Cowabunga!: a system to facilitate multi-cultural diversity through couchsurfing

Many organizations endeavor to promote diversity through their ideals and goals. Couchsurfing.org (CS) has a large presence in that realm. They have made it their mission to "create inspiring experiences: cross-cultural encounters that are fun, engaging and illuminating". However, even in this presumably open-minded community the participants are often advised by experienced couchsurfers (CSers) to filter their couch-searches within homogenous members to increase response rates. It is human nature to interact with people similar in values and belief systems. We propose Cowabunga!, a mobile application which augments multi-cultural exchanges instigated by CS. By facilitating chance meetings that would not happen otherwise, our solution is helping people get spontaneous exposure to others with whom they may have nothing in common except their CS membership.