Local Trading Communities

[Ning The Merciless]

It seems to me that we are faced with a problem that could easily be turned into an opportunity. All over the country people are dealing with job loss and severely reduced incomes. Simultaneously thinkers are puzzling over ways to localize production of food and necessities. Throw in to the mix the availability of the Internet and free online communities like ning.com and we have an answer to these problems and many more. Encouraging people idled by job loss to form "Trading communities" and use Ning as a bulletin board to post their needs and services for a local audience has the potential for becoming a nationwide movement of significance. Craiglist is useful, but only seems to work for large cities. Have a look at http://www.cosbycooperative.ning.com as an example of what I mean. Comment?

[Christine Chapin]

very interesting- this goes along with some conversation that I seem to be getting into a lot lately- mostly bc we have an over- abundance of chicken eggs and veggies (veggies in the summer- the chicks seem to lay all year round about 2.5 to 3 dz weekly out of 7 chickens) and my husband has been sidelined by colon cancer- so how do we start this here and what has been your experience with how it works so far?

[Ning The Merciless]

Let's see, I launched Cosby Co-op last November. We have 47 members at this point of which I'd say about 7 are regular posters. I have no way of knowing how many actual trades have been done but I can say that CC has helped me personally locate 3 significant trades on the level of labor for firewood sort of thing. CC has also been used to organize a "Survival Training" get together that covers things like emergency fire starting and finding potable water in the woods and were attended by 6 men. My base assumptions were that we would need at least 100-200 members for a useful economic base, and that 30 miles was a comfortable trading range for "neighbors." These are assumptions I basically pulled out of thin air. At this moment I am somewhat dissatisfied with the ning format in that you have to go to each of the forums to see what is on offer, and while I do my best to make that plain most members only scan the home page and have no idea what the full list of offers are. I am thinking about re-configuring the layout in ways that are easier to use but have made no changes as yet. I suspect that most of our members are here more for the social aspect than the trading. For the moment I am casting about for ways to add more local members and holding face to face meetups in hopes of emphasizing the economic aspects. I suspect as Spring arrives and the economic news worsens that may happen by itself. Craiglist is superior as it streamlines economics quite efficiently, my only complaint is all the job offers and trades are centered in Knoxville which is 50 miles away.

[Kat]

We can adjust the tabs in Ning if that would work better. I agree it could work even better to have all the swaps on one forum, especially starting out with just a few people. If folks want to give it a try and would like to have the subcategories removed, I can do that.

I was sort of leaning that direction anyway on some of our subcategories. For instance, I would rather see all events in one tab, one click, than select a subcategory. So changes may be underway regardless -- sometimes simple is best, especially when starting out as opposed to dealing with hundreds of people and posts.

We're trying to get together face-to-face meet-ups with folks here. I hate to admit I don't know how far away Cosby is from here, but you're welcome to attend.

p.s. [added later] okay, the "exchange" tab is now just ride sharing, goods, services, and skills. Can reduce further if folks see the need. I also took events to just one page for now. If anyone prefers the more complex version let me know.

[Kat]

I'd be interested to hear how growth has worked out with the Cosby coop. I've found that's the slowest part, pulling people together in a short enough time period to get strong benefit going before it languishes. I wonder if we might do well with the base we have here -- I have a feeling we could find some fairly eager swappers among the folks here for starters, especially as we get going with some meet-n-greets, classes, or other gatherings like the soap-making proposal. Perhaps regular swapping would also help us bring together more people who are interested in the other sustainability resources we're building here.

For posting, we could start here on Ning and then move to a forum structure if the trading gets bigger or we have lots of members who want to coop but aren't part of TT (although it'd be cool if it were all together since the swapping is sort of a living out of some of the TT ideals). There is a bartering area above under the "exchange" tab, as well as other similar selections.

I've also been working to put together a food coop that might easily transition over into these other things like you guys have mentioned. If that and/or TT gets large enough, we could combine efforts and meet up regularly for swapping homegrown food and other goods. Like our own little market... It could be a hybrid thing - expanding from online posts to an actual community setting in real-space and real-time.

More ideas would be great. And let me know how I can help.

[Sandi Brockway]

one thing ning is not, is a good database program. it just cannot do what craigs or ebay does

Actually, you would be surprised what Craigslist can do, and perhaps you could figure out a way to do something inside it to customize it. Or, create a front for it. Just tonight I had an encounter with a woman from Freecycle, and she said she found just what she wanted on Craigslist. this is sparsely populated rural country here. eBay is the same way, people could regionalize it. Outside of the internet, you could even regionalize your local Costco. Costco has been selling local goods and products for a long time. There are also sometimes free job services. We have slojobs. If not, one could setup one. There might not be full time jobs, but people are always looking for help with this or that.

you could make one FRONT from NING, but profile and collect all the tools using specialized links. Check out Michigan site and see what i did with some of their EXCHANGE subtabs. There is probably already trading going on in your communities online, find them all. Do not reinvent the wheel. make better what is already here, or regionalize it, frame it in a regional way, import it locally. i think that there is ways to do searches in Ebay that is just by city or region.

[Sandi Brockway]

Merciless
I found you something to play with. So far I cannot get it to work, but you might ahve better luck. Someone just recently turned me on to our local board which is very sucessful, and we live in small population base.

http://www.centralcoasttoday.com/classifieds

the classifieds addon is free and available at
http://livewired.ning.com/install?page=detailed-installation&ap...

I set it up here, you have to setup a tab or it will not work. then you RSS feed it to front page

i am going to recommend that in addition to their other activities bring in live local links from craigslist and ebay, and the job board and any other useful community boards.