The magazine, and moreover, AHA, has to try to appeal to as broad a spectrum of interests as possible. Not everything is relevant to me, but I manage to find a few things I need within the articles. I choose the seminars that are relevant to my interests. The AHA videos I have watched have been varied as well, but I always walk away with some bit of good information. So I try to cut the presenters some slack and be open-minded. But all of them were informative and helpful to my practice. Some were well-executed, others droned on and on. The video seminars were a mixed bag in presentation quality (it's been a learning experience for everyone doing remote video!).

During the pandemic, these seminars pivoted to live video. My state requires a minimum number of hours of instruction, much of it live and in-person. My profession, like many others, requires a certain amount of continuing ed credits in order to to stay current and maintain licensing. It's probably more difficult to get new, interesting content these days. I wouldn't be surprised if a simple google search could bring up lists of organizations that we'd be surprised to find are nonprofit. A 'shining' example of that is the NFL (pre-2015?). I think you might have the wrong idea of what a nonprofit is. And this is coming from someone who has several times declined to become a member despite being made aware of several benefits he'd like to make use of. But just because AHA isn't renting a physical space (actually, they probably book venues years in advance, and I doubt they get all their money back if they cancel) doesn't mean that they have no expenses. One of the best experiences, getting to meet with, talk to, and drink with other homebrewers, that's not a part of these virtual conferences.

Sponsors might be harder to come by right now, because they're probably hurting and what space can you give them to advise?ĭude, if you don't want to pay for it, that's understandable. Do people get paid to give talks at the AHA conference? They might be asking for more because it's tough to make content they feel is worthy of asking people to pay for. It makes sense that homebrewing innovators probably aren't doing as much. I don't know about everyone else, but with everyone traveling less I've been sharing less beer and even drinking less. They probably had to also hire a lot of tech support staff, and they're in demand right now. I get that one might think that a virtual conference is probably cheaper, and for a lot of people it might be (no airplane tickets, less time off work), but I bet the AHA is paying through the nose for web services to reliably stream their content to everyone. I've actually met Chip Walton before, and I got the impression that he is a genuinely good guy. I think was in a leadership position, too (maybe he still is?). The AHA leadership seems to include some people who have done a lot for the hobby. And do you know how long they've owned that building? Maybe they bought when prices were low. You don't have to be a nonprofit to do good things.

American homebrew association benefits