Coffee & Conversation

With Charmaine Farber Charmaine Banach, member of the Cal Poly Art and Design faculty since 2006, is passionate about typography and creative experimentation. Charmaine is a strong design advocate and will be discussing how to incorporate design and research in building a fantastic user experience for your customers. Come learn about the power of user experience!

Paul Edmondson is a Cal Poly graduate and one of the three co-founders of HubPages. After working as an intern with Hewlett Packard, Paul began to work as part of the executive team with Mongo Music, which was acquired by Microsoft in 2000 to form MSN Music. In 2005, he launched a Search Engine Optimization service, which ultimately helped evolve the idea for HubPages. Paul will be talking about how to restart a business to grow it back to success after a downturn or difficult stage of development.

Another coffee shop in SLO? Yes, we can! How to Be Successful in a Crowded Market with Scout Coffee owners Jon and Sara Peterson. Jon and Sara Peterson, owners and operators of Scout Coffee, have spent the last 10 years exploring and thriving in the coffee industry. Their background would impress anyone: Jon was the Marketing Director for Verve Coffee Roasters and Sara the Director of Retail Operations and was the top-ranked female barista in the country. Come hear their story of how they managed to bring another coffee shop to the wildly saturated downtown San Luis Obispo, and make their business boom and expand into another new location.

An Emerging Strategy to Grow Your IRA:  Private Placement Startups Want to help support innovative startups? Have IRA funds you want to maximize? Investors can learn how to do both by attending Coffee & Conversation at the SLO HotHouse on November 16, held by the Center for Innovation & Entrepreneurship (CIE) and The Entrust Group. Learn about emerging strategies for funding startups. Munzer Ghosheh, Regional Business Development Manager at The Entrust Group, will explain how to use certain pension plans such as IRAs as a funding source for startups. Free coffee is always included, along with plenty of time for Q&A.

Join us for our monthly Coffee and Conversation event in the SLO HotHouse. Coffee will be provided, and the event is always free. Reno and Lynn Rollé were 2014 and 2016 Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Nominees. As the previous CEO for Shop America USA and co-founder of HSN Direct, Reno co-created the book and marketing campaign for the #1 NY Times Best Seller, “Natural Cures ‘They’ Don’t Want You to Know About.” The success of this book helped propel Reno’s passion for organic nutrition leading to his eventual co-founding of BōKU® International; an idea born from a Mother’s desire to use nutrition as medicine to support the health and well-being of her family. Learn about the power of partnership with Reno & Lynn!

Join us for our monthly Coffee and Conversation event in the SLO HotHouse. Coffee will be provided, and the event is always free. Brett Landry is the founder and executive creative director of DRKHRSE, a creative communications company based in Morro Bay California. Before moving to Morro Bay with his wife and son, Brett worked as a creative director for agencies and clients around the globe, creating everything from Super Bowl commercials to documentary films starring Kelly Slater. An avid surfer, he has recently moved to the central coast to pursue the arts of filmmaking, social media, virtual reality, editing, sound design and again, surfing. Brett holds a master's degree from the Virginia Commonwealth University in communications as well as a B.S. in marketing. DRKHRSE has recently opened a 2000 square foot studio where they are prepping to be the first company to fly a drone over One World Trade Center, as part of a non-profit initiative with The Durst Organization. They are also developing a program to help high school students explore and produce virtual reality media for use in their school's social media communications programs.