Let’s take it back – way back – all the way to April, 2013, when Sprudge.com partnered with the Speciality Coffee Association of America to help document the 2013 SCAA Symposium. You can read all about the Symposium and its history here – this was the event’s 5th year – but our role here now is to amplify some of the thought provoking, downright challenging talks by focusing individually by the fascinating speakers themselves.
In past years, the Symposium program has faced critique from specialty coffee enthusiasts and onlookers for being too private with their release of talks and information. It gets to those bigger questions of “who owns information”, and “how do we charge for intellectual property?” It’s the firmly held belief of this publication that no one truly owns information, or imagery, or ideas. Not in this day and age. There is a thrill and a value to encountering new ideas as they happen, in a live setting like Symposium or TED, but once the cat is out of the bag..well, then things like exclusivity, paywalls, and “velvet rope” culture can actually retard the development of those very same ideas, however valuable they may be. We believe in the free sharing of information.
It’s also exactly what the SCAA has done in the past year, launching and regularly updating their YouTube channel with talks from every Symposium speaker, gently doled out week by week to continue fostering interest and discussion. These videos are, of course, 100% free. They’ve also had us produce original “teaser” videos for each speaker. Let’s re-live some of them below, and if you haven’t watched the full talks yet, we’ve included those links as well. Put on your headphones at work and tune in; it’ll just look like you’re really focused on some other project. We think this is fascinating stuff.
Steve Savage, plant pathologist and super interesting blogger:
Watch Steve Savage’s full talk here on YouTube.
Dr. Aaron Davis, Head of Coffee Research for the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew.
Watch Dr. Davis’ full talk here on YouTube.
Peter Giuliano, Director of SCAA Symposium.
Watch Mr. Giuliano’s full Sympsoium talk here on YouTube.
There’s even more talks up on the Symposium YouTube channel, including sessions with Tracy Ging & Nick Cho and Alejandro Velez, a sustainable mushroom expert working with coffee waste, and many more to come in the coming weeks and months. We’ll be continuing to produce original “Symposium Colloquium” teasers to go along with these new videos; today we can drop the newest one, a “preview sizzle reel” for a brand new Symposium talk being released next week, and starring SCAA Executive Director Ric Rhinehart:
Watch for the release of Mr. Rhinehart’s full talk next week, via SCAA Symposium on YouTube. We’ll leave you with just one last video, wherein we asked each and every one of our interview subjects – from James Hoffmann to Dr. Tim Schilling – what they would say to a coffee buyer, professional, or enthusiast who felt as though “Coffee leaf rust is not my problem.” Their responses are passionate, and unforgettable.
Follow Symposium on Youtube, and heck, while, you’re at it, follow Sprudge on YouTube to boot.
