Archive for the 'couchsurfing' Category

The Couchsurfing culture of party-hosting

Published
by
robino
on October 22, 2008
in couchsurfing
. 34 Comments

With CS getting more mainstream day by day, the culture of hosting might also be changing. Christopher Culver raises this interesting issue on the hitchhiking forum on Couchsurfing. “Does anyone else get the impression that the CS hosting community is becoming less friendly to hitchhikers? I was shocked when two of the hosts I stayed with this summer expressed their disappoval of hitchhiking, considering it ‘freeloading’.”

Chris also puts forward the question: “what experiences have you had as the Couchsurfing hosting community is shifting from a bunch of freespirited wanderers to everyday people with strict schedules and expectations?” And subsequently he concludes: “It feels like we are being forced out of our own community.”

This might be a very valid point. Couchsurfing, Bewelcome or Hospitality Club for that matter, are these still the networks of travelers supporting fellow-travelers? There are still lots of great hosts and travelers around, but somehow - due to the popularity of the network - it is also becoming more and more a network of people that are just looking for entertainment, other people to ‘party’ and get drunk with. Further to that, it does not necessarily has to be a coincidence either that the news-wire of CS has been full with party-events in the past couple of months.

But then again - on the others hand - CS still provides you a pool of lots of different people, which means you just have to be selective in picking the right host. Or like Sanne says in the same forum, “I guess my conclusion is: it’s not bad that ‘normal’ people are hosting, it’s just different. I think it’s a good thing that couchsurfing is turning into a thing for everyone. And yes, that means that you do have to put some more effort in selecting the right host for you.”

A Couchsurfing Career Life With Benefits that Money Can’t Buy

Published
by
robino
on October 15, 2008
in Collective, Corpganization, Matthew Brauer, couchsurfing, employees and volunteer coordination
. 3 Comments

Have you always wanted to be a “Ambassador Management Coordinator” or “Safety Systems Coordinator” for CouchSurfing? Now you can! CS published their “career openings“, or “couchsurfing careers“. Since these openings are not even linked from anywhere on the CS-website yet, you might stand a fairly good chance (it got posted!) to get one of the 14 full-time jobs, and become part of their family.

You may wonder why so many talented people volunteer for CS when they could have high paying jobs in the corporate world. The reason is that CS provides benefits they can’t find anywhere else. We live and breath CouchSurfing, and we are all a family.

Although you have to pay your first travel to the “Couchsurfing Base Camp” yourself, CS provides all full-time volunteers and employees “with free housing and meals”. In addition, each full-time staff member “has the opportunity to live abroad for several months of each year at one of our amazing Collective locations while maintaining a home and life in the San Francisco Bay Area”.

If you are the lucky enough to get one of the 14 listed full-time jobs, you will first have to go trough a three month trial period, after which you will be rewarded with “travel tickets, travel expense reimbursements and eventually paid salaries”. However, you will have to consent to your bos(ses) (”supervisors”) and keep yourself to the following social rules, meaning that you shall

- maintain positive references from other surfers or hosts.
- treat your team supervisors and other volunteers with respect.
- follow standards and procedures established by teams you work with.
- follow priorities and objectives established by the team supervisors.
- communicate in a calm and compassionate tone (’thou shalt not flame’).

So what are you waiting for, go and apply for your role! Current (as per 1st of November) “openings” include:

Administrative Assistant; Ambassador Management Coordinator; Database Administrator; Developer, Events Coordinator; Human Resources & Personnel Coordinator; Marketing Coordinator; Member Communications Coordinator & Writer; Safety Systems Coordinator; System Administrator; Gardener / Landscaper; IT Assistant; Trainer, Educator, Coach, or Expert.

Note that there are currently 14 full-time positions available, while there are only 15 people supposed to stay and live in the Couchsurfing Base Camp. At the moment though, according to Matthew, there are already 15 people living there…

Hidden CS features: stealthing members

Published
by
littleseed
on October 4, 2008
in Censorship and couchsurfing
. 7 Comments

There is a hidden feature in CS, about what few people know.

No official documentation, except this page:
http://wiki.couchsurfing.com/en/Stealth

When a member get “stealthed” he can’t be found with the CouchSearch but just trough friend links or group links.

If he writes a message, it goes nowehere and it’s never received by its recipient.
Sometimes all his outgoing messages are completely removed.

If someone writes him a message, he doesn’t receive it.

Seems a “nice” way to deactivate an user without deleting it.
Of course the user is not notified at all of the decision taken about him.
It’s always the “polite” American culture, like in facebook, notifying a friend add but not a friend removal.

It doesn’t seem a very transparent feature of CS.
It’s a quite funny feature too, once there were two guys (a guest and a host), both logged in CouchSurfing on two different computers in the host’s house and one was able to find the other’s profile but not vice-versa. :))

Overall, seems that there is not a clear process of who, how and for what should be stealthed.
I doubt it is ruled by “CS safety team” by personal evaluations, prone to prejudices and nepotism.

And, in my opinion, not a good service to the CS community, “hiding” members.

Did anyone know something more about it?

A good day!

littleseed

Couchsurfing Base Camp

Published
by
robino
on October 1, 2008
in Censorship, Collective, Leadership Circle, Matthew Brauer and couchsurfing
. 4 Comments

“I live at the CouchSurfing Base Camp with 14 other people in the heart of downtown Berkeley. It’s close to lot’s of great food, shopping, entertainment, and student life. I’m still just learning about Berkeley myself. Base Camp is busy day and night as the home and office for much of CS’s full-time staff. It’s fun to see how CouchSurfing is run, but not a good place to hang out during the day”, says Matthew Brauer on his CS profile.

The base-camp was already announced in the latest post of the CS Alaska Collective. “Currently, our very talented scout, Pinkfish, who found our dream location in Pai, Thailand, as well as this amazing house in Homer, Alaska, is searching for a living and office space to house fifteen full-time volunteers and staff for the next 12 months in the San Francisco Bay Area, California.”

What a surprise to read though that the Base Camp is already there, while it was clearly communicated on August the 20th that “before we move in, we’ll post the available volunteer roles at Base Camp and at the next Collective that will most likely begin in November. Maybe one of these roles has your name on it!”

- No.

still extremely negative

Published
by
robino
on August 6, 2008
in Collective and couchsurfing
. 0 Comments

No more extremes? CS updated their reference system, following examples by other hospitality networks. This is not the only change that had been implemented during the latest Alaska CS collective. In fact, a whole lot of bugs have been tackled [ 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 ]. Weird though that, according to this post in the brainstorm group, it took over a year (!) to repair the translation tool, with the result that “lots of people have turned their back to the project.” Now, that’s what you can call volunteer-empowerment.

Managing Corporate Sponsorships

Published
by
robino
on June 10, 2008
in Collective, Finances, Leadership Circle, Matthew Brauer and couchsurfing
. 11 Comments

Why would CS need someone able “to raise funds of more than $100.000″? Why was Matthew looking for someone with “demonstrated success in negotiating and managing corporate sponsorships” to participate with the collective in Alaska?

The person who got the job, the new Fundraising Guru, wants “to engineer and implement a comprehensive, sustainable fundraising and PR strategy which will enable the CS team to maintain, develop and promote CS, and its services, well into the future, in the most economical and efficient way possible.” Uhm, will CS be sponsored by a travel company soon, or is it just a solo idea that came out of the hood of Matthew? Why would a CS fund-raiser need that specific skill-set?

Communications deception or concealment

Published
by
jerme
on May 31, 2008
in Collective, General Info, Uncategorized and couchsurfing
. 9 Comments

MANDIE M May 24th, 2008 - 5:17 am on this thread

The blog is on its way.
This is my second day at the Collective and
I have to admit that I dropped the ball on getting the blog set up before my arrival.

MANDIE M posts again on May 28th, 2008 - 1:52 am but makes no mention of the blog.

Walter Heck 28th, 2008 - 3:11 pm The blog is here: blog.couchsurfing.com

Taking a look at the blog shows the thread
Welcome to the Collective! May 25th, 2008

Now was this a intentional or was Mandie concealing the blog till she got an ‘official’ response from her boss ?

Mandie reminds me of Dana Perino the current White House Press Secretary for President George W. Bush [1]

Also reminds me of the White House Press policy

“No one charged with keeping the press and the public informed about the workings of the government should have to play such frustrating games,” McClellan writes.

But “it was clear,” he writes, that the president’s definition of necessary would “keep the press secretary on a pretty short leash.” This included being barred from key internal decision-making discussions,

“The more filtered information is, the less accurate it’s likely to be,” said Hess, a presidential scholar at the Brookings Institution.

“The more typical press secretary spends a good deal of his or her time trying to find out what’s going on,” he said. “They’re up against a lot of people who are busy and who don’t really trust the press. … You’ve got to be pretty insistent.”

She’s knocking on your door!

Published
by
robino
on April 16, 2008
in Campaigns, Proactive Action, couchsurfing and networks
. 4 Comments

She’s the one that moves me! She is the one that takes me where I want to be! SHE found a church to share thoughts on sustainable hospitality exchange. The space SHE found is just awesome, it provides over 100 chairs, 7 tables, space for plenary sessions, space for workshops, space for art-exhibitions, a bar we can organise ourselves and… four toilets! She moves me alright!

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!

the bad guy on our couches

Published
by
pia
on April 7, 2008
in Censorship, Participation, couchsurfing, legal and people
. 15 Comments

hi guys,
there is this bad guy bouncing around our couches and taking things with him that doesn t belong to him.he is leaving behind empty pockets and broken hearts. I have researched his way around Europe and he has been doing this on CS since spring 2006. I will write a story on him and how the CS is handling his case. There is a self-defensive system going: people warn each other, start threads, etc., which is fine. I just have the impression, that the leadership is slowing this down. Anyone who wants to give me his opinion about it or speak up for the contrary I would appreciate to get to know your arguments. Please send me a Mail via CS:
HIER+DORT
Thanks,
Pia

SHE & you for Sustainable Hospitality Exchange

Published
by
robino
on April 3, 2008
in Campaigns, General Info, couchsurfing, networks and volunteer coordination
. 11 Comments

Yeah! by robokow.netYeah! What about a conference on hospitality exchange, could we bring that about? A conference to share our experiences as volunteers, facilitators, organizers, hosts and guests? Let’s say a conference where we can create new concepts of sustainable hospitality exchange (SHE) and to discuss how hospitality networks currently interact with their users and members, how this could be improved and link this with sustainable forms of traveling, art, volunteer empowerment, cultural exchange, trust metrics, gift-economy and pre-modern roots of hospitality exchange? Wow, wouldn’t that be just awesome?!

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!