Categorized under: beer

#bbc11 Day 1 Observations from the outside looking in

I (Ian) elected to skip this years iteration of the Beer Bloggers Conference. It was not for lack of interest or based on negative experiences in ’10, just a matter of priorities. Having said that, I’ve been following the conference very closely via the twitter hashtag #bbc11 and updates from the rest of the 2beerguys crew, Sean, Amber and Ryan.

Early returns on the conference have been overwhelmingly positive. Portland has come off in everyone’s posts as an excellent host city, and it is easy to see why PDX is one of the best beer cities in America. Boulder and Portland have both been huge successes. Kudos to Allan Wright for going 2-2 on locations.

In addition to the kick-off presentation by Julia Herz from the Brewer’s Association, both afternoon sessions sounded full of tremendous value. I would have loved to have heard Fred Eckhardt speak; hopefully I’ll catch that on video at some point.

There seem to be a lot of new faces/Twitter handles this year, and quite a few missing from last year, so I’m curious if people were soured from last year or if circumstances just dictated their absense like me.

Either way, the 80 or so bloggers that are there seem to be really soaking up the Portland beer scene and enjoying the conference thus far. Cheers to you, my fellow citizen beer bloggers!

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