Bay Area Community Exchange

BACE monthly planning meetings are now on the first Wednesday of the month. For Wednesday December 4th, we’re at Sudo Room in downtown Oakland, a few blocks from 19th St BART. Meetings are now only ONE hour, with ½ hour break-out groups afterwards for volunteer tasks. Time: 8:00 – 9:30 PM
, Address: 2141 Broadway, Oakland (entrance on 22nd; please see directions). This month’s agenda is here.

Many have asked if there is a way to participate in BACE monthly, face-to-face, outside of our planning meetings. In the do-ocratic spirit of grassroots economics, let’s get it going!

Inspired by Arroyo S.E.C.O. Network of Time Banks, and also by successes with our own “POSSE Parties,” we thought that monthly potlucks, rotating through Bay Area neighborhoods, would be something to get off the ground. So now all we need are some people who would like to help make this happen. Do you want to be involved with the more “non-technical” aspects of BACE organizing? Is there a community space in your area that you think would be good—a library, center, office, park, or maybe even a home? Do you want to be part of the strengthening of BACE?

When we interact face-to-face as groups it really shapes what this project is supposed to be all about. Experience has shown that it’s essential to share space with each other in order to really build trust, and to build a movement that challenges capitalist values.

So let’s get it started! Eating, drinking, listening to music, offering skillshares, and sharing ideas on how to use the time bank and how to make it better…. Sounds fun already! If you’re interested, call Amber at 415 699 7011 or email support@bace.org.

Coming up December 8th is the Get Local Holiday Bazaar. It will be at Cloud 9 at 1320 9th St in Berkeley, from 3 PM to midnight. Local currency project Bay Bucks is co-presenting, and they offered two Time Bank users space at the Bazaar to vend their goods. (Thanks, Bay Bucks!)

Diana will accept money or BACE hours for her handmade vegan hemp edibles and wearables, under the brand Peacecock, featuring her original designs.

Katrina will be selling herbal cordials and teas that come in pocket size containers. More info is on her website. She will accept BACE hours for palm reading or tarot.

For those of you looking to bring local community-building into your holidays, this will be a great event. Shove off, Black Friday!

We were blown away by the response to last month’s “Daylight Savings Survey.” There were 90 + respondents who received an “extra hour” of BACE credit for answering these three questions:

1. What has been your favorite experience on a timebank exchange, or what is your favorite feature on the website?
2. What has been your least favorite experience using the timebank, or something you don’t like/something missing from the website?
3. What do you hope to do with your timebank hour(s)?

The survey is closed, but about half of those who replied agreed to have their answers listed publicly. The results are very heartening and eye-opening—check them out! Here is a link to the collected answers. (Spreadsheet nerds, dig in!)

For the blog’s relaunch, we will be highlighting some of the stories shared through this survey.

All in all it was a very helpful and insightful experiment, and we are tremendously grateful to everyone who participated. It is valuable feedback that can help us make BACE better, together!

Do you have kids in your life who need to be entertained, socialize, learn and try interesting activities? All while getting to share in a delicious potluck and hangout in a cool hackerspace. Then this event and SudoKids is for your family.

“We like to keep activities a la carte, said Ray Lai one of the organizers of SudoKids. The kids let us know what they are interested in doing.

“My kids are always saying ‘Mom let’s go to Sudo Room!’” says Stephanie of Richmond. They love it here!

SudoKids is the children’s program at Sudo Room, a community hackerspace in downtown Oakland located at 2141 Broadway. SudoKids happens every Tuesday night from 6-8:30PM (dinner at 5PM).

This Tuesday will be our BACE monthly POSSE Party (potluck, orientation, skillshare, swapmeet, event). We invite all families to join us for the fun. If you would like to offer a kids activitiy or have any questions please contact Rick Simon – rick@bace.org

Hello BACE enthusiasts! We’re trying something new.

At this month’s General Meeting, we’ll meet altogether for an hour, instead of two, keeping the meeting very focused. After that hour, we’ll break out into small groups. Each group will be responsible for dividing up action items among the volunteers in that group.

The meeting is August 14th at Sudo Room in Oakland, 8:00 PM. Come at 7:30 for general info and questions.

We want to create a flexible and repeatable way for volunteers to plug in where they want to, and where help is needed. Let’s try it and see if it works! If you could do one thing for August/September, if would make a huge difference.

Some tasks volunteers can help with:

posting monthly events online
making and posting fliers
taking meeting notes
writing blog articles
answering emails
formatting the newsletter
crediting hours for meeting attendance

If more volunteers can help with tasks like these, BACE organizers (who are also volunteers) can pay better attention to the overall health of BACE, so that we will not just survive but thrive.

Everyone receives time bank hours for work the work they do.

Our aim is to have one meeting and one party a month. Parties are the time for community, and meetings are the time for BACE’s organizational needs. We’ll have orientations and answer questions 30 minutes before meetings and anytime during parties.

For this month’s meeting we’ll also discuss what nights of the week people prefer, and if the Oakland meetings are working better than the SF ones or vice versa.

Agenda link for the General Meeting is here

Thank you for your time, energy, and enthusiasm. Now let’s see what we can do!

-amber BACE board volunteer