My first day in Minneapolis was very long, having been up all night on an over-night flight. Despite that, the day began with two heart-touching presentations. First I attended the Investing in Coffee Communities: Strategies for Social Responsibility, which included short presentations by Carolyn Fairman from Coffee Kids, Chad Trewick from Caribou Coffee, Bob Bernstein from Bongo Java and our own Mark Prince. Following that I got to see and hear in person Dr. Jane Goodall, more on that later.

I already knew of the work done by Coffee Kids, having been involved with them with our past fund raising events but this presentation given me more insight as how they get involved with coffee growing communities and work on improving their lifestyle. The work done by Caribou Coffee, a fairly large coffee chain run in 15 states in east and mid-west and by Bongo Java, a 5 store operation in Nashville, TN was truly amazing. Interestingly enough, the difference between Caribou Coffee and Bongo Java was that Caribou works on empowering coffee growing communities and Bongo gets involved their local community and charities and goes way out of its way to help out its employees. I was very touched by both presentations and I hope that a lot of other coffee shops do similar work.

Mark also gave an excellent presentation about the history of CoffeeGeek.com and its plans for the future. He explained how web-based communities work and how they can help spread the message about the lives of coffee farmers. He also took some interesting questions from the audience, including one on moderating the blogs.

Sitting here on the Exhibition floor its interesting to see the variety of people involved in coffee. The day isn’t long enough to hear all of their stories though. Also next to the SCAA Exhibition there is some sort of a dance competition going on, so every few minutes there are groups small girls running through all dressed up in their costumes, wearing make-up and all excited. That makes a very interesting combo!

Investing in Coffee Communities Presentation Welcoming sign on the registration floor Long line-ups lasted all day