Community Exchange News
No.4, 10 October 2003

Community Exchange News is the Newsletter of the SANE Community Exchange System (CES) group

Contents:

CES Events: "Talent Exchange"

To All the Trusted Talented-Exchangers and other CES Members

A whole month has gone by and the October Talent Exchange at the Obs Fair was another festive occasion! Each month we get to meet more of our members. The better we get to know them, the better they get to know us, and the more we trade, the more Talents exchange hands! This is the place to come to make contact with other CES members and to ‘advertise’ your products and services. The more people you get to know, the more trades you can expect to make. Every new CES member starts out knowing hardly anyone. Slowly you’ll meet others, and as more people get to know you and what you do, so your trading begins to pick up.

This month I had about six people who came to trade with me at the Fair. I received a wonderful Shiatsu treatment and out-sourced some of my workload! A couple of friends came to visit and I showed them the website and explained how the CES works. I also helped interested passers-by to get started, and now we have MORE new profiles for everyone to enjoy, like a homeopath, a mechanic and an accounting package which can be customized for small businesses. My purchases for the day included: a box of veggies, a wooden tray, organic household cleaning products, facial products, Comfrey plants – the leaves of which serve as ‘activators’ for the compost heap, a bottle of fruit wine and a beautiful bunch of home-grown herbs. Plus I set up a few other trades which will happen over the next two weeks.

The Talent Exchange is the perfect meeting place, and we invite ALL our members to bring their produce, goods, wares and second-hand items to add texture and variety to our table. I’d like to encourage you to join us next month. Get out your list of ‘Offers’, or log onto the website today, or sometime this week. Check out the ‘Offers’ and email or phone some people that you’d like to trade with. Make an arrangement to meet them at the next Talent Exchange, at the Obs Fair on Sunday 2nd November. I can almost guarantee you’ll have as much fun as we do!

THANK YOU!

To Laura and Lisa for making us a cheerfully painted table cloth which boldly proclaims ‘Talent Exchange’!

To Leonard Smith who ‘Offered’ his services to fix the leaking tap in the kitchen!

NEXT MONTH:

We will be introducing a Notice Board for members to ‘advertise’ their services, so bring us a notice, business card, flyer or sample of your work for other visitors to see who you are and what you do. We also want to increase the variety of goodies to sell in the Tea & Coffee Corner. Would you like to bake biscuits, cookies or a cake, or make pies, quiche or a savoury bake? Our volunteering staff would love someone to boost their weary bodies with a treatment of sorts to help keep them going as they tirelessly interact with visitors and passers-by all day. And we’d like to invite two members to give us a mini-workshop, one in the morning and one after lunchtime. These are perfect opportunities to promote your ‘Offers’ and earn talents!

Contact Karen Jordi to make arrangements: jordik/at/ces.org.za or phone me on 072 387 5661.

DO YOU KNOW

. . . you can get homemade pasta on the CES?

Looking forward to meeting you next month, until then, Happy Trading!

Karen Jordi

Site statistics: CES continues steady growth

As at 10 October 2003:

Sales 2003:

Month Sales Talents
February3 295.00
March8 394.00
April9 1,768.00
May21 2,802.02
June80 6,091.82
July113 10,493.65
August194 19,949.01
September263 26,404.88
October (10 days)109 9,918.47
Total800 78,116.85

Site improvements: more buttons!

  1. If you now go to the personal record of any member (e.g. by clicking on a name in the Members list) you can click on the [Offerings] and [Trading Position] buttons below the record and you will be shown that person's offerings and account balance repectively.
  2. If you go to your own record [My Record] you can list all your own offerings by pressing the [Offerings] button. Your offerings will be clickable so you can edit them here. You can also access your statement of account by pressing the [Trading Position] button.
  3. The search facility has been improved by allowing you to search for a particular member's offerings. You can search on account number, firstname and surname (though not both together).
  4. You can now filter the lists to show only members in your sub-area. The idea behind this is to list people in the areas where you are most likely to trade. These areas are only roughly defined now and will be sharpened as time goes on. When the CES has grown to a large size and one group for the whole of Cape Town becomes too unwieldy, these sub-areas might be where the bigger group is split into smaller groups. The filter applies to the member, offerings and wants lists, and limits your searches to the sub-area. (See below for the descriptions of these sub-areas).
  5. You can now set a default sub-area for yourself. This means that whenever you access your account you will automatically be shown the members, offerings and wants for your sub-area. To set your profile to default to a sub-area, go to [My Record]. For 'Default to sub-area' select yes or no. 'Yes' means that you will default to your own sub-area, which you can also set for yourself on the same form. If you do not choose to default to your own sub-area, you will be shown the records for the entire Cape Town CES.

Tip: Refresh your offerings

You may have noticed that new offerings appear at the top of the offerings lists, and that your old offerings get pushed further and further down, out of sight!

Why not bring your offerings up to the top again by resubmitting them. Go to your own member record [My Record] and click on the [Offerings] button. This will list your personal offerings. Delete the offering you want to 'refresh' and then add it again using the [Add Offer] button at the top. While you are about it, be more creative about the way you phrase your offering. 'Market' yourself by thinking about your offering as an advertisement for your service or goods. Convince others that your service/goods are the best. Be professional!

Sub-Areas

The following sub-areas have been defined for the filtering mechanism (see above). We are open to suggestions about how we can sharpen these definitions and we can add more as time goes on. A sub-area could also be an organisation or any other kind of grouping.

Atlantic: Everything from Green Point around to the end of Camps Bay.
Cape Flats: Not well defined yet but basically everything on the Cape Flats not defined below and all the way to Mitchell's Plain and beyond.
City Bowl: Woodstock, Salt River, City Centre, everything up against the mountain and up to Green Point.
Constantiaberg: Everything straight south of Wynberg including, Constantia, Tokai and up to St James.
Hout Bay: Hout Bay and Llandudno (they want to be a republic!)
Northern Suburbs: The traditional northern suburbs and for now including Durbanville.
Other: Everything not considered part of Cape Town.
South Peninsula: Everything south of and including Kalk Bay.
Southern Suburbs: The traditional southern suburbs, from Observatory to Wynberg
Tableview: Everything up the northern side of Table Bay, including Milnerton.

SANE CES Administration
admin/at/ces.org.za