I spent part of Saturday at the Berkeley farmer's market (well, one of them) visiting with a good friend and enjoying some truly perfect weather. One of our first stops was, of course, for coffee. The Blue Bottle Coffee Company had a booth where they were slow-brewing coffee cup by cup, as it was ordered, slow-food style. I ordered a special New Orleans iced coffee that was roasted with chicory and cane sugar -- it was pretty amazing. Something about the scene was particularly poignant, so I whipped out my Treo, snapped a pic, and dutifully emailed it up to Flickr with a simple caption before i forgot where i was.
When I logged on to check email the next day, I was stunned to find the following subject line among my messages: "[Flickr] You are BlueBottleCoffeeCo's newest contact!" I couldn't help but laugh, yet i wasn't sure why... At first, I couldn't imagine a busy coffee roaster -- or any local entrepreneur -- taking the time to even setup a google alert let alone listen to a friend opine about the virtues of the web beyond e-commerce. Then I think I laughed at my own small-mindedness and false assumptions. But finally I was just plain happy that the entire online encounter was possible. I was glad that my photo was so easily found by someone who would appreciate it and that BlueBottleCoffeeCo could so easily reach out and acknowledge me and my little customer existence in this simple way. Creepy for some; exhilarating for the rest of us.
