Issue 118: July | August 2023
Issue 118
From the Publisher
The founder and publisher of Roast magazine, Connie Blumhardt has spent 25 years in magazine publishing and has worked in the coffee industry for the last 20 years. Connie brings the same passion and commitment to this industry journal that is present within the roasting community.
With each issue, Connie brings insight and inspiration to the pages of Roast with this column.
Connie Blumhardt, Publisher
As a hostess, I can’t help but feel responsibility, and hence nervousness, about having friends, family or say 13,000-plus industry people visiting my hometown. All of this happened recently with the Specialty Coffee Expo in Roast’s hometown of Portland, Oregon.
As many have heard, with some fearmongering and some truth, Portland has struggled in recent years with multiple simultaneous crises. Rising housing costs, addiction, mental health issues and homelessness were all amplified by the covid-19 pandemic, political divisiveness and social protest. The evidence of these crises (and the efforts to address them) were not hidden from attendees, but they also did not detract from the Expo experience. There was an excitement and energy around the event, as well as the parties outside the event, with takeaways that many of us had not experienced in years.
The numbers reflected this excitement, with pre-pandemic levels restored—the last time attendance at Expo exceeded 13,000 attendees and 500 exhibitors was in 2019. However, the real power is in what those thousands of people do after the event, as they are a small percentage of the total coffee industry and consumer population. We have learned more than we ever wanted to know about the transmission of viruses in the past couple of years, and there are useful parallels in how ideas go viral. If Expo-type events are going to make a marked difference in our industry, we must embrace what makes ideas go viral. Imagine the impact of each of these 13,000 attendees keeping the excitement (likelihood of infection) alive for a number of months (duration of contagiousness) with as many people as possible (contact rate).
I am proud of my team. The effort they put into not only one of our best issues ever, but also prepping for the Expo and producing a really fun guide to Portland, The Inside, was exemplary. I am also proud of my city and my industry. Neither is perfect, but they are better than they were two to three years ago—and that alone is news worth spreading.
Warmest wishes,
Connie
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