Archive for the 'Casey Fenton' Category

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More CouchSurfing BS

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

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 This necessary downtime will replace some outdated hardware and improve the site’s speed and reliability in order to keep pace with our growing membership.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

Pickwick: Difference between non-profit and charity

Published by on 26 October 2007 at 13:18 in 501c3, Casey Fenton, Finances and Transparency. 16 Comments Tags: 501c3, casey, charity, non-profit, salary, tax.

Pickwick about the difference between a non-profit organization and a charity:

A charity needs to be non-profit, but not every non-profit organisation is automatically a charity.

A Non-Profit Corporation can’t pay the owner a dividend. He has to pay himself (or others) a salary instead, which he does ($88,150.22 since 2005, for salaries, payroll taxes, and temporary help). The rest of the money needs to be piled up on the company’s books: there’s an ‘emergency fund’ of $30,000 and accumulated ‘net income’ of $40,135.89 from 2004 to date. Other than that, a Non-Profit Corporation, which is NOT a charity, can do whatever it wants with its money like any other privately owned company. This includes the possibility of one day dissolving the company, or changing its status to For-Profit, and cashing in.

A CHARITABLE non-profit corporation will have a clause in its corporate bye-laws where corporate assets are dedicated to charitable purposes. It receives tax privileges, and in exchange comes under public supervision and is subject to reporting and disclosure duties. It will be much more difficult for individuals to profit, and if done right, even impossible.

The confusion is understandable because colloquially the terms ‘charity’ and ‘non-profit’ are sometimes used as if synonym. The problem here is that this misunderstanding might be intentionally exploited. Ultimately the proof whether an organisation is or isn’t a charity lies in the public register of charities, both on State and Federal level, neither of which contains an entry for this company.

So the logical conclusion is that either it is NOT a charity and claims that it is are false, or it IS a charity, in which case it has not complied with registration, reporting and disclosure duties. In either case, as a NON-charity, or as a NON-REGISTERED (unrecognised) charity, any charitable solicitations, for money or volunteers’ time, might be illegal.

Casey, please comply with the law

Published by on 11 October 2007 at 09:18 in 501c3, Casey Fenton, Donations and Finances. 10 Comments Tags: 501c3, legal, pickwick.

Please note that this post does not necessarily reflect views shared by all OCS posters and sympathisers. I put it here on my own initiative.

Norbert has placed the following post in the brainstorm forum on CS. I felt it should be cross-posted here, so that it can be given due public support by those who feel that’s appropriate. It sure has mine!

“This is my final appeal to Casey and the Leadership Team. I haven’t filed my report yet with the Attorney General of New Hampshire. I would prefer not to do it. I don’t like the role. And I don’t like the fact that this may divert resources into legal procedures, costs, and possible fines. Don’t get me wrong, though: I’m not making any excuses for myself. I will do it if I have to, whether I like it or not. It will not be my fault for reporting it, but the fault of those who broke the law. Yet I feel there is still time to ‘heal’ the situation. CouchSurfing has been represented as a charity without being one, and has thus violated the law. It has failed to comply with registration, reporting and disclosure duties. It has obtained donations of money, time and skills under false pretenses. It has broken the law. It has done the wrong thing. The best defence against those charges obviously is to make it a real charity immediately. That would not undo the legal violations, but it would make them ‘technical’ rather than substantial, and I suppose they could then be overlooked.

This would have to be done with credibility. Mere words will no longer be enough, especially when they are cold, and don’t show an intention to reach out. It would be good to hear an admission of mistakes here and there, or at least an acknowledgment that help from members could be useful. I would like to see the true message of strength from the Leadership Team that comes with admitting they’re not perfect. How could they be? They are mostly young, motivated people, at the beginning of their professional lives, working for us in exchange for a bag of peanuts! So be who you are; don’t claim to be Bill Gates! If you say: this is what I’m good at, and here’s where I need assistance, people will come and help you. If you claim to be perfect, and are arrogant with it, people will try to prove you’re not so perfect after all. If we disagree, by all means do it your way, and not mine, as you’re the ones doing the work, but don’t lie and don’t bully.

I believe a genuine charity is the best way forward, as it will allow motivating future volunteers. This organisation has to spend a lot of time and effort on finding out what it wants from volunteers, and more importantly: what it wants to offer them. It needs to learn urgently that volunteering is a give and take situation, and not a one way street. That doesn’t negate that many volunteers are perfectly happy. They have found rewards for their work, mostly in their own local communities. But that is their own achievement, just like the volunteering itself. The organisation does not seem to be offering much. Where’s the volunteer training? Where are the written testimonials given for thousands of hours of dedicated services, that people might use for job applications in their CV, proving they exercised and acquired skills? Instead cold emails are sent out that “your services will no longer be retained due to personal differences”. Wrong way. Volunteers need to be at the very heart of the organisation. Please treat them as ‘human resources’, not as free labour without minds. I fear there is no ‘healing’ of the wounds suffered by some ex-volunteers, as some of them seem too deep. The effort here will need to be: not to let it happen again.

CouchSurfing, and a number of individuals, may face serious legal consequences, and real pressure can be put on you to honour your word and become a charity. That will happen unless you make it obsolete by doing the right thing now. You can’t, however, be forced legally to put the word ‘irrevocable’ in your bye-laws asset dedication, but you may realise it’s the ‘open sesame’ that leads forward and restores trust. In any event, the obligations that come with genuine charity status (irrevocable or not) to adopt acceptable (team) corporate governance instead of a one-man-band, to have annual reporting and disclosure duties, in other words: public supervision, will be a huge improvement. It will be both: control and support mechanism, to ensure you’ll do the right thing. Please do it.”

Pickwick: Appointing mediocrity

Published by on 02 October 2007 at 20:28 in Casey Fenton, Collective, employees, Leadership Circle and Transparency. 5 Comments Tags: casey, couchsurfing, formal-query, mediocrity, non-communication, pickwick, thai-collective, ulf.

Pickwick about Ulf’s remarks to the formal query about the immigration requirements and CS management, in Brainstorm:

Ulf: “brought up only to be able to point out (once more) to how that mean, mean LT has not come up with them!!!”

How do you know? I brought this up because innocent volunteers were made to violate Thai law and risk jail, and I decided to do what I could to stop it.

Ulf: “I wonder why those authors would not first of all contact the organizers, tell them about those concerns”

How do you know they didn’t?

Ulf: “an appropriate amount of time to answer (2 weeks)”

It doesn’t take two weeks to answer “are you aware that a business visa and work permit are required?” In two minutes you can say either: “Yes, and we’ll brief all applicants fully”, or: “No, good gracious, thanks for telling us, we’ll check immediately, any more help you can give?”

Ulf: “that mean, mean LT”

Some who’ve met the people came here with pain, disappointment, and feeling their trust betrayed. I’m not one of them. I don’t know anybody.

From an outside view I think something happened I’ve seen many times, as consultant, and as participant, in new political parties, family businesses, charities:

The founder generation leaves a second generation power vacuum, by appointing mediocrity, so that their own power isn’t challenged, and their own glory doesn’t pale against real professional competence. I don’t think they are mean. I think they are overwhelmed by their responsibilities.

Because they don’t have what it takes to do this job they don’t react professionally, but try to lie when caught blundering. And when caught lying, they feel with their backs to the wall and try to bully. The inappropriateness of those acts backfired, so the strategy now is to be silent or evasive. It’s neither wicked nor original. It’s human nature. It comes from making inept appointments, in an inept organisational structure.

Since a management style has been established that sidelines criticism by applying naked power unchecked, change will only occur if and when there is a sense of real crisis. I would have preferred it to be an internal crisis, brought on by a ‘rebellion’ here, about censorship or communication, rather than something that puts volunteers in a Thai jail, or leaves surfers stranded all over the globe should the site go down (again).

But I no longer hope for the ‘internal crisis’ option. Non-communication from above, most noticeably from Casey (the only voice that counts), and the resulting tedious repetitiveness of criticism, has left people with nothing else to talk about than each other, and that seems to have worked regrettably well. All are at each other’s throats, and blaming each other for it too. The issues fade.

It’s like the man shouting: “Move, Liz! Car coming!” and she replies: “Not in this tone, Henry!”

Copied with Pickwick’s permission

What do the LT actually do?

Published by Callum on 02 October 2007 at 16:00 in 501c3, Board of Directors, Casey Fenton, employees, Finances, general director, Jim Stone, Leadership Circle, Matthew Brauer, NDA, Transparency and Volunteer coordinator. 7 Comments Tags: Casey Fenton, couchsurfing, Jim Stone, Mattthew-Brauer, OpenCouchSurfing.

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?

“Run the show how you think you must…”

Published by on 30 September 2007 at 20:51 in 501c3, Casey Fenton, Collective, employees, Finances, Participation, Transparency and Volunteer coordinator. 2 Comments Tags: attorney_general, casey, Collective, shame, show, thai, volunteering.

I might have used other words, and I definitely don’t have the skill to do (or bluff?) this sort of stuff, but I’m not unhappy to see that Pickwick is seriously kicking some butt:

It’s getting heart breaking in here. And cold. Icy cold. All the ‘open source’ and ‘charity’ debate left me disagreeing, but unhurt. This Thai project does me in.
www.couchsurfing.com/collective_thailand_application.html

First the cold, demanding, uppity language itself. Then what looks like a “suck ‘em dry & spit ‘em out” attitude of present and future ‘Volunteer Coordination’. Then the cynicism luring generous, well meaning people to commit crimes and risk jail for lying to immigration police in a post 9/11 world.
www.couchsurfing.com/group_read.html?gid=429&post=401914#pos…

Shame on you. Shame on those who do it. Shame on those who sit close by and watch in silent complicity. It’s time to hold Casey & Friends accountable, if not to members, then at least to the law.

The Royal Thai Government have received a formal query about the immigration requirements for the project. They know you are coming, so you better cut out the criminal part of your plan.

The charity question needs a decision. Casey opened his mouth in 2003, and he now either sings, or shuts it again. No more smoke screens. Run the show how you think you must, but run it well, and stop lying. A thoroughly documented formal query about possible Unlawful Charitable Solicitations will be placed before the Attorney General of New Hampshire “practically tomorrow”. My advice: hurry and be there first, with a genuine charity.

The Casey Fenton Show

Published by on 23 September 2007 at 21:27 in 501c3, Board of Directors and Casey Fenton. 6 Comments Tags: 501_c_3, annual_report, board_of_directors, burning_questions, business_entity, bylaws, casey, couchsurfing, deception, fenton, founders, public_information, seb, state_of_new_hampshire.

In 2005 CouchSurfing was a business entity in the US state of New Hampshire, that’s for sure. You can even find the annual report of 2005 there to see that the Board of Directors consisted of Casey Fenton, and that the president of the organization was Casey Fenton. The treasurer was Casey Fenton, and last, but not least, the secretary was, you might have guessed it… Casey Fenton. This might have changed in the meanwhile.

So, what is the current status? Why hasn’t there been an annual report of 2006? As of this day, is there more variation in the official positions of CouchSurfing International Inc.? We were informed that Dan and Seb are members of the board now, but before January 2007, when Casey announced that he was the only member of the Board, many people thought that all 4 Founders were on the Board. Or not? We can’t know, since…

Last Annual Report Filed Date:	12/24/2005
Last Annual Report Filed:	2005

Casey’s Magic

Published by Callum on 22 September 2007 at 16:30 in Casey Fenton, couchsurfing, history, Leadership Circle and Participation. 32 Comments Tags: BeWelcome, Casey Fenton, couchsurfing, CrashAtMine, hospex, Hospitality Club, Hospitality-Exchange.

While reading an NY Times article about CouchSurfing (thanks Mary) I was reminded of the magic that Casey created in the CouchSurfing project. I’ve definitely lost track of the magic over the last few months since becoming involved in the inner workings of the CouchSurfing organisation.

There’s a great sense of community, a great PR image, a wonderful “feeling” when reading about CouchSurfing. It’s a feeling that Hospitality Club and BeWelcome definitely don’t have. It’s more bohemian, more offbeat and quirky, yet somehow more mainstream.

Casey struck a great balance between the hitch hiking “true” traveller and the mainstream. CouchSurfing appeals to people from all walks of life, and that’s undoubtedly because of Casey’s ability to pitch it well.

In many ways, this makes it even more tragic that Casey chooses to run the organisation in the way he does. There’s such a huge opportunity to do something really, trully exceptional here. Unfortunately, it’s being stifled by the closed door, backroom politics style of leadership.

So here’s my question. Can we create the same magic in another network? Can we recreate that wonderful bohemian feeling in BeWelcome? Or CrashAtMine? Or a whole new network? Or is it something uniquely Casey that can’t easily be copied? Is it a quality that can’t be replicated?

Trust issues

Published by on 14 September 2007 at 10:41 in Casey Fenton, couchsurfing, Jim Stone, Matthew Brauer, Member Rights, networks, Participation and people. 12 Comments Tags: couchsurfing, distrust, haters, hospitality_services, leadership_team, mutual_trust, organisational_structure, passports, travel_network, trust_network, volunteers.

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?

A long term relationship with Casey.
Americans.
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

501(c)(3)? Can Casey sell out?

Published by on 30 August 2007 at 20:30 in 501c3 and Casey Fenton. 2 Comments Tags: 501c3, brainstorm, casey, couchsurfing, sell_out.

The hottest thread in the Brainstorm group is probably the 501(c)(3) thread. The CS General Manager, the Volunteer Coordinator have posted, but apparently not with enough information to cast away doubts raised by a retired management consultant with plenty of experience with US law.

Apparently there is a way for Casey to sell out, as long as the bylaws are not sorted out properly. Of course, these are currently far away from public scrutiny.

As Callum wrote:

I think the key question for Casey / LT therefore is about the company byelaws. How was the company incorporated and are there any provisions for changing the company status? Without that information, I am of the opinion that if 501(c)(3) status is ever achieved, Casey could voluntarily remove that status, pay the relevant tax, and then sell CouchSurfing.