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Author Archive for Callum

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Channeling our energy

Published by Callum on 26 March 2008 at 10:45 in Campaigns and Proactive Action. 24 Comments Tags: , , , .

This site has become very active. There are a lot of people spending time and energy here. I would like to propose that we begin to channel that energy into proactive, positive action.

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… :)

Parrallels between CouchSurfing and Scientology

Published by Callum on 23 March 2008 at 16:04 in Casey Fenton, Collective, cult and Leadership Circle. 30 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , , .

I’ve been reading a (one-sided) article on Scientology. It struck me that there are some similarities between the methods employed by L Ron Hubbard, founder of Scientology, and Casey Fenton, co-founder of CouchSurfing. This might sound a little far fetched. I’d urge you to read the article and consider the suggestion before making up your own mind.

Firstly, I don’t think CouchSurfing is nearly as dangerous / mind controlling / cultish as Scientology. I’m highlighting similarities, not suggesting they are the same.

For example, Jon Atack states that Scientology orders followers to “disconnect” from “Suppressive Persons”. Disconnect means to break all contact with a person. “Suppressive Persons” are anyone critical of Scientology or L Ron Hubbard. It seems like there is a similar practice going on at collectives. Members who speak publicly about CouchSurfing seem to go quiet very quickly.

Other similarities might include:

  • Very long working hours
  • Closely confined working conditions
  • Limited contact with the outside world
  • Attacking of anyone critical of the organisation or its “leader”

This ties into Thomas’s earlier post “Is the Couchsurfing collective a cult?”.

From Atack’s article, I then read about Deprogramming and Exit Counselling. It struck me that perhaps we could learn from these techniques in dealing with current CS “volunteers”. Just to be clear, I’m not proposing that we start kidnapping people!

I think it would be useful to learn from the practice of Exit Counselling. I think it would also be useful to learn about how to approach cult members to discuss their situation. I think these techniques could help greatly in dealing with core CouchSurfing “volunteers”.

This might sound like crazy talk. It seems logical to me, but I’d welcome any comments / criticism / feedback. I will do my best to ignore inflammatory comments or trolling.

Proposal: CouchSurfing legal fund

Published by Callum on 25 February 2008 at 19:39 in Casey Fenton, Donations, Finances and pickwick. 19 Comments Tags: , , , , .

I believe CouchSurfing and Casey Fenton have broken, and continue to break, the law. Among other things, I believe that member’s “donations” are being misused. I think this misuse is the clearest breach of the law.

As the membership continues to grow, the potential for abuse also continues to grow. I think this situation must be brought to a head as a matter of urgency.

My proposal is to start a CouchSurfing legal fund. A financial fund where individuals could choose to donate money. That money would be used to pursue legal action against crimes perpetrated by CouchSurfing International Inc and Casey Fenton.

I think a number of issues would need to be addressed prior to any donations being accepted.

  • The constitution of the organisation / fund
  • Who would direct the legal action (I propose Pickwick as a core figure, if he accepts)
  • How lawyers would be appointed to carry out the action
  • Specifically, what action would be taken

Pickwick has diligently researched the legal constitution CouchSurfing. I think this work has made the greatest progress towards the goals of OpenCouchSurfing. I believe this area of work should be financially supported on a larger scale.

To start the ball rolling, I, Callum Macdonald, pledge $100 to this fund. I’ll make the actual donation once the fund is in place.

I warmly invite you to share your opinion, and if you feel appropriate, make a financial pledge. (Dislcaimer, financial pledges will be entirely voluntarily, so any commitment you make here is not legally binding.)

A call for disclosure

Published by Callum on 17 February 2008 at 13:06 in Censorship, couchsurfing, Leadership Circle and Transparency. 29 Comments Tags: , , .

I would like to warmly invite anyone who has copies of any of the CS mailing lists, or has access to any of the “closed” groups to publish these copies here, on this site.

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.

What is OpenCouchSurfing

Published by Callum on 22 January 2008 at 16:47 in General Info and Participation. 55 Comments Tags: , .

There seems to be some confusion around what exactly this thing called OpenCouchSurfing is. I thought now would be a good time to remind people of what OpenCS is and what it is not.

Let’s start with what it is:

  • It is a label, a title, a word, a term
  • It is a web site, a blog, a mailing list, a wiki
  • It is a loosely (dis)organised campaign
  • It is related to CouchSurfing and hospitality networks
  • It is a movement, a meme, an idea of loosely shared values

Now what it is not:

  • It is not an organisation, it has no offices, no officers, no constitution
  • It has no members, there is no list of “OpenCSers”
  • It is not “official”, nobody can speak on behalf of it, nobody can say they represent it

OpenCouchSurfing cannot agree or disagree with statements. It’s simply a means to communicate. As one can’t say “I am not E=MC2“, so one cannot really say “I am or am not OpenCS”. OpenCS is an idea, a campaign, at the very most, a petition.

Of course, all of this is simply my own opinion, because OpenCS cannot express an opinion or describe itself. So I speak on my own behalf, not in any official capacity on behalf of OpenCS. :)

10 reasons I use CouchSurfing.com

Published by Callum on 25 December 2007 at 22:07 in BeWelcome, couchsurfing and Hospitality Club. 8 Comments Tags: , , .

On this day of celebration for some, I’d like to share with you 10 reasons why I continue to use CouchSurfing.com.

  1. I have and continue to meet wonderful, amazing people through CouchSurfing.
  2. CouchSurfing has more members than BeWelcome.
  3. My messages or profile updates are not held for manual approval on CouchSurfing, unlike Hospitality Club.
  4. I can arrive in a new city and be confident there will be some local CouchSurfers to show me round, potentially host me, and so on. I don’t have that confidence with other sites.
  5. Generally, the system works. It has downtime, I would describe it as unreliable, but overall, it works at least 90% of the time for me.
  6. In most major cities, there is an active CouchSurfing group. The groups are a great resource for meeting locals, finding events, and getting to know a city.
  7. Likewise, in most major cities there are regular CS meetings which are generally filled with interesting people. I find the meets a great place to meet locals in new cities, more so than individual emails.
  8. I have built up a reputation and profile on CouchSurfing, it will take time to establish that profile elsewhere, and there are currently no easy means to do that.
  9. I, occasionally, use the related to feature, which shows how you’re connected to other people on the site. (If we could search based on that, it would be a major bonus).
  10. Finally, I continue to use CouchSurfing because it’s become a habit. Habits are notoriously tough to break.

I wanted to share this list to remind people that OpenCouchSurfing is not full of CS haters. In fact, many of the most active openCS supporters are very active CouchSurfers.

If you celebrate Christmas, have a very merry Christmas, if not, have a wonderful day.

CouchSurfing Thailand Collective Visas

Published by Callum on 25 November 2007 at 23:57 in Collective, Leadership Circle, Participation, Transparency and volunteer coordination. 2 Comments Tags: , , , .

According to the FAQ:

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.

CouchSurfing going 501(c)(3)?

Published by Callum on 25 November 2007 at 22:51 in 501c3, Casey Fenton, Leadership Circle, Open Source and Transparency. 2 Comments Tags: , , .

CouchSurfing members received an email yesterday telling them that, at long last, CouchSurfing has filed for 501(c)(3) status. The email also claimed that currently, CouchSurfing is a charity, and is legally dedicated to charitable purposes.

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.

More CouchSurfing BS

Published by Callum on 03 November 2007 at 13:14 in Casey Fenton, Donations, employees, Participation and Transparency. 24 Comments Tags: , , , .

The latest email from comrade Casey uses the word volunteer no less than 4 times, the only mention of the word employ is referring to Weston Hankins leaving his previous hot-shot employers. Would it be fair to say that Casey is misleading CouchSurfing members by not mentioning that staff now receive salaries from their donations? The email also asks for more volunteers, should those people be told some of their “colleagues” will be “more equal” than others?

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 Change in Direction

Published by Callum on 11 October 2007 at 16:29 in Campaigns. 12 Comments Tags: , .

Pickwick’s threat of legal action against CouchSurfing marks a change in the approach of OpenCouchSurfing. I think we need to consider whether the consensus of OpenCS supporters is in favour of this new approach.

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.