Thursday, February 20, 2014

Two more craft writing recaps: Digital takeaways and a Beer Trappe's perspective.

Two more Craft Writing symposium review links appear below. First, five takeaways.

5 VALUABLE MARKETING INSIGHTS FROM CRAFT BEER WRITING CONFERENCE, by Shea Anderson (Digital Relativity)

Almost all of the brewers who spoke said they also do the brewery’s writing.

I heard both Jeremy Cowan and Garrett Oliver say this, although they conceded doing less of such work writing nowadays. It seems to me that they've succeeded in establishing a house writing character (the Shmaltz shtick, Brooklyn Brewing's authoritative clarity) to guide those who churn today's copy.

It belatedly occurred to me that outside of the period 2010-2012, I could say the same about my writing for NABC. Probably more than 90% of the words written for NABC use since inception have been mine. To some extent, it's a legacy, although it can be annoying to look back and see errors and omissions, hence today's words for life: Everything you do is a work in progress.

Kevin Patterson runs The Beer Trappe in Lexington, and appears to be the voice of his workplace. His columns at LexBeerScene.com have been thought-provoking, and I'm looking forward to further reading and the occasional exchange of ideas.

Screwed Up Beer Week (vol 7) - "The Elephant in the Craft Beer Room", by Kevin Patterson (LexBeerScene.com)

So, two hundred and fifty craft beer writers walk into a symposium. And I can say with great certainty that they all knew much more about beer than me. There were esteemed authors of world-renowned publishing. There were owners of beer-centric periodicals. There were current beer bloggers. There were brewers who wrote abut their beer endeavors, for better and for worse. There were beer & food experts. There were beer chemists, biologists and physics experts. There were several masterbrewers. There they all were, all 250 of them... and then there was me.

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