BEAN - Another Networking Opportunity
Tacoma’s young, urban professionals have yet another networking opportunity on their plate. Between the Love Tacoma events, Young Professionals Network (YPN), Tacoma Shop Talk, and a number of other networking events that seem to always show up in our inbox, the social calendars of the young professionals in this city are pretty full. However, a new kid is in town. BEAN is a “networking, volunteering and social group for Seattle young professionals with 4,484 members.” In Seattle. They are looking to open a Tacoma branch and are having a planning meeting.
Anyone interested?
When & Where
Tuesday, March 18, 6 – 7:30pm
Mandolin Cafe
3923 South 12th St.
Filed under: General
5 comments
K Kari March 11, 2008
I’m thrilled to hear BEAN is coming to town! I joined beanonline.org awhile back because I’d been in a service/social group with the executive director previously and loved the experience. I have a conflict for the first Tacoma meeting, but I hope they have a good turnout!
M morgan March 11, 2008
Slight rant:
This is great for Tacoma’s young, urban professionals. And for the oldsters I guess there’s the Elks. What about the rest of us?
The thing I find interesting about all these real and virtual social networks coming into vogue is that very few of them do much to create community. Sure, you can meet someone and make a new friend, but what about the larger sense of connecting with society? I’m all for excuses to drink, but where’s the larger good?
For example, BEAN has as its cornerstones: leadership, friendship, and service. But the service portion is just a single day. Yes, better than nothing, but a single day? Rome has a couple thousand years on us, Tacoma needs more than just a single day if we are to catch up!
Ok, enough grumpiness. Play on.
S Sarahsnow March 11, 2008
So just what is the definition of ‘young professional’ anyway? It’s been my experience that Love Tacoma and YPN are all about the 20-somethings. Great for them, but what about those of us in our mid-30s? I’ve got a different take on life than I did 10 years ago, and would love to meet more like-minded folks in my general age range. So I’ll try to go check out these BEAN people, and hope for the best!
H Howard Wu March 13, 2008
This is Howard, and I am the executive director for BEAN. Thanks for all the discussion around this. A few extra bits of information about BEAN.
- BEAN actually does a lot of community service work. Yes, they are primarily single-day events, but we strive to provide a large variety of them, from food banks to tree planting to fund raising walks to teen shelters to voter registration to youth gardens to elderly home clean-up. If you can think of them, we have probably done them. We also have our annual Think Global Act Local campaign (http://www.beanonline.org/tgal) that is year-round for awareness/fund raising. We also have a scholarship fund now. Many of our members found inspiration in these one-day events and then go on to serve on different charitable groups’ board of directors or become mentors later on.
- About 35% of BEAN’s members are 21-25, about 35% are 25-30, about 25% are 30-35 and about 5% are over 35. We don’t know what Tacoma’s membership will look like, but if you are young at heart, interested in meeting diverse new people and want to give back to the community, BEAN is the right place for you.
Finally, many of us seem to commute for work or on the weekend back and forth between Tacoma and Seattle, so having BEAN spanning the greater Puget Sound area should hopefully offer wider variety of events/programs, no matter where you are.
I hope to meet all of you next Tuesday at the kick-off planning meeting. If you are interested in taking a leadership role, please show up or let me know. :-)
C Crenshaw Sepulveda March 14, 2008
I’m starting up a Latino version of this group called FRIJOL. I’ve got another one for the cynics out there called “BEAN there done That”.
It is sad they don’t allow AOL users to join, I’ve got a life time supply of AOL cds.