An Invitation and Other Program Notes

A few tchotchkes for your late Thursday morning.
 

An Open Invitation

In the twelve-year life of this blog, there have been exactly three guest posts. There's really no reason for this except inertia. In recent months, others, notably Michael Kiser and Austin Ray at Good Beer Hunting (examples here and here) and Ezra Johnson-Greenough at The New School have used guest posts to wonderful effect, demonstrating how valuable diverse voices can be.

I would like to extend an invitation to readers out there to contact me if you have a story you're burning to tell. There are so many stories out there I can't really tell--experiences working a bar, farming hops or barley, navigating distribution, and so on. Ezra's story this morning comes from someone setting up a brewery in Portland--an experience we rarely see the inside of. This kind of intimacy puts many of you closer to a subject than I could ever get. If this is something you'd like to do, give me a holler. I can help you develop the idea, structure it, and edit it.
 

Podcast Sponsorship

For the past couple years, Patrick and I have been happy to have our Beervana Podcast hosted by All About Beer. The magazine had great aspirations under former editor John Holl to create a suite of podcasts, but that never quite materialized. John took his podcast with him when he went to Craft Beer and Brewing, and in the midst of buying Draft and other projects, All About Beer lost sight of its podcasts. In light of that, we've decided to forge out on our own again, and we're looking for a sponsor or two to join us. If you like what we do and are interested in such an opportunity, give me a holler.

Bellingham Beer Week

On Sunday I fly into lovely Bellingham, Washington, the City of Subdued Excitement*, for a few days. I've been invited as a small contingent of writers to see the city during their annual beer week and I'll be speaking at Chuckanut on Tuesday the 24th. If you're a Bellinghamster* or will be in town then, think about dropping by. I will soothe you with my dulcet tones and enliven your mind with fascinating insight.** John Holl will also be in town, speaking an evening earlier, and he does have a dulcet voice and is always an incredibly impressive speaker. So put that on your to-do as well.

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* I did not make that up. Either one.
** No contract implied or guaranteed.