Reflections from the Specialty Coffee Expo

By Hylan Joseph, Espresso Partners

This year’s Expo was exciting for the Guild, we had our first stand-alone booth and a great set of volunteers who were able to meet with current members and new members to discuss the next years mandate. One of the most exciting of these new developments is that the education committee’s brand-new education track that will start in fall!

Thanks to all who dropped by the booth at the SCA Expo last month and met with Hylan, Nick, Kaleb, Homer and the rest of us to discuss your experiences with the Coffee Technicians Guild. We heard some great feedback about what you like, what you want, and what we can do to improve. We heard that you love the Slack channel to get information from other members. We heard that you’re excited about the coming education curriculum. And we heard that we can do a better job of reaching out to new members and letting them know how to take advantage of all the Guild has to offer.

Over the last few months the membership committee has been working with the SCA on how we can add greater value to your membership that you pay for, how to use that value and how to get involved with our group and slack. Over the coming months we will continue to work on delivering greater value to Guild members through possible tool programs and education opportunities as well as continuing to throw up Gearhead events for local tech get-togethers.

With each year we’ve seen great growth and interest in the guild, and what we saw at Expo shows that this growth is not slowing. Over the coming months we will continue to produce great content for the newsletter as our first point of engagement, and work to give all members a better sense of community with the Guild. Throughout this process, please feel free to reach out to Hylan with comments or suggestions, because without your input we are flying blind.