www.Bewelcome.info

…don't be fooled!

For the last two years, disgruntled ex-volunteers have relentlessly attacked HC on all communication channels they could find. We have mostly kept quiet, because we value the work they did in the past for HC and always hoped that differences could be overcome by dialogue, especially among idealistic people who want to make the world a better place through hospitality exchange. Unfortunately, after setting up their own “organization”, attacking HC has become a pure necessity for BW and supporters, since it's their only way to recruit more volunteers and members. We realize their attacks will not stop, so finally we are telling you what's really going on. Since we spend most of our volunteer time working productively on HC, improving the site and helping members, we don't have nearly as much time to write long texts and waste time uselessly on these politics. However, it is important that we explain to volunteers and active members who hear about BW what is really going on. This page is for you!

Contrary to their claims, BW is
* not democratic
* not transparent
* not based on a legal foundation

What's more, BW stole from HC:

• the complete new redesign
• the geographic database
• texts HC teams had been working on for years
• money

All the while, BW is claiming some moral “higher ground”, attacking HC on all communication channels they can find, spreading half-truths and conspiracy theories, essentially bringing politics into the hospitaliy exchange scene. They try to convince volunteers to stop working for HC, even though they have shown clear disrespect for volunteer team work by stealing the work of other HC volunteers. All this is highly immoral and hypocritical, but not many people seem to call them up on it, because they use buzzwords like “democratic, transparent, legal”. They are not.

BW is not democratic. Normal members do not have any rights to decide anything. The site is run by a small group of self-selected people who organized themselves in a French association. Only members of this association get to vote and decide. The process to become a member of this association involves several hurdles that normal members will never take. The “board of directors” can keep anyone out they don't like. In the end, this leads to a small group of a few dozen people deciding for all few thousand members. Calling this democracy is a joke. What BW doesn't tell: a completely democratic hospitality exchange network exists already - since 60 years! It's called Servas, the grandfather of all hospitality exchange networks. If BW folks were serious about democracy, they would have joined Servas.

One of BW's most important self-proclaimed goals is transparency. However, they discuss almost everything behind closed doors. Take a look at the Forum or the Wiki, all important discussions and decisions happen where normal members cannot see or read anything. Don't take our word for it - try to find out yourself.

BW likes to use the word legal a lot - in fact, it's again one of their core goals. Read the paragraph below about theft to understand what an amazing joke this one is. BW stole from HC - layout, data, texts, money, the complete work of different teams. It was not some little mistake, but outright theft. Now think about it: how hypocritical do you have to be to start a new organization that wants to be totally “legal”, but begin by stealing? We never tried to bring any legal action against BW, because we believe it's a useless waste of energy. So they will try to tell you that what they did wasn't illegal because it was never found to be that way by any court. Anyone with a bit of common sense can see through this.

BW stole a lot from HC. We are not talking about general ideas, the complete way how the website works, but direct, outright theft. We first couldn't believe it, and even today some people think we are just making it up. Just read below. Why they did it, we don't know (transparency?) - if you start an organization that wants to be totally moral, above the board, how can you do this?

From around 2004, a HC volunteer team worked on a completely new design for the site (yeah, we know it needs updating). We collected drafts, met several times in real life, worked together to improve the drafts, collected feedback. In fact, it was one of the largest HC volunteer processes ever. Now imagine our surprise when BW went online in February 2007: they had stolen and used the complete HC Redesign! Even today, although they changed some colors and other details of the design, it is clearly based on the HC Redesign. The guy who had done the last evolution of the design had taken it with him to BW (Michael Dettbarn). However, of course he didn't do the entire design by himself, it was the common effort of an entire team over many months. Other members of the HC Redesign Team, including it's coordinator, explicitly said that they did not want the design to be used for any other project than HC. Imagine their despair to see their work used by a project of thieves. We did think about legal action at this point, because seeing the frustration of those volunteers who had worked so hard, just to see their work stolen, was painful. But in the end, we realized that legal conflicts should be kept out of the hospitality exchange community - anyone who reads this can judge for himself if he/she would like to support a project like BW that treats fellow volunteers in such a way.

Another thing we immediately noticed when BW went online - they were using the exact same geographic database as HC. Now, this wasn't some database we downloaded somewhere on the net, but the work of many years of an entire team on HC: the Geo Team. Whenever new members signed up, they would enter their city and region as they liked. Later, the Geo Team went through, cleaned up all the cities, moved the members to the right places, “closed” countries when all regions were complete. It was thousands and thousands of hours of work. Some of the volunteers who started BW were programmers, so they simply stole this geographic database and used it on their site. To their credit, they never stole any personal member data (as far as we know), and later switched to a different geographic database when they saw how this theft would reflect on them, but stealing this entire geographic database shows the kind of moral fabric these people are made of.

Another blatant theft happened with texts HC Teams had been working on. The most visible (again, we don't have access to their internal wiki, so we don't know how much they stole in the end) was the FAQ and the Email Team internal FAQ. When BW went live, their FAQ included some questions and answers that had been copied and pasted directly from HC. Some of it had even been written by Veit himself when he wrote the first version of the HC FAQ some years earlier! Additionally, the former team coordinator of the Email Team - that's the team that answers all questions sent to HC - simply stole the work of many years of her team. The team had set up an internal FAQ of questions and answers they received most often by email. She stole this text and to this day continues to claim it was her right. This is especially outrageous: BW folks now claim that they had worked on these texts, so they were free to do whatever they wanted with them, even if other volunteers disagreed. This, again, shows the huge amount of disrespect towards their fellow HC volunteers who had worked just as much or more on these cooperative texts.

A few examples:
HC FAQ: Is joining really free? Yes. We will never charge a membership fee. There will be no costs to you. We do ask you to dedicate some time if you can and help us make The Hospitality Club better and better.
BW FAQ: Is joining really free? Yes. We will never charge a membership fee. There will be no costs to you. We do ask you to dedicate some time if you can and help us make BeWelcome a better and better site.

HC Email Team FAQ: Why are couples required to fill in two profiles?
Actually, it was both a technical as well as an organizational decision. We listened closely to experiences from Servas and they had had many problems when couples split or the entry in the host list could not be filled in for both (not just male/female, also different interests, occupations etc.). Therefore we decided to ask couples to sign for individual accounts, if they both want to log into the site. You can, of course, trust each other or mention the other in your profile. […]
BW FAQ: Why are couples required to fill in two profiles?
Actually, it was both a technical as well as an organisational decision. We listened closely to experiences from Servas and they had had many problems when couples split or the entry in the host list could not be filled in for both (not just male/female, also different interests, occupations etc.). Therefore we decided to ask couples to sign up for individual accounts, if they both want to log into the site. […] You can, of course, trust each other or mention the other in your profile.

After Veit organized the first HC Camp ever at his house in Dresden in September 2004, other people loved the idea and started organizing camps as well. The largest one of 2005 was organized in Monnai, France, by Pierre-Charles Marais. Together with other very active volunteers, we agreed, that HC Camps should be non-profit, so as many members as possible can attend. It was agreed, on a general level, and on a friendship level between Pierre and Veit, that if there were profits made at the camp, they should be used for the critical infrastructure of HC (servers etc.). In Monnai, it looked as if Pierre was making a loss, so Veit personally urged the members there to donate some more money so this loss could be avoided. In the end, Pierre made a profit of about 2000 Euros. Following lines, taken directly from their wiki show how Pierre and anyone else involved in BW betrayed HC and the members who were there who thought their money would be used for the benefit of HC and not for the private project of a small clique of volunteers (Note: HCvol was the preparation stage for BW.):

“How is HCvol financed? We are still discussing this issue. For now we have some money remaining from the Monnai summercamp in 2005.”

The ruthlessness and immorality speak for itself. BW now claims they will give this money back once HC has an established legal form (which we are still working on, it's not easy to find the perfect one) - but “borrowing” without permission equals stealing, and certainly neither Veit nor most other members who gave money in Monnai wanted to finance BW's servers with it.

If you read this page and compare it to the propaganda about BW you will find on the net, you might think: how is all this possible? How can they do this? Why doesn't anyone speak up? It's quite an interesting question. What we are witnessing, is a pretty clear example of Groupthink. Here's the definition from Wikipedia:

Groupthink is a type of thought exhibited by group members who try to minimize conflict and reach consensus without critically testing, analyzing, and evaluating ideas. During groupthink, members of the group avoid promoting viewpoints outside the comfort zone of consensus thinking. A variety of motives for this may exist such as a desire to avoid being seen as foolish, or a desire to avoid embarrassing or angering other members of the group. Groupthink may cause groups to make hasty, irrational decisions, where individual doubts are set aside, for fear of upsetting the group’s balance. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groupthink

The people who started BW were a pretty close-knit group of ex-HC-volunteers who had a common goal and enemy: show how bad HC and especially Veit is. Somehow, this lead to them shoving all morals away, even when some of them started doing some clearly immoral things like stealing. How they can justify it to themselves and still believe they are building a moral organization - we don't know. If the group thinks it's right, it must be right!

Here's a list of Symptoms of Groupthink by Janis (1977), again from Wikipedia. Check how well this fits the BW situation:

 1. Illusions of invulnerability creating excessive optimism and encouraging risk taking.
 2. Rationalising warnings that might challenge the group's assumptions.
 3. Unquestioned belief in the morality of the group, causing members to ignore the consequences of their actions.
 4. Stereotyping those who are opposed to the group as weak, evil, disfigured, impotent, or stupid.
 5. Direct pressure to conform placed on any member who questions the group, couched in terms of "disloyalty".
 6. Self censorship of ideas that deviate from the apparent group consensus.
 7. Illusions of unanimity among group members, silence is viewed as agreement.
 8. Mindguards — self-appointed members who shield the group from dissenting information.

So why are they attacking HC all the time? The answer is quite simple if you think about it: it's their only chance. If those disgruntled ex-volunteers want to build up some bigger project, they have to make HC look bad. Otherwise, why would anyone join them? HC is a fascinating project, yes, we have our problems, but in the big scope of things it works well. Hundreds of thousands of people are exchanging hospitality, something that was just a dream some years back. Now, to set up another organization that does exactly the same thing, down to copying texts and data, you must make the other organization look bad. And since they have a lot of time at hand, because there isn't much to do on BW itself without any members (except for building up more and more internal bureaucracy), they now spend hours and hours talking s–t about HC whenever they get a chance - on wikis, blogs, Forums. They blow up any mistake we do make (after all we're human) to huge porportions, to justify their existence. We don't have nearly enough time to counter all this destructive energy, otherwise there wouldn't be any volunteers left to actually work on the site (that's why it sometimes seems that many active hospitality exchange people support BW, it's actually not the case). It's sad, and it's a pity that we have to deal with it, but it is what it is. Whenever you hear some BW folks complain about HC again, ask them: “What's your agenda?”. There is one.

For many months, Veit and other involved volunteers tried everything they could to come to compromises with the later BW “founders”. We spent countless hours discussing, on the phone, in Skype, in real life. Development on HC basically stalled (in hindsight, this was a big strategic mistake, we should have let them go much faster). But all compromises we found were wiped off the table, in fact, while we were still trying to make them work, those later “founders” set up the preceding organization to BW behind Veit's back. Then they tried to blackmail HC (“You can only use our work if you give in to our demands.”). Finally, when this failed, they tried and try hard to disrupt any HC communication channel they can find. Be it our Skype conferences, Volunteer Forum, main Forum, Facebook - you will probably have seen some of their posts by now. It's extremely difficult to stay positive, concentrate on the work at hand, if all the time you have people around who claim we are doing things the wrong way, encourage volunteers to stop volunteering, spread half-truths and lies. Some well-meaning volunteers even stopped, believing their propaganda. Whenever we try to get back to work (removing posts in the Volunteer Forum, for example), long discussions about censorship start. If you talk to some very involved volunteers you will learn that a lot of discussions are always going on in our communication channels, that every volunteer can express freely what they think. But once this small group of very vocal, but very destructive people started to shout everyone down, we had to make sure we could still work. So yes, they have had a demoralizing effect on HC volunteers, and it's a pity. It would be so much better being able to fully concentrate on improving the site for all members all the time, rather than spending time on these politics - like writing this page. And it does hurt to work with best intentions on a project that makes the lives of many people better, just to have you name dragged through the mud all the time (and yes, they did attack single volunteers for simply doing their jobs). Still, in the end, HC is a wonderful project, and a small group of people will not destroy it. We need to make a better effort of keeping volunteers and members informed, and this page is a first beginning.

It's a philosophical question in the hospitality exchange community. Some people believe that the more networks the better, competition improves all networks, some also claim there is no competition. Others think that one big volunteer based network that is well run would be enough, allowing us to bundle all energy into solving technical and financial problems, making it safe, not wasting volunteer time on the same things on several sites. Everyone is entitled to their opinion, but let's take a look at BW's case: as shown above, they did hurt HC. So the mere existence of BW damaged HC. Also, a completely democratic network already exists - Servas. What's the use of starting yet another one? Why not join Servas? Maybe so the BW “founders” can have their own little claim to fame (it was quite telling how a bunch of them started proudly calling themselves “founders” just after their HC-rip-off-website went online)? In the end, BW will probably auto-destruct exactly because of this egoism, there will be clashes, political power-plays (like they did with us, it will happen internally as well). And in the big scope of things? There are two large hospitality exchange networks that work very well - in the two years their “project” has been running, BW found a ridiculously small number of members, even though they heavily promote their platform inside other hospitality exchange networks. Do you need another network that is built on lies, theft and pulling down of the others?

• Google kicked out BW from their Adsense program just a few weeks after BW started, and the “founders” started bragging how much money they made with the program. Maybe some of those “founders” were stupid enough to click their own ads all day and thus steal from the advertisers (ah, we now hear that they even encouraged their folks to click on the ads in newsletters or the Forum, wow!)? Of course, they don't tell you that, rather lie to you a little bit (from BW Finances page): [ads] Was our main source of income. We have considered not to have automated targetted ads from google and minerva, because many of the ads were impropriate, and because of privacy concerns. Compare that to what their “Board of Directors” was actually considering (from a public BoD report): suggestions to solve financial situation: - create a new google ads account. But hey, what's a little lie if it makes us look better and even includes a buzzword like privacy concerns, right?
• Former HC programmer and “official” BW representative Jean-Yves Hegron is not giving HC the source to a little program that is essential to running HC (hcbot) - it automatically sends out all our messages and deals with encrypted data. We only have the binary and even though we asked many times he did not give us the sources. This kind of blackmailing has a long tradition with BW folks.

At the beginning, we didn't do much at all. After all, some of the people who started BW had contributed to HC quite a lot, some are even considered friends by many HC volunteers. So we let them talk s–t about HC without confronting them much, rather trying behind the scenes to find compromises, understand, talk. This has been going on for 2 years now. Some of them already crossed the line by stealing from HC. But to top this, a handful of BW zealots used very sneaky, underhanded tactics to sabotage any work we are doing on HC (after all, they know exactly how our systems work, and how to best disrupt them). We watched a while, but finally had to protect our network and the sanity of our volunteers, so we disabled a handful of accounts. Of course, they started crying “censorship”, “we didn't do anything”, “this is how you treat us after we've done so much for HC”. But what would you do with someone who first helped you a bit, then started stealing from you, and then decided to keep coming back to disrupt your work and make sure anyone who passes by is sent to the market where he's peddling your stolen goods? Right now, we are taking a pretty much hands-on approach. If someone tries to abuse their insider knowledge of HC or uses sneaky tactics to disrupt our work or promote BW, we'll disable their profile. To reasonable people we are very much open to dialogue and trying to find the best way out of this mess.

• Kasper Souren
• Pierre-Charles Marais
• Jean-Yves Hegron
• Frank van den Block
• Claudia Pfeiffer
• Michael Dettbarn

A lot of the stuff BW is based on (money, texts, layout - see above) was taken away from HC and HC volunteers who worked on it for a long time without their permission. We will try to bring this stuff home and reunite the community. Since BW advertises having a “democratic” setup we will happily work together with them using this framework for the best of the community in our reunification efforts. And you can help us! Here's how Project “Reuniting the Community” works:
Phase 1: Right now, we are encouraging active HC volunteers to join BeVolunteer as “members”. BV currently has 45 members (see the irony of calling a network run by 45 people “democratic”?), a few of them are absolutely dedicated to HC. You have to jump through a few loops to be accepted by their “Board of directors” as a member, but the fun should be worth it. Basically, you just have to be an “active volunteer”, so just edit around the wiki a bit, join some of the many many discussions in their Forums, or translate a few sentences. Once you are a member, just let us know. We will reimburse you for any “membership fees” you have to pay to BV once the project has succeeded.
Phase 2: We will make sure that HC-friendly people are elected to BV's “Board of Directors” - the 9 people running the show (kind of interesting model of democracy). They could start making sure that links back to HC are added, and BW as organization stops its aggressive attacks on HC.
Phase 3: The final step will be to reintegrate BW into HC, a simple “General Assembly” decision will be enough for that. Since both will be based on open-source software then, it won't be too big of a problem. We might even continue to use their officially registered French NGO as the HC-NGO in France. And all will be good
Sounds like fun? Then help us, or get in touch if you need more info and encouragement!

What irritates me most was when BW was getting started or had already started, some of the so called 'founder members' who were still in HC, tried to brainwash me by tell me all those lies. I did not know the stories then but I felt that since they were trying so hard to get me “on Board” their website, there must be something not right. Looking back, all what they told me were lies. Moral wise, BW founder members, who jumped ship [HC] because of money are without fiber. I still laugh of any mention of BW as a 'non-site'. Fact, I have more HC members in my city of Warsaw than BW has in the whole world. What a laugh. Although I maintain a profile in BW. I have never logged in regularly and have never hosted anyone form there. toniwalia (HC member with most comments, active volunteer in Warsaw and Forum)

In 2006 when I started volunteering. The discussions about Bewelcome were very, shall we say prevailing. Everybody was talking about Bewelcome. That was also the time when I met many key vols personally. I talked many hours with claudia in Aschaffenburg (I visited her), with Kjell, with Simon, etc. My intention was to hear all opinions, extract the facts, and then make the decision into which project I shall put my energies.
The arguments I heard from you Bewelcome guys sounded very strong but I DID NOT FIND any evidence for them! I saw what Veit had done. I tried to imagine how I would organize the club if I would found it today. And I would do it just the way Veit did it! I saw that the democratic model of Bewelcome is simply not a good way to organize such a project. Ok, it is difficult now to prove it (we will see in the future) but all evidence I had suggested that hc has the best chances of being successful in the long term.
Of course I saw also the many problems hc had (and has). But I concluded that if we all put our energies into working WITH veit (and yes, for the Hospitality Club) instead of working against him, then hc has the best chances! I don't see any chances for Bewelcome. tilman (active meeting organizer, Email Team and Volunteer Coordinator)

Now that you've read this page, what do you think? Are there still questions you have? How should we deal with an organization of people that try to put HC into a bad light all the time, but by their mere actions have shown huge disrespect for our work? For any questions and comments you have, you can write directly to us at info@hospitalityclub.org. Let us know if we can publish your opinion in the Your Voice section above.

Unfortunately, we don't have time to engage very much in this never-ending political conflict brought upon us by some disgruntled ex-volunteers, because we try to keep HC running as best as we can. You could help us by mentioning www.bewelcome.info whenever someone brings up the subject of this oh-so-moral-and-better alternative to HC, so we can concentrate on the real work. And of course, please decide for yourself if you really want to support this kind of a “project” by donating your time or money to it.

Thank you for your time!

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