SF Bay Guardian · July 27, 2010
Named a “Local Hero”
Recognized for his work bringing the Bay Area's food community together.
← Back to Many Hands
Iso Rabins
A community organizer. For over fifteen years he has helped people in the Bay Area turn things they love into small businesses: wild food, underground dinners, a market for cooks with nowhere legal to sell, and a shared kitchen paid for by his community. He is at Many Hands because the same thing now needs doing with AI.
What he built
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2009
ForageSF
Started a wild foods company that teaches people to forage plants, mushrooms and seaweed around Northern California. It is still running. He also ran the Wild Kitchen, an underground supper club in warehouses, on houseboats and on rooftops, built around foraged ingredients.
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2010 to 2012
The Underground Market
A monthly market in San Francisco for food makers who didn't have the permits to sell legally. Thousands of people came each month, more than 400 vendors sold there, and many of those small businesses got their start on its tables.
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Later
Forage Kitchen
A shared commercial kitchen in Oakland, so food entrepreneurs could cook and grow without the cost of their own space. He raised $156,502 on Kickstarter to start it, from people who believed in the idea. It's still operating today.
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Now
Building with AI
Custom AI apps for coaches and nonfiction authors, plus a handful of public experiments. Many Hands is the next step: using the same skills to help communities point AI at what they care about.
In the news
The New York Times · April 15, 2011
The Underground Market, on the front page
The paper's front page covered the market and the cooks selling at it.
The New York Times
The Wild Kitchen supper club
Eight courses from foraged ingredients, served in warehouses and on rooftops.
Prototype: clippings are summarized, not quoted. Source links to be added.
Why it matters here
He's not a technologist who found a cause. He's an organizer who learned to use whatever tool was at hand. He knows who to call, how to ask, and how to get a roomful of people to show up for something they can't yet see.
Dima builds the things that have to keep working. Iso knows the people who will care. Many Hands needs both.