welcome. would love to hear more from you.

a lack of knowledge about what goes on? you seem to forget 2006. i’ve tried to avoid tooting my horn in this debate, for fear of leaving the impression that i think someone should be doing what i did last year (there are a lot of ways to do it). but since you bring it up, i was there, drove back two hours every day, posted into the night and covered both the usbc and scaa convention exhaustively. photos, video, you name it. shuttled interested coffee people up, came back, took my wife and kids.

obviously, there’s a trade show. for the purposes of argument, i chose to focus mostly on the need for usbc coverage — that’s the most obvious no-brainer, to me.

woulda loved to do it this year. no dough. would love to do it next year. we’ll see.

as far as “the establishment,” well … it’s an observation i’ve made before. it’s amazing how amateur enthusiasts stop thinking like amateur enthusiasts once they become “known.” membership in the social club has its lures, i guess, and a disconnect with regular people seems to be a common collateral damage.

i respect you for ducking out of competition judging and calling the system as you see it, mark. and i’ve said so. but it remains profoundly shocking to me that, in 2007, in a world where event-blogging is your cheapest and most obvious evangelism tool, where every other trade show/annual event reconizes its “duh” importance, where the online demand is clearly there, we’re still quibbling about the obstacles and who should do it and whether it’s really that necessary and who’s calling out who.

The show’s freaking busy. It’s NOT just the USBC. It’s a lot more. And to be honest, just about every single person involved at the USBC would rather use the precious minutes of time away from the USBC that they have to walk the floor. And I do mean “minutes”.

To be honest, I see the whining about a lack of up to the minute blogging as being more dismissive – or at least blinders-on thinking. It shows a lack of knowledge for what is actually going on at these events. For instance, you made a point of calling “the event” the USBC, but it’s only a part of what goes on every weekend in late April or May. It’s actually a giant trade show, and a lot of what goes on, on the show floor is just as interesting to most of the USBC participants as the USBC is itself.

For five years now, I’ve covered every SCAA. I’ve tried to give a mix of the USBC (WBC) elements and the show floor. In the past, it was weighted a lot towards the USBC because of my involvement in judging and the simple fact that I didn’t have time to walk the floor as much as I should have.

And dude, for several years, I was *the only one* doing anything remotely close to live blogging and visualizing the event for people like you and other coffee and espresso fans around the world. Before I came along, you either had to be really familiar with alt.coffee and use your imagination because there were no visuals, or you had to simply attend the show (or wait two months before the trades came in).

And this year, a poll of CG readers clearly stated that the USBC coverage was not their first choice – it was sixth or seventh down the list. I’m probably going to have more full coverage of the USBC than that request allowed for. But the priority was gathering as much intel and info from the show floor as possible for the things the majority of the readership of the website wanted.

Oh yeah – I like how you just lumped me into the “establishment” with your comment above. Ironically, just about every industry person would disagree with you. So I guess I’m in Limbo at best (hello dead babies), or in purgatory at worst.

Next year, put us all to shame – attend Minneapolis, post fifteen updates a day (with videos and audio, of course, along with top shelf photography), and I’ll shut the heck up.

your dismissive remark leaves the impression (true or not) that you’re now “in the bubble” and not thinking about the appetites of the consumers you’ve spent eight years reaching.

that’s all.

but as i said before, i’m not picking a fight with you individually. your summaries posted more recently on CG are quite nice, and appreciated.

“UPDATE: annnnnnd, now we have a coffee personality who built his street cred on the backs of web-connected enthusiasts….”

Kinda harsh there Ben. I’d like to think (or at least hope) I built whatever cred by actually doing things. Not just riding on others’ coat tails. You know, I’ve been doing this for almost eight years now, and if I’m not mistaken, was the first “consumer” to be judging in barista comps long before most of the players today even really knew anything about them.

Just sayin…

In the meantime, Billy, Kevin, Danimal and myself are headed Francisco-ward for a dose of Ritual… and then on the road home.

And the hits keep on coming.

not at all.

it occurs to be that the barista mag people did a decent job of blogging the nordic barista cup last year … and that it’s even more stunning to reflect on the total lack of usbc info in that light.

i believe people do want it. my hits have always soared when i blogged about the usbc.

turns out my hits are soaring NOW … because people are turning to google and getting last year’s stuff. sigh.

I am beginning to wonder whether we are alone in finding this interesting, or wanting to know more…

but dang it … you guys need a reporter amongst you, so the rest of the world can understand.

i’d love to hear the skinny. was the competition really that good? did you change up the caviar any?

I can speak of the back competition room though.

This competition was probably the best so far for over-all cheer amongst barista. I enjoyed thoroughly the comradery of those involved. It was very chill, and surprisingly not very competitive. I am sad to see this weekend go, as it will be another year (ish) before I see my friends again.

I feel as if we have all grown to much more of a community, and look forward to seeing how we grown in the next year!

no, seriously, there are plenty of ways that the power and drama of competitions are poorly captured, thus frittering away the opportunity to engage and excite people. the layout is one of them, and has been argued before.

but this lack of basic competition info — this is the pits. no wonder my hits went through the roof last year … and i was driving two hours back from charlotte each day before blogging!

On a more serious note, I tried on Saturday to get nito the competition but the layout meant you were very far away from the action, and the atmosphere was non exisitant, I was REALLY looking forward to this part of my trip, and just couldn’t get sucked in.

And alas work calls so I had to leave early Sunday Morning so missed most of the compertiton. Can I be let off the hook please