Yes, I was doing some work for a neighbours carpet cleaning business, and they told me about the fact that they use a barter network to get business, and they had got tens of thousands of dollars of new work through it. The whole thing is totally legal, not underground economy. Anyway I joined a few months ago, since business was very slow. It ended up that business shot up after I joined, but that was just good luck not barter work.

I don't get a lot of leads, because it's better for small jobs, like carpet cleaning, restaurants, etc.

Anyway I got a call from them for a lawn maintainance company that needs to keep track of customer leads. He was looking for a Visual Basic programmer, I told him I wasn't a VB expert but could probably help him. When I got there I found Telemagic was FoxPro based, and he discovered to his surprise that I knew VFP.

He had been told it was pointless looking fot a FoxPro programmer, because it was too hard to find any. Funny how things work out.

As another weird connnection, I'm doing a big job [real money] for a stockbroker, they were told the job should be done in C++, and when he did an internet search for programmers in Toronto that do C++, I came up as #5 in the list. No idea why since I do very little C++ work. Anyway, they were happy to have the job done in VFP, they called in their network/hardware consultant, and he agreed that Access and/or C++ was not a good solution, so there are some sane people out there.