Mid-2018 Drupal Coffee Exchange Updates

We are about to start another quarter of the Drupal Coffee Exchange. Personally this has been a lot of fun to see this start from humble beginnings and an off-the-cuff idea posted to Twitter to now have a growing membership and have been running for over a year now. We now have international participation and are looking to expand that. For me, it’s yet another reminder our community goes well-beyond the commits. Now we have a way for community members to stay caffeinated and share our favorite coffees between community enthusiasts. It’s unique, it’s fun, and it’s become a creative and complementary way to participate in our community.

I wanted to share some recent developments that exemplify that energy.

DrupalCon introduced an in-person exchange

On Twitter, several people (Kirsten, Jeff, and others) mentioned they were going to be attending DrupalCon Nashville. Previously, we only did remote exchanges where community members paired up each quarter and shipped coffee to one another. We tried an in-person exchange on top of the traditional quarterly exchange. This was incredibly fun. People met in person, I purchased coffee to share from a local roastery, and everyone brought a pound of beans. Carlos and AnaLaura bought several small bags from a small international roaster that allowed several people to take more than one bag home (thank you both).  

Slack channel

To help facilitate any sort of coffee-related discussions, we created the #coffee-exchange channel on Drupal Slack. I invited people on Slack that I already knew were interested (and I’m still looking for more).  Come join us - it’s open for all. We’ve already had fun discussions on coffee equipment and collaboration on [keep reading…]

New logo, new hashtag

AnaLaura created several design comps for a logo for the coffee exchange. Community members discussed their preferences and we came up with a logo! Thank you, AnaLaura for your volunteer efforts - I know everyone loved your work and was super excited by this. Included in the logo is a new, shorter hashtag, #DrupalCoffee, replacing the longer and more cumbersome #DrupalCoffeeExchange.

Stickers

Since AnaLaura volunteer effort was to design the logo, I volunteered to make stickers for participants. We’re trying to figure out how to get these to people, as we don’t often get together in person and people send coffee directly to each other. Ideas are welcome.  Help us figure out how to distribute the stickers! Please let me know if you want one or two, even if you aren’t sure how to get them to everyone else.

Regional exchanges

Shipping international can be a major deterrent for people to participate. Some may want to try coffee from other countries, but this should be a known and agreed upon arrangement. Personally, I was fortunate enough to be able to exchange with Beto from Manati and enjoy some amazing Costa Rican coffee (thank you so much). I hope others have the opportunity to try this, it’s a great way to branch out. It’s important that people have a way to participate without having to incur unreasonable costs. As such, we will be welcoming regional participation and trying to increase awareness for participation across different regions. Whether the region is country, continent, or otherwise, we’re exploring this to help ensure the exchange is more inclusive.

Next steps

We are coming up on our Q3 exchange for 2018. Should you want to participate, please fill out this form and I’ll be in touch with more information.