Talk:Joe and Kasper Consulting

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Contents

Rationale

Joe and Kasper would like to work full-time on projects like CouchSurfing. Unfortunately they are not getting paid for their work on CouchSurfing. So they need to look for other sources of income. This could be done in two different ways:

  1. CouchSurfing starts accepting consulting jobs (interesting)
  2. We ourselves start accepting consulting jobs



Discussion

There are a LOT of people (like me) that get no financial incentives to volunteer my time (think about that word and what it means for a second: volunteer) and I'm still happy to do what I can to help, even though that means having almost zero disposable income most of the time. When I run out of cash, I go find a quick job that pays until I have just enough cash to come help out again. CouchSurfing doesn't want anyone to volunteer their time or efforts if the person in question doesn't actually want to help out. It's that simple, isn't it? (submitted by Jim)

Sorry guys, but nobody works for a company for free! What you need is the guarantee that the voluntary work you do actually benefits the whole community (and not just a few shareholders). Or have you ever volunteered for Microsoft or Encyclopedia Britannica? It is the common spirit that drives people to invest time and effort in a community project. You transform it into a company, you kill the project. Please don't make that happen. cheers, Roland

This is a project on the side. We do need to make money. And we don't make any money now. So there are several options that come to mind:
  1. CouchSurfing pays us enough to break even (unlikely in the near future)
  2. CouchSurfing starts accepting consulting jobs (interesting)
  3. We ourselves start accepting consulting jobs
This page is about option 3). So this doesn't have anything to do with turning CS into a for-profit company. And because of CS's non-profit state option 2) (or 1) wouldn't do that either.
I would be very happy to work for Microsoft or Encyclopedia Britannica if they were interested in using free licenses for the works they produce. Of course I would require a decent salary. GuakaCS 19:12, 14 February 2007 (EST)
I do agree. Everything is fine to raise money (well almost everything) as long as we don't sell our soul, which would kill the spirit. And as we do not want to copy 20th century business models, I'd say we better build on this great and cheerful cs-community. Wikipedia can do it, we can do it too. I can't give you the right solution (I would probably be somewhere else if I could ;) but here are some fund raising lessons we could learn from other projects:
(i) make donations to cs tax deductible,
(ii) concentrate on few periodic calls for donations
(iii) look (or better ask the community to look) for donation multipliers; that are sponsors, which are willing to e.g. double all donations within a certain period.
Roland

Important note: Of course we realize that we don't HAVE to volunteer our time, efforts, or energy to CouchSurfing or any other organization without being monetarily compensated. We certainly understand that no one is forcing us to do what we do for CouchSurfing and that as men of free will we can stay or leave whenever we like. We realize that that ARE in fact so many people out there that believe in CS to the point of feeling happy to have at least the time to help make the project better without being financially compensated for it, even though so many of them have the skills and know-how to be using their time for gainful employment. And, of course, we obviously appreciate the freedom freely (and even gladly) afforded to us to discuss and complain about it on CouchSurfing's own servers while being housed and fed by the organization while we're doing it.

Hmmph

Jim, you sound like you have a chip on your shoulder about this? - JoeEdelman 05:08, 16 February 2007 (EST)

  • It seems innappropriate to me that you and Kasper are advertising your consulting expertise on the CS wiki.--RedCouchGuy 10:47, 14 May 2007 (EDT)
Jim, this idea was born during the CS Collective in New Zealand. Up to now this hasn't been taken anywhere, but if we do, we'll definitely put it somewhere else. In the meanwhile, it might be good for the entire organization to consider this idea more seriously.
Wouldn't it be great if people could make more money and do good for CouchSurfing, without this money coming from donations to CouchSurfing? Joe and I think this would have been (and still is) possible. Unfortunately CS prefers to pay just one person a tiny bit of money (though half of the income of 2005). GuakaCS 04:32, 15 May 2007 (EDT)

Hmmph part 2

  • I agree with RedCouchGuy I think this site is not for self-promotion or gain, but so others can benefit.
  • However if a large amount of time is spent by J&K Consulting on this website for free, then perhaps allowing them to advertise (Google style) their consulting project on their homepages or pages directly relating to them is a good idea - but then again it will have to be discussed what constitutes 'a lot' of work, otherwise this could turn into advertising land - why shouldn't I advertise my Sydney business (which is entirely unrelated to CS) - because I do 'a lot' of free work too. I think rules should be discussed first - this may be a way to attract talent.
  • If CS is for profit then it's not CS - If someone else is getting paid to work a lot on this site, then I want to get paid and not work like a chump. I only volunteer my time because it's one of the few initiatives that seems to have a soul and is not interested in marketing to me, profiting from me and generally exploiting me unlike everything else. Of course you may want to do some market research on your key stakeholders to ascertain if a significant loss of patronage may result from CS becoming a for-profit organisation. (note: my opinion is different if CS is a charity with paid employees)
  • In regards to attracting clients, it's not at all professional to have the consulting group on a wiki sub-page that's not easy to find, second of all who is going to think to look on a wiki subpage for someone to fix their open-source problems or build them their own wiki? Your google search is high if you type in the actual name of the company - but type open-source, set up open-source software or build a wiki and many more sites come up (well it would be hard to get a high ranking for this anyway).
  • CS as a profit organisation which fixes open source problems - the branding seems all wrong to me, when I think of CS I think of backpackers, parties, socialising etc - I do not think of professional business solutions. Which brings me too...
  • Who is your target audience? Chances are if they are on CS, they are not looking for business solutions so they won't look for K&J consulting. On this website you are targeting mostly under 30's, who have no continuous income, they don't own businesses etc - at least this is the impression I've gained from CS parties and hosting and just surfing profiles - so you are advertising to the wrong people don't need your services. (those csers who do have jobs, generally aren't small business owners or company directors)
  • Finally your content is not clear - what is creative commons? What is open-source? Where did you learn this? Do you need to be accredited? You guys need a hook - we live in a windows world where people don't even know what linux is and are completely unaware of the benefits of open source.

My suggestion, is get your own website, make it look cool and professional and have CS listed as one of your projects - far more professional.

Cheers all --RAH RAH 04:50, 13 June 2007 (EDT)

I already stopped working on CS. The J&K consulting doesn't actually exist as much more than this wiki page and some ideas. I'll move it away from here since it's obviously very controversial. GuakaCS 12:17, 15 June 2007 (EDT)
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