Getting Ready for Grand Opening

Our recent Community Pulse talked about our Grand Opening for the new Catalyst Space. It'll be this coming Saturday, Sept. 12th from 4-10pm. It coincides with the Latin American Parade & Festival which converges in the East Village right in front of our Space and it also coincides with the 2nd Saturday Art Walk happening at our cross street at Linden Ave.

Please come by and say hello! We're at 430 E. 1st Street, Long Beach, CA 90802. In the East Village Arts District, that's on 1st Street between Elm Ave and Linden Ave.

It's been amazing to see all the renovations that have happened in just a few short weeks. Catalyst Operations Director, Ryan Blanc, spearheaded organizing volunteers to paint, demolish, and build things for the new Space. Thanks so much to all the volunteers! It really looks great!

In just over 3 months at this new Space, we have connected with over 200 people from over 75 different community organizations. The Catalyst Space has been used by 13 collaborative teams as they work on their own member-driven projects and initiatives. The Space has also been a place where catalysts and community members could regularly hang out to connect. We've held a Catalyst workshop and a Bike workshop at the Space too!

We've also got four computers available for community use. We used Linux (open-source free Operating System) and we have Open Office (free word processing software) installed on all the computers so we've been able to make the computers functional without cost. Now, we'll be putting together a series of workshops and presenting the Catalyst Space as a Community Growth & Learning Center. We're hoping to get funding and get this Center subsidized by a couple sponsors. Cross your fingers!

New Computers for Catalyst Space

So we just took advantage of a great deal and we acquired 8 used Dell computers for only $500. Part of the deal was that we also had to take a ton of other working/non-working office equipment and supplies. These included telephones, fax machines, paper folder, shredder, monitors and more! We'd have to go through and see what works and what doesn't. A $500 donation made it possible for Catalyst to purchase the package deal. But we'd need more donations to cover the costs of repair or other services.

The main reason we got this package deal was because it included the computers. We want to set up some work stations inside the Catalyst Space and make them available for catalysts to use, for community workshops and classes, and we're exploring ways that we can make the computers available for community members. We probably only have space for four of those eight computers.

The computers' hard drives were all wiped which means they don't have any software, including operating systems. So we're planning on having volunteers set up the computers, install the Linux operating system, and also the OpenOffice software. These are all Open Source applications which means they are all free. The philosophy of Open Source is that knowledge belongs to the world and any programmer can add to the internal source code to improve or adapt the software for the public. It's cool because it really does fall in line with Catalyst's approach to community collaboration and sharing resources.

It's still gonna require more resources for us to set up the computers to be fully functional. If you can help or if you can contribute your time or financial resources, we'd definitely appreciate it!

Click here to make a donation.

Catalyst Space Allowing Collaboration

There has been so much activity in our Catalyst Community lately! And the fun part is that I've been on vacation for two weeks!

So while I've been gone on a road trip from Chicago to Long Beach on vacation from July 1-11, there has been numerous collaborative team meetings led by many of the Green Long Beach team facilitators. They've all been using the Catalyst Space too to have their meetings which is exciting because this is what it's here for - to inspire and empower and resource people to be catalysts!

These teams for Green Long Beach have included a Government Action Team, the Co-ops Team, the Green Spaces/Community Gardens Team, the Green Restaurants Initiative Team, the Bikes Team, and the Education Team. Each team has been meeting in the Catalyst Space to conduct their strategic planning of their vision and projects.

In addition to the team facilitators making active use of the Catalyst Space, the community catalysts are also helping out to cultivate an awesome catalytic space for people in the community. Tanya has been working with the LBCreative! folks. Elliot has been working with the Green Long Beach! facilitators. Ty has been helping everyone out and really helping to maintain the Space. Ryan has been living into his new role as Catalyst's Operations Director and he's been taking care of much of the facilities issues for the Space.

All in all, I'm very excited that all this can be happening while I'm not even around. It's showing that a lot of the foundational ground work of investing in and empowering catalysts is paying off and bearing fruit.

BTW - vacation is awesome!