In 1945, American Author Arthur Fremont Rider meant to demonstrate the rapid growth of information by showing that libraries were doubling in size every 16 years. His goal was to show that colleges or universities would be stagnant unless they kept up with this fast pace of change.
Around 1970, Rider’s rule was unseated with the advent of the digital age. The capacity to store information changed from the size of a room to the speed of a computer processor. In came Gordon E. Moore and his law that processor speeds would double every two years. That rate of growth has since been shortened to 18 months, and now a year, meaning our capacity to store information is growing exponentially to an unimaginable level.
Hence why we live in the Information Age, an era where the digitisation of information has changed the nature of modern living and economies around the world. And as more and more data is released, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to decide which information to take in.
David Griswold, Founder of Sustainable Harvest, has found a solution. In an age where information is being thrown about, he’s falling back on classic storytelling tactics (see page 12). Sometimes he tells the stories himself, or he allows people to tell their own stories at the company’s Let’s Talk Coffee events or through video content. Griswold has found incredible success in cutting through the waves of information by touching the core of the human spirit with a good tale.
Great stories naturally need to be accompanied by accurate information. INTL FC Stone CoffeeNetwork is a leader in the coffee information space. We’re proud to be teaming up with this organisation in the first of a regular set of series the group will be writing for GCR Magazine. In this edition, INTL FC Stone writes about how to make sense of figures coming out of Vietnam (see page 29).
Nuova Simonelli has opted to share information with everyone from universities to baristas, to create a better espresso machine. Its experience is now being fed back into the world’s most elite coffee competition (see page 33).
On the events space, the launch of Re:Co (see page 58) in Gothenburg, Sweden this June is set to redefine the nature of coffee conferences, using TED-style storytelling tactics to stir creativity and new thinking in the industry.
These fresh takes on how to create and distribute information are key to moving the industry forward. GCR Magazine is similarly eager to provide a relevant news information source. As we successfully move into our fifth year of publication, we thank you for joining us on the journey, and look forward to continuing to provide market leading information – and of course, some great stories along the way.
Christine Grimard
Editor, Global Coffee Report
