San Francsico Tea Festival

I’m super excited about it. You should definitely come! Then we can meet up and properly see each other once again to actually talk instead of sit in the same classroom for a few months without really talking. ;)

I’ll have to talk to my boyfriend tonight… We were supposed to go sort of "pre"house hunting in manteca next weekend but tea rules over all else so… Would you really be willing to meet up with me at some point so I wouldn’t be a sad loser though Haha

Haha, I’d love to meet up with you! FyreTyde will be with me, too. We’ve known each other since we were 12, so we go a ways back, and you’ll be in for some good company. :)

Yay! Sounds great! I’ll message you my number and we can call/text if needed. Will do the same for MadelineAlyce just in case she can make it. :)

It was fun! Not as big as I was anticipating, but definitely fun. A friend had also recommended a pretty rad tea shop in Chinatown, so FyreTyde and I skipped out for a couple hours in the middle to hit that up and were very pleased with the results! Made it back for the Meaning of Tea excerpts and discussion. Was a great day!

Which shop did you skip off to?

I was in the same boat – wish there were more exhibitors… perhaps more vendors actually selling teas. I managed to talk with the folks at every table within thirty minutes of them letting us into the hall. I also think it would be good if next year they can pull off two sets of education-oriented conference rooms to cover more information. Wish there could’ve been flights of tea types for folks to become better acquainted with certain groups of teas – the closest thing to this was the short lineup of teas being brewed by the folks at Pure Puer.

Great for it being the first one, though!

I totally agree, Thomas. We went off to Vital Tea Leaf on Grant. There are apparently a couple of them, but we were at the one with Kenny, who was totally awesome and fun.

What I really wish they had was more discussion panel/interactive discussion about tea topics in addition to the education conference room. I’ve attended a number of conventions and, while always on a much larger scale than this, my favorite place to be has always been in a room with a panel discussion where the audience can participate a bit more. It’s great to have talks and to learn more, but I guess I’m a sucker for direct participation.

I agree though. They did very well for this being the first festival they’ve put on! A lot of hard work goes into these events and when it’s your first, it can be even harder!

I thought it was really overpriced but then again, I got there too late to see any of the speakers I wanted to see and some of the other events you had to sign up for, I guess I didn’t get the memo on that one because they were all filled up.

I wouldn’t go again unless they lowered the admission price to something like $5.

Two of the talks I felt were worth at least $30-$50 each, but I’m used to parting with around $300 on 1-2 hour talks mostly covering information I already know… I used this mostly for networking, though, which meant a terrific bargain price at least 1/4 of what I’d expect just to have access to talk to more than three prospective wholesalers or experts at the same place. If repeated next year, I will fully expect new information not covered this time and a bigger turnout of exhibitors – if it’s a carbon copy repeat then I would also only want to pay $10-$15 admission for the rehash. I imagine if you didn’t get the opportunity to go to most of the talks or speak to any of the panel speakers one-on-one then it may have been a severe let down.

@Thomas – I did see one talk but basically it was information I already knew or you could otherwise get from the internet for free. I didn’t really go to network either… sorry if I’m sounding fussy, I just did not see how it was worth $20 to get in when they had huge corporate sponsors and volunteers doing most of the labor. Also I thought there were not enough vendors and they could have done a better job of advertising the fact that some of the events were sign up only and when/how you were supposed to do that.