Hello Tacoma! This posting is a brief update on the status of the Barter Tacoma system some of us have started, and it is off to a good start. The reason I'm posting it here is because this is an excellent means to trade art and creative services for other services and items or amenities. It is also an excellent means to offer up art supplies you may not be using to trade for services, items or amenities. This posting is also a call-out for old bulletin boards! If you or anyone you know has any old bulletin boards we would greatly appreciate the use of them! This system is still in it's fledgling stages and needs a bit more help to get off the ground. Barter slips and information about the system to post with the boards have been pre-printed and are ready to apply to boards. Please contact Mary K at: marykdesigns@gmail.com. If your business or shop would like a barter board, and would like to be listed on the www.bartertacoma.com website (with a link for directions to your place of business) please email bartertacoma@gmail.com to get started! Send your street address and business contact information in the email, as well as your url. It was our founding hope to create a system of trade instead of spend, to enrich the community through the continued traffic of goods and services. The secondary goal was to generate foot traffic to locally owned businesses for the sake of posting and reviewing the posts on these various boards... a kind of "unique-to-Tacoma" treasure hunt. Thus far, we have a board going at Mad Hat Tea Shop, 1130 Commerce Street, which has produced some interesting results! If you're hungry for a little more information about bartering here's a note that was posted to the barter tacoma facebook just this morning: Bartering is a very old practice. According to Wikipedia "Barter usually replaces money as the method of exchange in times of monetary crisis, when the currency is unstable and devalued by hyperinflation." see article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barter Upon the recommendation of a friend, this example to the north of us in Bellingham is also being cited: Fourth Corner Exchange - founded by Francis Ayley with about 16 members originally in January 2004. As of this time last year it had 600 members. See article: http://www.bellinghamherald.com/102/story/332133.html Based on information in the above article, this system was investigated, although "BarterTacoma" is currently not ready to embark on this kind of system, the system itself is pretty darned interesting: Local Exchange Trading Systems (LETS) See article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local_Exchange_Trading_Systems A favorite site from King county: http://your.kingcounty.gov /solidwaste/exchange/index.asp although the offerings are a bit sparse right now, a couple of years ago the offerings were pretty good. It used to have a giant offering of salvageable building materials that were being posted for pick-up. Tips for bartering: - Assess the value of your services in estimated hours - or an hourly rate - to determine the value in trade. Factor in buffer time for the unknown's. - Provide images of the item, amenity or "end-results" of your service with your posting. This should increase the interest in your post significantly. If you want to save the paper, stockpile digital images of your barter-ables, note on your posting that you have images available via email, and highlight your email address. - Make good on your barter as soon as you can. This system will grow very well through trustworthy trade. Suggestions are welcome and encouraged. Help is too! Please note, there are tax rules about bartering. More information can be found here: http://apps.leg.wa.gov/WAC/default.aspx?cite=458-20-112 -- Mary K Johnson 253.267.9354 www.marykdesigns.com www.bartertacoma.com "Our Similarities bring us to a common ground; Our Differences allow us to be fascinated by each other" - Tom Robbins