Ya-Ya’s Tea-Board

It’s time to publicly announce my latest tea-related project to you my loyal readers: New Zealand Tea Lovers, a social network aimed at connecting tea drinkers in New Zealand (and the rest of the world).

I’ve had this idea of creating a social network (a bit like Facebook or Bebo) for tea enthusiasts around New Zealand for almost a year now, but it wasn’t until quite recently that I started putting some energy into the project. I initially developed the idea after realizing that while I knew most of the Christchurch tea people personally and brought many of them together, I knew relatively little about the scene in other parts of New Zealand. I also realized that we have a lot of customers from other cities in New Zealand that live relatively close to one another but most likely don’t know about each other’s existence (Wellington is one of these hotspots that comes to my mind when I think about people with a sophisticated taste in tea). I started wondering whether these people would LIKE to know about other tea drinkers in their neighbourhood who share their passion for tea. At the moment, I am the connecting link between these people, but wouldn’t it be great if they could find out about each other in some way? A tea-focused social network seemed the ideal solution for this situation. And so, the idea of New Zealand Tea Lovers was born.

The opportunities that such a social network offers are infinite. Members can share photos or videos, start discussions (or ask questions), even write their own tea blog on the network. Since some of our customers send us beautifully written, long emails with detailed accounts of their impressions of certain teas, wouldn’t it be great if these notes could be shared with everyone?  Well, on New Zealand Tea Lovers, they can. And another example: in the online tea world, it is not uncommon for groups of people to swap small quantities of tea with one another. This can be a very educational exercise, since you’ll most likely end up with something you wouldn’t have purchased yourself and sometimes you’ll discover new favourites this way. The tea network can be used to organize such tea swaps.

It will also be the perfect place to announce tea gatherings. These can be public or ‘invitation only’ with full control over the people who will receive an invitation - you choose. I used the opening of New Zealand Tea Lovers as a good reason to organize the first gathering of the Christchurch Tea Group. This social event will happen on Easter Monday at the Sand Dance Cafe in New Brighton, commencing around 2 PM. Anyone’s welcome, but it would be great if you could sign up for New Zealand Tea Lovers (it’s free of cost and obligations) to help support our new network.

As a side note, it is a strange coincidence (I am still unsure whether I believe in such a thing as a coincidence) that this morning, while scanning through my RSS reader, I discovered a new post by CORAX on the Cha Dao blog that dealt with issues closely related to our new social tea network. In his post, CORAX elaborates the influence of the internet on the spread of tea culture and has a lot of interesting ideas to share. I’d highly recommend reading his post (and all posts on Cha Dao, for that matter).