Take home Tuesday

Although I've mainly posted up about my travels outside of Toronto, I'd like to take this moment to write an opinion piece about my experience on the blog-o-sphere within the last year.

My first anniversary came and went, and officially it was on Sept 26th. A couple of days before National Coffee Day. During my time I've been posting regularly, sometimes 5 articles a week, to lull periods where posts are far and few in between.

Here are my top 5 life-lessons I've learned through Espresso Adventures.

1) Taking time to carefully plan ideas: Easier said than done when other life factors are taking away your time from your passion. It's easy to become swayed, but if your goal has SWOTs and you've analyzed all angles, you have an idea of what it takes. Time is of the essence. I've allocated 30 minutes of brainstorming, 20 minute reflection, and 10 minutes of exploration of my most prominent thought of the day.

In a nutshell: 1 hour of time/day, interruption-free thinking.

2) Photos, notes, inspiration: Documentation!!!!

 I have a really good memory, but once my attention span is filled I seem to think I'll remember which cafe I visited 3 weeks ago... This is why I care around a notebook. Coffee Journal, scratch pad.

Photos get stored in my phone, and camera. This was I have a way to cross reference my journey.

3) Coffee sparks conversation.

Tastes, experiences and suggestions allow me to have a common conversational piece with other cofficers. In general, it doesn't dominant the conversation but allows for an easy way to start the random conversations flowing - then allowing for networking to happen. I'm all for the advancement of creative process. To many more.

4) Social Media: Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn...

Love it or Hate it. It's the new forum for the internet. We must embrace and use it to continue the conversation beyond the posts of Espresso Adventures. Currently I lean towards Twitter, but it's multi-faceted, and without these campaigns - it does not feel whole.

5) No shortage of coffee education.

Seriously, it's tough to keep up with the emerging micro-roasters, brew techniques and brew processes. But it's fun, exciting and brings out the scientist in me. As technical as it can be, we can learn a lot from what's out there, and our own experimentation. It's more toys, toys, toys.

That's it for Take-home Tuesdays.

HAPPY ESPRESSO ADVENTURES....

Watch out for the Top 10 in 2011 cafes in 3 weeks time.

(old and new joints curated into one list.. oooo excitement)