Well here we are the year 2008! Unbelievable. So many things happened for specialty coffee and for Barista Magazine in 2007, and we can’t wait to see what the new year has in store.
When we went to the Nordic Barista Cup in Gothenburg, Sweden, the theme was the future café. Surprisingly, the future did not turn out to be Twiki and robots like the world of Buck Rogers. But hey, there’s still time.
And of course, visiting Tokyo for the World Barista Championship sure felt a lot like visiting the future, and it was a year of firsts, the first champion from the U.K., the first finalist from a producing country, the first time a woman barista finished as high as second. In 2008, we’ll be headed to Copenhagen, Denmark for the WBC and surely we’ll witness more history in the making.
In the U.S., outside of coffee there is one huge event on the horizon (even bigger than the Blazers return to excellence as marked already by their 13-game winning streak or even that wedding thing Sarah and I had back in October), and that is the presidential election.
Hopefully we will elect someone who is ready for the future and believes in things like science, international cooperation and working towards improving the world for tomorrow. Believe it or not, some candidates in the field (all on one side of it) don’t believe in these things. In fact, when asked whether or not they believe in evolution almost all of them said they did not. Welcome to 1808!
The first voting for candidates (in the nomination process) is only a few days away (Jan. 3 in Iowa). Soon we’ll know if our Democratic nominee and (fingers crossed) the next president will be one of these three people:
In any event, history will be made in 2008, and we hope the new year will bring great things for all of you and peace and happiness for everyone!