Beaners, mythbusters and hoppers..lend me your ears..

Bean there

My dear pal Sabina (@sabinapoirier) would appreciate the title of this post. But in fact, it’s got nothing to do with her.

I’m talking beaner as in java. Jo. Café. An aroma I can’t resist. I’m no bean expert, but here’s my 2 cents on four Arabicas, which I arranged to sample through a random DM via @DanyPaquin, @cafevrac and @cafedirect.

• Tarrazu (Costa Rica)
  Abstract on the website is bang on. This bean is my fav of the four. Although @cafedirect tells me that Kenya AA is a strong contender.
• Limu (Ethiopia)
  Sweet and spicy is right. My #2 choice and awesome with french toast and maple syrup. Yes, it has to be the real maple, dude.
• Peaberry (Tanzania)
  Was not thrilled by this bean. There’s an ever so slight bitter, earthy taste which I couldn’t get used to. Well okay, add some condensed milk and we’ll do it à la Vietnamese sweet coffee – ever had one of those? Yum.
• Bali Paradise (Indonesia)
  The sweetest tasting of the four. Mild, mellow but packs a good caffeinated punch. No wonder it’s preferred by many of cafe-direct’s clients.

Thanks again to Café-Direct for being part of this organic taste-testing. If you’re a die-hard beaner, you’ll definitely want to check them out.

Mythbusting: who’s with me?

A tweet from @btobmagazine caught my attention and actually inspired me to whip up this post.

The article notes that a recent

online survey was conducted in November (by R2Integrated). Of 296 marketer respondents, 42% said time and resources were the greatest barriers to entry into social media, and 38% indicated that their biggest mistake with social media was not allocating the same to their social media marketing plans.

Would you consider yourself within that 42%?

When you look at your overall social media efforts—not just isolated—ones you know are actually gaining traction because of the disciplined, integrated approach you adopted, was time management really an issue? Did you really need a separate dedicated team to carry out the legwork?

Curious on your experience and thoughts. Please feel free to share in the comments.

On the 2011 hopper

Upcoming posts I’m working on:

• Further notes from the social front: social road warriors a year later (featuring @so_char, @AdrianEden, @grdeken and @RebeccaEras)
• Master of your own domain: are you? In what I hope to be a series of posts, I’ll be sharing my experiences with my longstanding web hosting firm: BlackSun Inc (@blacksuninc). Hope to share some thoughts, tips, tricks, best practices on managing your own personal web presence. And why, more than ever, it’s never too late to start doing it now.
• Guest post for Twidget Media (topic TBD)

grasshopper courtesy of gameshalo70