Barista Magazine

AUG-SEP 2012

Barista Magazine is your home for the worldwide community of coffee and the people who make it.

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EDITOR LETTER from your #1 fan/follower In the summer of 2007, Publisher Ken Olson did something that would change the way Barista Magazine reports about coffee forever: in one fell swoop, he grew our bimonthly journal into something more than a magazine—that summer, BMag emerged as the most well-read, relevant online coffee media source there had ever been, or has been since. The summer of 2007 was when Ken headed for Tokyo, Japan, for the World Barista Championship (WBC), armed with a camera, a laptop, and a mission: to blog and shoot photos of every single National Barista Champion, and post all of them to Pasteboard, Barista Magazine's blog (baristamagazine.com/blog). In the five years since, we've kept it up, adding constant Facebook and Twitter newsflashes to our more than 11,000 followers. I'm just back from the WBC in Vienna, Austria, and though it was exhausting, it was endlessly rewarding: I blogged about each of the 12 semifinalists, and then each of six finalists, with color and news stories interspersed. (It's all still online if you want to check it out!) But really, this is the eighth year that Barista Magazine has championed the WBC winner. 2005 WBC Champ Troels Poulsen graced the cover of our second issue ever, and featuring the WBC titleholder on our covers and as the subjects of feature articles is a tradition we have kept up ever since. More than that, it's become a coveted prize for the competitors. In the years since 2005, we've only made our WBC coverage bigger: we include original photos of every National Barista Champion in a 'yearbook' spread (see the centerfold of this issue for the 2012 barista champs). We also include animated stories about the fun going on at the WBC, the action, the celebrations, and sometimes the tears. And we commemorate the outgoing World Barista Champion in an article about the adventures he's had as our international coffee ambassador in a feature article (see page 58 to read about 2011 WBC Champ Alejandro Mendez's whirlwind year). But we wanted to do even more. In 2009, we signed on with the WBC to be the Official Media Sponsor, and we've remained as such ever since. As the one and only media sponsor of the WBC, we create glossy programs that include profiles of every competitor, and print thousands of them to distribute to the audience. We also post the program online so folks watching the WBC from afar can read 10 barista magazine about the best baristas in the world. And in between blog posts, we update our Facebook and Twitter accounts with the latest. We've done this for all these years in our unrelenting efforts to serve the international barista community. But as awesome as the WBC is, we realize that there's so much more to who you are, Barista Magazine readers. That's why we work so hard every single day to give you food for thought online at Facebook and Twitter, and in regular updates at Pasteboard. With the most widely read and followed Facebook Fan Page of any coffee publication or website, Barista Mag's Facebook Page is where 11,000 people and counting go for trend stories, juicy tidbits about coffee celebs, awesome photos from cafés around the world, updates from the planet's top coffee conferences and events, and more. And we Tweet like crazy at @BARISTAMAGAZINE. We manage our Twitter account the same way we plan editorial for Barista Magazine's pages: by combining hard news about such topics as Finca El Injerto earning $500-per-pound green in a recent auction, to community bulletins about events like the Coffee Cocktail Mash-Up that our friends at Everyman Espresso in New York are working on, to fun and comical snippets: where can you buy that pink Hello Kitty coffeemaker? We try really hard, every day, to deliver you with online awesomeness, the same kind you've insisted from us in paper form since we launched Barista Magazine in 2005. So basically, this is a love letter to you, readers. I believe Barista Magazine has the smartest, not to mention coolest, readers of any magazine or website in the coffee industry. You're game changers and trendsetters; you're intellectuals and scientists and engineers; and you're the most fun and interesting people to hang out with that I know. We exist to serve you, which is why I'm always reminding you to email me. Give us suggestions about how we can do better. Ask us for articles on topics we've not covered before. And say hi on Facebook and Twitter—we're there and waiting for you! Because if you haven't noticed, readers, you're the reason we're here. You're number one in our book—er, magazine and blog and social media—you're number one, and you always will be. BARISTA MAGAZINE Publisher Kenneth R. Olson Editor Sarah Allen Art Direction Pail Design Graphic Designer Jessica Bernert Photographer Giles Knight Business Manager Cheryl Lueder Advertising Sales Sarah Allen 800/296-9108 Contributors Tracy Allen Michael Harwood Tim Hill Sam Lewontin Todd Mackey Rodrigo Mussapp Melissa Myer David Ringwood Amanda Wilson Editorial Advisory Board Christopher Nicely Abel Alameda, Handsome Coffee Roasters Joshua Boyt, Metronome Coffee Lemuel Butler, Counter Culture Coffee Trevor Corlett, MadCap Coffee Company Roukiat Delrue, WBC Sonja Grant, Kaffismiðja Íslands Gerra Harrigan, New Harvest Coffee Roasters Heath Henley, Dose Coffee & Tea Jannicke M. Johansen, Mocca & Java Rita Kaminsky, The Albina Press Troels Poulsen, Kontra Coffee Dan Streetman, Irving Coffee Farm Colin Whitcomb, MadCap Coffee Company Barista Magazine 4345 NE 72nd Ave. Portland, Oregon 97218 phone: 800.296.9108 fax: 971.223.3659 email: info@baristamagazine.com www.baristamagazine.com Barista Magazine is published bi-monthly by the Barista Magazine Company, LLP. Subscriptions are $20 in the United States, $40 US in Canada/Mexico, and $50 US for the rest of the world. The contents of this publication may not be reproduced in whole or in part without written permission from the publisher. Postmaster please send address corrections to: Barista Magazine, 4345 NE 72nd Ave., Portland, OR 97218. ISSN: 1944-3544 Copyright 2012 Barista Magazine. All rights reserved.

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