The time had come for a redesign of this site, and a move away from free wordpress templates towards something custom. Feedback is, of course, very welcome. I’ve tried to make sure a few bits of previous feedback were incorporated such as having recent comments nice and clear on the front page.

Post pages are, I hope, simple and readable. Comments (which are a massive part of why I write this thing) are also a little more readable and clear. Any bugs then let me know (unless you are on IE 6 ¹, in which case I am sorry, terribly sorry).

Looking forward to the Christmas break, as I have a tonne of draft stuff I need to post. In the meantime – why not cast your vote in the Absurd Latte Art Contest II.

UPDATE: For clarity – I did not do the design work here. I was merely a tyrannical and irritating client.
ANOTHER UPDATE: Full credit to Lawrence Brown for the design work.

1. I know some people are stuck with this browser at work, but I probably shouldn’t condone reading my ramblings during working hours…. [↩]

I don’t often post work stuff on here, but I figure I am allowed to break my own self imposed rules once in a while.  I have a whole backlog of posts and comment responses that I will get too soon.

I plan to talk a little bit more in future about some of the ideas behind The Penny University, but for now I will say that we are about to close out the applications for the two jobs we have open there.  We hadn’t really posted the advert in a lot of places, and while we’ve had some great responses, I just wanted to make sure it was spread as far as could be.

You can read a little more about the project in the job descriptions.  I should also add that we’d be very uncomfortable asking anyone to relocate for a job, especially with work visas being so difficult right now.

If you have any questions do let me know, though we’re not releasing a lot more detail about the shop for a few more days.

Barista

Store Assistant

This weekend the reigning Aussie barista champion, Scottie Callaghan, is in London as part of a trip around the world.  He’s been hanging out in Copenhagen, Oslo, Sweden and Amsterdam beforehand and is heading to the US early next week.  I can’t help but be jealous.

Scottie’s trip is all about learning – talking to as many different people as possible, tasting as much as possible – and it seems like a pretty good idea to me.  It is easy to slip into habits where working hard every day at what you do, and maybe reading up on stuff online feels like enough.  You can’t replace the experience of learning through doing, but what I like about learning through discussion and tasting is that you often are taken down avenues and get ideas you hadn’t expected.

I haven’t travelled very much since the company started roasting, so I am really looking forward the upcoming SCAA show.  The show is all about people for me, but I am pretty excited about the SCAA Symposium on the days beforehand.  (It probably won’t surprise you to find out that Scottie is going to this as well!) Yes, I should be clear and state them I am involved in one of the sessions on the first day (about which I am actually a little nervous) but I am looking forward to the rest of the program too.  (If you are curious you can see the program here)  The idea of being in big room full of people who know more than I do about every single aspect of the coffee industry is immensely enticing!  I’ll try to blog as much as possible from the event, but if you are going I look forward to having a chat over some coffee!

Hopefully when I get back I can get stuck into (and reveal) another couple of big projects that I think will be amazing – and are the reason all has been so quiet on here of late.