Sometimes, I feel as if I live in TFL. It's my home away from home. It's where I get together with friends and discuss shared interests, learn new things I can put to immediate use, crow about successes and laugh about disasters.

I also spend hours each week, as many members do, trying to help others solve their problems and sharing what I can to enhance the pleasure others' experience from their baking. When I don't have an immediate solution to some one else's problem, I may spend hours going through my books and searching online to find one (or six). I see other TFL members doing much the same all the time.

Why do we do it?

Yesterday, Paul Solomen did a segment for the PBS News Hour on some radical thoughts regarding what motivates us to "work." Although his focus was on "work" as in what we do to earn a living, I thought it also spoke to what motivates a lot (most?) of us on TFL. I thought the part of the segment interviewing a group involved in supporting open source software was particularly relevant. 

Anyway, here's a link: PBS News Hour, April 15, 2010

Paul Solomen's segment is the 4th in this video of the entire broadcast from 4/15/10. (I wish I knew how to embed the video.)

What do you all think?

David

Last week I posted a message on TFL asking community members to test out the new fundraising software I'd developed for Mercy Corps, my employer, by making a few small donations. The response from the community was overwhelmingly positive. We hit our original goal of one thousand dollars, which I feared might be unreasonably high, in less than 72 hours, and several community members expressed a desire that we extend this longer. If you are game, I'm game. Let's see what we can do.

What is Mercy Corps?

Mercy Corps is an international aid agency based in Portland, Oregon. With over 3,500 employees working in more than 40 countries, we work to help people build secure, productive and just communities. We do that by expanding educational opportunities, helping build water and sanitation infrastructure, providing microfinancing to women starting small businesses and running food and nutrition programs to prevent malnutrition.

As I've mentioned, I work there, but I was a supporter and fan of the organization before I began working there. Mercy Corps works in some of the world's toughest places, including many that rarely make the headlines, and is committed to being efficient stewards of their donors' money.

If you are interested in supporting our fundraising effort, you can do so here. Your show of support would mean a great deal to me.

Update 10/25: I am moving the discussion of this from the forums to a blog thread so that folks interested in the fundraising project can still chat about it without interfering with the bread-centricity of the forums. I've also raised the goal to $2,500.

Here in Carbondale, Colorado, we will soon be building a community wood-fired bread oven, a noncommercial place for bread makers to bake together.  We feel that it is a good alternative to having twenty or thirty individuals bake at home in their individual kitchens, especially in this town, where community spirit is very strong and where many people grow their own food.   We would be interested in hearing from any of you who have experience with the community aspect of baking.  Do you have any suggestions for us?  Any pictures of your own community ovens, or ones located in other parts of the world?  Public response to the idea has been overwhelmingly positive, and we can hardly wait to begin.

 carbondalecommunityoven.weebly.com.