What if we focused not on participating in structures that weren’t created with us in mind and aren’t designed for us to succeed but rather created a new community centered around people as the subject matter experts in their lived experiences?
Wow, I found this so interesting! Thank you, Jen. I'd love to hear some examples of what a more broad and diverse sensory lexicon would look like, in your eyes.
I often run our daily sensory program at the brewery I work at, and sometimes the discussion around a beer feels like a race to identify the correct off-flavor first. Sensory becomes an arena where people compete to show off their knowledge and prove that their palate is the most discerning of them all. It takes all the fun out of experiencing a beer. And if you find a quality you enjoy about said bad beer, you feel less experienced, naive, and a bit foolish for saying so.
So yeah, there are a lot of weird dynamics that emerge when talking about beer, especially with loud, highly opinionated people in the room. I really want to change this, but it feels like quite the task!
Thanks for sharing, Ana! You bring up a good point about what this may look like in an internal sensory panel. A more broad and diverse lexicon holds space for people of different backgrounds to bring their lived experiences and culture to the language. Maybe it looks exactly the same as what we have now, but we don't know because the work hasn't been done yet.
For internal panels, it can be more challenging for sure, especially when you have people who treat it as a competition. A few things I did when I ran internal sensory panels were to have panelists use DraughtLab so they could record their perceptions, ask panelists not to discuss their panel until everyone had completed their panels, and remind panelists of the purposes behind sensory. I had a couple of people who treated it like a competition or a game and had to follow up with them one-on-one.
Wow, I found this so interesting! Thank you, Jen. I'd love to hear some examples of what a more broad and diverse sensory lexicon would look like, in your eyes.
I often run our daily sensory program at the brewery I work at, and sometimes the discussion around a beer feels like a race to identify the correct off-flavor first. Sensory becomes an arena where people compete to show off their knowledge and prove that their palate is the most discerning of them all. It takes all the fun out of experiencing a beer. And if you find a quality you enjoy about said bad beer, you feel less experienced, naive, and a bit foolish for saying so.
So yeah, there are a lot of weird dynamics that emerge when talking about beer, especially with loud, highly opinionated people in the room. I really want to change this, but it feels like quite the task!
Thanks for sharing, Ana! You bring up a good point about what this may look like in an internal sensory panel. A more broad and diverse lexicon holds space for people of different backgrounds to bring their lived experiences and culture to the language. Maybe it looks exactly the same as what we have now, but we don't know because the work hasn't been done yet.
For internal panels, it can be more challenging for sure, especially when you have people who treat it as a competition. A few things I did when I ran internal sensory panels were to have panelists use DraughtLab so they could record their perceptions, ask panelists not to discuss their panel until everyone had completed their panels, and remind panelists of the purposes behind sensory. I had a couple of people who treated it like a competition or a game and had to follow up with them one-on-one.