The CouchSurfing Wiki, an informal workspace which anyone can edit.

The Rotterdam CSC was at the summer of 2007. My personal opinion (Diederik) is that it was a great succes. Many things were solved. I'll leave the page intact below for learning purposes.

If someone has an wrapup-document, feel free to add it..

Contents 1 Basic Details 2 Setting of the collective 2.1 The Location 2.2 The Apartment 3 Specific Goals 3.1 Back to basics 3.2 Measuring Success 4 Resources 4.1 Resources already in place 4.2 Resources needed 4.3 Estimated Total Costs 5 Communication 5.1 External Communication 5.1.1 Current communications 5.2 Internal Communication 6 Guidelines and Rules of the Collective 6.1 Guidelines 6.2 Rules 7 Members of the Collective 7.1 The Application Process 7.2 Professional Skills Needed 7.3 Member Requirements 7.4 List of Collective Participants 8 Collective End 8.1 Cleaning Up 8.2 Announcing Success

Basic Details

• Collective Mission: "Get the level of tech quality back up to speed and measure our success."
• Number of People: up to 8 (5 on average)
• Collective Host: Walter Heck
• Dates: Friday, June 1st to Tuesday, July 31st

Setting of the collective

Walter's apartment in Rotterdam, The Netherlands will be used as a main location for this mini-collective. Temp well above 20celsius during that time. So pack for a nice warm summer :) It should be able to give shelter and place to work for about 5 to 8 people. This would be crowded, but certainly not impossible. The use of the apartment would be free, although of course it has to be kept clean :)

The Location

The location is close to a highway leading south and a railway station (Paris, hosting the collective at the same time, is about 5 hours by car and 3 by high speed train). There is a nice park for relaxing close by (5 min. walk). The Rotterdam area is in the south of the busy business area of Holland, which makes for a lot of big (well, for dutch standards ;) ) cities having some very active CS communities close by.

The Apartment

The size of the apartment is about 90 square meters, it has one big bedroom (4x4m), one storage room (currently in use as duke's room, 1,8x2,5m) a bathroom and a separate toilet, a kitchen with a big fridge and freezer, and a large living room (divided into two pieces, one being 4x5m and one being 2,2x4m). There is also a nice balcony that has the sun on it all day long sized 2,5 x 2,5 m. Currently CS'ers Duke (Mexico, admin) and Tiina (Finnish) live in the house as well. They occupy the storage room and the big bedroom, but if and when they are home, they will most probably not mind sharing their rooms.

Specific Goals

Back to basics

What we need more than anything right now is getting the basics up and running. We have a beautiful website and an even more amazing community. Let's get that website more or less bug free, so that community can flourish even more! That's why this collective is going to be solely focused on the tech side of couchsurfing.

1. Improving Infrastructure - Set up System Administration, Database Management and Core Developers teams. This will help us to maintain and upgrade servers, restructure the database, and create a valuable commit/deployment system.
2. New Developer Training - Bring in and properly support new, high-quality, potentially long-term devs.
3. Core Functionality - Strengthen existing core pages and participate in the current core projects.

Measuring Success

We will know that this collective was successful if at the conclusion:

1. A solid infrastructure including functioning System Administrators Team, Database Management Team and Core Developers Team
2. Several new long-term developers who are activley contributing towards the maintenance and future sustainability of CouchSurfing.com
3. Create a testing system to automatically test portions of the website and look for bugs and errors.
4. Create a server monitoring system and a monitoring team that can watch servers worldwide 24/7. (Bonus: a system where they can take corrective action)

Resources

Resources already in place

• Kitchen: There probably is next to enough plates, pots and pans in the house.
• Internet Connection: There is a DSL 20Mbit down, 1 Mbit up connection already present at the house at no cost (Walter is paying 25€ per month for it, but doesn't see why cs should cover those costs).
• Computers: There are two fully working computers in the house that run windows XP. They can both be used for development and communications if needed.
• Alternative Sleep Locations: Aldo will arrange a CS bike or two and function as an overflow place to crash.
• Desks: There is a desk that can seat two and a long table that can seat 4-6 at most.

Resources needed

• Beds: Beds would need to be arranged, as there is only one spare mattress and one sleep-able couch. An option would be to get some cheap mattresses from a second hand store nearby (probably between 10 and 20€ a piece).
• Desks: Temporary desks could be set up. Long tables work well.
• Linens: Bed linen is probably a bit short, but we could ask for some temporary donations from the surrounding CS community and if that doesn't cut it get some from the second hand store.
• Groceries: The main cost of this collective would probably be groceries. Food for everyday life and stuff like cleaning stuff, shampoo and other small things.
• Misc: Cleaning supplies, cables, fixing anything that breaks, shampoo (we want clean tech people), etc.
• Donations: We could compile a list of things needed based on previous collective experiences and put that up to ask for some donations from the dutch and Belgian cs communities. This would reduce the cost of this collective to next to nothing.

Estimated Total Costs

• Beds: 5 used mattresses(maybe air) X 20 = 100 Euro
• Desks: 2 tables X 50 = 100 Euro
• Linens: up to 200 Euro
• Groceries: Average of 6 participants X 60 days X 5 Euro /day = 1800
• Misc: estimated at 450 Euro
  • Total: 2,650 Euro = 3,600 US Dollars = $2.25 US per person per hour of work.
• NOTE: This is the Max cost we suspect, donations of food and other items from the surrounding community could bring this number down substantially.

Communication

External Communication

This collective will do the following activities to be sure that external communication happens on a regular basis:

• We will have a specific individual whom will be responsible for communicating the weekly activities and successes of the collective.
• We will communicate with other collectives to be sure that we are not duplicating efforts elsewhere.
• We will communicate with the Tech Team using existing methods and also think about creating enhanced and/or simplified methods.
• Do a weekly review of status. Where are we as compared with our Collective Mission this week? Are we on track to completing our mission? Do we need to take corrective action?

Current communications

If you would like more information or just stay up to date, we have created ...

• A Rotterdam Collective Blog for general collective updates
• A public cs group for public questions to those at the collective
• A public email address to ask questions to the collective you would rather keep private.

Internal Communication

The collective will do the following to be sure internal communication is at its best:

• Have daily summary hours, where everyone that is at the house at that time has to attend. Each member will spend a few minutes reporting on what they have been doing in the past 24 hours and what they will accomplish in the next 24 hours.
• Members will offer each other ideas and suggestions to enhance efficiency in increasing the ability to achieve the collective mission.
• Ensure that all members of the collective create a summary of their daily tasks for the external communications volunteer to ensure accurate information transmission

Guidelines and Rules of the Collective

Guidelines

Please think of the following guidelines while working with this collective:

• Respect the common space. Keep your things neatly collected in your designated space.
• Work hours are from 10am to 6pm, this is a period when quiet, focused time is observed. Any additional work time is optional.
• Parties, craziness and drinking will be only outside the collective in order to promote focus on the mission

Rules

Please observe the following important rules:

1. Always smoke on the balcony
2. The gallery at the front of the apartment has all the bedrooms of the other apartments bordering it. Please be very quiet there after 21:00(9PM).
3. The cat is the queen of the apartment. Respect her and love her ;) Break anything in the apartment (well, not everything) and there can be discussion about it. Hurt the cat and you are on a one way trip over the balcony railing :)

Members of the Collective

The Application Process

Those wishing to participate in this collective must submit an application prior to arriving. Applications will be reviewed by Walter together with the people at the collective at that moment and Chris Burley (tech team leader). Those accepted will be invited to the collective. The application will ask for information concerning:

• Length of time available to be at the collective (including dates)
• Technical skills (PHP programming skills / Expert MySQL skills / System Administration skills (Linux preferred) )
• Communication skills (for communicating daily with those outside of collective)
• Experience working with groups and solving group dynamic problems
• Specific interests - Which parts of the collective objectives will you be interested in working on?
• Why do you want to work with CouchSurfing and this collective?
• What technology resources will you need? Are you able to provide your own computer?
• Personal requirements: health / allergies / religious

Excited to contribute? Email the Tech Team to get the application process started if you feel you would be a great member at the Rotterdam collective.

Professional Skills Needed

We are looking for members with skills in the following areas:

• PHP programming skills
• Expert MySQL skills
• Sysadmin skills (Linux preferred)
• Communication skills (for effective group communication as well as communicating daily with those outside of collective)

Member Requirements

Those wishing to participate in this collective must meet the following requirements:

• Be dedicated to the CS Mission and organization. We are here to do the work of the mission of CS.
• You must sign an NDA in order to get access to the source code. As of May 20th it's still unclear what this NDA is going to look like.
• Disciplined and self-motivated. Able to produce high-quality results without lots of specific direction.
• Be a group worker. Must be able to work well with the collective group, with the Tech Team and the CS community as a whole. The needs of the community come first and foremost.
• Must demonstrate good communication skills.
• Must foster mutual respect amongst individuals.
• Must communicate effectively in ways that enhance productivity and build respectful relationships.
• Must demonstrate, proficient written, verbal, and information technology skills.
• Must have the ability to communicate concisely (respects people's time and attention, efficiency of communication).
• It is preferred that members provide candid and caring constructive feedback to each other.
• Must be open-minded (respects and entertains other people's ideas).
• Must demonstrate good conflict resolution skills (doesn't linger on or get invested in drama).
• Must demonstrate awareness and respect for cultural differences.
• Must have active listening skills (paying attention, withholding judgment, reflecting, clarifying, summarizing and sharing).
• Must practice empathy (concern for social and emotional needs of other group members).

List of Collective Participants

This is an official list of applied and accepted volunteers for the collective, if you are interested in attending please do not put your name on this page but instead apply.

• Friday Jun 1
  • CS Tech Collective *STARTS*
• Tuesday Jun 5
  • RedCouchGuy - *ARRIVES* @ CSC - Rotterdam, NE
• Wednesday Jun 6
  • WestonHankins - *ARRIVES* @ CSC - Rotterdam, NE
• Friday Jun 8
  • EMORIGINAL - *ARRIVES* @ CSC - Rotterdam, NE
• Saturday Jun 9
  • CS picnic - Rotterdam
• Wednesday Jun 20
  • Casey - *ARRIVES* @ CSC - Rotterdam, NE
• Wednesday Jun 25 at the latest
  • Naz Gassiep - *ARRIVES* @ CSC - Rotterdam, NE
• Friday Jun 29
  • CS - Anu* arrives
• Someday between Jul 2nd-4th
  • Pietertje^CS- *ARRIVES* CSC
• Wednesday Jul 11
  • AZARETHROY - *ARRIVES* CSC
  • CS - raepuuska - SF
• Wednesday Jul 18
  • RedCouchGuy - *LEAVES* CSC - rotterdam, NE
• Friday Jul 27
  • Shai* - *ARRIVES* CSC
• Saturday Jul 28
  • CS Rotterdam collective endparty

Collective End

Cleaning Up

At the close of the collective (end of July) Walter is leaving his apartment. He would very much appreciate it if the last one or maybe two days of the collective could be spent helping cleaning it out.

Announcing Success

An inventory of completed tasks will be evaluated by the Tech Team Leader at the end of the collective. A report will be given to the CS community on the results of the collective and what was accomplished. Those who participated will be thanked for their time and attention to helping complete the CS Mission.