Ken, Greece and Out of the Box

Barista Magazine Publisher Ken Olson is headed for Athens, Greece, next week for La Marzocco‘s Out of the Box Athens event! He’s excited. He’s less excited for the 3 layovers he’ll have on the way there and back, but the actual being-in-Greece-checking-out-the-cafe-culture part—that, he’s excited about.

Ken's hotel is really close to the Acropolis! Maybe he'll hike up to it and enjoy a cup of coffee while he's in Athens.

This is the first time the Out of the Box event is touching down in Greece. These La Marzocco events have been hits in all the locales they’ve chosen so far, from Italy to Sweden to the United States. The most recent Out of the Box was held in Milan in conjunction with the Host Milan Expo (you can read my article and see my photos from the event in the new issue of Barista Magazine).

The place was packed during a discussion of pressure profiling at the Out of the Box event that took place in October.

The Out of the Box concept is about bringing passionate coffee people—from cafe owners to baristas to roasters to distributors—together in one intimate space where they can learn from workshops with industry experts, play with espresso machines, interact and learn from one another, and party til long after the sun goes down. This event in Greece next week will be no exception.

Ken will deliver the presentation, “History and Evolution of Coffee Advertising” at Out of the Box. This would explore the origins of marketing coffee, how it became popular, methods used to build and promote coffee culture, how it has changed over the years, and what we can learn from it when marketing specialty coffee today.

Other lectures will be offered by representatives from La Marzocco, as well as Yiannis Taloumis of Taf Coffee, and Stefanos Domatiotis, who has been the Barista Champion of Greece for, like, ever.