To introduce Symposium’s series on coffee leaf rust, we knew we needed some deep background. What’s the history of coffee rust? What is its relationship with other rusts? How does it work, and spread? How does it compare with other agricultural pests? And, most importantly, how might the coffee industry learn from the broader agricultural
By Tim Castle Wednesday, the first day of the SCAA’s fifth annual Symposium, was not the first time that I’d heard we’re related to fungi. Forty years ago at UC Berkeley, my biology professor, whose name I cannot remember, noted, “The reason systemic mycoses [that is, fungal infections] are so hard to kill is because
By Hanna Neuschwander Collaboration, Cowboys, and Breaking Bread The morning began by picking up a thread from last year’s Symposium: Pathological collaboration. Shauna Alexander Mohr introduced the fledgling Coffeelands Food Security Coaltion (CFSC), a collaborative effort of major specialty coffee companies inlcuding Starbucks, Green Mountain, CBI, and Sustainable Harvest, as well as NGOs such as
By Hanna Neuschwander In its fifth year, Symposium began with a quick exegesis on the meaning of the word “symposium”: From the Greek, sym = together, pos = drink, ium = setting, or, as director Peter Giuliano put it, “It’s about sitting around drinking together.” Indeed. A short introductory lesson from Giuliano suggested caffeine—as a
About the Tasting Experience With Symposium’s close look at coffee genetics this year, we felt it would be a unique opportunity for us to also create a sensory experience for attendees. This is being provided as part of Symposium in the Sensory Experience Room, translating the program into an engaging, interactive activity. The coffees selected for
By Peter Giuliano, Director of Symposium Symposium isn’t just a conference. It’s a community that exists to grapple with the most pressing issues of the day. When the Ethiopia Commodity Exchange debuted on the world stage, the first place ECX leaders and coffee professionals came together to debate was Symposium. Cutting edge climate science, consumer
Over the past five years, a new world has emerged for specialty coffee. Global climate change has altered coffee agriculture and trade, we’ve been confronted with new realities about our supply chain and how it works, and the business of great coffee has flourished, twisted, and turned in unanticipated ways. Through it all, SCAA’s Symposium
It’s no surprise that Tracy Ging’s talk on Understanding the Specialty Coffee Consumer was probably the most discussed at Symposium 2012. The ground-breaking work of talking with coffee consumers about the very idea of specialty coffee led to pretty compelling insights about how our customers actually think - or rather how they feel - about coffee. And
We’re proud to introduce Symposium talks to scaasymposium.org! Every year, we capture the compelling talks presented at Symposium for posterity. Starting today, we’ll be regularly releasing Symposium talks on our site, free for anyone to watch and learn from. It’s our way of continuing the discussion outside of the Symposium itself, and bringing it to
Dear Coffee Leader, I’m thrilled to write to you today as the new Director of the Specialty Coffee Association of America’s Symposium! A little more than five years ago, I was honored to be part of a discussion where a new idea was put forward: what if we built a conference for those whose jobs