From 1970 to 2010, the world has witnessed 145 banking crises, 72 sovereign debt crisis and 208 monetary crashes. Writers such as Charles Einsenstein and Bernard Lietaer have clearly identified one of the root cause of these crisis: our monoculture monetary system. They have also outlined the solution: local or community currency. However, the current monetary system is so dominant that local currency efforts often fail. This workshop outlines how to design a local currency that is robust and sustainable.

Money lies at the base of all economic activities. Led by Chong Kee Tan, this workshop is about how to build a sustainable alternative to the money in use today, so that resiliency projects can use it as a foundation. Participants will gain critical insights and experience first hand the destructive power of a bad monetary system, and learn how to create a better one. First part of the workshop is a 20-30 minute interactive game and debrief, second part is a 30 minute presentation on monetary design.

Dr Chong Kee Tan started life as an academic. He had taught at Stanford and National University of Singapore.  After leaving academia, he worked in real estate development in Singapore, and later came back to the Bay Area and worked in HIV prevention in San Francisco. Outside of work, he has been an activist for 20 years, working in the area of Asian democracy, press freedom, censorship, and — after coming to the United States — in the area of equal rights and sustainability. After the 2008 financial crisis, he began studying our financial and monetary systems, and quickly came to realize that these systems are the root causes of the most pressing problems facing the world today. He started Bay Bucks as a TransitionSF project in hopes of reversing the rising trends of inequality and making the SF Bay Area more resilient. Chong Kee received his BA (Hons) in Computer Science from Cambridge University and his PhD in Chinese Literature from Stanford University.