Badge of Honour

About a month ago, the World Tea Expo was held in Long Beach, California, for the second consecutive year.

We were not there.

Most readers would assume that the organisers would either (a) fly myself and Lady Devotea to the event, put us up in luxury and shower us with gifts or (b) simply move the whole thing to wherever we are living at the time, but for reasons no one fully understands, this does not seem to happen. After all, even in a country where “World Series” means “American only”, it seems unlikely one can call something “World Tea Expo” without us there.

Nevertheless, it happened.

Last year, I was too busy at that exact time to be online during the event, but this year I saw hundreds of posts from WTE.

A few were from other vendors I follow just to keep and eye on them, but the vast majority were from tea bloggers.

When we were last at WTE in 2013, I felt that bloggers were not quite given the respect we deserve. With the exception of a couple of vendors, one or two industry luminaries and the odd mainstream writer having a dabble, the vast majority of writing, musing, thought leading, arguing and yes, promoting of tea and tea drinkers is now generated by the blogging community.

I mentioned this at the time to a few others when I was there, and their feeling was that 2013 was actually a year in which bloggers were being taken more seriously than even before.

How times have changed. It was clear from the images that this year, the bloggers reached new heights.

While there was notable angst at the list of bloggers nominated for “Blogger of the Year” – which has been interpreted as an attempt to have some of the same old faces present, despite pressure by so many great tea bloggers – the organisers seem powerless now to resist the rise of the bloggers.

Incidentally, if one reads the nomination rules, you find this gem:

Best Tea Blog – A personal or business blog that is regularly and actively posted to, is educational, and shows high regard for the tea industry.

High regard, eh? Iconoclasts need not apply! Although given that one of the official nominees has blogged precisely three times in the year concerned and not for over a year at the time of the nominations, it seems the rules are quite malleable. And Tony Gebely, who won that category has occasionally dipped his toe into not-so-high regard for the tea industry, so I guess there is hope.

But why the change? Why are bloggers starting to attain a status at WTE when a few years go we were just a minor irritant?

You could argue that the world is changing, that social media and blogging are becoming more mainstream, which brings those of us who dabble in those waters to the fore. And while this is true, there are other forces at work.

Those “other forces” are the Tea Bloggers Roundtable, a collective of tea bloggers that is pressing the cause of tea bloggers at every opportunity.

When I say a collective, I mean one person does all the work and the rest if us just show up when we can.

That person is Jo Johnson, best known internationally for the Scandalous Tea Blog and who is carving out a reputation as a key tea person in her hometown, which is a little place you may have heard of called New York City.

I’m proud to be a member of the collective, which basically just involves me offering an opinion when asked, or indeed, even when not. It’s not exactly hard work.

But Jo has managed to get blogger sessions happen during each of the last three WTE’s, as well as some extramural events around each one.

I’m not going to dwell here on the extraordinary generosity of Jo when Lady D and I visited NYC, a highlight of which was to speak at her annual White Tea Event, but more on what she has done for the community.

I was proud to be accepted as a member of the Association of Tea bloggers, which seems to have died away, but I’m far prouder to be a member of the Tea Bloggers Roundtable.

So, a couple of weeks ago, I went to the letterbox and found this:

 

Anyone who knows my tea tastes knows that the words “Keemun Mao Feng” are music to my tastebuds via my ears, but more importantly, it was a little souvenir of the WTE we missed, courtesy of Jo.

And here’s what happened to it within an hour:

Along with the tea, however, came something more precious…

A hand made, Tea Bloggers Roundtable badge, which I will wear with pride.

It’s a Badge of Honour.