I just read midsch’s posting about his helplessness in the hospitality exchange scene… He described the different situations quite good. However, my view on it and the possibilities connected to it are not as dark than his are…
It does not matter if CouchSurfing, HospitalityClub, GlobalFreeLoaders, BeWelcome… hospitality exchange pages have numerous times been described as the most useful sites in the web as they bring people together in real life. Since then numerous new hospitality exchange communities popped up to establish their own community.
But why establish your own community in times of Facebook APIs, Open Social and Drupal? Why not connect all those different communities together? Why not develop a Drupal module (http://www.drupal.org) that
offers all those established communities the possibilities to meet each other in real life?
I started a project on Amazee.com (as I have been around there when I wanted to bring the thing on paper), devoted to the development of a Drupal module for decentralized hospitality sites. Let us continue to learn from each other – here in the web, but also in real life. So why not spent our energy in this way?
Funny: Recently I thought about evaluating Drupal (and/or other software) if it’s possible to use them for hospex-networks. This could help to bring BeWelcome forward, but would also open up much more possibilities.
Probably the main problem: Search. Because if the search for hosts isn’t able to work beyond borders of the single networks, it’s only half of the fun … but this implicates a lot of privacy concerns as well.
Great to see even more people on the same wave-length. There are some more practical plans for following this path, plans that possibly can go into reality much sooner than we think…! Why don’t you come over both of you
Would love to come, CasaRobino is on “the list”, but I’m not as flexible as I’d like to … You may have followed the stupid discussion in another thread here, where I (dis-?)qualified myself as boring, intolerant and unworthy;) – anyway, my employer want some planning anyhow, so let’s see if there are some options to the end of the year.
amazee.com looks interesting but IMHO too many project dilute the core idea and also confuses participants. With the explosion of social networks and distributed ways of collaborating users are not being selective on which network they want to participate. The network needs to some show the user it will add value to their lives or time.
The DrupalSN.com – Drupal Social Network is an exciting sub project on drupal and with their huge base of developer waiting to see how it develops.
I do not know, but I guess it would be possible to have a sort of decentralized search… and that is the thing that we have to develop!
I think it is just a matter of getting it rolling as there is the applicability for many different things…
Other connected projects:
http://sioc-project.org/ – http://drupal.org/project/sioc
Sans, thanks for the link. I do not know for sure if you did get the idea completely, but never mind. I think Drupal showcase shows that there are many communities that just want to be connected… just one admin that thinks this plugin will add value to my community and slowly, they will share and exchange between the communities…
$2500 for the first 500 people ($5 per person) that join this project!
http://www.amazee.com/drupal-communities-meet-real-life
On Amazee it is possible to get some money for successful projects. When have around 300-400 people joining the project, then we will get $5000. I put now up that 50% will be shared out between the people joining the project (little extra for a dinner with you, friends and guests) and 50% will be used for the project. It think that is enough and bring the thing running. Sure, it can be done completely without the money, but there are costs coming up when you do the project at fast and at large scale with some impact. Further, the action is not alone for the money, but to get further publicity… And where is the money going to? It goes to me. When there are voices of doubt coming up, I have no problem setting up a democratic non-profit association (under German law ‘gemeinnuetziger Verein’) which aims it is to promote exchange between hospitality exchange networks and further communities. The money will then go to this association. I hope this brings enough transparency.
So join and spread this project! I am curious if somebody cares at all about those issues and help to get the ball further rolling.
To adia
I try to register with my openid
http://openid-provider.appspot.com/couplechina@hotmail.com
but failed
do you mind to be a modeator of
hospitality club and tell me your id on CS/HC ?
http://www.xing.com/go/invite/5839977.ab256e(clike this link to get a month free premium membership in xing.com)
http://www.xing.com/group-8265.cf51ca/5839977（click this link to join hospitality club in xing.com）
so you can promote it yourself
T G I F
HospEX market
HospEX may become a 10 million member’s 100 million dollars market by 2010.
https://www.xing.com/app/forum?op=showforum;id=247137
I think the search problem is a non-problem. Search is the first generation approach to finding a host. But actually, it would work very well (in my opinion, much better) to reverse that process. Instead, to create a “couch request” for a given location.
So you create a “request” to stay in Sydney on Mon 17 November for 3 nights. It links to your profile. Then each person in Sydney can choose how often they want to be told about new “requests” on the system. If somebody offers to host, that is shown publicly to avoid confusion / cross bookings.
In addition, you can browse profiles in all sorts of ways that are “better” than search. For example, pick a geographic location, then look through your friends, friends of their friends, people with given interests. Browse around a little, explore. Then if appropriate, invite individual people to respond to your open “request”.
I think this model fundamentally flips the hospex space on it’s head. It solves the whole “busy hosts get all the guests” issue by changing the game.
It’s also technically much easier to implement as you simply publish (XMLRPC?) a “request” and cross-post it to other cooperating sites. Easier than a search API.
Callum, that’s a good one!
the lack of structure that is the bane of all “heal the world” hospitality things seems to be strong in this one aswell.