Cheese conference: day zero
Aug. 7th, 2006 09:14 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gordonzolaThe tricky thing about the annual American Cheese Society Conference is that it is part trade show and part community. I wasn’t around for the beginnings twenty-three years ago, but I know it started as a mutual aid organization for traditional cheesemakers. Outnumbered by corporations, out-volumed by factories and unknown, for the most part, outside their regions, cheesemakers, and a few supporters banded together to help preserve and promote hand made, American cheese. By extension this also supports family farming, pastureland, and better quality food.
The point of tension at the conferences is caused by the ACS’s own success. Government statistics show that Americans are eating three times the amount of cheese they were 30 years ago. Too be sure, much of that is from factory made mozzarella and eaten on pizza, but awareness and demand for small, specialty cheese keeps increasing. My LJ is a testament to that. Starting as a small group of people I knew personally, many folks "friended" me after finding out I buy and sell cheese for a living. (and I’m glad you did!)
This attention however has changed the conference. Media passes? Enthusiasts willing to pay $450 out of pocket? Big corporate players wandering the aisle at the Festival of Cheese? It’s a brand new "artisan" cheese world.
Don’t read this as vitriol and denunciation. In some ways it was inevitable. And the popularity of hand made American cheese has enabled a whole bunch of folks to stay on the land instead of selling to agribusiness or housing developers. To me this year’s conference was a conference of growing pains. Considering there were about 25% more folks than last year I think the organization handled it extremely well, but the whole way through I kept getting a sense that this was the end of the intimate conference era. But hell, people were probably saying that when it got to 200 people and I showed up in 1999.
Still, it’s telling that the first thing a longtime cheese person said to me upon entering the hotel was about all the new faces and the opulence of the Hilton Portland. "We should divide this conference in two. Have this public event and festival for the networkers and then have an educational conference at some ugly college campus for those of us who really want to learn about cheese."
The conference is part schmooze fest, part seeing people I really care about. I live in the city and dairy farmers don’t so this is an excellent time to talk to people I only see once a year. Professionally, I need the networking to some extent too. I will leave the details murky but I get deals at this conference. Some of those aren’t even price deals, just having a cheesemaker agree to sell us some of their rare cheese.
It can be a little overwhelming. I didn’t get into the hotel before running into some nice folks who run a store in Utah. I met them a couple of years ago in a refrigerated warehouse during a distributor show in Oakland. Then there was the guy from the University of Vermont dairy program. Then the once local cheese importer who consults cheesemakers. It took about a half hour to get to the registration desk.
Luckily, this year I had no official role so I could take my time and not feel like I had to be somewhere at any given moment. There was an optional cruise around Portland that I wouldn’t dream of asking my co-op to pay for. Instead I went with the travel sisters to find beer and ended up at the Rock Bottom Brewery.
The seasonal beer was really good. None of the others really grabbed me but I wouldn’t spit any of them out either. Can you tell?
The point of tension at the conferences is caused by the ACS’s own success. Government statistics show that Americans are eating three times the amount of cheese they were 30 years ago. Too be sure, much of that is from factory made mozzarella and eaten on pizza, but awareness and demand for small, specialty cheese keeps increasing. My LJ is a testament to that. Starting as a small group of people I knew personally, many folks "friended" me after finding out I buy and sell cheese for a living. (and I’m glad you did!)
This attention however has changed the conference. Media passes? Enthusiasts willing to pay $450 out of pocket? Big corporate players wandering the aisle at the Festival of Cheese? It’s a brand new "artisan" cheese world.
Don’t read this as vitriol and denunciation. In some ways it was inevitable. And the popularity of hand made American cheese has enabled a whole bunch of folks to stay on the land instead of selling to agribusiness or housing developers. To me this year’s conference was a conference of growing pains. Considering there were about 25% more folks than last year I think the organization handled it extremely well, but the whole way through I kept getting a sense that this was the end of the intimate conference era. But hell, people were probably saying that when it got to 200 people and I showed up in 1999.
Still, it’s telling that the first thing a longtime cheese person said to me upon entering the hotel was about all the new faces and the opulence of the Hilton Portland. "We should divide this conference in two. Have this public event and festival for the networkers and then have an educational conference at some ugly college campus for those of us who really want to learn about cheese."
The conference is part schmooze fest, part seeing people I really care about. I live in the city and dairy farmers don’t so this is an excellent time to talk to people I only see once a year. Professionally, I need the networking to some extent too. I will leave the details murky but I get deals at this conference. Some of those aren’t even price deals, just having a cheesemaker agree to sell us some of their rare cheese.
It can be a little overwhelming. I didn’t get into the hotel before running into some nice folks who run a store in Utah. I met them a couple of years ago in a refrigerated warehouse during a distributor show in Oakland. Then there was the guy from the University of Vermont dairy program. Then the once local cheese importer who consults cheesemakers. It took about a half hour to get to the registration desk.
Luckily, this year I had no official role so I could take my time and not feel like I had to be somewhere at any given moment. There was an optional cruise around Portland that I wouldn’t dream of asking my co-op to pay for. Instead I went with the travel sisters to find beer and ended up at the Rock Bottom Brewery.
The seasonal beer was really good. None of the others really grabbed me but I wouldn’t spit any of them out either. Can you tell?
