Archive for the 'Jim Stone' Category

The games people play

Published
by
jerme
on June 23, 2008
in Casey Fenton, Jim Stone and Leadership Circle
. 2 Comments

The Crossman game on the brainstorm group

Patrick Ralph Crossman April 22nd, 2008


I just want to let you know that I have just made a substantial and detailed post in the global ambassador group (which includes the LT) in an effort to start a discussion on the member and volunteer issues we have, and the serious discontent going on within our community and hopefully to determine what we can do to move forward together.

I spoke with Casey for an hour today. Rest assured that steps are being taken in the right direction. I am doing my best. Stay tuned.

Patrick Ralph Crossman April 24th, 2008

Working on it. Trust me We are moving forward one step at a time.

The simple answer: he(Casey Fenton) is very busy with his responsibilities. It’s not about being above communicating with ordinary users. It’s about focusing

Patrick Ralph Crossman on 22 June 2008


Casey actually just emailed me a few days ago to arrange a chat about something in particular. But I don’t know exactly what it is yet. Us connecting is a little difficult because we have to work around a seventeen-hour time difference as well as my 9-5 work schedule and tendency to travel on the weekends! I was at a CS rafting get together in the north this past weekend. That was a blast!

For simplicity purposes, could you please clarify specifically which question you are referring to: “can you answer okijibawa’s question as promised”…?

I really wonder what Patrick was talking to casey about or what his post was in the global ambassadors group.When he does not even know why he posted on that thread !!

Impressions of the CS Thailand achievements

Published
by
tgoorden
on May 8, 2008
in 501c3, Board of Directors, Casey Fenton, Censorship, Collective, Donations, Jim Stone and Matthew Brauer
. 25 Comments

To be honest, the list of CSCT achievements confused the hell out of me. Instead of a report on which objectives were achieved through which actions, it’s a huge list of “stuff that we’ve done”. How does all this relate to any kind of overall plan? Was there even a plan?

This is not a report, this is a “shut the fuck up” list. What this list tells me is: “LOOK! We’ve done A LOT! Leave us alone!” Doogies (a CSCT participant) sums it up best in one of his comments on this site:

You wanted to know everything we did in Thailand so you get a document with more than 500 achievements we accomplished there for couchsurfing.

More than 500 achievements! Wow! Unfortunately, I find it clearly symptomatic of a miserable professional result. I’ve seen this approach before: Whenever a large project failure had to be covered up. Been there, done that myself. It’s a sleight of hand technique: By pointing at a huge, unreadable and almost entirely unverifiable list of statements, they are hoping to hoodwink the CS donation base that all that money is serving a purpose and probably to fool themselves in the process. The person responsible for this style of writing is Mandie, showing us again how incompetent she is at what she does. Hold this report up to the standard of any serious non-profit organization and it just becomes sad. This is not a report, it’s a hastily thrown together list of things people could still remember doing.

There is plenty to learn from the report though. In general, it appears that the largest part of the participants has been busy analyzing and communicating. Also, tech has been very busy, probably the most productive team overall (this has always been the case in CS). If anyone seems to have done anything, it’s clearly the programmers. We’ll see how well it all holds up in the summer.

Things that I noticed right away:

  • Jim Stone is a scary control freak, which we already knew from the way he bullied everyone in the CS Wiki. Look at what occupies him:
    • ” A reminder system to let people know they should update any reference that has been identified as violating our terms of use.”
    • “References are no longer completely deleted when removed, just hidden for safety concerns. We also know who deleted it, what the reference said, and when it was deleted.”
    • “Deleted Images: The safety team can easily delete images from accounts that are deemed inappropriate. The member is also emailed to let them know with instructions on what they can do next.”
    • “Refined a tool that more easily identifies real spammers and harmful users and doesn’t temporarily falsely identify members as being spammers as often now.”
    • “Deleted posts: every post that’s been deleted, why it was deleted, who did it, when, and ability to reactivate it with one click.” (I’d love to see this list of “whys” sometime.)
  • Rachel is a one-stop CS police force: “Directly handled several member disputes.” She obviously doesn’t need to report to anyone, because obviously every communication is an achievement and a report of Rachel’s activities simply isn’t listed.
  • Speaking of communication, Mandie thinks this is an achievement: “Email to ambassadors explaining website downtime.” My god. An email. The “report” is full of nonsense entries like that.

But all that is just fun and games. It clearly wasn’t edited anymore than the average OCS post (this says enough), providing hours of entertainment. Meetings are NOT achievements, neither are writing emails, calling people or “Finding a suitable caterer and arranging for daily delivery of food.” (Obviously nobody felt like cooking in a country with such a low wage scale.) Who cares about the “bi-weekly shopping trip”? Or what about ” Administered half-way point evaluation meeting with House Manger.”? That one was from Matthew Brauer, who has a truly sad list of achievements and still can’t spell his name right. (What the hell is it with using nicknames in an “official” report anyway?)

But what is really interesting is what is missing:

  • Where is all this generated material being kept? Things like “plan for Alaska Collective including budget, roles, objective and location”, “desired skills sets for volunteers in team”, “‘Core concepts’ to help uncover and articulate what CouchSurfing is about, not about, what its mission is.”, etc etc. The server team doesn’t mention installing a document repository and the Wiki has been shot down Jim Stone style. So, unless I’m mistaken (no way to verify unless Doogie could come out his tower to enlighten us), all these wonderful documents either don’t exist or are sitting in someones harddrive or mailbox. Either way, that will mean 90% of “work done” will be tossed away again for the next collective, like it has happened 2 times already. Remember the huge “organizational chart” that was created before CSCNZ? Exactly. CS management = the way of the Dodo.
  • There is absolutely NO mention of 501c3 status. None. Let me repeat that: the entire 501c3 process is completely absent from this report, even though it was in quite a few announcements. What happened guys? Didn’t you work on it or is it not an achievement? Or maybe, perhaps, it was a miserable failure?
  • There is not one mention of drafting contracts and exactly one reference to legal work:
    “Phased out one-on-one verification on the advice of our legal team: verification now only available through credit card or a verified PayPal account.”
    Right, so all those expenses towards the CS lawyer(s), 14,234$ in 2007, have only resulted in another way to increase profits? It appears nobody had a contract or even insurance (only travel insurance is mentioned), since none of that is mentioned. (Search for: “legal”, “contract” and “insurance”.)
  • What the hell is going on with Casey Fenton (who also doesn’t need a last name)? Why doesn’t he have his own personal achievements, like his buddies Matthew or Jim? Why is he mentioned in second place of a team twice? My guess is that they are trying to shield Casey from direct comments on his behind-the-scenes style of control. Who are they kidding? Where has the “leadership team” gone? Where are the board meetings? Who is on the board anyway? Of course, it’s also possible Casey couldn’t be bothered to write down his list of “achievements” and/or Mandie didn’t dare to ask him.
  • Did you know CS has a new team in charge? Neither did I. This time, it’s simply called “CouchSurfing Management” and guess who’s in it? Matthew, Casey, Jim and Weston (member since April 15th, 2007). Congratulations guys, you have finally managed to create your little Northern American boys club.

What else do you see missing from the report? What do you think is the funniest “achievement”?

Casey Fenton needs to go.

Published
by
zak0r
on January 20, 2008
in Board of Directors, Casey Fenton, Collective, Corpganization, Finances, Jim Stone, Leadership Circle, Matthew Brauer, Uncategorized, employees, general director and legal
. 64 Comments

Disclaimer: I am not OCS, if the OCS doesn’t like me utilizing their venue, I can perfectly understand them removing this, so go ahead Callum or whoever runs this site ;)

That title works to grab everyones attention. Hello there lazy bums in Thailand, celebrating ineptitude under the sun!

I was thinking how all the work of the motivated volunteers full of ideals and good intention can be saved. The title was my only answer. One thing i have learned is that people dont really change, i dont expect Casey or the majority of his buddies to be different, despite all the visionary leadership.

Why do I point out that people don’t change? Because I am convinced that they would have to change if Couchsurfing is supposed to progress. Couchsurfing as a website and Organization has grown beyond the size that is governable with the attitude and management employed by Casey and his appointed BurningManBeer Buddies. We are dealing with an Organization that is crooked and mismanaged from the Top. Casey might be a nice guy, he might be a good coder, he might even have that MC1R sexyness to get all the good bitches in the pack, but he is about as good as a manager as Paris Hilton is an expert on Quantum Mechanics.

From the Top down, it was all about happiness and fun, NEVER about accountability and results. Casey initially, when first launching cs.com public, already made a claim on how cs is a 501c3 non profit. He either made a false claim, which would make him a liar and crooked person, possibly a felon, since he collected the donations, or an amazingly inept manager. You don’t run an Organization without knowing its legal status, dot! I tend to go with a third option though. He is a hopeless dreamer, who wants to make a 501c3 and heal the world, but gets ahead of reality way too much. This pattern was followed in the whole CS team and Spirit of Organization. Sure, it would be great to have a good manager, but lets settle for someone who COULD be a good manager, such as TTT, but who actually sucks ass since he settles for having a manager title, rather than doing the job, just like Casey and 501c3. On CS, the culture of Vaporware needs to go. The people will not change, so unless they go, Cs will never proceed beyond the Fratboys who would LOVE to be cool, but end up being drunk failures.

They ALL lack the self confidence to critically reflect upon their managerial skills or the apparent lack of. The root of all this is of course, Casey. He appointed Managers who lack the wit and gut to debate with a dissenting community. A dissenting community that actually argues constructively and is kind enough to share all the solutions.

CS, thanks to the pressure built up by Pickwick, is about to arrive in the cloud of Accountability that is the real world. I hereby Claim that there will be no milestone accomplishment at the Thai Collective, which will make it nothing more than an expensive party for Casey and his equally inept cronies.

You run an Organization and fail to deliver, you go. If Couchsurfing.com is all about buying Caseys’ Burning Man crew 4 Months of sponsored Holidays on the beach along with pussy that would not be available to this elusive group of mediocre men, then Couchsurfing.com is indeed a brilliant success for aforementioned visionary leader and his associates. It would of course make it a racket and scam, morally at least, regardless of how it would be judged by a legal professional.

If Couchsurfing is not a racket and scam but instead an organization with genuinely good intentions, then it is a failure on all accounts. Absolute top-performing professionals in their respective field get alienated or sacked by a management that has possibly not even learned how to spell (project) management. The Couchsurfing Management in its current incarnation is a direct result of Casey Fentons inability to accept superior skill from employees and volunteers. The current management has a track record of rejecting highly skilled employees and outside advice, lacks skill and self confidence along with the inability to accomplish anything themselves.

You guys all need to go. I am glad CS is in the Real World SOON, legally speaking. Casey and friends, you guys talk all the talk, all the time. I have yet to see anyone walk the walk. I invite you to prove me wrong, but you and me, we both know, you fail.

p.s. i invite everyone to personally attack me on my position, preferably somewhere in real life

p.p.s please, since i am so full of shit, be so kind and make a list of all the accomplished managerial successes of the current leadership team, since thats all that it takes to turn my whole posting into a pile of shit. hint: most mangers work 45-50h a week and deliver results correlating to this

More of the same

Published
by
tgoorden
on December 2, 2007
in Censorship and Jim Stone
. 6 Comments

Things will get worse until they get better?

I got a message from the all-seeing eye of CS, informing me that the reference that has been there for Kasper for, oh, say, half a year now is suddenly inappropriate. It doesn’t say who deems it inappropriate, but I can take a guess. Here’s what it said:

I met Kasper in the NZ collective where he was one of the most active and valuable volunteers there by far. He helped me get started volunteering myself and we’ve kept in touch ever since. Kasper is an upstanding guy, as honest and fair as they come. He does what he says and is morally head-and-shoulders above the people that are running this site (like Jim Stone). He’s an independent thinker and does what he can to make this world a nicer and more free place to live in, even when that goes against “those in power”. I’m lucky to count him as one of my friends.

Now, I’ll leave you two seconds to think about what made this reference “inappropriate”, possibly, perhaps. Ok, kidding, I marked it already. Interestingly, they never tell you exactly what the problem is, you can only change it and then ask: “Is it ok now, please?”

So, I’ll come forward and say this: Jim Stone, if you have anything to do with this, you have just proved my point. Kasper (and pretty much most people I know) are morally head-and-shoulders above the way you handle your affairs. You abuse you idiotic self-appointed powers whenever you feel threatened and think your title entitles you to act in ways that simply nauseate me. I wish I believed in karma.

Welcome to the Couchsurfing police state.

Jim sets an good example

Published
by
Kasper Souren
on October 11, 2007
in CouchSurfing Wiki, Jim Stone and employees
. 13 Comments

“For an good example check out the guide for Birmingham.” (sic!) Jim is still happily keeping up with the volunteer coordination (for 2000 US$/month). Unfortunately, doing this, he is encouraging volunteers to break copyright law. The text at the article on the CouchSurfing wiki about Birmingham looks a bit too similar to the article at Wikitravel.

My original intentions for the CS Guide were to make it into an alternative of Wikitravel, not a lower-quality spin-off. But if this is the direction chosen for the CS Guide I suggest using a Creative Commons ShareAlike Attribution license for the entire wiki (or at least for the Guide) instead waiting for legal action.

What do the LT actually do?

Published
by
Callum
on October 2, 2007
in 501c3, Board of Directors, Casey Fenton, Finances, Jim Stone, Leadership Circle, Matthew Brauer, NDA, Transparency, Volunteer coordinator, employees and general director
. 7 Comments

We used to get the excuse “Casey is too busy”. Now we get the excuse “The LT is too busy“. This begs the question, too busy doing what?

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? ;-)

Jim Stone on the CouchSurfing Wiki

Published
by
Callum
on October 2, 2007
in CouchSurfing Wiki and Jim Stone
. 0 Comments

I just found this gem of a quote from Jim Stone on Wikis:

The Wiki is meant for EVERYONE to edit and not a place where permission is needed. I loved this kind of info and was glad to see more discussion about what needs to be understood by more people and then actually seeing it going somewhere. The Wiki is the end-all destination but it certainly is a step in the right direction.

opencouchsurfing.hyperboards.com

Published
by
Kasper Souren
on September 29, 2007
in Collective, Crash 2.0, Jim Stone, Transparency, couchsurfing, history and volunteer coordination
. 10 Comments

Right after the crash some people at the CouchSurfing Collective in Montreal had set up a Hyperboard. This appeared to be a huge success. (Unfortunately archive.org’s web archive didn’t archive very deep. Please let us know if you happen to have some backups around.) A lot of people offered to help with rebuilding the site, with a slight slant towards a bit more transparency, decentralization and democracy. So this was probably a bit too overwhelming, since it was promptly closed by the current Volunteer Coordinator (2000 US$/month).

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,

Why I don’t take part in the survey …

Published
by
midsch
on September 18, 2007
in CouchSurfing Wiki, Finances, Jim Stone, Leadership Circle, Participation, Transparency and couchsurfing
. 4 Comments

There is this fancy survey, where we can choose some questions, which will be presented to the Leadership Circle. Maybe they even answer to it. I don’t count on it. And I don’t want even think about it, but as this posting shows: I failt. But:

  • Why limit the number of questions at all?
  • A leadership circle of 13 people plus 3 paid employees plus tons of volunteers should be able to answer 10times so many questions.
  • Some of the answers should have been published anyway (yes, without being asked).
  • While the most of the Leadership Circle plays “dead man”, Jim gets paid to spent time for complaining about not having time, blocking people from the wiki and developing the cs-haters conspiracy theory. I guess, simply answering questions would need less time.
  • Statistics? wouldn’t be the first time someone lies about numbers at cs (funny enough: Mikky says so). So even if there is a reaction it would be easy to call it a minority issue. (In my opinion some of the questions really are, but that’s not a reason not to answer them.)

It’s not a matter of choosing the right questions or limiting them to a smaller number. Or presenting them from a Survey. Again it’s a matter of the Leadersship Circle’s will to communicate with the users and if they want to make their work transparent (or at least visible).

To me the survey is completely ridiculous.

Trust issues

Published
by
tgoorden
on September 14, 2007
in Casey Fenton, Jim Stone, Matthew Brauer, Member Rights, Participation, couchsurfing, networks and people
. 12 Comments

Let’s take a step back and look at what hospitality services like Couchsurfing are really about. It is pretty obvious that almost all of the real-life activity associated with CS (hosting, being a guest, organising and attending meetings, collectives, etc) all require one simple thing from all participants: mutual trust. The content of profiles and of course especially the references (and vouches) are very much designed towards determining trust. Perhaps couchsurfing.com actually more a trust network than a travel network?

Yesterday, I loaned two American girls a key to my house. I had met them about 30 minutes before that. They followed me home from the train station, happily handing over parts of their luggage to relieve their own back. None of us asked for passports, identification, or anything. They are 19 years old. If you would try to explain this to an average person, they’d probably declare us nuts, but they would be mistaken. It is pure and simple “trust by default” and an extremely refreshing feeling considering the world we live in.

Oddly enough, it appears that for the organisation of Couchsurfing, this basic principle of trusting each other has been completely turned on its head. Of course, the most obvious and glaring distrust is between people in the leadership team and anyone critical of them. We have come to the point that practically any statement critical of the leaders results in the commenter being filed under the “haters” category, which can only happen if CS leaders like Jim Stone or Matthew Brauer distrust any interested volunteers by default. Worse, they have taken actions in return that can only be interpreted as defensive (moving of threats on forums, taking away rights on the Wiki, etc etc).

If you look at the organisational structure of Couchsurfing, you will notice that “distrust by default” is present everywhere. You cannot become ambassador if the already established ambassadors don’t explicitly trust you and it is very obvious they have a very different standard for that than they would as CS hosts. Worse still, you can’t ever become an admin or a leader if Casey doesn’t trust you personally and his criteria are, to say the least, murky. What do Jim and Matthew have in common which makes them elligable for this top position?

  1. A long term relationship with Casey.
  2. Americans.
  3. A fondness for partying hard*. (Burning man, etc.)

*This is something we hardly ever talk about, but common knowledge for anyone who’s been to a collective. It’s one of those unspoken truths that everyone seems to avoid on OCS, because it can easily be interpreted as a personal attack. To be clear: I’m not making moral judgements here about how they spend their free time (hey, go nuts!), but it does worry me that the organisational top is held together by this. However juicy the rest of the gossip is, I’m happy it doesn’t appear here.

Perhaps, and this is speculation of course, this situation has to do with some fundamental aspect of Casey’s psyche. If anything, the structure of CS is a reflection of his personality. And aren’t Jim and Matthew merely “channeling” Casey’s fundamental distrust, while of course taking it a bit further than Casey ever did? The fact that Casey started a trust network doesn’t have to be a contradiction to this, it could easily be an overcompensation on his part.

I don’t expect Casey to suddenly see the light and invite “us” into his castle. This would require an almost superhuman effort. But, something will happen eventually. Maybe something or someone will “break” eventually. (Casey has quit the project before, he might do it again.) Maybe people will drift off in separate directions.

The only thing I can hope for is that - somewhere in the future - the Couchsurfing organisation will reflect the one thing that it’s members rely on every day: trust.

Have a great weekend. Thomas