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I’m moving on from Couchsurfing.

Published by on 12 July 2007 at 21:31 in BeWelcome and Crash at Mine. 3 Comments

[I've copied this from my blog, here] So, a couple of months after resigning from CouchSurfing.com I’m ready to announce I’ve started my own project that I’m calling “share the love” (it’s a working name, but I like it so far).I like what BeWelcome.org is working on, but I figured that I had some ideas I wanted to try out that would mesh better in its own system.Here are a few of them:

  • Network driven searching (people who are friends, or friends of friends show up in search results first).
  • “Couchme” reserve couchsurfing (Ask someone to come stay on your couch).
  • Tagging (more on this later).

    • I’m predicting critics will say that it will be difficult to compete with Couchsurfing.com because it has critical mass. That’s not really how I’m measuring success in this case; since my goal if more for people to download the software and run their own hospitality exchange networks. I’m planning some webservices-foo so that networks will be able to exchange information and search across each-others user base. Having a distributed system might help reduce some of big-brother problems I have with Couchsurfing.com (or about any other social network). You can check out the project here: Share the love.

Tips for those who still care about the CouchSurfing Wiki

Published by on 17 June 2007 at 17:21 in CouchSurfing Wiki, Leadership Circle and Participation. 9 Comments

I just found these Tips on Developing a Wiki Community. From my long-lasting experience setting up wikis and making sure that they keep on growing, it’s pretty accurate. And it’s not only very useful for the CouchSurfing Wiki. Here’s the most relevant parts to whatever has happened in CouchSurfing:

The biggest difference between a group of 50 and a group of 43,000 is that a small group needs to value each individual much more highly.

Note that there are probably 50.000 active surfers, but at most, only a couple of hundred people who can be called more or less active volunteers (and most of them are less active). Unfortunately, individuals outside of the Leadership Circle have never been valued very highly within the CS organization…

If you walk into a non-profit agency to volunteer, there’s somebody there to say hello. They get you oriented, and they check in with you about how things are going. If it’s a successful, active program, then other volunteers are there too; they talk to you, and help you out. There’s always a sense that your participation is important, and appreciated. If you’re not getting paid for being there, then they need to give you something, and usually what you get is pride, satisfaction and appreciation.

…and sometimes it’s humiliation, alienation and frustration instead.

But, well, I’m happy to announce that I will be getting paid to work on researching Trust Metrics at the Fondazione Bruno Kessler in Trento, Italy. And even though I haven’t even started officially yet, I already feel proud. But I already started, of course, I can’t resist the temptation of setting up a new wiki about a fascinating topic. Ironically, the job is a direct result of the appreciation for my work at CouchSurfing.

Adesso, io vado imparare anche l’italiano!

Kasper

One small victory

Published by on 15 June 2007 at 17:30 in Campaigns and Transparency. Closed

I woke up this morning to find that the finances have been posted here. It’s good news indeed. I’m yet to take a closer look myself though; I’m surprised that travel related expenses were so high.

CS Chief Financial Officer since April 2006

Published by on 01 June 2007 at 16:44 in Board of Directors, Leadership Circle and Transparency. 5 Comments

 

So, you might have heard about Mr Whatley because of his amazing NDA writing skills. I just found out on the social business network that he’s actually been CouchSurfing’s Chief Financial Officer since April 2006. Note that this must have been updated fairly recently, with “over 200,000 members and growing strong”. Note that there is no mention of a Chief Financial Officer on CouchSurfing.com.

Matthew T. Whatley, Esq.

Owner, The Law Offices of Matthew T. Whatley

Current
  • Chief Financial Officer at Couchsurfing International, Inc.
  • Owner at The Law Offices of Matthew T. Whatley (Sole Proprietorship)
  • Owner at Ninja Tax Services (Sole Proprietorship)
Education

  • Mahawithayalai Mahidol

  • Golden Gate University, School of Law

  • Carnegie Mellon University

  • Keio Gijuku Daigaku

Connections

41 connections

Industry
Law Practice
Websites
Public Profile
http://www.linkedin.com/in/whatley

Summary

I am an entrepreneur at heart and love helping others found and grow their own small businesses. I am interested in taking on new clients and founding relationships with other attorneys. I primarily serve the Arts and Small Business communities. I would say the majority of my clients go to Burning Man every year.

 

Specialties:

Personal and Small Business Income Tax Preparation and Minimization, Business Planning, International Business Contracts, Sarbanes-Oxley Auditing, Offshore Asset Protection, Personal Injury Law

Experience

Chief Financial Officer

Couchsurfing International, Inc.

(Non-Profit; 11-50 employees; Non-Profit Organization Management industry)

April 2006 – Present (1 year 3 months)

www.couchsurfing.com
Profile Name: Matt
With over 200,000 members and growing strong, Couchsurfing allows people to host or be hosted in over 100 different countries throughout the globe thus sponsoring cultural exchange and creating a world wide community of travelers.
I manage the finances.

…

BeWelcome

Published by on 30 May 2007 at 22:47 in BeWelcome, Open Source and Transparency. 2 Comments

During the first week of the CS Collective in New Zealand I heard about the rumors of Hospitality Club volunteers who decided to finally break away from Veit to start a new network. I was very excited about that! I discussed it with Casey. He saw this as an opportunity to attract more volunteers to CS. I uttered my doubts about that. Better let the HCvols continue whatever they were doing, and stick to cooperating and finding ways to communicate. So even though I perceived some sense of bureaucracy, I tried to become a volunteer for BeWelcome.

Unfortunately it took 6 months before I actually was given access to the BeVolunteer wiki and the non-public part of the forum. But considering the hundreds of people who never ever heard back from CouchSurfing after indicating their offer for help right after the CS Crash 1.0, half a year is not that bad for a brand new organization!

On the wiki I saw that 13 out of 14 people had voted to release the software under the GNU General Public License (one undecided). In the forum I saw that people were having meaningful discussions and that everyone is open to ideas. I saw that about half the Board of Directors of the official organization had been replaced by new people. I noticed that releasing more information is mostly hindered by trivial issues – finding and removing personal information on a wiki takes time. The source code is not (yet) as feature rich as CS, but it’s built on a decent framework, and it looks amazingly clean – in comparison.

BeWelcome does not yet have a super nice running system, but everything is in its right place, or Coming Relatively Soon: free software, a fairly representative official power structure, open data, and transparency.

P.S. the founders of OpenCouchSurfing were aware of BW, but remained sceptical. The main goal of OCS is still a more free and open CouchSurfing, but at present volunteering for the newly born BW seems a much more efficient way to achieve a free and open hospitality exchange network.

In retrospective

Published by on 24 May 2007 at 01:12 in Casey Fenton, Crash 2.0, history, Leadership Circle, Open Source and Transparency. 1 Comment Tags: , , , , , , , .

During all recent events I often thought about what must be going on in Casey’s head. He’s the one pulling the strings. Then I remembered an email I received from Casey Fenton, a long time ago, November 29, 2005 10:01 PM to be exactly.

Subject: Censorship in Hospitality Club / CS

Hi Kasper,

I was just sent a link to your page about HC censorship.
(http://www.industree.org/guaka/index.php/Censorship_in_Hospitality_Club)
You said: “The thing that I find most revolting is that it, at least to
me at this point, seems such a closed process. Rules are somehow being
set up, and the 90000 members of HC are just to follow them.
CouchSurfing has actually the same problem, and I think it will be good
to address this.” I was wondering what the problem is that CS has that
you’re referring to? We always want to make sure that we’re doing
things right… and it there’s something we’re not doing right, please
let us know! If you need any questions answered, I’d be happy to answer
them.

btw, love your photos… especially the one of those kids in Bamako and
the one of you on the beach with the guitar.

Cheers,
–Casey

Which implies that Casey read about the ideas I have for hospitality exchange a long time before we actually met in Montreal. As Joe wrote: “Many aspects of CouchSurfing have been marred by these issues: (a) a tendency to do
things in the dark, (b) a tendency to tell people what they want to hear, and (c) a tendency to work *near* people, but not *with* them.”

Sometimes I feel sad, sometimes I feel bitter. But…

Life is still good, though I hope that some things will change. In my opionion there are several principles a free hospitality exchange network must follow:

  1. Open policies
    It should be clear what is going on. Policies and guidelines should be accessible by anyone.
  2. Democratic processes
    All people making part of the network should be able to take part in discussions.
  3. Open data
    People should be able to “take” their own data in a portable, open format onto their computer, into their phone. It should be possible to give permission to others (based on a trust level) to copy part of one’s information. Similar to ideas implemented in Indyvoter (http://beta.indyvoter.org).
  4. Free software
    Like Wikipedia, hospitality exchange networks should be based on free software. This will attract more programmers, open up new possibilities (like integrating electronic authentification and encryption (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GnuPG) or efficient access on portable devices (http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/05/25/139202&from=rss), extending it into a getting-car-rides system where drivers and hitchhikers can get in touch using GPS…).

I’ve Been Fired!

Published by Callum on 22 May 2007 at 11:13 in Campaigns and Open Source. 8 Comments Tags: , , , , , .

This morning I woke up to find an email in my inbox telling me that my volunteer services are no longer required by CouchSurfing.

Apparently I have “fundamental differences in ideology and communication styles”. I’ve asked for clarification on that, fundamentally different from whom. I’m not holding my breath for an answer!

One thing was stated clearly in the email, CouchSurfing is not going open source. Not now, not any time soon. So at last the OpenCouchSurfing campaign has received one answer. That’s real progress I think.

Interesting times… :)

A final goodbye

Published by on 22 May 2007 at 09:54 in tech team leader and Uncategorized. 3 Comments

I have received a “thank you” letter from Chris Burley that effectively closes the NDA discussion and other related matters for me. To be honest I’m quite grateful for it.

It is much better to know that the Couchsurfing admins really don’t want to discuss our issues than to be left with a false glimmer of hope. CouchSurfing has – for good or for bad – decided to show itself as a top-down run community and while I don’t agree with that decision, it is at least clear and final.

There are a few small corrections I would like to make (read the letter first):

  1. OpenCouchSurfing was primarily about a Free and Open CouchSurfing organisation. While OSS (Open Source Software) would certainly have helped in getting there, it was hardly the only proposal that has been made. For me personally, an Open Organisation was a much more important issue for instance.
  2. “We value group consensus above individual ideology” seems a bit weird to me. We had over 90 people signing the petition, including two admins, so its hardly an individual ideology. There were many people that really would have like to see some of our proposals come true, but unfortunately we don’t have the keys to the castle.
  3. As has happened before, Chris makes it sound like it was more about style than about content (“constructive criticism”). I think most people will agree that there has been ample opportunity to engage in friendly debate for the admins, which was never taken up. Most critical (but friendly/constructive) questions have simply been ignored over several months. It should be of no suprise that this angers people in many ways and it is therefor quite unreasonable to expect friendly banter all the time. “We’re working on it” or “we’ll publish something… soon” can hardly be considered constructive debate either.

In conclusion I would like to personally thank everyone who has tried to help us make a positive change within CouchSurfing towards a more Open and Free organisation. I do not feel that this was a wasted effort as getting the admins to make up their minds is an added value by itself. Amongst the relatively few cases of outright hostility, there were plenty of comments that helped us to continue this extremely difficult effort. Thank you for that support.

“A new discussion about improving the NDA”

Published by on 18 May 2007 at 09:36 in NDA. 1 Comment

Chris Burley announces new possibilities:

We agreed about the following action items
1. Triple T, Casey and I will start a moderated public working group
inside CS groups to invite current and future volunteers to ask for
feedback on the NDA. We will allow feedback and suggestions for
improvement and do our best to include this feedback into a revised
version.
2. I personally will contact two unbiased corporate lawyers who have
experience in international law and have offered assistance to ask for
their help in drafting certain portions of the NDA which are in
question.

I hope this means that the current draft will be scrapped, but anyway,
this message is all very very positive compared to the whole draft itself.

Kasper

The horror! The horror!

Published by on 17 May 2007 at 21:11 in Board of Directors and NDA. 4 Comments

The fun never stops:

  • The proposed Volunteer Agreement in all its paranoid glory. Read it and weep.
  • Appearantly the tax ninja that wrote it* is on the Board of directors! Who knew? (Hint: noone.)
  • We’re also keeping track of everyone that quit or will never start developing for CS because of this fiasco.

That’s all for today.

*: Or copied it from here. CS really seems to have problems writing original text. Maybe they need a copywriter to volunteer for that?