An Update (aka Why I Am Being So Slow)

I started the 30 Coffees Project as a mission to meet 30 different people, talk about an issue with them in entertaining manner and write it up within the year. So far, it has gone semi-swimmingly. In terms of meeting people, it’s been cracking and I’ve had two great coffees already. In terms of doing it in a year though…erm, yeah about that.

Basically, this project is going to take a hell of a lot longer to finish than I thought. I’ll be planning on meeting up with some new and fabulously interesting people very soon but the amount coming from here will be more gentle trickle than rapid erm rapids. Reason is that I’m fairly busy now doing my own running a business thing but also that each of the coffees I have had so far have been worth writing loads about – so I want to take my time.

So completion date is looking a lot less like the end of 2014 and more the middle of 2015. But fear not, there will be more coffees to read about really really soon and I will promise that they’ll be amazing. Pinky promise.

George

P.S. If you’re scheduled to take part in the madness and fancy bludgeoning me round the head to buy you a drink, please do drop me a comment and I’ll make you a priority. Probably.

Coffee Number 2: The Freelancer

He lives in a house, a very small house in the country

Ross Davies is a freelance journalist who has written for the BBC, the Guardian and a number of B2B publications. He was drinking what looked like a surprisingly strong black coffee and I didn’t determine his favourite Beatle (I’m guessing he’s a Lennon man) but we did talk a lot about our respective music careers and the perils of freelance writing…

Coffee Number 1: The PhD

Photo courtesy of some guy on Facebook who took it

Charlie Schoonman is reading for a PhD at the University of Cambridge about something to do with Geophysics. I’ve forgotten what but I promise you it will “rock” *sniggers*. She decided to forego the coffee option in favour of a cup of tea and her favourite Beatle is George Harrison “because he wrote the best songs of the three” (note the implicit exclusion of Ringo). We met at the Round Cafe in Cambridge and we ended up discussing the behaviour and mindset of those who went to Oxbridge. The results were relatively inflammatory…

Prologue: The Author

Look at him, all smart and stuff

George Osborn is a writer, app marketer and person who has existed on this earth for roughly 24 years (give or take an appropriate time unit). He’s the founder of The 30 Coffee Project and is embarking on a quest in 2014 to meet 30 random people for warm drinks in return for advice, enlightenment and schedule filling. His favourite Beatle is John Lennon and his drink of choice is a Decaffienato Lungo from the Nescafe range. The poseur.

This piece is an in depth interview conducted by Blunt George, one facet of the Author’s Psyche; the results of which were a little odd to say the least…

Pay versus Exposure: A Coffee Drinking Freelancer Writes

I have been thinking about the value of unpaid writing a ever since I set up the 30 Coffees Project and my thoughts have been gathering momentum these past few weeks. There has been a lot of talk recently about whether plebs like me, you or anyone else not in possession of a wealthy life giver should take unpaid work writing, with answers ranging from “Of course you should, you unskilled pleb” in The Independent and “No you shouldn’t you mad person” in The Independent (depending on what day of the week you read it by the looks of things).

Yet despite all of that, I’ve not really been satisfied by any of the answers to the whole question of “should I be paid for everything I write?”. For one thing, I’m a narcissist who loves the sound of my own voice (even when it’s put on paper) and haven’t put my thoughts down yet. But on a broader, and what I hope is vaguely important, point I think the whole discussion has been really poorly defined as of yet. We’re witnessing a theoretical battle defined by combatants cloaked in black and white stood on either side of a very grey and smudgy no-man’s land, when the truth of the matter (in my books at least) is that it is in that most of us are slogging around in ill defined middle ground between the banner swinging forces in search of an answer.

Coffee drinkers, are you ready? The Rules of Engagement

Always follow the rules (Photo nicked from sibling dodgy phone photography ltd)

Rules. Without ’em, you can’t hope to have fun. Well, that’s not strictly true of course. Plenty of people have had fun without rules before. But I’m not one of them. I like rules for the solidity they provide me as well as the sense that everything I’m doing isn’t simply part of a random selection of events and sequences that will ultimately culminate in a broadly pointless existence that I’ll be sitting at home when I’m 50 contemplating and going “where did it all go wrong” (breathes).

Anyway, when it comes to the 30 coffees project I thought that it could benefit from the introduction of a few rules that would help allow the whole thing to have a jazz like structure, deriving free form awesomeness from the few set boundaries that I give it. After a long period of agonised mulling (5 minutes on the sofa in between a GTA 5 sticky bomb rampage), I came up with the following guidelines that’ll help keep the whole (mis)adventure cooler than Miles Davies in an ice box.

30 Caffeinistas Found – Here Comes The Coffee

UPDATE: I’ve managed to get thirty wonderful people signed up to the thirty coffees project meaning that I can begin to plan ahead for the forthcoming hot beverage bonanza. Back of the net!

If you’ve agreed to take part, then you’ll be getting a tweet or email from me pretty damn soon asking you where you live, how I can contact you and where is best to hide near to your house (last one is a joke, please believe that) so I can arrange when to pick you up, take you out for a coffee and disappoint you with me shoddy sense of humour. This project will be running over the next year or so which means that, if you’ve signed up, there’s no escaping from it as I will hunt you down and buy you a hot drink. So you know.

Anyway, if you’re not sure what is going on here and want to know more then why not read this post or, alternatively, contact me via my about page. I promise I only bite gently.

In the meantime, get ready for more coffee related “content” (bleurgh) in the coming months!

George

Welcome to the 30 Coffees Project

Hello there,

If you’re reading this then chances are you’ve stumbled into my crazy little world at some point and have found your way into this obscure little corner. If you’ve done so deliberately then congratulations – you are intelligent beyond belief, incredibly attractive and probably capable of unscrewing a jar lid without needing the help of a tea towel. Nice one.

If you haven’t come here intentionally though, you might be wondering what this little site is all about. It’s a question that I, to be totally honest and up front with you, have kind of asked myself. Initially, the 30 Coffees Project was simply meant as a way of helping me to find my way towards a constructive career path by turning incoherent thoughts into something more solid with the help of thirty of my friends, colleagues and randoms off the internet through the means of a warm beverage and sincere chatter.

So far, so much potential for being bundled into the back of a random van down a darkened London lane. But the more I was mulling this project over, the more I realised that it was a little bit self absorbed. Humans tend to get a bit selfish, even when they think they aren’t being an utterly one minded prick, and that’s something that’s more than crossed my mind when coming up with this whole project. Sure, I was going to pay people for coffee but in return I was going to get time, wisdom and selflessness; an invaluable commodity that no amount of espressos can truly pay for. Profound, I know.

That realisation has lead me to expand the scope of the project a bit. Of course, I’ll still be chatting about my business ideas, plans, aspirations and probably utter nonsense at some point. But I’ll also be taking time to understand the people I meet, how their relationship with me affects their advice and what I learn as a result of spending time with them – both about what I should do in my life and about how we are as people in general.

And, most importantly of all, I’ll be writing it down here. Each coffee/hot beverage will be documented on this blog and will have all the information I can possibly provide to help you understand the relationship with the drinker, the nature of the conversation and the lessons learned – something that’ll hopefully help you have a weird, John Malkovich style entrance to my world while presenting the lovely volunteers in a sympathetic light.

The project kicks off in 2014 and I have twenty eight people signed up already. If you want to climb aboard the good ship coffee, then drop me a comment or get in touch with me elsewhere – otherwise, check back in 2014 when I get this show on the road and join me in this journey into the human psyche and my personal psychodrama (or should that be melodrama?)

George