing, as usual, was any sort of external verification. Casey helpfully provided a link to the Wikipedia page on 501(c)(3) status and an irs.gov page for those eager to learn more. Neither of these links have directly relate to CouchSurfing, nor do they do anything to confirm CouchSurfing’s current legal status, or confirm that any application for 501(c)(3) status has been filed.

There was no link to a copy of the paperwork, no postal tracking number, no evidence whatsoever that anything has been filed anywhere. There was no copy of any filed paperwork regarding CouchSurfing’s current status, no links showing that “non-profit” status cannot be easily revoked in New Hampshire. As usual, we are expected to trust our “visionary leader”.

Personally, I think it’s clear that Comrade Casey felt the pressure from Pickwick’s legal questions, and the openCS campaign in general. The response was as usual, ignore, ignore, ignore, then organise a seemingly unrelated press stunt to make people feel better without actually proving anything.

In conclusion, until I see independent confirmation that CouchSurfing has filed for 501(c)(3) status, I will consider it a possibility at best. It is clear to me that the CouchSurfing leadership cannot be taken at their word.

What’s the major difference between the CS ambassadors and what we propose?

1. CS ambassadors are appointed from “above”. Depending on the level you wish to attain, the group that decided changes to higher levels, so it might be other ambassadors, up to LT. Community ambassadors would be elected from the local community.
2. CS ambassadors have to follow a “code of ethics”, which ironically includes accepting the legally dubious terms of use. Not only is protesting any of that de-facto not allowed (you can only accept or you don’t get to be ambassador), it may require you to agree to semi-legal and ethically dubious rules and systems. Community ambassadors do not have such a code, but would be judged for their behaviour, which obviously includes real ethics.
3. CS ambassadors get a “job” description, like organizing meetings, etc. Community ambassadors would be required to outline a program before their elections.

In general, I would say the official CS ambassadorship looks much more like a corporate job than anything else. There is a job description, an appointment process (including fairly subjective selections) and even a contract (“code of ethics” – cough). Or, in other words, a CS ambassador is representative of the Couchsurfing corpganization. By contrast, a community ambassador would be much more about being a representative of the local community instead.

The resulting proverbial shitstorm that resulted from the announcement was both predictable and suprising. Predictable because it obviously threatens some people’s positions (even indirectly). Suprising because so many of the LT cliché’s popped up in the discussion. Arguments and techniques that seemed to come straight from the LT playbook. Let me give you some examples:

1. “It is really easy to participate, just apply! Why are you complaining?”
   It’s easy to participate as long as you agree to everyting yes. Groupthink example nr 1.
2. ” We are just doing the best we can here! Why are you complaining?”
   The sympathy card. Avoidance tactic nr 1.
3. “We’re not a closed group (the ambs), we just didn’t make an agenda because it was a private meeting/we didn’t have time/…”
   This wouldn’t be accepted in any other non-profit. Meetings behind closed doors? Please. Groupthink nr 2.
4. “Democracy is a wonderful thing but it is not applicable to all organisational structures.”
   The poster did apologize for this, but still one of the major points seems to be that democracy for some weird reason can’t work in CS, the evidence of countless democratic non-profits being discarded in one swift stroke. Avoidance tactic nr 2.
5. “Please give us feedback instead of complaining.”
   This basically is the brainstorming red herring: allow people to “provide input” to be able to ignore what you don’t like while still looking like you “care”. Whatever. I disagree with the way ambs are choosen, period. That means I don’t want to provide legitimacy to what you’re doing by giving you suggestions. Although, I do have one suggestion: resign and participate in the election instead of clinging to your current position. Avoidance tactic nr 3.
6. “I don’t support the whole election but I will not block it in any way.”
   This is basically claiming ownership over something you don’t have. Elections don’t need amb support, it needs people support. Groupthink nr 3.
7. ” You will always get a quick and honest reply for us, as we are the CS freaks.”
   How this can be claimed in any serious way is beyond me. You’re probably not even allowed to talk about certain things.
8. “You’re just being paranoid.”
   Thanks buddy, but I don’t think you’ve met a real paranoid person in your life – I have. Personal attack, yay!
9. And then came the stuff that really reminded me of the LT:
   “Would you please stop this discussion? It damages the CS project a lot. [...] for us, CS-members, it seems a lot of bullshit! and a lot of spam too !!!!!”
   immediatly followed by:
   “I’ll create a group within the antwerp group about the election so we can have our discussions over there without bothering the people too much…”
   This made me so angry, to see that same argument “you’re all a bunch of haters, go away!” followed up by the same kind of censorship “please step over here sir, so the good people can’t hear your complaints”.

The only tactics that haven’t been tried (yet):

1. Permanent silencing. (Deleting posts and or manually moving threads.)
2. Discredit the people/movement behind this. (Although point 9 is pretty close to that.)
3. Direct threats (remember the “your account will be closed if you make vague legal threats thing?”)

Shameful. Shameful and painful.

Thomas

This post quotes the complete gag order (I don’t feel comfortable quoting the rest right now, maybe they’ll throw a infringement of copyrights on me :

“CouchSurfing’s new policy is to end all correspondence and immediately suspend the account of any member who notifies CouchSurfing of an intent to pursue a legal action. This policy is for the protection of CouchSurfing members.”

My reply:
“So the options are
a) just take it and shut up about standing up for your legal rights (can CS *really* ditch the laws of every other country except for the US for all eternity?)

b) NOT tell CS if you are going to take legal action – isn’t it more protective of the members to at least give a fair warning before said action takes place?

IF I didn’t know how crooked some of the stuff is and has been at times (not saying all of it, and everyone of the leadership team / whoever in charge all the time), this just tops it.

So let’s get this straight: I’ve in fact donated time and money (multiple times) to an organization that will NOT give half a thought about protecting its members’ legal rights internationally, in the form of not being in any way responsive to any kinds of inquiries (considered threats in here in any way you state them I assume) of getting them enforced? Am I getting it right?”

The full email follows…

Dear Sucker,

This message is to give you an update about the technology behind the CouchSurfing website. We’re making exciting improvements to our website hardware, software, and volunteer Tech Team that we want to make you aware of.

On Thursday, November 9th, at 1:00am in New York, 6:00am in Paris, 10:30am in Delhi, and 4:00pm in Sydney, the CS website will be unavailable for a brief period of up to 4 hours while we install new hardware that runs the website software. This necessary downtime will replace some outdated hardware and improve the site’s speed and reliability in order to keep pace with our growing membership. To prepare for this down time, please make sure you write down or print out any important information you may need during the outage.

Thanks to your support and enthusiasm, CouchSurfing is now the largest website of its kind, with over 60,000 people using the site each week and over 10,000 members meeting each other face-to-face each week! We’re taking action in advance to prepare for the needs of our growing community. As we make these upgrades during November, you may experience other unannounced website outages, but we expect these to be few and brief.

CouchSurfing’s volunteer Tech Team has been acting literally around the clock from several time zones to fix the issues effecting our email delivery system. For several days scattered over the past few weeks, emails were delivered up to a day late, and we understand the frustration that can cause. We’re happy to report that the Tech Team now has the issue under control, and we thank them for their determined efforts.

Thanks also goes to our new Tech Team Coordinator, Weston Hankins. Bringing Weston on board has been a huge score for CS. Weston has previously worked for automaker, Daimler Chrysler, and he co-developed core aspects of the Microsoft Windows operating system. He was willing to leave his high-profile employers and volunteer for CS because he shares our mission and love of travel.

Providing CouchSurfing’s free service depends on the amazing output of our dedicated volunteers including Weston, the Tech Team, and many others. We’re always seeking more help to continue to provide members with excellent service.

If you are a professional Linux system administrator with several years experience and knowledge of distributed file systems, load balancing, or database replication, please contact us.

We look forward to providing all members with improved website performance and reliable email delivery in the next month and into the future.

Happy CouchSurfing,

–Casey Fenton

A charity needs to be non-profit, but not every non-profit organisation is automatically a charity.

A Non-Profit Corporation can’t pay the owner a dividend. He has to pay himself (or others) a salary instead, which he does ($88,150.22 since 2005, for salaries, payroll taxes, and temporary help). The rest of the money needs to be piled up on the company’s books: there’s an ‘emergency fund’ of $30,000 and accumulated ‘net income’ of $40,135.89 from 2004 to date. Other than that, a Non-Profit Corporation, which is NOT a charity, can do whatever it wants with its money like any other privately owned company. This includes the possibility of one day dissolving the company, or changing its status to For-Profit, and cashing in.

A CHARITABLE non-profit corporation will have a clause in its corporate bye-laws where corporate assets are dedicated to charitable purposes. It receives tax privileges, and in exchange comes under public supervision and is subject to reporting and disclosure duties. It will be much more difficult for individuals to profit, and if done right, even impossible.

The confusion is understandable because colloquially the terms ‘charity’ and ‘non-profit’ are sometimes used as if synonym. The problem here is that this misunderstanding might be intentionally exploited. Ultimately the proof whether an organisation is or isn’t a charity lies in the public register of charities, both on State and Federal level, neither of which contains an entry for this company.

So the logical conclusion is that either it is NOT a charity and claims that it is are false, or it IS a charity, in which case it has not complied with registration, reporting and disclosure duties. In either case, as a NON-charity, or as a NON-REGISTERED (unrecognised) charity, any charitable solicitations, for money or volunteers’ time, might be illegal.

1. What that you ever did for CouchSurfing.com entitles you to take this kind of action?
2. What is your interest in harming CouchSurfing.com?

To me these reactions indicate that the community at large does not recognise a crucial difference between civil litigation and criminal prosecution. The former is a legal procedure between two parties, each with their private interests; the latter is between ‘the people’ and whoever harms the public interest.

That’s right, the public interest, and CS users would do good to realise that they are the public here. Just some points for consideration:

• If you decide to donate a (substantial) amount of money to CouchSurfing because you think it is a charity, only to find out it isn’t because the IRS fines you for illicit tax deductions, your interest is being harmed.
• If you decide to donate valuable time as a volunteer to CouchSurfing because you think it is a charity, only to find out you’ve made a fool of yourself because you put free slaving on your resume, your interest is being harmed.
• If Casey decides to sell your user data to a third party for a neat sum, and this party turns out to be a spammer, your interest is being harmed.
• If you decide to donate code and programming effort to CouchSurfing because you’re an idealist and you believe in its cause, only to find out that Casey sells CouchSurfing International inc. to a large commercial player that turns CS into a paid service, your interest is being harmed.

To return to the responses I started with, it will be clear that the potential harm to the public interest is all the moral entitlement Pickwick needs for his actions. Second, they aren’t even his actions to begin with, let alone they could serve a private interest; if the New Hampshire DA sees sufficient reason to prosecute, they are the public’s actions.

Not to try and stop Pickwick, but whether to encourage him to work under the banner of OpenCouchSurfing or whether to keep a distance between the two.

I’d like to warmly invite people to share their views here. I’ve also started a similar discussion on the mailing list.

When we met matrixpoint last week in Boston, he mentioned that he doesn’t like to be reminded of the red couch every time he’s visiting the OpenCouchSurfing website. First we jokingly thought, maybe of adding some black. But amylin decided that transparent silverish looks better, and I fully trust her in these matters.

I hope no one will seriously object to changing the color of the couch.

Ulf: “brought up only to be able to point out (once more) to how that mean, mean LT has not come up with them!!!”

How do you know? I brought this up because innocent volunteers were made to violate Thai law and risk jail, and I decided to do what I could to stop it.

Ulf: “I wonder why those authors would not first of all contact the organizers, tell them about those concerns”

How do you know they didn’t?

Ulf: “an appropriate amount of time to answer (2 weeks)”

It doesn’t take two weeks to answer “are you aware that a business visa and work permit are required?” In two minutes you can say either: “Yes, and we’ll brief all applicants fully”, or: “No, good gracious, thanks for telling us, we’ll check immediately, any more help you can give?”

Ulf: “that mean, mean LT”

Some who’ve met the people came here with pain, disappointment, and feeling their trust betrayed. I’m not one of them. I don’t know anybody.

From an outside view I think something happened I’ve seen many times, as consultant, and as participant, in new political parties, family businesses, charities:

The founder generation leaves a second generation power vacuum, by appointing mediocrity, so that their own power isn’t challenged, and their own glory doesn’t pale against real professional competence. I don’t think they are mean. I think they are overwhelmed by their responsibilities.

Because they don’t have what it takes to do this job they don’t react professionally, but try to lie when caught blundering. And when caught lying, they feel with their backs to the wall and try to bully. The inappropriateness of those acts backfired, so the strategy now is to be silent or evasive. It’s neither wicked nor original. It’s human nature. It comes from making inept appointments, in an inept organisational structure.

Since a management style has been established that sidelines criticism by applying naked power unchecked, change will only occur if and when there is a sense of real crisis. I would have preferred it to be an internal crisis, brought on by a ‘rebellion’ here, about censorship or communication, rather than something that puts volunteers in a Thai jail, or leaves surfers stranded all over the globe should the site go down (again).

But I no longer hope for the ‘internal crisis’ option. Non-communication from above, most noticeably from Casey (the only voice that counts), and the resulting tedious repetitiveness of criticism, has left people with nothing else to talk about than each other, and that seems to have worked regrettably well. All are at each other’s throats, and blaming each other for it too. The issues fade.

It’s like the man shouting: “Move, Liz! Car coming!” and she replies: “Not in this tone, Henry!”

Copied with Pickwick’s permission

CouchSurfing now has 4 full time, paid members of staff. That’s a 300% increase in professional resources within the organisation. What exactly are all these professionals doing?

Here’s a few things they’re not doing which they could be doing.

• Publishing finances, up to the minute (it’s really not hard)
• Getting 501(c)(3) status (again, really not hard)
• Publishing LT meeting minutes (extremely easy)
• Getting a new NDA sorted (seriously, it doesn’t take 15 months)

Perhaps they’re too busy partying, having threesomes, burning da man, banning people from the wiki, spreading the verification disease, etc. Who knows eh?

503 Service Unavailable

No server is available to handle this request.

I hope this will be quickly resolved. Still, funny how this technical issue coincides with CS’s dodgy legal status.

An addition, after some complaints about this blog post, which is, I contend, a bit silly on its own…

The dodgy legal status of CS is related to the financial situation. A 501(c)(3) status means paying less tax, and complete transparency (if a politician in San Francisco can make his Quicken books public, in real-time, why not CS?).

And it’s clear how finances and server issues are related. The time and money Casey spent on partying with Jim on his birthday (and renting a limo) would have been better invested in server hardware and maintenance.

It’s getting heart breaking in here. And cold. Icy cold. All the ‘open source’ and ‘charity’ debate left me disagreeing, but unhurt. This Thai project does me in.
www.couchsurfing.com/collective_thailand_application.html

First the cold, demanding, uppity language itself. Then what looks like a “suck ‘em dry & spit ‘em out” attitude of present and future ‘Volunteer Coordination’. Then the cynicism luring generous, well meaning people to commit crimes and risk jail for lying to immigration police in a post 9/11 world.
www.couchsurfing.com/group_read.html?gid=429&post=401914#pos…

Shame on you. Shame on those who do it. Shame on those who sit close by and watch in silent complicity. It’s time to hold Casey & Friends accountable, if not to members, then at least to the law.

The Royal Thai Government have received a formal query about the immigration requirements for the project. They know you are coming, so you better cut out the criminal part of your plan.

The charity question needs a decision. Casey opened his mouth in 2003, and he now either sings, or shuts it again. No more smoke screens. Run the show how you think you must, but run it well, and stop lying. A thoroughly documented formal query about possible Unlawful Charitable Solicitations will be placed before the Attorney General of New Hampshire “practically tomorrow”. My advice: hurry and be there first, with a genuine charity.

Another Hyperboard was opened by “Mentor” with whom I’ve been in touch through email and chat, without knowing his or her identity. Mentor had also set up thecouchsurfingbuilding2.hyperboards.com, which was a huge collection of messages, and random information, with funny and sometimes harsh comments. In the beginning I think it was kind of silly, but I gradually started to appreciate the board. So I wasn’t happy when I saw it was closed a while ago.

Now Mentor is back with a new board: opencouchsurfing.hyperboards.com!

October 2nd Addition

Apparently the opencouchsurfing hyperboard, which is not accessible anymore now, was not started by Mentor of thecouchsurfingbuilding2 hyperboard. Also, as you can read in the comments on this posts, Mentor never took part in the public discussions that are OpenCS. Let’s discuss it on the mailinglist first if you think a public OpenCS forum is a good idea,

It’s finally time to let go of all my remaining ties to volunteering in CouchSurfing, a few words about the why, if you will…

It wasn’t a bad year (1) In fact, it was a very good year. How often do you get a chance to see the world, settle down a bit in places, work for the things you believe in and meet the people you’ve been craving to meet all your life?

I’m still coming to terms with my feelings of this year, and CS more specifically. There’s a strong component of unjust treatment, and many questions which are to date not answered. I could probably write a book about all this but this will have to wait until a later date (you might want to check here in the near future though (2)

There’s definitely some anger: after all, I started doing CS work after already been burned once in a volunteering setting (3) and for this reason really did not want or need a second similar experience. However, I got one. What makes me angry is not the “wasted time” itself, it’s more the fact that had I known the fundamental attitudes (4, 5) of the leadership a year ago, I would probably not have started volunteering to such an extent – my anger is more directed towards concealing these attitudes (with lack of real communication there was no way of telling what the admins were thinking) rather than having them in the first place – for at least it would have offered an opportunity for me to choose if these were the kinds of people I’d like to work with (or as it seems, for). This by now almost feels like purposeful deception to lure in willing volunteers (6).

There’s also sadness: thinking of what might have been, the possibilities for creating real difference, all in vain. And not because people, the community didn’t want it, they were ready to take CS to the next level, to decentralize (7) along with the mission crafted up after the big crash of 2006 (7, 8 ) to create a better world, one couch at a time. No, it was the attitudes of the leaders, lack of any real communication by them, lack of meaningful, respectful dialogue with the community or even volunteers who are actively striving to make things better that stopped (sometimes even reversed) (9) the momentum of the community to decentralize itself. I also feel sad that this potential of the community was never recognized by those in power and that corporate structures, top-down management and weeding out all possibility to self-organize were seen as the only way to go forward – where’s the space for diversity, more bohemian attitudes towards life and independent thinking that are very present in the spirit of this community?

But there’s (always?) a silver lining: if it wasn’t through CS, it would have probably taken me years longer to find the people I connected and hope to continue working with (some, though by means not all of them here: 10,11) to create a better world, one whatever (Line of code? Guest bed? Idea? Freedom?) at a time!

I’d like to thank all the great people I have worked with and met on my 21st century version of the”Grand Tour” (11). Regardless of my issues with the leaders at the moment, I believe the rest of you are still good people and deserve far more credit and appreciation than what you’re given now.

Finally, just a fair warning from someone who cares about all of you: please keep your eyes open before jumping in the deep end with CS or if you’re there already, and don’t stop asking the questions (13) in case there’s something worrying you…

Goodbye, and happy surfing,
Anu

1. http://anujossain.blogspot.com
2. http://www.opencouchsurfing.com/author/anu/
3. http://anujossain.blogspot.com/2007/09/dj-vu.html
4. http://www.couchsurfing.com/group_read.html?gid=7161&post=329495#post332871
5. http://www.couchsurfing.com/group_read.html?gid=7161&post=329495#post331893
6. http://www.opencouchsurfing.org/2007/08/22/follow-the-money/
7. http://www.couchsurfing.com/recovery_page.htm
8. http://www.opencouchsurfing.org/2007/08/23/the-beginning-of-the-end-of-cs-20/
9. http://wiki.couchsurfing.com/en/Idea_to_feature:_lessons_learned (original)
http://www.opencouchsurfing.org/wiki/Idea_to_feature:_lessons_learned (backup)
10. http://www.bevolunteer.org
11. http://www.crashatmine.org
12. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Tour
13. http://www.couchsurfing.com/group_read.html?gid=429&post=379068