Permanent Collective
From the CouchSurfing Wiki, an informal workspace which anyone can edit.
The Collectives in Montreal and Eisenstadt have made clear that these are great ways to get people to participate in the improvement of CouchSurfing.com. With the growing number of members, running and improving CouchSurfing.com becomes an increasingly heavy and intense job. Now combine this with the fact that not all great minds might be able to physically be present at the same time at the same place, and you will see how the dream of a permanent Collective was born.
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Where shall it take place
In most of the larger cities in Europe there will be a number of unoccupied buildings (e.g. offices/apartments on the nomination to be torn down). Quite often the owners of these buildings will rather see them occupied than squatted. With a good CS marketing story it should be possible to find ridiculously cheap, or quite possibly free Collective space). We could have the Collective in one place for an amount of time and then move it to another location when necessary. The beginning might be a bit difficult, but with a snowball effect and the organic growth of the CouchSurfing community, it's very imaginable that within a relatively short time-span different CouchSurfing cities will be bidding for the Collective, the way real-world cities bid for the Olympics!
On a more practical note:
Not every location may have all of the desired facilities. It is important to make a distinction between essential and comforting facilities.
Essential facilities:
- Roof, walls
- Running water
- Toilets, showers
- Enough space for all participants to be physically present
- Electricity (and daylight)
- Stationary (or everyone brings their own pens and paper)
- Internet
- Computers
- Kitchen, cooking facilities
Comforting facilities:
- Sleeping space (though only when there are enough nearby surfable couches, otherwise this is essential)
- Heating (in winter) or fans (in summer or tropics)
Netherlands
In the Netherlands there are a lot of squats. There are also so called "anti-kraak" houses and offices, with dirt cheap rent (basically to keep squatters out).
United States
Property laws in the United States explain why there are so few squats. It's generally highly illegal making it easy for a property owner to evict occupants. A site in the US would simply require a very generous and sympathetic person.
New York and San Francisco have the most CSers.
Who will be there, Who will run it?
You!
Like any Collective, this would also be open for all members to join. Given its permanent and mobile character, hopefully it would be possible for more people to attend than with the previous Collectives. Of course, it would be very desirable to make sure that at any given point there will be an organizing team consisting of a few members who have already been around the Collective for at least a week or so in order to make sure work moves forward rather than round in circles endlessly. Also some of these people would have the responsibility for making sure new arrivals feel welcome and are brought up-to-date soon upon arrival. This was something that could have been done better in Eisenstadt, where some of the later arrivals felt a bit out of pace with the rest of the group. Obviously the organizational team will not consist of the same people all the way through, but rather change as anyone who has been around for a week or so will be able to participate in it!
Roles
There will be several roles in the PCSC, pretty much like we’ve witnessed in previous Collectives. These can be broken down into three categories, which in turn might be subdivided, should the situation desire so.
- Anyone who's there is a participant.
- The organizers are the (local) people who have taken on the duty of arranging a location, contacts with other local organizations (if necessary). Organizers would also include the people setting up the daily schedule for workshops chores, division of labor etc.
- Facilitators are the people moderating the workshops, the people taking notes.
This is just a rough division. It should go without saying that people should in no way by definition be confined to only one role. There might be overlap. In the end we're all working towards the same goal so drawing hard boundaries between roles which are not to be crossed, would not stimulate cooperation. On the other hand a complete lack of boundaries might lead to an unorganized chaos which would harm efficiency.
Financial sustainability
Thus far, the Collectives have been sustained by the grace of generous donations of participants as well as non-participating CS-members. However, for a viable permanent Collective, we also need a decent sustainable financial strategy. Ideas anyone?
