The Brilliance of Mayhem

Before I start, Marmite and Cheese (melted on top in the toaster oven) on Toast, one of the greatest foods of all time!

Maybe it should be the Mayhem of Brilliance really. This house is full of both I believe. The chaos going on in this house and within it’s realm on the web is amazing, but it seems to be working. These people are working together in an attempt to break ground in the realm of connecting with each other, while creating the foundation and the means for everyone to create their own experiences. We are merely beta-testers of how people relate to each other. What a strang feeling, I feel like I am somehow in the middle of something very small that is about to be very big. I have always kind of felt that way, ever since I joined Couchsurfing and began to imagine the possibilities. Being in this house with these people really drives it home though. There is an excitement in the air all the time, people who really desire to make a difference in the world and the capability to do so. It is funny though, that these brilliant individuals have so much chaos in their own heads. So much going on, I can’t quite figure out how they keep it all organized. That is the mayhem of brilliance I was referring to and somehow they are all coming together under a loose goal to create whatever they desire and somehow it all fits together. I feel like it should be related to something I have read and the only thing that comes to mind is ‘On the Road’, like I am Sal Paradise meeting all these crazy people who are developing a new generation and I am lucky enough to be around seeing it all go down. What a feeling that is.

A message from Kirsty

The World Is Getting Better, Pass It On

I’ve just had a great weekend…… A great weekend spent with amazing people doing wonderful things and I couldn’t have chosen a better way to spend my holiday weekend.

Those of you that know me at all well know about Couch Surfing and what a big part it has played in my life for the last 18 + months. This weekend I had the opportunity to spend the weekend at the couch surfing collective in Nelson.
What..s the collective you ask? In a very abbreviated definition it..s a group of passionate couch surfers from around the globe, living together in a house and working crazy crazy hours from November through April , all working together to make Couch surfing a stronger organisation and in turn making the world a better place.

If the concept of Couch Surfing is completely foreign to you jump on www.couchsurfing.com and check it out. I’m not going to give you a simple explanation of it, because , while in some ways, the idea is not a hard one to grasp, the ripple effects of being involved with such an organisation are anything but simple and far too involved to fit into a blog. It.’s something your need to experience to fully understand.

After 5 hours drive I arrived at the Couch Surfing home at The Cliffs. Unsure what to expect exactly I was glad when a familiar face opened the door. Let me clarify familiar .. I had never actually met Kasper before (the face in question) but as I had exchanged emails with him a week earlier and seen Kasper..s photo on his couchsurfing profile, at least I knew he was definitely a CSer and I was in the right place. Hurrah! Shortly after meeting Kasper, I was introduced to Joe, and as time carried on eventually meet the lovely Elsa, Leo, Casey and Steve (actually hungrysteve was the one face I already knew). I..m big on first impressions and was not let down .. the house was filled with welcoming and interesting people. I knew my weekend was going to go well after seeing Leo and Elsa’s personal bubble’s video not long after arriving. The video reminded me of.. well, me actually!

Anyhow.. digression. Introductions done, pressies for the collective offloaded, I started my weekend of observations.
These are my observations:
The Collective hums this weekend. There’s not an excessive amount of talking. Sure there’s conversations, but more often then not the participants will be sitting at their laptops (of which there are a fair few .. all equipped with their adaptors, stickers and, in Elsa’s case insane lettering), typing away, getting the job done. Every now and then the hum will break for a discussion (quite often to do with codes that I understand very little about).
From time to time over the weekend Kasper might strum away on one of the guitars, or cut loose on the keyboard, Leo will laugh at something he sees/reads on the screen in front of him, Casey will try, try and try again to get the conference call to India working right, Joe will start talking couch surfing philosophy..etc.
Everybody is working hard and playing their part. It’s an atmosphere of getting things done, even if it takes 15 hours of one day in front of the computer screen.THe most amazing thing about being here is seeing how hard everyone works and knowing what a good job they’re doing. You half expect the walls to swell with all the atmosphere it has to contain.

For a group of people that have such a common purpose they’re all quite wonderfully different and so very interesting that it would take endless hours to even scratch the surface of the combined personality of the collective.

Outside of the collective work there’s more fun to be had. A couple of Nelsonians drop by with pizza and it leads to a night out on the town in Nelson. Starting off slowly in an Irish pub Leo decides he’s actually Irish. He’s the first Irish Brazilian I’ve ever come across. Next thing there’s an almighty thud as the couch underneath Jakob, HungrySteve and Clare gives way. Conversation is flowing and in the background the singer in the band is rattling on about selling an old mountain bike… Time to move on… The night progresses .. we end up in a little bar in a side street, and squeeze into the smoking area out the back. It’s packed like a tin of sardines and raining non stop., so of course is a perfect photo opportunity to throw your arms up in the air and embrace the rain..according to Leo anyhow. Kasper and Elsa get their dancing shoes on for a while and then it’s off to the next pub. This time with a more familiar pub-ish atmosphere. There’s Bon Jovi and Dragon in the air and the crowd is singing along. Time for more beer (for all but me .. sober driver .. responsible girl am I). Am feeling like am at united nations gathering .. kiwis, dutch, French, Brazlian and American. It..s a beautiful thing. Casey makes a firm decision to learn some kiwi drinking songs. Then embraces kiwi slang with an enthusiastic ..Sweet Ass… I think about letting it go and seeing how long it takes till someone else corrects him, but decide against it. We discuss whether ..Sweet As.. or ..Sweet Ass.. makes more sense and the night continues.
A few minutes later and the crowd hits the dance floor. Next thing you know Else is being piggy backed by Leo and Kasper and HungrySteve have formed a piggy back team of their own. Almost time to leave.
As seems to be tradition for me in bars, before leaving I am thrown over the shoulder of Leo (nb.the tradition is being thrown over the shoulder of a male .. not Leo speficially). Naturally I scream, big girly girl am I. So of course Leo proceeds to throw me over the shoulder again. Apparently he enjoys carrying weight around.
A few minutes later we’re all out in the rain. A ..hot.. police woman walks by and Steve and Leo pose for a photo with her. Their eyes are lit up like children in a candy store. High fives all round.
Off to Phat we go. Time for some punk music. Hmm. Leo, Steve, kasper & Elsa, all give it a go. Casey and I choose not to. Highlight of Phat is HungrySteve declaring he just wants to go up and give all the angry punk kids a hug- heart of gold has he.
Time passes and we..re outside again. Photos are being taken. Leo learns to Waltz. Steve scores a job interview. Elsa, Casey and I just want to go home to bed. Leo gives up the waltzing and the four of us disappear towards The Cliffs, leaving HungrySteve, Kasper, Jakob and Clare to get up to the kind of mischief you get up to in Nelson on the weekend.
Back at the Cliffs much time is spent trying to teach Leo to speak with an Irish accent. There’s many a laugh and a ..top of the morning to ya…
End of Night one.

The next day there’s a walk to the markets. Sadly Elsa’s not feeling well. .. She heads home ahead of Joe and Leo and I. We wander around the markets until leo runs into a friend from the states. Yep. It’s a small small world. Invitations to stay in Colorado flow from said friend’s father, phone numbers are exchanged and it..s time to move along.
Moving along interrupted for a long stretch of lying in the park, talking, watching trees and leaves dance, playing on the children’s playground, getting a devine massage, feeding seagulls. So relaxed. So nice.
Home again and very very happy to find Elsa feeling much much better. Time to rearrange furniture and start decorating the house a little. Elsa and I head off to the Warehouse, screaming and running all the way to the car as the rain pours down.
And the weekend continues. A healthy mix of work, fun, learning, sharing, achieving, visualising the future, you name it .. it’s there.

Sunday morning rolls around and there’s finally sunshine. Elsa and I head beachward. Time to collect shells, play in the waves, embrace our childlike natures and enjoy the sunshine. I’ve been very glad of Elsa’s company this weekend. I doubt she knows what a cook girl she is!

Before you know it. It..s time to go home:( . It..s hard to leave such a paradoxically vibrant and calm atmosphere. You can see being in this house becoming addictive. You know good things are being achieved there. You wish you could spend more time there and if you’re honest you’re a little jealous of those that get to live and work there in future months. You realise you’re very lucky to have had such a good weekend and met the people you met. You know Couch Surfing is in good hands.

The World is Getting Better, Pass it on. A simple statement on the couch surfing collective..s notice board. Remember it. Believe it. Pass it on. It could just work.

xx

It’s all about learning

To me, this Collective is all about learning. We are all learning something, in fact, that is what we have all set out do whether we realize it or not. Some people are reading about the Collective to learn more about what it really is. Everyone at the Collective is learning something, and I believe we all are actively trying. I think we are hoping to learn what we can offer the world to help it grow and prosper. Some of us are learning about how we interact with each other and how to share that information with more people so that we all begin to communicate more effectively. Others are learning about what people need and how to meet those needs and wondering what outcomes are possible once needs are met. I feel like I am constantly learning. Whether it is something I am actively trying to learn like the guitar (I learned two whole chords), or something that just happens from listening to conversations, I feel like I am learning a lot every day. I am going to try and share something I learn each day with everyone who reads this blog. We can learn together. Increase our collective consciousness. Please share what you learn too. We can all learn from each other.

Washing someone’s feet

The topic du jour is Emotional Tourism Authenticity.

In general we are exposed to so many opportunities to help others emotionaly, I wish I had a guide to help me be a emotional tourist. I ran into Lauren yesterday, one of those coincidences….we met once in colorado and there we were….facing again in NZ. 12 hours later, it is midnight and we head out to the a place were emotional tourism could happen properly.

After a few random introductions, were were having fun at the moment, “sure yeah rock n’roll dude”, but it was clear to me: were were not friends because we lacked intimacy in so many levels. Feeling awkard about the situation, I thought about a story on the bible about Jesus washing the apostle’s feet. The story tells us that when intimacy is necessary at any moment, humbleness is the only way. By representing humbleness in bowing in front of his disciples, he created humbleness that could be experienced by a combination of actions and words. He actually explained why he was washing their feet, giving meaning to the action.

So, how could I recreate that? Ok, since I did not have any holy water at that specific irish pub at 2 in the morning, I decided to massage her feet. I tell her that I was massaging her feet and explaining why at the same time, like stated before, because it is a coordinated effort to create understanding at that moment. Otherwise, it would have just be a simple 1.5 hour ordinary foot massage.

Yet, after a while, it was not working that well. There was a little tension in our sensitive eyes. She was not so pleased because there was still doubt in the air. I had another thought in my mind that I had yet to share. It was the voice, the guy that wanted to express my desire to tell her she was a beautiful woman and such. It is that very basic instinct of match making that is so common. She was so used to having negative intenractions with young man that she was not relaxed fully. Neither was I.

In order to be authentic, I had to share that thought, which I did, while telling her yet again an example of adding meaning to a thought. So I told her about my feeling and explained that It was a natural reaction to by basic instincts and cultural understanding.

That contribution made much of a difference. It was felt see in her smile and the fact she was somewhat feeling like I could ask her anything.

So I asked, “what is love to you”? She does not answer. She rambles about loving situations and people, but still does not have a clear definition of love. So, I keep pressing her feet and calf muscles, and I suggest that this intimate moment has nothingto do with the massage. The sensory overload that life can give us is only possible by understanding the capacity of our heart to love much more than a brother or a mother. Loving strangers was the real unselfishness challenge.

It got better and better, as she got prettier and prettier too. Suddenly she was a much more special cross between a stranger and a friend. We lived love finally at that night, not only talked about love, but by taking the responsability of loving each other. Not talking about sex here you dirty minds.

Much more than a foot massage aye?

Kirsty Crazy

Week-ends are beautiful. Sometimes the sun decides to shine away, but we get ‘locals’ to drive up and spend a couple of days with us.

A little bit of kiwiness is really refreshing in our American/European based environment : it brings some exoticism to the place. Oh, wait, we are in New-Zealand. Wooops.

This week it’s the company of Kirsten, aka KirstySarah that we enjoy. And it’s been pretty crazy: as soon as she arrived, er, we kept on working, everyone on his laptop Fortunately we experimented Nelson’s night life crazyness later in the evening.

Round and round fromIrish pubs to angry punk student bands we did it all. Pearls of the night: we cannot help spreading couchsurfing love! Steve repressed his need to HUG every punk dancer he met. Why so much violence? Yeah for CouchSurfing. Oh, and Casey started a new language, but he still has pronounciation issues. It’s ’sweet as’, not ’sweet ass’. Oh well.

Leo and Steve met the hottest cop ever. At least they say so. They took a picture, if you’re really nice they might be willing to share it with you. Too bad she didn’t gave them her phone number.

What else… If there’s somewhere you need to be, don’t rely too much on Casey for directions. Google Earth works well though.

We’ve also been yelling a lot in the rain. We should write a new song. Or make a musical. Kirsty’s really into it

It’s the week-end, so as you can see, everything’s really mellow. All on our computers, for a change! No, not entirely true. We’ve been customizing the house a bit. Trying. Making this house a home. We’ll get there soon!

So long, farewell, auf wieder sehen and talk to you tomorrow.

Kirsten and Elsa

work day

And we’ve been working, and working, and working again. All of us sitting at one table, and the worst part of it is that WE ARE GETTING THINGS DONE! Yop, incredible isn’t it?

It’s funny: when we’re chatting, or looking through the wiki’s recent changes, we suddenly realize that we’ve been working on the same elements whereas no words as been uttered. As I said, we’re forming a circle around one single table. No, not the round table, but we’re still going to change the world, and have legends about us – and you.

Talking about legends: we should start breaking them down as soon as they are formed into people’s minds. i.e. Kasper broke the coffee maker and I killed the hummus before it was even made. I’m sure others made bugs too, they’re just keeping them secret. So yes, if we start depriving our participants from coffee and hummus, I don’t know where we’re going anymore.

About legends still: please please please stop thinking (i’m not assuming you do, btw) that because everyone always refers to one and one person only all the time you must do the same. I’m staying with those guys who get users questions all the time. They’re happy to answer them, sure, and they’ll never complain about it. But the sad thing is: they’re so used to spending their entire days in front of their computers that they don’t realize that it’s not a normal thing anymore. (No, of course not, how could I dare make any judgment:) )Plus, I’ve never been so close with my computer as I am now. It’s like making friends with someone. Except it’s a no one. But if it helps you guys make new REAL frinedships I’ll be happy.

As we’ve been hammering you guys lately: this Collective is a doocratie: whoever wants something done gets it done, and the beauty of this place is that when we don’t have the tools to solve problems, someone is always willing to teach us. So that later we can do it ourselves. Amazing, a?

So please do it! Realize your ideas your ideals, don’t hesitate to ask for help when you don’t know something and learn so that you can work later. Welcome to the NZ CSC! Feel free to join us, for real or on line and… check the wiki for news!

Ending Suffering

I have been thinking a lot about suffering lately. I used to relate the word to an idea of starving children in Africa suffering because they don’t have enough to stop the pressing starvation. Wikipedia defines suffering as “Any aversive (not necessarily unwanted) experience and the corresponding negative emotion. It is usually associated with pain and unhappiness, but any condition can be suffering if it is subjectively aversive. Antonyms include happiness or pleasure.” I started noticing suffering in my own life and in the lives of those around me. We all suffer but I believe that we can end this suffering. The suffering I see most in myself and around me is a certain lack of human contact. Not that we don’t physically interact with people or never connect meaningfully with people, this isn’t the common case. We just don’t scratch very deep below the surface in our interpersonal relations often enough. We don’t know to really help people when they are feeling sad so we try to distract them. More often than not when we meet somebody new, we just exchange pleasantries asking insignificant surface questions like “How are you?” and “What do you do?” Think about your typical response to these questions. I know I usually answer with a “Good” and “Well, its complicated, I am sort of a bum” and maybe a more detailed description into what I do. I never tell people that I am trying to figure things out in life, that I am seeking to stay away from the mundane, repetitive autopilot lives I see so many people engaged in. I certainly never tell people that I am feeling sad because I don’t know hot to effectively communicate with the world around me, to make every moment and every interaction deep and meaningful. Maybe it isn’t the questions that are the problem though. Maybe we have just grown accustomed to giving shallow answers. Maybe we are afraid nobody really cares. Maybe we are afraid of what the true answers really are. Think about the question “How are you?” Try and answer it answer it truthfully. How are you? Are you feeling good today, are you feeling sad? Explore the question deeper. Why are you feeling this way? Do you want to feel the way you do right do? If not, can you change your feelings? When I am feeling down and stop to ask myself why, I usually discover that my negative feelings have no basis in reality, that I have worried myself into a negative state based on nothing at all. “What is wrong with this moment?” I try to ask when I recognize that I am not feeling as happy as usual. It tends to ground me in the reality of my situation. It helps to remind me that worrying has no way of changing the outcome of any situation. I need reminding of that sometimes. I get too caught up in worrying that I lose the ability to enact change. Let’s think about the second question now. “what do you do?” I have been asking myself this question a lot lately. What do I do for the Collective? What am I doing with my life? More often than not, this question draws me to try and measure my successes against those of others. I don’t want to measure myself that way anymore. Wow, I am getting away from my initial train of thought here. I want us all to try and help end all this suffering in the world by trying to connect with people. By answering the questions people ask me truthfully, first within myself and then to the people that aks it. By being open and honest with people I hope to recieve the same back from them. The more this happens, the more connected we all become and the closer we get to ending suffering. I know how I am going to answer the next time someone asks me “What do you do?”

Effective Communication at the NZC

How I am feeling: slightly anxious for such a beautiful morning. I feel like I am not ready for effective communication because I cannot communicate even with my real self at the moment. It was not good feeling, but I am in a new environment and it takes time to adapt.

I shared the above because it was how I was feeling the moment I had a conversation with Kasper this morning that was a learning experience.

It means that by telling the truth about how you feel, we make communication truly effective. How does that work? As we watch for how our body and emotions respond to a person’s communication pattern, we learn to tell the difference between reacting to a negative feeling or creating understanding by cooperating with the communicator in front of you.

If we don’t think before we speak, what have we got? We got thoughtless words without any substance.

So, this morning, Kasper and I started to talk about features in CS that are still on the works. We both understand the logic behind it. However, we get overly excited talking. He shouts that the results of the idea currently is all bullshit and I react to it. I get my feelings hurt and I did nto become aware of it. Thus, I did not respond correctly to his his cries. I REACTED by defending the idea politely, but not sharing the fact that there is no freedom in the air. I did not feel comfortable at all. I felt like we were just shouting.

We were all about opinions and not about ideals. We were all about each other and not about ourselves as a group.

The ideal of transparency starts in dialogue. Do you want transparency? BE TRANSPARENT by sharing your thoughts, feelings and emotions. In order to do that, we must be patient with ourselves because our mind tends to want immediate results from people that haven’t learned how to communicate effectively in the first place. The result is always chaotic group misunderstanding.

To be transparent is to notice when a person communicates ineffectively right in front of you, then read your feelings and voice them. From then on, it is like having an agreement with that person that they will understand me better and take personal responsibility in communicating effectively with me, respecting opinions and thus creating ideals. It is what mutual respect does to people.

How to ‘break the ice’ of cold communication? Cold communication is when both parties are not not aware of their feelings, or even the definition of feelings itself. Feelings are the physical responses to mental stimulus. It is when yourself or someone says something and the mind responds usually in subtle ways and we usually completely ignore those feelings. We feel a pain in the chest or a weird uncomfortable feeling that we did not understand what just happened.

We then got a puzzle in our mind and a pain we don’t want to suffer and that feels surprisingly normal. We then want to reject this pain and then we react to our minds or against others with anger. We never communicate this way, and instead we procrastinate the inevitable.

We perpetuate the pain and never reach mutual respect. We may work for years with people,volunteering for the same organization and not be aware of how we are not respecting each other’s ideals. I heard once from a friend that we must let the pain go through to learn about ourselves. She was not talking about taking a bullet and enjoying that pain. She was talking about fighting the very basic instinct of defending our false sense of self when confronted with a bad communicator.

So, letting everyone know the truth is a great start. True feelings, that lead to true thoughts and not reactional blah-blah.

Have you asked lately why a person was communicating in a negative way? Have you really voiced your opinion by trying to help out someone, or you just reacted to a negative feeling with another negative feeling?

Let’s illustrate a few examples. They happen this morning, Nov 15th, at the Collective NZ.

The following examples are not to be taken literally. They just illustrate an example that happened this morning. It shows how we can improve by sharing our feelings with everyone!
Ineffective Communication example:

Person A) So hey listen, how can show me how feature X on CS works? ( failed to acknowledge how was the person feeling)

Person B) It works by doing such and such. (here, the person failed to ask the person why he/she was asking such a question, and to ask her/himself how it felt to get such a blunt direct question.

Person A) But that is bullshit. I can’t believe in it. It is so unfair and so on…. (person failed to see that absolutely no feelings were shared. It was a cold hearted question that led to nothing)

Person B) No, that feature is good really. But anyhow, why don’t you create an alternative instead? (person fails to see that the negative response triggered a highly defensive response)

So, see that nothing positive is reached. No feelings were shared, therefore no complete and effective communication was achieved. Faith on each other, did not happened. Faith=trust. Basically they did not trust each other, developing just a hole lot of blah-blah-blah.

Effective communication can be achieved by being aware of a person’s feelings. We can all avoid it most of the time and educate each other on this stuff.

So, here is how the conversation could have gone if we had acknowledged the emotions happening:

Person A) Hey, would you like to talk about something?

Person B) sure

Person A) Ok, how does feature X works?

Person B) It works by doing such and such.

Person A) That is Bullshit man. No way!

Person B) Well, that hurt my feelings. I don’t understand why really, but your response made me feel this way. Now I cannot respond effectively. I feel kind of angry now.
Person A) Why is that. Please elaborate.

Person B) Well, I am still angry, and I was expecting an apology, but hey, this is great anyways. So, yeah, I was not feeling too good to begin with. It was somewhat an attack on my ego. Your ego attacked my ego by not asking the right questions and my using bad language! so, I reacted instead of of responding.

Person A) Well, I understand better now. Your response was crude and did not explain well enough so I did not understand the whole idea in the first place. But I understand that it was my fault in the first place because I did not ask the right questions. I could have asked: How does that feature work and why such a decision was implemented? Why such decision was made?

Person B) You are right. So, to respond to your question effectively I will give you my best in telling you an unbiased opinion about the decision making behind feature X. We…it started by….this…and that….and so on.

Person A) Well, that is better! It makes sense, but based on current circumstances, we can make it better. I suggest we start a project to improve it!

So, is effective communication is in true friendship? By sharing how you truly feel with yourself others react the same way, as we also take personal responsibility for our questions and to teach others how to communicate with themselves. We may act of our anger, but explain that you feel that way and that can can just good enough. If there is something that you did not and created a reaction, you will know right aways. It feels great to share this you you all actually!

When communicating effective, the other party does not react and instead asks to self: Have I caused this reaction?

Asking ourselves how we truly feel is powerful. We take personal responsibility for getting the true opinions of people and the result is: instead of forming your personal opinion, you develop an ideal, a goal to strive for.

It starts with us sharing our feelings and emotions to begin with. It then progresses with always checking within ourselves if it is really true what we are saying or we are just putting on a mask to look cool or smart in the conversation. We will know if we feel judged, and if so it is because we are lying to ourselves. Can you really judge the truth? Lack of self awareness and knowledge do not create conversations, but instead we then perpetuate the very nature of immorality. It creates lies.

The world is getting better. PASS IT ON.

Cheers!

ps: You can edit this very document on the wiki. Let’s create ways to communicate effectively. You can share it as much as you want. If you want to change it but don’t know how to, ask someone using the wiki talk feature. There is a document on the wiki that is a guide for effective communication for all of us, help us develop communication from the roots.
http://wiki.couchsurfing.com/en/Guide_to_Effective_Communication_for_Couchsurfing_Volunteers

Inspiration

Where does it come from? I imagine that the answer is different for everybody, but I know that everyone at 22 The Cliffs is feeling it. The energy here is incredible, everyone is excited to be busy typing away and discussing their plans for making CouchSurfing even better. The inspiration is contagious, hearing people discuss plans and getting excited about the future makes it impossible not to get excited too, even when the topics are technical and might as well be an alien language. I hope that everyone keeping up with the Wiki can feel it too, getting excited and contributing by editing documents and creating discussions. It is happening right now, the future of CouchSurfing being shaped and every member with the ability to add and contribute. That is what I find inspirational, the fact that any CouchSurfer anywhere in the world now has the opportunity to be a part of this Collective, regardless of location. I look forward to watching it all grow and unfold, each step built upon the foundation of the last. The result should be solid, a more solid CouchSurfing network for all of us to use to continue to grow personally and make greater connections with those around us.

Kicking Ass and Taking Names

Ladies and gentlemen, girls and boys! This collective may appear to be in New Zealand, but really it is worldwide. We are committed to inviting you to our meetings, not merely to learn about what we are doing, but to fully join our team of technicians and brainstormers and fundraisers and whatever else. Couchsurfing is a global movement — an up-and-coming superpower, really — and anyone with the skillz can throw down. We’ve got an IRC channel (freenode.net/#couchsurfing); the wiki; a new wiki template for feature requests; a public agenda (also on the wiki) etc.

I love watching this stuff (the wiki, etc) work, as people who are not admins get deeply involved in the movement, because the barrier to becoming really helpful–has become so low.

Anyone with something clear and well-defined to offer that wants help getting involved can call the collective, or email me through couchsurfing (joe_edelman).

I am so happy to be here with Leo, Steve, Elsa, and Kasper. What a rad bunch.