CSC Rotterdam 2007

Sunday times

noreply@blogger.com (Anu) — Sun, 15 Jul 2007 14:29:00 +0000

A quick(ish) update on the past week of work at the collective (I'm in a writing mood rather than coding on a sunday :)

* Casey has been staying up late and creating more robust way to ensure CS code stays in good shape by providing a way to have another set of eyeballs on the code before pushing it on the live site, along with improving the code distribution system and kicked the ass on some major irritating bugs (Atlanta, anyone ;) as well as many minor ones. And staying on top of his emails in many many CS organizational issues (hereonafter mentioned as Leadership stuff :)

* Chris has been moderating Volunteer agreement group and coordinating our efforts (as well as being approachable for some feedback) to keep the ball rolling (Chris says he's been working on awesomeness!), plus the leadership stuff

* Jim has been busy with the backstage stuff of verifications and member services along with the leadership stuff

* Weston left Tuesday morning and we all miss him... the coding guidelines are now in good shape thanks to him :)

* Maija came by for a couple of days to see us all in action, attach faces to emails and profiles, and we hope to see her back in action after her trip is over!

* Walter has been working on a day job (how he does it, I don't know, with people coding all around him at all hours!) but has been active in providing us feedback on more efficient methods for working with the database (which I personally think is excellent as the occasional reminders and more education for application developers would help to ensure site stays up during the busy summer travel months)

* I've been busy with coding the ambassador applications software for the ambassador management team, so more flags can be distributed faster than is possible under the current system (note: I'm just helping them by creating the tool, not involved in the process myself). After an in-house "go for it" I started a brainstorm about providing secondary addresses on the site (a genuinely awaited feature that just hasn't been implemented yet) - more to come soon after some technical solution options are discussed within the tech team. I've also kept an eye on the groups as usual and helped out a bit here and there. And attempting to act as (sometimes) reasonable "community voice" within the house....

* Duke is not one of the coders but has been very gracious in allowing our presence at his house. He's working for some video tutorials for CS - yay for that :) along with ensuring good vibes in the house

* Tiina has been an excellent hostess for us all, making sure we're all well fed with the (infamous) Finnish salmiakki, reindeer meat, smashed potatoes, and dragging us out of the house every once in a while :)

Moikka!

noreply@blogger.com (Anu) — Mon, 09 Jul 2007 17:57:00 +0000

(Moikka = Hi in Finnish!)

Hmmm.. not quite sure what to say so I'm just going to say it :)

I arrived to CSC Rotterdam today, after quite a few weeks on the road, meeting excellent folks on 3 continents and almost without having to resort to a hostel (in fact, a month in the US I didn't even need to have a backup plan due to meeting many of my long-time online CS connections). This, if anything was a motivation-booster to keep working on the site to the best of my abilities despite not always seeing face to face with how some things have been handled.

Enough about the fun stuff, I did come here for a reason after all - some projects I will most probably be working on for the next few weeks:

(DISCLAIMER: these are the initial thoughts, subject to change due to re-priorization at some point)

* On-site software for ambassador applications (should make it much faster to go through and approve the applications, yay!)

* Secondary address for folks who are verified and have a second home, or live more nomadic lives. This is necessary for at least Nomadic Ambassadors who are SUPPOSED to be on the road most of the time, and will need more localized support for handling their tasks, and a good to have for anyone on an extended trip with intermittent periods of sticking by in one place
(I should know, been there, done that, and would like to remain Finnish even though wandering somewhere far off :)

* Upgrading tools for people who greet new members

* More information about who's who in developers' group

* Misc tiny bits on the site that need coding

* Misc bug fixes

Long time, no see

noreply@blogger.com (Walter Heck) — Tue, 03 Jul 2007 20:54:00 +0000

Hey all,

sorry for keeping you in the dark for such a long time. I will try to update a little more often, since I feel really bad about slacking :(
So, what has been going on in the past week?

Naz: He finished the new groups look and we released it. The release process has not been as flawless as we would liked it to have been, but this just showed us that we really need to work on it :) The layout itself has improved a lot, and in the last few days Naz also reintroduced the chronological view that was not released earlier. He is currently working on reintroducing all the other features that went MIA during the first release, so stay tuned while they reappear.
Unfortunately, Naz left the collective on friday. We begged him to stay and it was really hard for him to go. I would hereby like to thank him so much for all the incredible work he has done for us, and the good times we had with him in our group!

Weston: now officially dubbed "Bug MasterBlaster 5000" by Jim, Weston has continued to solve a whole bunch of bugs. He is also taking the lead in professionalising our processes as he has soem good professional experience with these kinds of things. I think we're going to have to physically force him to stay here soon :(

Casey: Was working on getting the sysadmin team ready so he could actually go to switzerland for the weekend. Except for some minor glitches that would have happened otherwise as well, we made it through the weekend thanks to our amazing sysadmins Diederik and Nico! Furthermore, Casey has been fixing some bugs and of course he is always busy with his regular cs-work being an admin and a founder and all.
He went to Switzerland to see his girlfriend this weekend and is now back with us with refreshed energy, so we are preparing to see him work 22 hours a day again ;)

Jim: while working on more verifications stuff and admin thingies, Jim and me cleaned out the mantis together. We're about halfway through by now, and are hoping to finish "the big sweep" by the end of the week.

Chris has also been solving some bugs as well as managing the tech team and communicating with the leadership team. He has also been working on creating some long term goal docs and some other stuff.

I myself have been extremely busy with work again, and all the time I have left goes to cleaning out mantis :)

So much for this update, whoever is reading this!

Another day in the life of RCSC

noreply@blogger.com (Walter Heck) — Tue, 26 Jun 2007 22:06:00 +0000

Hello all,

since you are all enjoying the (not so) daily updates so much judging from the whopping amount of 7 comments, here's another one to let you know what's up.

Jim has been working on his usual verifications and admin stuff, and also has been busy drafting various policies.

Our aussie developer Naz has been working on the new groups functionality and performance improvements for them.

Weston has been fixing various bugs, writing up a first draft of coding standards and going around like crazy coding stuff (more in the New Feature Playground)

Casey was working on his usual leadership stuff, some sysadmin things and new features like the spelling checker and documenting the existing code.

Chris was also working on his LT stuff besides working on the new groups design.

Also we have had a very productive house meeting with all the techies staying here at the house.
Chris was taken out to dinner by Gerard tonight, and the rest of us stayed in and watched a movie. Right now the night session is starting (thank god for power drinks :) ) and since I'm not working tomorrow, I can finally stay up and get some stuff done as well.

More later!

72 hour Geek-a-thon

noreply@blogger.com (Christopher) — Sun, 24 Jun 2007 20:50:00 +0000

How many computers does a geek use if a geek could use computers?

Casey arrived Wednesday and immediately got to work on:
-- coding several updates to the site:
-- Birthdays are now captured
-- A Google Map feature that allows users to specify their location is in beta
-- fixed bug related to password retrieval
-- started a CentOS 5 install on 7 servers
-- helped install a load balancer for www3, 4 and 5
-- worked getting Naz up to speed on CS code

Chris worked on building the tech team by writing up the "Tech Priorities" for the next 3 months, increasing membership in China, brainstorming improved groups communication and sliding scale verification updates.

Duke continued his research to find appropriate costs for Sliding Scale verification.

Jim continued his work on the current verification system, CUQ updates, and improved meetings brainstorming.

Naz rewrote the database schema in PostGreSQL, hopefully convincing others that it's not as big of a change as some people believe.

Weston spent the week finishing some details on the time/date changes and got the Rotterdam Test Server up and running again with a cronjob that automatically updates the CouchSurfing Website running on it from the SVN HEAD revision.

Walter just tried to stay up to date on all collective related things while he spent the weekend with his "normie"-friends. He also met up with some fellow CS-ers (amongst which Thomas, ex-CS-dev) on Thursday in Antwerp when he was there for work.

The uber geek-a-thon started Friday and didn't end until ..... you won't believe it ... Sunday afternoon!

Dinner Friday, then tech meeting

After the tech meeting Diederik, Nicco and Andreas stayed here and had a couple of beers while having a lot of good (read: geeky) discussions about tech stuff related to CS. Diederik finally went home in the early morning, while Nicco and Andreas stayed the night (almost without sleeping)

On saturday, a lot of hard work was done, after which Nicco and Andreas decided to spend another night :) Finally on Sunday morning Nicco was forced home by a friend he had to meet.

Fun times at Ridgemont High

Wednesday - soccer in the park, an amazing time where we created an experience where everyone would be

Friday - dinner with the the local sys admins (geekdom begins)

Saturday - Chris spent the weekend in Amsterdam

Sunday - Naz, Tiina and Walter spent the day at ParkPop in Den Haag

Honey, we're home!

noreply@blogger.com (Walter Heck) — Tue, 19 Jun 2007 19:59:00 +0000

So the Lords of the house are back from London (It was awesome! Marillion is a cool band, although their fans are freaks ;) ). We arrived back home just in time to see the techs kick the last strippers out ;)

So, what has been happening around the house? I see Chris has kept you guys up to date. Only thing I have to add is that Aldo came around last Thursday dropping off some stuff and driving the techs around Rotterdam for a while. Aldo rocks!

The tech stuff

Weston has finished work on a long wanted feature: personalized date/time formats! Now you can finally adjust your date-time preferences in your profile so us Europeans won't get confused anymore. He also fixed the "update picture caption" bug.
Jim has been working on verifications stuff some more and has been fixing some other small things besides of course his ongoing admin effort.
Chris has been doing managerial stuff and continues to work on sliding scale verifications implementation. Also he has been helping Jim with the content side of the verifications.
Naz has continued to expand his functionality map and is working on documenting existing functionality and what is needed for them from a coding perspective.
Tiina and me have been working all day and Duke has been working on the sliding scale verification data and his usual admin stuff.

Tomorrow Casey will finally arrive to kick all our asses :)

A few days of rest ... kinda

noreply@blogger.com (Christopher) — Sun, 17 Jun 2007 18:02:00 +0000

The Current Situation
Considering we have six people in a space made for .... two, there has been a bit of adjustment to get used to the don't-leave-your-underwear-on-my-bed and did-you-flush-or-just-think-about-flushing? comments. On Thursday, Duke, Tiina and Walter escaped to London, thus allowing Jim, Weston, Naz and Chris some time to get some work done. If anyone has some extra space in Rotterdam, email us please.

So what are we doing?

Jim has been constantly improving verifications and admin tools.
Chris is implementing Sliding scale verifications with the help of research from Duke and Casey.
Weston is continuing his updates to the current way date and time are displayed. He hopes to allow all users to display time in a way that is natural and culturally respectful.
Naz arrived yesterday(Saturday) and has already created a map of all current site functionality in hopes of better understanding the code, and implementing improvements.
Walter, Tiina and Duke have been traveling for the weekend to London.

It's not all work and no play

Tuesday night we went to the weekly Rotterdam meeting. We had a few newcomers like Marjolijn that went ahead and signed up after the meeting.
Wednesday a big group of us woke up at 9am and headed to Kinderdijk, an area of Netherlands that is full of windmills. Thanks to Femke for showing us around!
Thursday night, Aldo stopped over and took Jim, Weston and Chris on a little city tour complete with a taste of Heineken, the Gay Palace, a kebab shop and 3 boxes full of food from Aldi. Thanks ALDO we now have fresh bread each day!
Friday, after a day of programing universal date updates, verification research and tech team coordinating, Jim, Weston and Chris took a quick train to Den Haag and spent the night with Dre and Monique watching live music and dancing.
Saturday, Weston went to Amsterdam while Jim, Chris, and Naz talked about travel and life.

Wishing everyone a wonderful day,
Chris

Does anybody really care which day it is?

noreply@blogger.com (Duke) — Wed, 13 Jun 2007 12:15:00 +0000

Hello boys and girls,

Here's what has happened in the last few days in the world of collective geekiness:

Chris worked on implementing the test server for the system admins, and added Andreas Dahlberg to the sys. admin group. Along with Tiina, Jim and Aldo he also got extra supplies for the place, including some lighting and a second hand desk.
Jim's been working a lot on verification, tweaking here and there to see what works best.
Weston took the day off and went to check out Amsterdam.
And finally, I've been working on collecting all the data that I need for the Sliding Scale verification system, so it can be implemented asap.

Everybody is out on a boat somewhere between Kinderdijk and Dordrecht, enjoying some of the wonderful view that the Netherlands have to ofeer. They'll be back tonight and back to work.

Tiina, Walter and I will be in London for the weekend watching the best band on earth live in concert at the Forum. yay!

See you on Monday!

- Duke

Day 8, 9 and 10: running out of subtitles...

noreply@blogger.com (Walter Heck) — Sun, 10 Jun 2007 21:09:00 +0000

Hey guys,

sorry for not getting back to you all sooner, but as usual time is limited and the todo-list is not :)
In the past two days we have been desperately trying to set up a CentOS server here at the house to play around with upgrading the webservers. After some heavy battles with crappy equipment, we finally managed to pull it off. Major thanks to Weston for leading on this!

We have also been trying to replace the old router with the new router. After another battle of epic proportions, Chris finally got it more or less working.

Further more Jim has been working all things considering verification. The sheer number of pieces of code being committed into the versioning system is amazing!

I myself have been busy with all kinds of different stuff, amongst which trying to keep up to date with emails, helping weston with the CentOS server and securing a place for the end party (sign up for the meeting!) etc.

Yesterday night we had a meeting and party here in Rotterdam, which was very nice. After coming home we finally welcomed Chris to the RCSc. Welcome my friend!

Today we had a reporter for a local magazine here. It was really nice to have an interview with someone that actually seemed like she could be an active couchsurfer in the near future!

That's all for now, more soon!

Day 6 and 7: bsuy, busy, busy :)

noreply@blogger.com (Walter Heck) — Fri, 08 Jun 2007 06:40:00 +0000

Hello all,

sorry for not blogging about day 6 separately, but I just didn't get around to it. What has happened in the past two days?

Non-tech stuff: Weston arrived, after a monster 2000km hitch in 30 hours and Jim got rid of his jetlag.
Tech stuff: We did more preparing. Yesterday we set up the living room as efficient as possible for people to work in. We now have 6 desk-spots for people to work in and two couches for the laptop-monkeys. All the computers have been put in the right spots and we just need some power chords and networking equipment to finish setting them up.
Jim has sent out a mass email to about 8000 people asking them to please choose a country, since all these people have no location set somehow. We all wish him good luck with the replies he's gonna get to that over the next few weeks. Aldo told me he sent out an invitation to the Eisenstadt collective last year to a couple of thousand people and he's still getting responses :)
Weston has been very active in getting himself all read up and is now deciding on a project to choose. Stand by for updates on that :)
I myself have been active just trying to stay up to date on everything and getting the house set up. I find it harder then I expected with a full-time job, but the cool productive vibe around here is definitely worth it!

One sad message: Chris missed his flight and as a result will be here late Saturday night (instead of today), which means he'll miss the picknick meeting on saturday we're having here in Rotterdam.

That's about it for now. I gotta run off to work, take care!

Walter

Day 5 of the geek collective

noreply@blogger.com (Walter Heck) — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 21:45:00 +0000

Today Jim Stone arrived, being the first external guest. Along with him arrived a wireless router (and my new laptop, which you all won't give a crap about ;) ), which will give us the possibility of setting up a good wireless network and some decent physical network as well.

Tomorrow we're expecting Weston Hankins, who will be with us for about two weeks. He only applied yesterday and has agreed to change the route of his trip just to be able to be with us. I love how passionate people are about this thing!

Tiina, Duke and Jim are off to the weekly cs-meeting here in Rotterdam at the moment, so I have the house to myself for the moment (yay!). I couldn't go with them because of work, which kind of sucks but I guess there's nothing we can do about that right now :)

One other thing I wanted to tell you all about: last sunday we met up with Nicolas Sahlqvist, who offered to help us out with system administration. He signed the NDA right after we met and has been helping us out with all kinds of advice in the past couple of days. I think we are very privileged to have his help and we are already benefiting a lot from his excellent knowledge! Hopefully we will be able to get system administration for CS to a whole new level!

more tomorrow, I'm gonna get some sleep :)

Walter

Day 3: First Tech Activity

noreply@blogger.com (Walter Heck) — Sun, 03 Jun 2007 19:29:00 +0000

For those of you that worry we are not being geeky enough over here, just take a look at this picture :) We took apart all these old computers and with a bit of luck, we can make 6 computers out of these, so we can setup a testing network for testing server setups.

We also met up with two swedish system administrators living here in Rotterdam. They seem to have a lot of experience and I think it would be great to have them on the team of sysadmins as we are in big need of some help there.

Jim Stone is arriving tomorrow (we were incorrectly assuming that he would arrive today :) ), and I'm looking forward to meeting him. RCSC signing off for day two...

Walter

Day 2: Cleaning up the joint...

noreply@blogger.com (Duke) — Sat, 02 Jun 2007 21:43:00 +0000

Greetings from R-CSC headquarters! Today we are just finishing cleaning up and leaving everything spotless for the arrivals of the first CSC participants (and by 'we' I mean mostly Tiina). We've vacuumed the floors, washed the dishes, and cleared out all the FHM's from the toilet, (although they can be put back by request). ;)
Walter is clearing out a bunch of boxes from when he was young and full of dreams, and will probably put up a small rummage sale in the corner, so come get your free crap! We also got some extra mattresses so more of our fellow volunteers can have their 3 hours of daily sleep.

Still to do: Cannibalize a bunch of old computers that Walter brought and find out what works and what doesn't. Maybe we can piece together a couple of good working server PC's. Wish us luck!

- Duke

The first day of the RCSC

noreply@blogger.com (Walter Heck) — Sat, 02 Jun 2007 08:05:00 +0000

The first day of the Rotterdam CSC was a very quiet one. We are expecting no guests until sunday morning, when Jim Stone is coming in. For now, we are focusing on getting the house ready and presentable.
Here's alist of things that I want to post with every daily update to show you guys what we've been up to and what we are going to be up to :)

Done:
- Finding someone to manage finances (At least until CS budget is set up)-> Tiina (thank you so much!)
- Cleaning the house

Todo:
- Rearranging the living room to accomodate all the people coming in
- Fixing and setting up the computers available
- Cleaning up a bit more
- Set up more communicatiosn channels (skype, irc, msn etc.)

CS Money spent:
0 €

If you guys have any questions, don't hesitate to ask them either here, at the public CS group or at the private email address.

Excited to get down to business

noreply@blogger.com (Casey) — Thu, 31 May 2007 06:10:00 +0000

Dear Friends,

I will arrive at the CSCR around June 18th and I am excited to get down to business. I believe that this collective has an amazing amount of potential as the first tech only mini-collective. We can do so much to make CS and the mission successful.

See you all in June!

--Casey

Welcome

noreply@blogger.com (Walter Heck) — Wed, 30 May 2007 06:40:00 +0000

Hi all,

welcome to the "official" CSC Rotterdam 2007 blog. Turn here for your average infromational and entertaining updates on what's happening in Rotterdam. We're kicking this thing off starting June 1st (although the first participant is Jim Stone who is arriving June 3rd). I for one am getting more and more excited and hope that this collective will be ultra-productive!

Cheers,

Walter