Why we work on CouchSurfing

All CouchSurfers feel involved with the site. In different ways. Why do you work on improving CouchSurfing, in different ways than hosting and surfing?

jeja nolan

Because I finally have time to dedicate to it...

Because I feel the energy.

Because thanking to it I met so many wonderful people and realised that my craving for life which is a bit different is not insanity...

Because I feel good while doing it, and I love to feel good :P

& to the Casey's courage to live the idea and all of CS hard workers: http://208.100.1.88/media_content/1BHTEcMXeA.swf

hug.

j.

Elsa (aka Beito)

As I work on CouchSurfing I work on myself. I see CouchSurfing as a big part of my life. When I improve CouchSurfing I improve myself, when I damage CouchSurfing I damage myself. Of course CS doesn't define me, and obviously I don't define CS, but CS offers me a mirror of my philosphy, as I hope it mirrors other CSers' philosophy. As a CSer, I can do what I enjoy the most: adapt to other cultures, adapt to new people, learn random skills everyday, be surprised by my surroundings and my way of responding to them. I love CS and so far CS loves me. I work on CS so other people can live what CS allowed me to live I work on CS because I am selfish I work on Cs to be surprised everyday I work of CS to belong to a community I love I work on CS to learn and teach and share I work on CS because it the one thing I truly want to do, here and now.

SUPERYAMI

Working on couchsurfing is just for me the best way to share different and exciting points of views. I came and joined in this adventure not knowing in advance what it would bring.. i guess i was at a point of my little life where i was feeling too much alone and was willing to go out there and meet people with the same kind of interests. believe me i got overwhelmed by generosity, charmed by superbs weekends and meetings around, addicted for life since cs arrived in my agenda!!

Hosting a lot at the beginning helped me gain confidence in the system before i actually used it from time to time around europe mainly. i am just so fond of the whole concept behind that i feel that we should all fight to have this ideal been put forward to every guest you shall host.. this is basic and my role as a host to give this sort of explanation of what could be achieved by opening our hearts and homes to total strangers!! I want to be even more present in the nearest future because cs helped become me again and this is for me the best way to pay it back to you all than just being there when you will need my help!!

KAOXONI

I work on Couchsurfing because it works on me. I've been constantly growing confidence and courage since and as much as I've just been participating and doing the next thing whenever it came up to my hands. Especially in hosting and other in-persona encounters, I've constantly been meeting people of various ages who just keep growing into their amazing personal shapes, inspiring me to take the same freedom.

It's about digging up talents and sharing them. It's about treasuring very little things, giving and taking them freely but never for granted and watching in awe the real big thing they sum - or multiply - up to. I's about the feeding of 5000 with a lunch bag of fish 'n' chips. It is simply amazing, and I just can't help losing sleep to be a part of it.

Joe Edelman

CouchSurfing is a way for people to rejoin the web of life.

People these days think you can't get love for free. They think that everyone is out for themselves. It's not at all true, but people don't realize it. They don't realize that life is a gift, not a contract. They don't realize that the world is a party, that it's free to attend, and that we're all invited. They don't realize that almost everybody out there is ready and wanting to help in every way they can.

Instead, people spend hours and days and years clicking around the internet, looking for love and freedom and adventure but only finding web pages. My hope is that they find CouchSurfing and give up on the web. My hope is that they leave the web of "content" and rejoin the web of life.

Finally, there are forces at work to take away our gifts and make everything into purchases. To separate people so that they will pay for access to parties which aren't the free one, which aren't the one to which everyone is invited. To make everyone fearful of everyone else. It comes down to marketing realities: will you buy into the reality where everyone is out for themselves, or the reality where everyone is trying to help you? We've got a lot of people paid good salaries on Madison Avenue who are trying to convince us we're not invited to the party. That we need to buy tickets, or something. It's about time we had our own marketing agency that tells us the wonderful truth.

- Joe Edelman

(B)Sirius

In short: Life is to be LIVED! That's the Idea behind it (at least for me). And my ideal life is traveling the world, meeting friends all over the world and giving and receiving free from the community, while there is a floating move between living and traveling, working and relaxing, where work is not something I have to do, but something I want to do. And CouchSurfing demonstrates that this actually works!

Long version: TBD, roughly along the lines of Joe and the principles of love, abundance and pay it forward.

Sirius 13:34, 5 December 2006 (EST)

Leonardo Silveira

CouchSurfing for me feels like destiny. Call me a lunatic, or dreamer, or alchemist, or someone who loved Ayahuasca too much. Couchsurfing came at a time that I did not have responsibility for what I felt in my heart, that gut feeling that makes people do the right thing.

With that said, I absolutely had no intention to be in CouchSurfing to begin with. I was very selfish, specially in 2001 when I worked with Casey. I was then, faced with a moment of justice for the first time: To do the right thing, defending injustice, or to risk not paying my mortgage for a while. I risked my job, which i lost in direct consequence of the creation of couchsurfing.com and that is how I got involved in it.

It is normal for those that don't see life as a gigantic programmed function, to make sense of life in a spiritual way. So for me, my work is destiny. If it is painful or not, if it is joyful or not, I don't care. I am just here to fulfill a prophecy: to make the world a better place, one love at a time.

Joep Gommers

Because I'm selfish!

Of course I'm selfish! Everyone's selfish. So are you. So why is it so degrading to admit? People are finely tuned to whatever might hurt or help them. We can't help it: it's the way we're built. Any creature that neglects itself lives a short life. I remember a kid's game where I'd try to make my friend blink. I'd flick a hand at his face, and if he blinked he lost. It was fun to play because it was hard to win. We can't help protecting ourselves.

"But it's bad to be selfish! We should think of the other person first." Well, if only one of us is going to be happy, what's the difference if it's you or me? "You won't go to heaven if you're selfish." Oh, we're being good so we can get a big payoff? Sounds selfish to me. "But what about all the great, selfless people of history? You know, Gandhi, Albert Schweitzer, those people." Ah, now we're getting somewhere. These people were very selfish. They insisted on having things work out their way. They just happened to be busy with one of the deepest selfish pleasures of all: making a difference to others. What greater satisfactions are there than nurturing your kids, doing a fine job at work, helping a friend through a tough time? Or removing a beer can from a garden path, or planting a tree, or - sometimes - helping your nation be a better place?

• I love to meet new people.
• I love to entertain people.
• I love to help people.
• I love to travel and exploit somebody else his hospitality.
• I love to help couchsurfing enhance this experience.
• I love to design, code and work on security and psycholoical challenges.

because it makes me happy.

Ok well, also because couchsurfing is a wonderful project that enables people all around the world to enjoy the freedom, comfort and happiness they all deserve.

--Joep 07:18, 5 December 2006 (EST)

Kasper Souren

CouchSurfing is radical.

I was close to Montreal. Practical reason: in some senses, CS is a do-ocracy. I went to the CS Collective, told I wanted to set up a wiki for CS, and did it. After that I started programming. Personal reason: I've been CouchSurfing with many people in many countries. I want to give something back. Deeper reason: unleash the real power of the global network into people's homes. "Wrap the Internet around every person on the planet and spin the planet, software flows in the network. It's an emergent property of connected human minds that they create things for one another's pleasure and to conquer their uneasy sense of being too alone." ^[1]

To me CouchSurfing continues where Wikipedia, GNU, Creative Commons stop. Bringing people together. Not just bits from one person to another.

- Guaka

EnigmaX

New to CS, but in the past I might have surfed via word-of-mouth from friends or relatives and the more you have the merrier it is, indeed. I cannot say that I work for CS because lots of us contribute to it in many ways... if helping out with the magazine, or just being here in the Chat rooms. The more we spread the word and PR comes in the bigger we get and more options we have. I look forward to helping out with the CS magazine to, at least, have an issue out before New Years... and have a full issue in Jan 2007. Maybe another reason is that my job requires me to stay home or be around the computer and watch things... so I get bored and I think I went as far as doing bartering online for web/graphic/print services in return for stuff I might need, not need or for the heck of it.

- EnigmaX^TalkCS

amylin

I went to Montreal because there were a lot of aspects of CouchSurfing that I thought I could improve upon. But, deeper than that, I'm always interested in meeting large groups of people from all over the world... because I haven't traveled nearly as much as I should, and I need more inspiration to just give it all up, and get out there. CouchSurfing creates a personal network of travelers who have done just that. I believe in the power of trusting strangers-- of allowing myself to live more freely, with less restrictions, with a clearer consciousness, with an open mind and open arms-- CouchSurfing encourages this, and connects me to people who welcome me into their homes and lives with unabashed joy.

--amylin

Anu

WHY NOT? It makes me happy to be able to use my training & past experience to advance something I believe in. Be it fixing bugs, informing users, implementing new functionality or being a general pain in the ass a bit all over the CS cyberworld I generally just enjoy helping out in whichever way I can. Currently doing it being part of our rocking Tech Team, to Make the world a better place, one line of code at a time.

MatrixPoint

Short answer: To "Participate in Creating a Better World, One Couch at a Time."

Long answer (and I mean really long): I wear several hats. There is the science-technology hat, the humanitarian hat, and a few others I haven't worn yet, at least when writing essays.

- John

Paolo Massa, phauly on CS

It seems a huge percentage of people take the following statement as self-evidently true: "humans are self-interested and the only possible economic system is the one that exploits this normal attitude".

I don't believe this is true. The Wikipedia example demonstrates clearly that people do something that is against basic economics assumption, rationality. It is not rational to use some of your time to create or improve a page on Wikipedia. But a lot of people engage in this "irrational" activity. Similar argument can be brought for Free Software and a lot of online practices. Just imagine if I would have told you 10 years ago that "I think it is possible that thousands of people will build together the best encyclopedia, without having to be paid a dime". You would have laughed at me as a desperately out-of-reality guy with the so unimaginative refrain ""You are mad! Nobody works for free!" But Wikipedia stands there and shines with light that continuously reminds us "This is possible, and if this is possible for the best encyclopedia, why not for xxxxxx?"

But we need more example and more citable evidence. In particular we need example that are not in the virtual world, as Wikipedia and Free Software for instance are. A common critique to Wikipedia is that sharing works on Wikipedia because the environment is virtual, i.e. there is no scarsity: bits are not apples, if I give one bit of information to the community, then I have one bit and you have one more bit, but if I give one apple to the community, then I have one apple less and you have one apple more.

CouchSurfing can be the first working and visible evidence of a different social organization, a social organization based on the simple (and rational!) act of sharing between humans. Nobody will be able to say "sharing is just for a tiny minority of fool people", CouchSurfing will be there to testify that sharing is the best way for increasing the quality of life of everybody on our little planet.

So, why I work on CouchSurfing? Because I want to be give my contribution in creating the real evidence that "sharing is rational and works".

--Phauly 11:39, 2 May 2007 (EDT)

See Also

• How We Want to Keep CouchSurfing
• Moving from free software to free life