ForageSF had its first public appearance on jan 6. At YBCA I was a panelist for the Slow Food/OPEN restaurant event. It was a cool experience. Getting to sit around a table made out of compost with 11 other people who do things that I find incredibly interesting. Met some good people, saw some people I already knew. The structure of the event was that a table of 12 panelists sat around the aforementioned compost table. People from the SFbay food community, Slow Food, Forage Oakland, Chez Panisse, etc. The table was made of compost (really cool idea, people came up through the meal and put compost into seed planters that were given out with the meal), and the concept was that people from the public (who were all sitting at tables around the perimeter of the room), would come up and talk to us if they had questions about what we did. I personally think people were a bit confused by the format. What OPEN was trying to do was reorganize the traditional panel (microphones, discussion topics), into a more organic situation. People coming together to talk about food in a common environment of interest. I thought it was great.
