As The Chaff Settles: TEDCoffee Recap

42 volunteer baristas, 5 WCE staffers. Mission #TEDCoffee: complete…for 2014 at least! It has been almost a week since our team of baristas rounded out a wonderfully eventful 5 days of coffee & tea service at TED2014 in Vancouver and at TEDActive in Whistler. Our team, with the help of 26 incredible partners, and the guidance and wisdom of the BGA, smoothly and professionally operated 7 full service bars and 11 self-serve stations in two cities. We had the pleasure of utilizing 5 different brewing methods while serving coffees that highlighted local roasters from Canada, as well as coffee that was shipped across oceans from New Zealand and Taiwan. On top of that, we helped facilitate the debut of TOM’s new roasting venture. All the while bringing together a community of coffee professionals from across North America to work side-by-side towards a common goal. Not too shabby!

Matthew Williams of WCE remarked, “The success of coffee service at TED was the result of an extraordinary group of baristas. They were adept at handling the unique challenges of operating a temporary bar in a busy venue. They made awesome tasting coffee and they engaged with TEDsters in a way that everyone should be proud of. Hats off to a great team!”

Our dedicated group of volunteers really pulled through, working passionately to spread the word (and taste) of specialty coffee to the eclectic group of literati roaming the Vancouver Convention Center and the Fairmont Chateau Whistler. This made for a very unique experience as Jonathan Paul Doerr of Portola Coffee Lab in Costa Mesa pointed out.

“You are at this incredible event working with the best of your peers in the industry, serving amazing coffees and having an amazing time; but yes, that was a Nobel Prize winner you just served a soy cappuccino. And yes, your heart stopped while you were pouring it. Coffee at TED2014 is the most fun and enjoyable coffee experience I’ve been a part of. A constant flow of energy pulses through the space you are in. It is infectious. There is, however, a heaviness in some of the topics that are being discussed. You are a buffer though, and you stand in the decided safety between the trenches. The openness and free flow of ideas can only take place when there is a gap between things. At TED we facilitate that gap, but also provide the joy and intensity that permeates the conference.”

We are extremely excited to announce that WCE will be managing #TEDCoffee again next year, so please check back for updates on TED2015 and TEDActive. And check out some choice pics at our Photo Shelter Gallery!

WCE would like to send out a humongous “Thank You!” again to everyone who helped make #TEDCoffee 2014 so great!

Potent Quotables: Riley Paterson

Mr. Riley Paterson, of Visions Espresso in Seattle, on his first TEDCoffee experience:

I worked at 3 different stations, and was assigned to the brew shifts at all of them. I make pour overs all the time…I have a Chemex at home, so I’m used to that part, but the parameters for brewing for that volume of people was something I’d never experienced before. It was great because I got to use a Hario V60 at the first station, a Chemex at the second, an Aeropress at the third station, AND with three different coffees at that. It was also really cool to see what the coffee scene in Canada had to offer…that Matchstick Washed Ethiopia was DOPE, the Elysian Rwanda was awesome, and TOMS is off to a good start! I think it’s interesting that many of us have mentioned that a large part of our experience at TEDCoffee is the idea of drawing attention to the concept of equality, over just service per se, for example, how we are trying to change the perception of specialty coffee as a profession. We want to magnify the idea of hospitality, while still expressing the desire to establish expertise. I wonder what kind of experience the TED attendees are having after interacting with us…does it translate to them?

“These events are a community building exercise for the baristas. It’s a great chance to swap knowledge, work on the way we communicate quality coffee to interested consumers, and actively contribute to the dynamic, engaged audience at TED,”

“These events are a community building exercise for the baristas. It’s a great chance to swap knowledge, work on the way we communicate quality coffee to interested consumers, and actively contribute to the dynamic, engaged audience at TED,”

-Executive Council Member of the BGA and Director of Coffee for Cherry Street Coffee House, Laila Ghambari 

Journey to TEDcoffee2014: Where we came from and where we are going

Photo Credit: Brian W. Jones

Peter Giuliano, Director of Symposium for SCAA:

The TED conference has been one of the most captivating phenomena of the past quarter century: allowing amazing people to give voice to new ideas. And, since the beginning, TED has understood the connection between great ideas and great coffee. Companies like Thanksgiving coffee and Intelligentsia coffee helped create delicious coffee services at TED conferences in Monterey and Long Beach. A few years ago, however, a new approach emerged: a collaboration of extraordinary coffee professionals gathered together expressly for the purpose of creating a unique coffee service for TED. It was designed to be an expression of the best that coffee could offer, an extension of the TED philosophy of “ideas worth sharing”. The project came to be called Coffee Common, and was an expression of the coffee community- dedicated to celebrating excellence and goodness in coffee. Talented volunteer baristas, in collaboration with roasting and equipment companies, created a unique coffee service, focusing on delivering transcendent coffee experiences in the coffee setting. Perfectly prepared coffee, presented by engaging professionals. The idea became to deliver a tiny, 45 second equivalent of a TED talk in coffee form. For two years, Coffee Common curated the coffee service, and in 2013 the torch was passed to the SCAA’s Barista Guild and Roasters Guild. Once again, the bar was raised- introducing a new approach to coffee sourcing and including a message about the importance of culinary professionalism and collaboration in coffee.

This year, with TED’s relocation to Vancouver, we are once again planning a paradigm-busting coffee service for the conference. Extraordinary representatives of the Barista Guild will craft coffees at a network of coffee bars, featuring special coffees from Canada and other exciting coffees from around the world. We continue to be committed to collaboration, exploration, and excellence, and to spreading the word of specialty coffee among the unique TED audience.