The Year Behind, The Year Ahead: December 2019 CTG Membership Update

By Hylan Joseph

The Year Behind

It’s been a tremendous and interesting 2019 for the Coffee Technicians Guild, including successful CTG Summits in Milan, Italy and Houston, TX, the introduction of four of our Coffee Technicians Program (CTechP) beta classes, several community-led events, and the continued growth of our membership and community! We also had the first all-guilds meeting in March. It was an eventful meeting where the Barista Guild, Coffee Technicians Guild, and Coffee Roasters Guild all sat together and talked about ideas for our respective guilds, how we could improve, and where we thought our future was going.

We recently completed this year’s election cycle, where we saw 5 members of our leadership board finish their terms, introduced a new Chair, Vice-Chair, and 2nd Vice-Chair.  Some of the Leadership Council members who had cycled off had been with us since the founding of the Guild, including Gene Lemos and Shad Baiz. We owe them a hearty thanks for their commitment and efforts to help bring the guild to where it is today.

The Leadership Council gratefully thanks our members and everyone who participated this year. We’ve been busy and we’ve only just started.

The Year Ahead

Although it can be difficult to lose the knowledge and experience of those Leadership Council members whose terms have come to a close, we look forward to the new members bringing fresh ideas, vitality, and help to continue the work of maintaining and growing our the Coffee Technicians Guild.

As the standing Chair, my primary goals for the guild for the upcoming year are to continue to expand the content that we produce monthly, expand our social media presence to add value for our membership, and work to ensure that the CTechP program is on track and continue to recruit for the content creator group. We will also grow our access to professional development for both experienced technicinas and people new to our trade.

The Membership Committee has now split into 2 groups. The first group will focus on continuing to generate valuable content and creating more outlets for content for our members. The member content group is also tasked with creating dynamic partnerships with the Barista Guild and Coffee Roasters Guild in developing cross-content for the 3 guilds. The second committee, led by Sharla Holliday, will focus on membership experience and engagement.

David Miller, Chair of the Education Committee, and his team – including Marzia Viotti and Simon Green – will be focusing on several initiatives including professional development tools, ways to access manufacturer training programs, establishing a bridge with the Barista Guild to create a basic knowledge base for baristas looking at other careers in the specialty coffee industry. This group will also continue to drive recruitment for the CTechP content creator group.

The Events Committee, led by Jim Bliss and Cat Foley, will be working to create more events and developing a template for community-led events (US) so that any member can access and host an event. Lorenzo Roncali, Erika Mondadori, and Marco Serri will be working to develop a community-led event template for our EU members.

Vice-Chair Richard Muhl will be the man about town for our guild. He will be working with my team at membership to help develop content, with David Miller and his team and recruiting and developing content for the content creator group, and will also be working to have a community-led event in Australia this year.

These are our goals; this is the direction we are headed. Things may change or adapt, but we have a great team that is working to give our constituents a great value and a great community to be a member of.

Thank you for your participation. The Leadership Council wishes you a happy holiday and a great new year.