Newsletter - January 2007
The CouchSurfing Wiki, an informal workspace which anyone can edit.
Happy New Year Surfers!
We hope you had a great Holiday Season, with your friends and family or if you're on the road, with new CouchSurfing friends. We hope this New Year will bring you lots of love, happiness, travel, and exciting adventures, and we will do our small part in helping you achieve them.
It will be a great New Year for CouchSurfing as we are in a very exciting time in its history. CS recently celebrated its 3th birthday on the New Year. We are over the 150.000 member mark and we are experiencing larger growth in new sign-ups than ever. We have so many new CS’s that we are so happy to welcome. Almost 45% of the total members on CouchSurfing signed up in the last 6 months. Please look forward to many exciting things this year as CS continues to grow.
Translation:
Currently 76% of CS members reside in Europe and North America while only 19% of the world population resides on these 2 continents. CS has made an incredible start on its journey to being a proportionate worldwide website. We urgently need translators to help spread CS. Your help will be able to give the incredible opportunity CS offers to so many other wonderful people around the world who do not speak English. We need translators for every language. Please, if you are fluent in English and another language sign-up to be a translator [add link]. You will be helping to open up the wonderful world of CS to many other people out there. We can’t do it without you!
CouchSurfing Collective New Zealand
It’s inspiring to see all of the new features, fixed bugs, and many other great things coming out of the Collective in New Zealand. What are the new things?
Volunteers:
CS is run by so many talented, amazing volunteers from all corners of the world but we always need more members to join our volunteer team. Currently we urgently need….
Who are the volunteers that we most urgently need?
The War on Them:
It’s very exiting to announce that the new TV show about two CouchSurfers exciting journeys debuted this month. They are set to prove how fun, safe and easy CS is as a tool to see the world. You will get to see into the lives and adventures of genuine CouchSurfers. They will teach about traveling and the amazing CS culture. The show is hosted and directed by Eric Wootton and Robert Seitzberg. They have some great stuff in store on this season of “The War on Them.” Use the link below to join the CS group and see the first episode. Definitely check it out!!
www.youtube.com/watch?v=jtG_EMl5va4 The War on them Episode 1 http://www.couchsurfing.com/group.html?gid=3659 CS Group
Eric and Bobby are looking for a wiki manager, listserv manager, sponsor manager, and a few other people to help with the show. If you would like to get involved please e-mail them thru their CS profiles.
Place link here.
CS Finances:
We are in the process of releasing our finances to the CS community as part of our initiative of greater transparency. We will be detailing how all of your donations are spent and will show projected cash needs for the future. One of our goals is to have a 3rd party audit of our financial statements, we will look into the costs involved and will keep you posted. We understand this is an important part of building trust between the CS project and its members and will make these goals happen as soon as possible.
Donations:
We are also happy to announce that members can now conduct recurring donations. This is a great way to show your continued support for the CS. Casey, please help here as this is a touchy subject.
Best wishes,
The CS Volunteer Team
