We have been very lucky to have attracted the crowd that we have for this event over the years. Seeing the growth of our crowd is one thing. Seeing the growth in our crowd's Beer Intelligence is another. It wasn't many years ago (December 23, 2006) that I was getting hit over the head with a Bud Lite bottle by a pair of douche bags who were apparently pissed off that we didn't carry the world's best selling beer and wanted to be demonstrative about their preferences. Soooooo - fast forward to today and we are a burgeoning beer culture well on our way to meet Athens, Savannah, and Asheville (although it could take a few years).
So, no lie, we have a great beer culture here and I am more and more appreciating how wonderful our crowd is. I often say that I know how good a beer festival is by how few people say "what is the lightest thing you have?" I hold to that today and I think that is probably going to be a steadfast theory.
As I posted before, the breakout sessions are a great sign that our public wants to know more. Additionally, we have not had an incident of violence in 3 years :-) AND we have the chief of police and the mayor attend our event. Keeping in mind that our festival does not carry anything to the availability of Blue Moon, it is impressive in a small southern town to have your local power want to see what you have going on.
The other amazing sign that our festival is moving in the best of directions is that we have folks from literally all over the WORLD come to our event. We did a "where are you from" poll and had an attendee from Australia here!! This is not an anomaly. Of course we're not
that international, but we do have attendees from all over the state and actually do have quite a few from the southeast United States.
It does appear that we are on the up, and are going to have a great core clientele that will follow us from year to year. Given that we have the dedication of everyone in town, this is the perfect recipe for getting better, and better, and better, and better, and better, and better, and...........................................
We have been very lucky to have attracted the crowd that we have for this event over the years. Seeing the growth of our crowd is one thing. Seeing the growth in our crowd's Beer Intelligence is another. It wasn't many years ago (December 23, 2006) that I was getting hit over the head with a Bud Lite bottle by a pair of douche bags who were apparently pissed off that we didn't carry the world's best selling beer and wanted to be demonstrative about their preferences. Soooooo - fast forward to today and we are a burgeoning beer culture well on our way to meet Athens, Savannah, and Asheville (although it could take a few years). 
So, no lie, we have a great beer culture here and I am more and more appreciating how wonderful our crowd is. I often say that I know how good a beer festival is by how few people say "what is the lightest thing you have?" I hold to that today and I think that is probably going to be a steadfast theory. 
As I posted before, the breakout sessions are a great sign that our public wants to know more. Additionally, we have not had an incident of violence in 3 years :-) AND we have the chief of police and the mayor attend our event. Keeping in mind that our festival does not carry anything to the availability of Blue Moon, it is impressive in a small southern town to have your local power want to see what you have going on. 
The other amazing sign that our festival is moving in the best of directions is that we have folks from literally all over the WORLD come to our event. We did a "where are you from" poll and had an attendee from Australia here!! This is not an anomaly. Of course we're not that international, but we do have attendees from all over the state and actually do have quite a few from the southeast United States. 
It does appear that we are on the up, and are going to have a great core clientele that will follow us from year to year. Given that we have the dedication of everyone in town, this is the perfect recipe for getting better, and better, and better, and better, and better, and better, and...........................................
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