Interviews with CS-Key Members

Interviews with CS Key Members

In the next CS-Newsletter there could be an interview with one or some of the CS Key Members. Whom would you consider important enough to be interviewed and what questions do you have to this person?

This is the place to add your suggestions and questions. You see my English is far from prefect, and remember: There are no stupid questions. So don't be shy. Just hit the "edit" button and type down whom you would like to ask and which question you would like to see answered in the next CS-Newsletter. When there are enough questions (mmmh.... how much is enough? twenty? fortytwo?) they will be send (via mail) to the appropriate persons who hopefully will send their answers soon. -- Torsten 09:32, 22 March 2007 (EDT)

The Questions

to Casey

• to Casey: Would you say CS is democratic? Has it become more democratic after the database crash of last summer?

• to Casey:The goodbye letter after the crash was it written by you or someone else?

• to Casey:Who handles the finance on cs . You or your brother Jesse? Has the the blance sheet been submitted

Jesse worked on them, but Donna is our bookkeeper.  In the past, Matt Whatley has prepared our taxes. --Mattthew 18:38, 8 August 2007 (EDT)

• to Casey:How did you choose your admins? How most of them north america?

• to Casey:Who deleted the database when it crashed?

• to Casey:Is couch surfing transparent now ? How transparent will it get?

• to Casey:The present org system is set up by dan hoffer and as he is a MBA he used the org structure of a corporation? Is that ideal for a virtual site with a global audience?

• to Casey: What do you think about making couchsurfing "open source"?

see http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dctjjf4h_11c572h4 --Mattthew 18:38, 8 August 2007 (EDT)

• to Casey: Is it true that certain people who are not members of CS have a greater influence on where CS is going to than the CS community?

• to Casey: What do you think about the new hospitality exchange network Bewelcome.org that was recently founded by former core volunteers of Hospitality Club? Are you afraid that CS key volunteers could develop a fork of the Couchsurfing project one day?

• Casey: Who are the ten most influential people in the Couchsurfing project?

• Casey: Where do you see Couchsurfing in five years? How do you phantasize your role in Couchsurfing in five years?

• How did you get the idea about opening a hospitality network?
• When did you start developing it?
• How did the first years go?
• What did you expect, and did everything go as you expected?
• How many logins can be considered as no more used? How many different users logged in in the past week? Past month? Past year? What do you consider as "active member" in general?
• Where do you currently see the biggest problems?
• How is the structure at the moment? How is the network organised? How many people are actively helping out?
• How is the financial situation?
• Why do you have advertising on your site? or Have you ever considered putting ads on your site?
• What does your average day look like? How much time do you spend on the network?
• How is your personal financial situation?

Money CS paid to salaries is listed here:  http://www.couchsurfing.com/organization_finances.html.
As you can see, we earn a very small salary.  However, each CS employee's "personal financial situation" is their own private concern. --Mattthew 18:38, 8 August 2007 (EDT)

• How do you see "your" network in relation to other networks?
• Will it just be about hospitality exchange? Did you consider integrating other types of exchange, like BookCrossing, give-away shops?
• Where do you see the network in five years? Ten years?
• When a member dies, how do you deal with the situation?

to Jim Stone

• to Jim Stone: Do you know where the contributions went that were made by CS members to the hyperboards(http://couchsurfing.hyperboards.com/ http://thecouchsurfingbuilding2.hyperboards.com/) when CS was in trouble (the crash) during the summer of 2006? How comes that from all the questions, answers and promises given at that time the only one left is by "redcouchguy" (aka Jim Stone) announcing that CS is back?

All contributions to CS have been listed in the Financial Report pages on CS.
The hyperboards were shut down when CS came back up so as not to spread out and duplicate volunteer resources.

to CS Key Members

• How did you you find your way to hospitality exchange? How to CS?
• How did you get involved? have you been active from the first day on? What was the key experience that you became active?
• Why CS? Why not any other network?
• What is in your eyes the potential of CS?
• Where do you currently see the biggest advantages?
• Where do you currently see the biggest problems?
• What does your average day look like? How much time do you spend on the network?
• How do you see CS in relation to other networks?
• Will it in your eyes just be about hospitality exchange?
• How is your personal financial situation?

Money CS paid to salaries is listed here:  http://www.couchsurfing.com/organization_finances.html.
As you can see, we earn a very small salary.  However, each CS employee's "personal financial situation" is their own private concern. --Mattthew 18:38, 8 August 2007 (EDT)

• Where do you see the network in five years? Ten years?
• When a member dies, how do you deal with the situation?

To former key member

To Guaka

• There was some talking about making the CouchSurfing software open source. Why is that important and how is the progress with opening the source code of CS?

I would actually want to start by releasing a part of the software under a free license. Probably the GNU General Public License or the GNU Lesser General Public License. Releasing a part of the code will give more incentives to programmers to join the project. Right now we are not even allowed to use our contributions for our own projects. My strong voice for a free software release attracted many people (such as Joe Edelman and Morgan Tocker), which shows the potential. Other people refuse to sign the Non Disclosure Agreement (such as Callum) or even to work on non-free software projects (such as Tiara and Vasilis). We're missing out on a lot of smart people.

Releasing software under a free license would also strenghten the ties with the movement for free software and free information, which has been doing amazing things in the last decade, but which is still lacking a social face. Real social networks such as CouchSurfing can provide this.

Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be any progress with this for the code running the CouchSurfing website. Programmers are still bound to signing a very restrictive Non Disclosure Agreement. I would like to have this changed, but we currently don't have a lawyer working for CouchSurfing who positive about changing this.

On the other hand, some side projects have been started, such as fnet and a Ride Share project. The code for these is released under the GNU General Publice License. Guaka^CS 12:59, 23 March 2007 (EDT)

-- Just a quick update on this. Casey has announced, once and for all, CS will not go open source. I'm not sure where it was formally stated, but it will be in the Tech Team meeting minutes somewhere. Callum^{Talk CS} 15:32, 16 July 2007 (BST)

• You used to advocate people post all city info in the CouchSurfing Guide section. What made you change your views an allows CS member to add all the info they wanted and not tell them to post it on Wikitravel?

This is partly true. I would like to see an article on the CS Wiki for every city in the world. But these should contain different information from that what can usually be found in Wikitravel (or Lonely Planets). In the beginning I tried to move stuff that I found more at its place there to Wikitravel, but I really didn't have time to maintain the CouchSurfing Guide as much as I wanted to. But that's okay. I think CouchSurfers are smart people, and as long as there are no copyright violations (e.g. copying texts from Wikitravel, or any other websites) it's fine, and the Guide is whatever CouchSurfers make of it - though I still would like to see someone pick up on it and make the articles a bit more streamlined, following some style guidelines. Guaka^CS 12:59, 23 March 2007 (EDT)