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What does print management have to do with coffee?

[caption id=“attachment_556” align=“alignright” width=“350”] Priyanka transitions from Java code to Java drink! Priyanka transitions from Java code to Java drink![/caption]

The regular readers of our blog will have noticed a few off-topic posts slipping in from time to time. The common theme is coffee and beer . As a group of passionate computer programmers and tech geeks it’s no surprise that we have developed a strong corporate coffee culture. Coffee is our secret weapon! Over the past 10 years we’ve changed programming languages, compilers, and development practices, but one factor has remained constant: Coffee. It must be the pillar for PaperCut’s success.

Coffee is very much part of our culture. The company funds a continuous flow of lattes, cappuccinos and macchiatos (Hendrik’s favorite) all arriving from the coffee shop directly opposite the office. Most of us have espresso machines at home (e.g. Rancilio Silva ) and discussions on brewing techniques seem to pop up in developer meeting agendas unannounced.

Recently management decided that attending a formal coffee barista course would be a good idea. Traditional businesses would have called this a “cooperate team building exercise”, however for us it’s “core competency training” :-) The whole Melbourne development team (minus Tom) spent a day at a coffee training academy learning the finer points of coffee production.

Lessons included:

  • The art of wasting lots of milk perfecting the perfect froth.
  • The amount of coffee one must waste to calibrate the ideal 25 second espresso pour.
  • Latte art : The art of convincing someone that the shape on the top of their coffee was deliberate.
  • How to make beverages unknown to computer programmers (chai lattes, and hot chocolates)

The day finished off with a competition. We paired up into teams and had to make 8 coffee variants in 8 minutes. Congratulations to Matt and Jason who took out the title.

To take a slight deviation, my favorite pieces of coffee trivia:

Overall it was a very fun day. We even got to walk away with a formal certificate - we’re now qualified Baristas! If we all get sick of writing print management software we now at least have a fall back option - open a cafe!

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Thanks to Jason for the great images!