CoffeeCon Seattle 2017 (a consumer-focused coffee festival). What an exciting undertaking to help bring them to Seattle! About a year ago, as I write this, I happened to be sitting in with a local non-profit – Northwest Space Agency – as they talked about their plans for the year’s events.
NW Space Agency focuses on helping local businesses in Seattle connect with their customers and the community by giving them agency through space and events (basically finding space to host events to promote local businesses).
Throughout last year NW Space Agency hosted numerous coffee-related events – cup tasting challenges, brewing challenges, etc. They are all aimed at connecting coffee and the people in coffee with everyone else. While the group is new, they have done a great job of bringing the casual coffee drinking just a bit deeper into the world of coffee locally.
So about a year ago, I heard them talking about putting together a larger event at the end of the year. A little festival of coffee where local businesses could show off what they are doing and the people in the community could enjoy all that.
Queue my enthusiasm.
First though, turn back a couple years, where I ran into Kevin Sinnott and his show, CoffeeCon. I think my attention was turned to this via my friend Michael Allen Smith, who runs I Need Coffee, shortly after he attended the CoffeeCon San Francisco show in 2014.
I recall realizing immediately the similarities in the goals Kevin and I had – to bridge the gap between the average coffee drinker and the vast fascinating and exciting world of specialty coffee. I knew I wanted to do some kind of consumer facing coffee event (having attended many industry shows), but I personally lacked the resources necessary to go it alone.
Kevin is also an incredibly generous person – from the get go he has strived to help Coffee Lovers Magazine get more exposure through the work he is doing. We did a joint project together, featuring Kevin and CoffeeCon in one of the issues. You can actually view that issue free here – one of the few I have set up to enjoy on any device (tangent: the experience is not as great as the app, but I can do things like embed it in this article).
Ok fast forward, Jan/Feb 2016. It’s been a year + of me encouraging Kevin and CoffeeCon to bring their show to Seattle. The people of Seattle clearly enjoy these kind of events (looking at the many food and culture related events that happen around the city, quite notably The Northwest Chocolate Festival). And NW Space Agency wants to do one themselves.
So, we put two and two together.
The course of 2016 was a great opportunity for all of us – learning how to gather many businesses around this idea, and bring coffee drinkers from around the region to enjoy what the pacific northwest coffee scene has to offer.
And of course, we got to show off what we are doing right smack in the middle of Seattle Center.
Coffee Lovers Magazine, in Seattle Center! Yea that was pretty awesome.
This show is just the beginning. The world is hungry for this kind of connection, where it’s about the people, the connections, and celebrating the best of what we do.
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