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.

Don’t Hate the Wiki, Be the Wiki

Saturday night I didn’t go out into town. Nelson’s small but lively. Loads of good people. Friday night was exciting. Saturday
night’s probably even better. But instead Leo, Steve and I had amazing conversations about what CouchSurfing is, what it can be and how to get there. My knowledge of and experience with wikis and free software
projects comes to great use.

During the Montreal Collective people often felt a bit out of the loop. We decided to use the CouchSurfing Wiki for some brainstorm sessions as soon as we’ll have internet here. This way people outside the Collective will not only be able to follow what’s being concocted but also to finetune, reuse and remix. Anyone interested gets the possibility to read what’s going on and to Collectively cooperate with people at the Collective. This Collective should show that it’s possible and beneficial to work in a transparent, decentralized way.

On wikis it’s important to avoid phrases like “I think”, so that people are more tempted to click edit and change something. From Ego to Collective.

Noone will be forced to use the Wiki. But many people at the Collective in Nelson will be using the Wiki. We’ll show that there are amazing possibilities. There are over 130.000 CouchSurfers. Many of them highly creative, intelligent, flexible, open minded. We should give them opportunities to participate, to think about problems, to come up with solutions unthought of before. CS Groups are good for discussions, but not for associative, collective thinking, not for
synopses of discussions where 50 people have ideas. Wiki means “fast”, but it’s also cooperative.

The Wiki is about intercultural understanding. People from different background are working together on creating pages on almost anything related to CouchSurfing.

Some people are not at all happy with the CouchSurfing Wiki. I’ve been asking for direct feedback, but didn’t get any. So I have to put myself in an anti-wiki mindset. The only arguments I can think of are:

* CouchSurfers are not smart enough to read Wiki pages, let alone edit
them.
* The Wiki doesn’t look enough like CouchSurfing.
* Vandalism, or CouchSurfers editing pages with bad intentions.
(We actually had one case of vandalism, and remarkably, was from the same country as the person who is shouting out loudest, though only in private communication, and unfortunately not with me, that the Wiki is “external shit”.)

But these couldn’t seriously be the reasons for people to “hate the Wiki” [sic]. Which makes me wonder, what is hate? According to Steve it’s insecurity. He might be right. I’m still waiting for good arguments.

At least Steve and Leo don’t hate the Wiki.
P.S. Since 20 minutes we’re connected in the House!

CouchSurfing in Syria!

Right now I’m in LA, it’s 1:25 AM, and I decided to stay up later. My flight is only leaving at 6:20 PM tomorrow. 18 hours later I will be arriving in Auckland. I’m not too eager to leave the US. I had a great time here. My life has changed. Again. CouchSurfing is so much cooler than I had thought, and now I’m totally addicted to making it better.

When I went to the Collective in Montreal I didn’t really know what to expect. I just wanted to set up a CouchSurfing Wiki. Which I did! Do-ocracy is the rule. The Wiki is turning out to be a big success, with over 100 registered users and more edits than I can read. I didn’t have any clear goals. I just wanted a platform where people can cooperatively work on documents related to CS, and somehow related, a Guide for CS all over the world. No Tourist Guide, a CouchSurfing Guide. Where people who want more guests, but live outside the city, advertise themselves. Where you can write about good places to hold CS meetings. Where you can explain people coming to your country how to be a good guest. Today I was reading the article about Syria and it made me happy!

I only spent two weeks in Montreal, the final weeks of the Montreal Collective. But I met many amazing people, whom I will meet again and again for the rest of my life. And I started programming on the CS code, just a little bit. With amylin I hitchhiked down to NYC, drove to San Francisco with a CouchSurfer I met in Lima, hitchhiked to Quincy, and did some more programming. And more hitchhiking to Portland OR, more programming, more hitchhiking!

Last week http://bugs.couchsurfing.com was set up. More than 70 bugs have been reported. Which is great! The more bugs reported, the healthier the project! It makes it easy for developers to go and fix them.

There are so many people who want to help out with technical issues, programming, security, design. It’s just hard to get them started. There are still only 3 people who regularly submit patches (incremental improvements to the code), Casey, Anu and me. That needs to be improved. But, the current code base is not the most readable ever. So things need to be redesigned.

One good way to get new programmers started is putting out small (harmless) parts of the code out there, and ask for improvement. People who send in useful patches can be given access to the entire code.

Check the NZC Technical Goals on the Wiki for more information. And feel free to edit or to leave comments on the discussion page.

peace,

Kasper