The 2013 Beer Bloggers Conference in Boston this July is turning out to be quite an event. In addition to an outstanding agenda of beer and social media related content, we are pleased to announce that founder and director of the Cicerone Certification Program, Ray Daniels, is now confirmed as our 2nd event Keynote Speaker.
Ray Daniels is joining beer legend, Jim Koch from Boston Beer Company in the Keynote seat, and we are thrilled to have him be a part of the conference.
In the beer world, Ray Daniels simply has done it all. In addition to the Cicerone Certification Program, Daniels is also a Senior Faculty of the Siebel Institute of Technology – America’s oldest brewing school. Since learning how to homebrew in 1989, Ray Daniels’ resume is quite impressive:
- 2 time Midwest Homebrewer of the Year
- Contributor to Zymurgy, All About Beer, American Brewer, Beer and Tavern Chronicle, Brewing Techniques, DRINK , and Malt Advocate
- Online contributor to allaboutbeer.com, drink.com, and Michael Jackson’s beerhunter.com
- Creator & organizer of beer tasting events, including the Real Ale Festival in Chicago
- Editor of The New Brewer and Zymurgy & Publisher of Brewers Publications
- Founder and former Director of the Craft Beer Marketing program at the Brewers Association
- Author or publisher of over two dozen books on beer & winner of “Beer Writer of the Year” by the North American Guild of Beer Writers
- Certified Beer Judge
Given that bio, we can expect Mr. Daniels to have quite a bit to talk about during #BBC13. When asked about speaking to our conference attendees, Mr. Daniels replied
Twenty years ago if you could write, it was pretty easy to get a big audience, but a lot harder to find your own voice due to the filters and noise inherent in the process and the medium. Today, it seems it’s easier to speak with your own voice but a lot harder to get a big audience. Despite the differences, the core values of writing are still essential to success–and still hard to achieve. In addition to sharing some of my thinking on beer today, I’ll share some of the surprising things that made me a better writer and some of the traps I encountered to writing well.
In addition to his thoughts on beer writing and the evolution and future of blogging, Mr. Daniels had a few opinions to share on the subject of on & off-premise establishments. The quotes below are examples of the kind of discussion you can expect to find initiated by Ray Daniels at the 2013 Beer Bloggers Conference in Boston this July
I’m depressed by the entry of monied operators into the on-premises sector who proclaim themselves as Meccas of beer but clearly can’t meet basic quality standards or minimal server training levels with the number of taps they are building.
I find off-premises retailers who organize their beer offerings by style to be maddening. I think the approach is undertaken without a real understanding of how consumers think about beer and seems inspired mostly by the common categorization methods for wine. There’s a lesson here that most of us learned long ago: beer is not wine. Efforts to treat it like wine will ultimately result in disappointment.
About the 2013 Beer Bloggers Conference
July 26-28, 2013 Boston, MA – which to many is the home of the craft beer explosion due largely in part to the efforts of Jim Koch and the introduction of Samuel Adams Beer.
Registration is open for the conference, and pricing begins at just $95.00 for citizen bloggers. Please check out our America page for complete conference details.