Holding an online version of a tea conference / expo

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John_B
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Thu Apr 02, 2020 10:17 pm

Someone asked an interesting question about interest in an online version of a tea conference in a couple of Facebook groups. This is one related post, in Gong Fu Cha:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/gongfuc ... 321834158/

I'll start by adding some thoughts on how that might work.

Obviously not being able to taste the tea is a main drawback. Tea is experiential: two tea versions could look relatively identical and be completely different in quality level and character.

Technical issues come to mind right away. Lots of people are more familiar with online group meeting tools now than they were two weeks ago but setting that up still seems to be a challenge. Intuitively "booths" set up with video feeds interacting with people asking questions would still make sense, and it could work to present other more static content.

Cost comes up early on; her point was clarifying if people would be interested, or interested enough to pay for the experience. Most said no, to the second. I'm not sure I'd be willing to pay to have people try to sell me tea online either, and I'd be suspicious of the idea that there would be lots of other content or informative interaction potential. It should be possible to get vendors to contribute a little on their end, in different ways, and keep profit (or just cost coverage) low for an organizer.

My advice to her was that trying out an online group tasting form first might work, to get a feel for the tool and process, and experiential side, then move onto holding an informal seminar, to go further. The technical side would be a challenge but having it make sense to people to experience also would be.

Other thoughts?
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pantry
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Thu Apr 02, 2020 11:06 pm

Interesting thought. Many of the academic conferences in my work in have moved online as well (and apparently virtual music fest is a thing now). I think for food related expo, perhaps participants would have to pay a small fee to attend. Attendants would get a package of tea samples in advance, so they can tune in and brew together live with the vendor + other participants and taste the tea together + Q&A. I agree that vendors would have to contribute, perhaps by offering those samples at minimum cost. In a way, it's probably a more accurate way to know how the tea would taste in your home setting (different water, brewing method, etc.) These expos probably would still have to be regional so you don't have to stay up until midnight to drink tea.

I had been planning to attend a tea expo in China in the Spring...what a year!
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pantry
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Thu Apr 02, 2020 11:11 pm

hmm...just read through the FB post you mentioned...I'm not sure a tea expo where people tuned in live for a dress up party, pictures taking, and bakery takeout is what I had in mind :mrgreen:
John_B
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Thu Apr 09, 2020 3:06 am

Tealet is holding such an event from April 9 to 10 (so today and tomorrow, except I'm 12 hours ahead here in Bangkok):

https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=2709661922601424
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Victoria
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Thu Apr 09, 2020 6:33 pm

@John_B how did the online tea festival go? I see you are posting about it on FB quite a bit, so will assume you joined in?
John_B
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Fri Apr 10, 2020 4:42 am

I caught part of it, but it ran from 1 AM to 5 AM here (in Bangkok, on the "other" side of the world). Sometimes I wake up in the night so I clicked on it to see parts of two of the segments.

It looked ok. The idea was to get a lot of people involved with tea short time-slots to say what they wanted, it seemed. I thought maybe there would be interest in that. Elyse said the video would be made available so I'll probably go back and catch more when it's not live.

That's not really so close to an expo format. Workshop segments might come across similarly, but it would be possible to try to make it more interactive, to open multiple channels up to Q & A access. That's not a critique; just pointing out the obvious.

Technical issues would make that a lot harder to set up and join in on, or maybe it could just be ran through Facebook live streams, with comments covering the viewer input function. I'm not sure if the effect would be like walking around and checking out different booths.

It's all as much a thought-model to me as it is about a desire to see this happen. I'm working from home, so online meetings are a lot more familiar than they were 3 weeks ago, and maybe an expo or convention could become so too.
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pantry
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Fri Apr 10, 2020 4:05 pm

Thanks for sharing the event, @John_B. I was able to check out a few session during lunch break, and thought it was a good idea that they pre-recorded the 'lecture' part--made streaming quality much better.
John_B
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Mon Apr 13, 2020 2:39 am

The next related event I'm aware of isn't until July:

https://www.nomadteafestival.com/

I hope that the world is mostly back to normal in three more months, but who knows at this point.
John_B
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Tue May 12, 2020 10:34 pm

They finally posted the article I was working on for TChing on this theme, which is also posted in my own blog:

http://teaintheancientworld.blogspot.co ... uring.html

There isn't much new in there, beyond what I covered in discussion here. Tealet has been doing a series of informal online tea events, not unlike that first version, just more limited in scope. I mention doing individual meet-ups in that post, but that's exactly what one would expect.

One strange part of that was experimenting with introducing others who don't know each other. It's odd talking to people on video instead of text, and then a little more odd jumping straight to "meeting" them in a group.

I connected with a tea producer and major vendor, and talked with one of my favorite producers along with another tea maker and vendor in a different country. Nothing too unusual came of all that, maybe some limited business opportunity in the one case.

The social part only worked well related to regular meet-ups between people I've already met. I'm part of a tea clique spanning Vietnam, India, and Germany now (and Thailand, on my end).
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aet
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Wed May 13, 2020 3:59 am

We do tea chat on zoom with friends time of the time. It's cool. I talk about tea situation in China ( mostly Yunnan ) , they refer about trends going on in Europe ( both sides happy to chat and absorb some more info than can fit in text ) . Especially now in lock down time it's handy.
Time differences are just bit annoying , so I having tea till 12 night and sleep after is not as should be , but if I go "lads out night" would be worse ;-)
For the moment we have only 2 groups , Russian and Czech. I'm not in any English speaking one, so I'm open to invitation though.
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