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Archive for the 'Collective' Category

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2008 Q1 finances

Published by on 10 June 2008 at 11:52 in Collective, Finances, NDA and Transparency. 22 Comments Tags: .

“I hear servers and domain names are really expensive to maintain, and that some of the ones working on it, especially the full-time employees, are really hard-working, so deserve to be on a payroll. That fact is hard to disagree.. But at the same time, i wasn’t happy to hear that some especially coveted members in the core CS circle get their flight costs to get to the collective covered by the money raised from our donations. And that, just to get someone they really like having around to join them and be their private cook!”

Regarding finances, check for yourself, the finances of the first quarter of 2008 are available. Salaries are the biggest post on the expenses side. That doesn’t include flights and other costs of Collectives. Less than 10% of the income is used for servers and there was a surplus of almost 60.000 US$.

7220 • Salaries of Professional Staff
 19,384.68
7250 • Payroll Taxes
 1,955.63
7260 • Workers Comp
 139.02
7515 • Bookkeeping Fees
 1,512.50
7520 • Accounting Fees
 449.12
7525 • Bank Service Fees 8,221.52
7530 • Legal Fees 9,867.59
7540 • Web/ Internet/ Host Fees 2,960.59
8110 • Office Expenses/ Supplies 3,195.01
8130 • Telephone & telecommunications 2,208.03
8140 • Postage, shipping, delivery 5,730.80
8160 • Equip rental & maintenance 13,923.46
8170 • Printing and Copying
14.55
8210 • Rent, Parking, and other occupancy
 4,777.81
8215 • Building Repair and Maintenance
 215.00
8220 • Utilities
 917.73
8305 • Auto/ Fuel Expense
 48.31
8310 • Travel 6,223.67
8320 • Meeting Expenses
 798.64
8330 • Meals/ Groceries 10,895.37
8520 • Insurance – non employee
 138.60
8540 • Staff Development 3,589.10

(note: meals and groceries were bought in Thailand!)

“I take it that back when CS was a more grassroots thing (correct me if i am wrong), all collective volunteers had to find their own way of getting to them. And that all the work was done pro-bono, even those who were working on improving CS on a full-time basis. In such a case, i wouldn’t think it’s fair that there are people on the payroll now, but those who helped cs in the initial startup days don’t get shit for all that they have contributed… “

CS never was very grassroots. PEople (like me) just tried to move it there. Casey has received a 2000 US$ per month salary ever since there was money coming in. It’s always been under control of Casey, and later Casey and his close friends.

I think paying some people is fine. Though, only people who are really needed, e.g. system administration to keep the site up 24/7, and further, let the community decide where their money is used. Whenever there’s a donation, add some checkboxes where you can give options where the money can go after the basics (administrative stuff, server costs, basic legal costs) have been covered (e.g. none, publicity, collectives, salaries for casey’s friends, food and lodging for groupies).

And don’t pay 2000 US$ per month plus expenses plus flights plus food and lodging. During a stay at a Collective it’s extremely easy to not spend more than 300 US$ per month…

Apart from the flights to and away from New Zealand (800 US$) I hitchhiked to the three CouchSrufing collectives I worked at. The laptop I bought to work on CS (1000 US$) broke quickly after I stopped volunteering, because of an extremely ridiculous non-disclosure agreement was “leaked” that does not allow working on any similar project (e.g. Wikitravel or other social networks).

BeWelcome will take time to grow. The BeVolunteer organization is already far ahead of anything else in hospex world in terms of flexibility, transparency and democracy. The software is about to follow. 3500 members is already a large pool of active people to connect with.

And note that BeWelcome now has (alpha stage) functionality where all members can verify members, for free. And it’s ID card or passport verification, not just address verification (which can very easily be falsified).

My idea about couchserfing was that it could be used as a vehicle to do much more than just hospitality exchange for college aged low-budget travelers. With so much money coming in and such a huge community behind it it would be extremely simple to set up much more sharing and society enhancing projects. E.g. a good friend of mine who also attended the New Zealand Collective is setting up groundcrew.us. If it would have been done from the inside of CS it would have been big by now. Though, on the other hand, I’m extremely happy that I didn’t accept Casey’s offer to host Hitchwiki.org with CouchSurfing…

Communications deception or concealment

Published by on 31 May 2008 at 05:59 in Collective, couchsurfing, General Info and Uncategorized. 9 Comments Tags: .

MANDIE M May 24th, 2008 – 5:17 am on this thread

The blog is on its way.
This is my second day at the Collective and
I have to admit that I dropped the ball on getting the blog set up before my arrival.

MANDIE M posts again on May 28th, 2008 – 1:52 am but makes no mention of the blog.

Walter Heck 28th, 2008 – 3:11 pm The blog is here: blog.couchsurfing.com

Taking a look at the blog shows the thread
Welcome to the Collective! May 25th, 2008

Now was this a intentional or was Mandie concealing the blog till she got an ‘official’ response from her boss ?

Mandie reminds me of Dana Perino the current White House Press Secretary for President George W. Bush [1]

Also reminds me of the White House Press policy

“No one charged with keeping the press and the public informed about the workings of the government should have to play such frustrating games,” McClellan writes.

But “it was clear,” he writes, that the president’s definition of necessary would “keep the press secretary on a pretty short leash.” This included being barred from key internal decision-making discussions,

“The more filtered information is, the less accurate it’s likely to be,” said Hess, a presidential scholar at the Brookings Institution.

“The more typical press secretary spends a good deal of his or her time trying to find out what’s going on,” he said. “They’re up against a lot of people who are busy and who don’t really trust the press. … You’ve got to be pretty insistent.”

Impressions of the CS Thailand achievements

Published by on 08 May 2008 at 21:56 in 501c3, Board of Directors, Casey Fenton, Censorship, Collective, Donations, Jim Stone and Matthew Brauer. 26 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”?

“Happy” birthday.

Published by on 17 April 2008 at 13:55 in 501c3, Blogroll, Campaigns, Casey Fenton, Censorship, Collective, Elections, history and Transparency. 4 Comments

Happy birthday.

Almost exactly a year ago, the OCS initiative was started. Initially, our hope was to entice the LT with concrete ideas and campaigns, to get them to address the various serious issues we had discovered at the heart of CS. Not much has changed however and most of the changes have not been for the better:

  • CS is legally still in very dubious water. Still no 501c3 status, after… 3 (or 4?) years of claiming it?
  • Casey still holds all the legal (and financial) strings and has decided to set up camp in Alaska next, which is essentially his home.
  • Transparancy is down, censorship is waaay up. (Search engines have been blocked and CS has a permanent censorship/security team now, almost like during the cold war!)
  • CSC Thailand can be declared a failure as well now, after the NZ meltdown. I haven’t seen anything positive come out of it, but we’re still waiting for the “memo”.
  • “Not talking to anyone” has become the official communication mode for the entire organisation.

And so, with a heavy heart, I’m renewing the OpenCouchSurfing.org domainname by 2 years. In all honesty, I had serious hopes that it wouldn’t be necessary to have this website for more than a year. I (personally) was perfectly willing to “bury the hatchet” if there was even some semblance of progress. Alas, it is not to be. CS still makes me angry, especially for the obligation I feel towards its wonderful community to speak up about its numerous failure, shortcomings and shady deals.

Maybe now is a good opportunity to start thinking about OCS “2.0″. The way I see it, the signal to noise ratio on the blog could be better and there have been some points of discussion we could re-raise at this point. Anonimity, re-posting and privacy concerns come to mind. More importantly, I believe OCS should refocus its efforts towards a clearly understandable and easy to navigate website. Right now, I can only imagine the confusion of a random surfer on OCS. I still heavily support our “open for all” attitude, even with all the negativity that comes with that, but I think it can be channeled better.

So, in the spirit of transparancy and cooperation: Who would be interested in helping “revamp” and organise OCS? We’ll need to digg through a lot of information and restructure quite a bit, but I also think there is room for new activism. Things on my mind:

  • An open call to ALL ambassadors for transparancy (and perhaps elections)?
  • A good Q&A section, where we try to answer what CS doesn’t answer.
  • Video?
  • …

I also wouldn’t mind separating this “public blog” from a better structured blog with some editorial control that we could move to the front page. We could “rewrite” a lot of the current knowledge into practical, well researched and well written articles that would be aimed at the general public (including new members and press) and not just people with CS background knowledge.

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.

How to Digg for News on Couchsurfing

Published by on 10 March 2008 at 12:14 in Collective and volunteer coordination. 8 Comments Tags: , , .

After reading Mandys latest post on the present state of the communications systems in place on couchsurfing . I decided to write this how-to article.

CouchSurfing has morphed over time from a one-man gig to a volunteer-based community with people pitching in to help everyday. The problem is that no system has ever been developed to help those people communicate with one another.

That happened in 2006!!! But mandy makes it sound like it was yesterday.

I would love to think of myself as some sort of wonder-woman, but the simple truth is that I am not and my mere presence at this Collective doesn’t solve a problem that goes far beyond one person. But what I am trying to do is develop the system that will enable everyone to communicate with each other.

Once an actual system is in place, with each team understanding the communication channels that exist and how to access them and what information needs to go where and when, then I think we will see a dramatic difference in the way we all feel about communication within CS. But developing a system takes time, and that is what I have been working on

.

http://www.couchsurfing.com/group_read.html?gid=3585&post=780947

The best places to find news

Closed to most

The most important group on couchsurfing.You need to be vetted to get in here.
Ambassador’s Private
http://www.couchsurfing.com/group.html?gid=1668

Member Disputes & Safety – Private 18 1 1340
http://www.couchsurfing.com/organization.html?gid=6223
Ambassador Management Private 9 – 1310
http://www.couchsurfing.com/organization.html?gid=3577

Important Orgs Groups

MARKETING & COMMUNICATIONS
http://www.couchsurfing.com/organization.html?gid=3583
Community Communications

Location: CS Organization >> >> MARKETING & COMMUNICATIONS >> Community Communications
http://www.couchsurfing.com/organization.html?gid=3585

[CS Tech] News Feed

Location: CS Organization >> Product Development Experts >> Technology Team >> [CS Tech] News Feed
(Notice the deeply embedded group )

Interested in being informed about many small changes happening on the website? In being up to date on what the Tech Team is currently improving? Then this might be the place for you!
http://www.couchsurfing.com/group.html?gid=7856
Open but difficult to find

Ambassador’s Public

Casey emails certain close ambassadors how share the news with other ambassadors.
http://www.couchsurfing.com/group.html?gid=2125
News from CSC Thailand, 2007-2008

CSC Thailand, 2007-2008 – Public

Location: CS Organization >> PROJECT TEAMS: Collectives >> CSC Thailand, 2007-2008 – Public (Almost a dead group right from the start of the collective )

http://www.couchsurfing.com/group.html?gid=7944

CSC Thailand Public – Questions and Answers
http://www.couchsurfing.com/group.html?gid=8871 (Almost a dead group)
Location: The CouchSurfing Project >> QUANTITY VS QUALITY….IMPROVING CS THROUGH YOUR SUGGESTION. >> CSC Thailand Public – Questions and Answers

Discussions group with titbits of Information

Brainstorm – the old and original one….
http://www.couchsurfing.com/group.html?gid=429

The redefined same topics less feedback (People say techs implement stuff from here. Fact no they do not)

http://www.couchsurfing.com/group.html?gid=7621
QUANTITY VS QUALITY….IMPROVING CS THROUGH YOUR SUGGESTION. (Almost a dead group)
http://www.couchsurfing.com/group.html?gid=1589
Thoughts from the General Manager (Almost a dead group)
The CouchSurfing Project >> Thoughts from the General Manager
http://www.couchsurfing.com/group.html?gid=7218
Public Comments for GM (Almost a dead group)
Location: The CouchSurfing Project >> Thoughts from the General Manager >> Public Comments for GM
http://www.couchsurfing.com/group.html?gid=7219

Present active groups /Groups with sprouts of activity.

Meetings upgrade team

Location: CS Organization >> Community Experts >> Events & Outreach >> Meetings upgrade team
http://www.couchsurfing.com/group.html?gid=4882

Translation – General

Location: CS Organization >> >> Translations >> Translation – General
http://www.couchsurfing.com/group.html?gid=3568

Finance

Location: CS Organization >>  >> ORGANIZATIONAL OPERATIONS >> Finance Coordination
http://www.couchsurfing.com/organization.html?gid=3593
Location: CS Organization >> Operations Experts >> Finance
http://www.couchsurfing.com/group.html?gid=6207
Location: CS Organization >>  >> MARKETING & COMMUNICATIONS >> Community Communications >> CouchSurfing Newsletter MrRico
http://www.couchsurfing.com/organization.html?gid=518

The Alaska Collective?

Published by on 05 March 2008 at 00:34 in Collective and employees. 88 Comments Tags: , , .

From the most directly available news source about CouchSurfing it seems that the next Collective will be held in Alaska. And congratulations to Doogy, who seems to have been hired to work for CS. I wonder what his official function will be. Translation:

i have been hired to work for CS but then [i] have to decide before March 8 if I move to Alaska with the group for this Summer…

Is the Couchsurfing collective a cult?

Published by on 25 February 2008 at 14:39 in Casey Fenton, Collective, cult, Culture of Appreciation, Transparency and volunteer coordination. 51 Comments

First off: Don’t panic! What I’m trying to investigate is the collective, not the website or the entire CS community. I will try to look at various aspects of the collective in relation to typical cult characteristics, but I will also try and suggest an “antidote”, a way in which certain tendencies could be reverted. Note that I only approach this from a psychological point of view, religion has little to do here (for now). For all you conspiracy nuts out there: I do not believe cults are formed with the intent of forming a cult. I believe they are usually a result of well intentioned, but badly executed social experiments. Lastly, you might not agree that some of the characteristics are bad, which is fine as well of course.

Let us look at the key steps for coercive persuasion typically found in cults.

  1. People are put in physically or emotionally distressing situations.
    As a former participant, I can testify that taking part in a collective is both physically and emotionally draining. Simply put, there are too many people in too little room. Sleeping in the living room, getting too little sleep regularly because of the continuous activity, general lack of truly private moments. Many people in the NZ collective needed a “break” (temporarily move out) because of how stressful is was at times.
    Possible solutions
    Separate the working environment from the living environment. Encourage realistic working hours instead of letting people work into the night. Lower the number of participants to suit the venue.
  2. Their problems are reduced to one simple explanation, which is repeatedly emphasized.
    The simple explanation given in this case is “We’re all together in this monumental task”. CS as an abstract idea is seen as a supremely important goal and anything that stands in its way (criticism, the law, etc) needs to be pushed aside. “Nonviolent communication” (see previous post) is seen as the only reasonable communication style.
    Possible solutions
    Place CS within the larger context of hospitality networks, cooperate with other organizations on a structural level (seminars, shared initiatives, etc). Get outside experts and expertise that does more than promote the party line. Challenge entrenched viewpoints regularly, create a culture of continuous evaluation. Stop using NVC.
  3. They receive unconditional love, acceptance, and attention from the leader.
    I’ll translate a part of a collective participants’ blog (“Doogie”) which I think speaks for itself:
    “The atmosphere is anything but serious or professional. Everyone is more than friendly with each other. At unguarded moment, when you least expect it, you’ll get a heartwarming energy hug or a ‘good work’ pat on the shoulder. It is impossible to be depressed here, because every little dip is countered with the best medicine: a good portion of well meant affection.”
    Possible solutions
    Make rewards realistic and conditional. In essence, compliment someone on a specific job done well, instead of broad emotional rewards. Be a bit more professional, perhaps the constant hugging is not such a good thing?
  4. They get a new identity based on the group.
    The “ideal image” is the Burning Man persona: Carefree, the eternal traveler, unbound by relationships, jobs or anything similar, experimental and spiritual. During my time at the NZ collective I saw more than one “spontaneous dress up party”, where suddenly half of your colleagues are dressed in fur coats, bunny ears, half undressed and in various levels of intoxication.
    Possible solutions
    Keep the party out of the collective. Moderate the dressing up and make sure you have a better age/background mix in your volunteers. How many carefree 30 year old North Americans do you really need? Give some room for the “boring” people. (Note that I don’t really care about what one does in their spare time, but if a group is socially pressured into the same behavior I do object.)
  5. They are subject to entrapment and their access to information is severely controlled.
    As a volunteer, a collective is financially draining (most participants are relatively poor to begin with), which quickly limits your options to staying at the collective constantly (24/7) or quitting altogether. You are bound by a very restrictive NDA, limiting your career possibilities and ability to communicate with the outside world. Criticism is kept off the CS website through social pressure (hence the existence of this website) and criticism is put on par with “hating” (which is pure indoctrination). Again, a lack of real outside expertise (social academics and more experienced people are actively being held outside of the collective). The collective is organized in a very remote location (New Zealand, Thailand), isolating people from their regular social network.
    Possible solutions
    Pay all of the participants or severely limit the duration. Organize it in a much more accessible location (Europe or North America). Kill the NDA. Make critical evaluation a highly accepted and rewarding activity on CS on all levels (instead of repressing it in the “brainstorm” group).

Any other ideas?

Casey Fenton needs to go.

Published by on 20 January 2008 at 18:02 in Board of Directors, Casey Fenton, Collective, Corpganization, employees, Finances, general director, Jim Stone, Leadership Circle, legal, Matthew Brauer and Uncategorized. 68 Comments Tags: , , .

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

Casey Love

Published by on 16 January 2008 at 12:19 in Casey Fenton, Collective, Transparency and volunteer coordination. 17 Comments Tags: , , , .

Damn Kasper, how do you do those quotes?

Thanks ;)

For your information: this is an extract of the original post by Kasper (http://www.opencouchsurfing.org/2008/01/14/ill-communication/)

Thomas said:

It would be nice if Diederik could speak up about his experience and his own evaluation of the CS organisation.

@Diederik
A (small) word of warning: Speaking out against CS will almost automatically get you lumped in with the “OCSers”, even if you specifically state that you aren’t.

Well, to be honest, I probably already am. Some months ago, I had some posts, also on my own website. Seems that the communication went dead afterwards.

Let’s start at the beginning. I think this gives a better insight in my current feelings towards the Techteam, and in general: the leader of it, and Casey (ok, here comes my ban…)

My CS experience started at my former employer. Walter was a programmer then. I and Walter could (and still can) get along quite well, and I was invited in his house.
There were several great people, which had the same “frequency” (another word of saying we could get along, but that sentence would became corny ;) ). I met Duke, Aldo, Tiina, Paul and some others I forgot due to the use of ethanol ) My current position then was system engineer, and I was asked for that position at couchsurfing.

That would become handy, because of the start of the Rotterdam Tech Collective. Some several others were there too. Anu* (love!), Weston, Naz (great friend), Chris where several of them.
I got introduced with Nicco and we had great chats about the code (I’m not a programmer, so having some insight is perfect for me), system engineering, the couchsurfing system etc, etc. At that time, there were several things an issue. Nicco and I (as the only admins, besides some Indian people) started to work.

We had an agenda, and could start.

Several issues were addressed quite quick. Most of them are not-to-be-disclosed, but several were visible from the outside:

That time, the collective was already 3 months (or something like that) in the past. Several people came to become “sysadmin”, Nicco was degraded as leader, while Weston became TT-Leader (managing dev and sysadmin). Communication became less and less. From some times, we couldn’t reach Casey, which was our first contact for the code. At that time, my irritation began (my irritation towards the OCS was already there ;) ). Could some parts from OCS be *INDEED* true?

(Anu isn’t really stupid, you know, and Daz is just Daz and should drop dead, etc etc ;) ) At that time, it seemed to *ME* that some people were only busy programming, and not with management.

We had a great CSInterklaas weekend, and the Thai-collective started. We had several “incidents” before and after that (not-to-be-disclosed), and my irritation was at top. When I decided to resign (1 week ago) at the same time the poweroutage at the datacenter happened. Bad timing… Or probably not, because there were some more “incidents”.

This morning, I pulled the plugs from cs-sysadmins, cs-erc, cs-devel(|public). At my desktop is a Freemind scheme (http://freemind.sourceforge.net, go get it) with my thoughts, idea’s and remedies. I had the idea to post it in the CS-Sysadmin group for learning. If only someone would not only *READ* it, but also *REPLY* to it. Therefor, I decided not to do so. I have the feeling that I’m being ignored, so why should I put more energy in it?

From my opinion (an censored version of the mindmap):

  • Where’s the communication?
    We are having more and more people, which asks more communcation to happen. The group only has 3 or 4 skype-meetings, and no real agenda. LT has, I believe that dev has. Why doens’t sysadmin have one?Miscommunications happen too often. Get a good IRC channel, AND STICK WITH IT. Use it like SVN, and make sure that you are the only one working on one problem.
  • Weston should resign from being a techteam-leader.
    Weston is a great guy (as well as Casey btw), but he is a programmer (as well as Casey). I believe that Casey and Weston should either resign from sysadminning and start programming OR do resign from both, and become a real manager (that is: delegate and check).
  • Get things prioritized
    Sticks with the communication part. Changing passwords is not an problem, but if changing OSes is having an higher priority, get that done.
  • Have more communication between CS-Sysadmin and development
    Commit often
    Commit the build to the webservers *NOT* often, but on an weekly base, and *COMMUNICATE* what the differences are. This ensures that everyone knows what is going on, and can act upon unexpected behaviour…
  • Learn from mistakes
    D’oh ;)

Let’s end with some positive notes:

  • I met all those great people. Some of those I want to mention: Nicco (thanks mate), Anu, Naz, Aldo (thanks a lot with the thinking), Martine (hug), Stijn, and all those others. Not to mention all those people that we hosted, will host, and I blatantly forgot.
  • I still believe that CS works. It needs to change. An negative one here is that I don’t believe that that will happen in the near future.
  • I still will be hosting with my girlfriend. We have a lively community in Rotterdam, which I love.
  • I seem to understand better and better where this OCS is all about. I only hope that I won’t reach the cynical level of communication that some of OCS have. At the same moment I feel that I will become only more bitter.

I guess that the post shuld be called “Casey Love”, the feeling that you were loved, but the other end just decides to move on to the next one.

Love from Rotterdam!

Diederik (And Frank Sinatra… “The best is yet to come”)

p.s. When resigning from cs-sysadmins this morning, I saw the description of the group. Guess that this one is not NDA bound:

“Description: This group is free from political agendas and personal ideologies. It is a place to serve the one of the core needs(server administration) of the CS Organization in order to make sure that the members have access to the site at all times so that they can experience inter cultural understanding.”