Filed under: Uncategorized — canadianbarista @ 8:44 pm
First of all, a billion apologies for not keeping up with this blog. I have a million excuses, and some pretty good believable explanations… but I’ll spare you all those and will just say that I hope to make this blog more of a regular thing.
One of my mandates has been to involve more people into building the culture around the competitions, and as such I sorta hoped others would start their own blogs to finish what this Canadian Barista blog had started.
Those of you who know me, know that I’ve not been idle in the coffee world, as the past year+ has kept me very busy… so busy that I’ve had to scale down some of my coffee exploits.
But I will try to maintain this blog, ( but in reality I will be delegating/blackmailing certain people to take some of the load)
On that note, I am pleased to announce that the regional championships have been given to the local communities to further develop. Steering/organizing committees have been set up in the Eastern, Central, Prairie and Western regions to help find sponsorship, involve cafes and their baristas, and beat the bushes for volunteers.
The rationale behind this was to allow the locals to create partnerships with local businesses. This is a far better solution than the Canadian Barista Academy trying to do this from outside your communities. The idea is to create local coffee “events”, that will attract the general public, but mostly it is to showcase the state of the local coffee scene.
Sort of like separation of church and state, we’ve decided to separate the economics of the event from the running of the event itself.
That being said, the Canadian Barista Academy is still creating sponsorship opportunities for the regionals, and is running the actual contest. All judges must go through training, certification, and the stage setups, scorekeeping etc are firmly in the Academy’s hands. This way we keep an impartiality in the judging process, and the steering committees are free to pursue sponsorship without fear of bias.
Fulcrum Events, the host of the Nationals, October 14/15th in Vancouver, is sponsoring the regionals both financially and with infrastructure/support staff. I hope everyone can make it to the nationals, I know it’s going to be one of the best nationals ever.
There will be more to come in future posts, including some opportunities for baristas to pay their expenses if they come to the Vancouver Coffee Tea Show… if you are willing to work in booths, making drinks to serve the public, let me know!
Okay. I better go get some coffee..
Les