October 18-20
Serendipity and CityWorks(X)po
October 11, 2011
I had a great piece of luck yesterday as I was driving aimlessly around Roanoke. I’d spent much of the day checking on clients and dropping off samples of coffee at prospective businesses and I had pretty much decided to pack it in and head up the mountain to Floyd when fate, or awesomeness, or whatever you want to call it, stepped in. As I was steaming down 581 I got a phone call from the folks at the City Works Xpo, which is a terrific and exciting new conference being held at the newly renovated Market Building right smack in downtown Roanoke. The event is the first to be held in the newly excellent building and it features some amazing and truly ground breaking speakers.
The Xpo is focused on a subject close to my heart – the idea of place-making and cultural change in small cities and towns. There are some amazing things that are possible in small cities and small towns that could never happen in large urban centers. Why? And how can entrepreneurs, legislators, and citizens take advantage of the possibilities? Check out the SustainFloyd website athttp://www.sustainfloyd.org to see what I mean.
Rad people like Mia Birk, Theaster Gates, and Nicco Mele will be speaking at the (X)po and mixing it up with attendees. So where do I come in? Well first of all, I went downtown to meet the folks at City Works – Brent, Francis & Beth – and they are totally great, energetic, and fun people. They figured (rightly, I might add) you can’t have a super hip, smart meeting of the minds without locally roasted, superbly prepared coffee. So Red Rooster will be providing the Fair Trade Organic coffee & espresso for this super-cool event, including pour-over drip plus lattes and the like.
Surprisingly, the CityWorks folks also asked me to speak at the event, which is a great honor that I can only attribute to people like you, who are currently online reading about our company, who have donated to our Kickstarter project, who buy our coffee online, or who have a hand-printed private label coffee bag/blend of your own. Without your support, a small rural company from a small rural town would have no place at a media savvy, high tech, innovative conference like the CityWorks(X)po, but thanks to your help, we’ve been invited to a big dance.
Thank you.
Haden Polseno Hensley