Always happy to see projects coming out of my hometown. I like the idea, but I hope that there's good moderation for submitted bounties so it doesn't become another Rent-a-Coder like cess pool. It's also be neat if the bounties could be free form, so people could barter goods and services. Personally, being offered $50 is worse than not being offered money at all for something that I'd want to work on. On the other hand, for some tasks I wouldn't mind if someone were willing to trade me design work, or treat me to a lunch or a beer.
(I'm actually a Berkeley transplant, only moved here 3 weeks ago from Boston!)
The bartering goods and services idea is interesting, but it seems to only work for local things. The one thing I think would be interesting to use that for is for tutoring. I'd teach somebody Django if they could teach me Node, etc..
