One of the best meetings yet, but maybe I am biased. Twelve of us gathered at the Flying Apron Bakery on this brisk October evening. We pushed a few tables together and got some great tasty edibles via owner Jennifer (who couldn’t make it for Spotlight presentation, but we will try it again soon). Thank you so much Flying Apron!

Main Discussion: Trade & Barter

“How could our group implement a fair trade and barter system?”

Many of the attendees could relate to trading items, whether it was items at local markets or trading child care hours with friends and neighbors. Most of us seemed open to setting up trades in the future, even if they weren’t a business owner. Sounds like we could all be creative enough to figure out SOMETHING to trade such as life skills or items around our home. Talk of needing a triangular type trade is sometimes necessary at times or someone to facilitate the trades. It all depends if what you have to offer is of worth to the trading party. Some of the extra veggie trading groups do not want to be publicized due to a larger need than they can provide.

Some links that came up:
• Barter Faire via Gretchen
• BarterSauce and Fremont Market via Tara
• Growing Food, Growing Community
• And please see links from our previous Discussion post

Organizing an Organization

We then turned to talking about how to manage volunteer and grass-root campaigns. Many of us agreed that keeping your branding and name usage on the right track and not being mis-used would keep the value of your group and it’s members strong. Feed off the strengths of each member, write up a simple mission statement that everyone agrees so and keep referring back to it. Be open to new ideas and change, but make sure the basic premises are understood. A democratic voting system may work in some types of volunteer groups, or you may need to have a central decision maker. Gina brought up a great book, Forces for Good, that she highly recommended we take a look at about this matter. Awesome! I will definitely add it to our book review list.

Represented at the meeting were:
• Phinney EcoVillage via Gina
• Sustainable Kirkland via Lori

Influencing Co-Workers

Gretchen brought up some good points about trying to lead by example at her work, by bringing her own lunch or serve-ware, but was very disappointed with her co-workers easily bought food for lunch in styrofoam boxes and plastic-ware–throwing it all away when they were done. Jessica chimed it about her own initiatives she is working on at her workplace, with asking the city for more containers or pickup, making it easy for workings to participate and forming a committee to show management how beneficial it can be for the whole company. Amy also echoed the notion of putting it numbers or causes that management to relate to, in order to convey your message that something needs to be done. No small task, but thousands of mid-level workers have been chiming in across the country. You can be the voice of change!

Sisters who attended: Amy, Tina, Tara, Julia, Aubrey, Gina, Jessica, Gretchen and Lori for showing up! I know I missed someone, so please email me and I will get this list updated!

Busy Sisters!

• Tara Smith is doing Local Bounce on Thursday and Shop Local Seattle on Saturday

• Amy Woidtke is doing Green Masterminds Meetup on Biznik on Monday and an Art and Wine Tasting event at Thinkspace on October 29th

• Gina Diamond is offering House Parties for the Holidays!

Please leave additional links info and anything I missed below! We want to share!

September’s Meetup was hosted at Eat Local in Queen Anne

Located on the top of Queen Anne hill, Eat Local offers chef-prepared organic and wholesome meals, along with local products (Tote2Go! bags) and a lovely loft filled with artwork by a featured artist. Jessica, Amy, Sarah, Marlo, Emily and Kaytlyn all gathered for this month’s meeting to join in some great green girl talk.

Sun Dried Tomato and Cream Cheese and Caramalized Onion Canapés, Lorna Smith Ceramics, and some interesting reads

Sarah showing us the different kinds of organic cotton shirts

Sarah, of Sparrow’s Tail, had her moment in the { Spotlight } with her featured business of the evening. Organic clothes for every age.

Sarah showed us the durability of the cotton after a year’s worth of wearing and washings

Topics that came up for discussion

Cheap Business Promotion Ideas: Our time was mostly focussed on helpful business talk, low-budget ideas for startups trying to network. From Biznik, to Twitter, to leaving comments on blogs, if you want to drive some quick traffic to your new website, there is quite a lot you can do! But if you don’t focus on the ones that are the most appropriate for your business, they can be a waste of time. Amy’s comment on keeping track of each one with the time you spent and the return you got on your investment (ROI) is critical to make sure it something you should pursue in the future. Some of these items can just take minutes a day. And don’t ever forget the in-person networking. Priceless.

Greenwashing: At the end of the meeting, we briefly covered the hilarious new Escalade Hybrid that had the first featured ad spread in the latest Real Simple. I mean really, do you think we would buy that? Obviously, we aren’t their target market, but it’s really pushing the “green” talk a bit to far.

Great meeting everyone! See you next month!

Wow, we had an amazing group this week! Jessica, Becca, Wendy, Jen, Sarah, Taylor, Carolina and Kaytlyn all participated in this week’s gathering.

Topics that came up for discussion

Green Cleaning Products: Which ones we liked, natural recipes, what to do with anti-bacterial soaps instead of letting them go down the drain or to the hazardous waste facility. Mention of nature’s filtering methods through ecosystems.

Four-Day Work Week: Some members were definitely interested in doing four 10-hour days instead of five 8-hour days, but either knew their employer wouldn’t allow them or were turned down when asked. Some didn’t want to spend the extra hours at the end of each day as they were long enough, or they had children and needed to get home at a certain time.

Clothing Swaps: Becca described how much fun she has had in the past at clothing swaps. She says she usually trades some really good stuff without paying a penny. She says the quality is really nice and they usually have a variety of sizes. It’s also kept clutter out of her closets. Whether they have some chocolate and wine involved (sounds enticing, doesn’t it!), it’s definitely something to keep in mind when “recycling” clothes or staying within a budget. Links to come.

Supporting Small Business: Some great advice was given to Sarah, who was having trouble marketing her new organic clothing business. Women really responded to seeing and touching the fabrics, to bring examples of the textiles and show how much softer and durable they were. Becca chimed in and really would like to see the meetings include all members and have the community support them, instead of separate business and individual meetings.

Great meeting everyone!