todd m. sweet

Daniel Schreiber & Flatlander Chocolate

For me, an important part of remembering Dan and celebrating his passion is to go back and read all of the wonderful words that have been written about him over the past year or so. He certainly captured the imagination - and taste buds - of many, many people here in Central Illinois.

I learned about Dan’s efforts at making chocolate when he launched his Kickstarter project, but it wasn’t until the fall of 2009 that I was able to taste his creations after buying some from Laurence Mate’s This Little Piggy club. The first bar I tried was the Salted Milk Chocolate, and ever since then I’ve been telling all my friends and family about it.

Anna enjoying Dan's Artella Buying and trying his chocolate had become a shared activity in our house - my wife and kids looooove it as well. My son, daughter and I were lucky enough to try his 100% cocoa bar at the market earlier this summer. Now, whenever my son takes a bite of any bar he asks if it is the, “100%?” Dan converted them as well. They both refer to him as “Willy Wonka, the Chocolate Man”, which is about the highest compliment they can give. Here’s a photo of my daughter enjoying her very first taste of the infamous Artella last Sunday.

Linked below are the various stories and blog entries featuring Dan or his chocolate that I was able to find. Although this represents only a small portion of his life, it does represent the Dan I knew - a smart, determined, passionate, sharing, entrepreneurial craftsman.

Dan’s Digital Outposts

artisanal thinking - Dan’s personal blog

Theobroma Cacao: The Antioxidants Strike Back by Daniel Schreiber - Kickstarter

Flatlander Chocolate - Facebook Page

Flatlander Chocolate - Twitter Feed

Flatlander Chocolate - Company Website

Word of Mouth

Theobroma cacao - This Little Piggy

Theobroma Cacao - Clever Food Blog

Grinding Nibs Into Chocolate - Clever Food Blog

Nibs - Clever Food Blog

Theobroma Update - This Little Piggy

UI grad student turning beans to bars of chocolate - News-Gazette.com

Why Dan Matters - Clever Food Blog

1000 Year Old Food Club - Clever Food Blog

Cocoa Loco - This Little Piggy

The Morning After - This Little Piggy

Days of Wine and Chocolate - This Little Piggy

Cheapening Food - This Little Piggy

PKN Champaign-Urbana Vol. 3 – PechaKucha Daily

What’s brown and bitter and shaped like an almond? - In My Backyard | WILL Agricultural Programing

Cooking at Home with Jason: Easy as Silk Pie - ChambanaMoms.com

In Memoriam

Remembering Dan - Website established by Dan’s family to collect your experiences

The man that was and will always be Flatlander Chocolate - Smile Politely

Life remembered: Friends recall Daniel Schreiber’s passion, zest for ideas - News-Gazette.com

R.I.P. Daniel Schreiber of Flatlander Chocolate - Smile Politely

In memory of a budding food artisan, we continue to do what we do - Prairie Fruits Farm and Creamery

Daniel Schreiber - This Little Piggy

Hauntings - This Little Piggy

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Thanks Dan - you will be missed.

The Sweet Family

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HOW TO: Manage a Sustainable Online Community

Understanding the life cycle is key to building a comprehensive community strategy, specifically when it comes to moderation and management. A few of the components impacted include: Content creation, group formation, engagement tactics, expert discovery efforts, knowledge sharing practices, and employee participation. Once the strategy is clearly defined, goals and objectives can be identified, clear measurements for success (return on investment) are marked, and the community life cycle becomes the map or playbook for understanding how to reach those goals and objectives.

The three cardinal sins can be avoided if you understand the life cycle of your community, and thus where and how to apply resources and strategy to running it.

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The Killer in the Pool | OutsideOnline.com

Lengthy account of the incident at SeaWorld where a trainer was killed by an Orca.

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(via xkcd: University Website)

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Study Rethinks Importance of Kindergarten Teachers - NYTimes.com

Students who had learned much more in kindergarten were more likely to go to college than students with otherwise similar backgrounds. Students who learned more were also less likely to become single parents. As adults, they were more likely to be saving for retirement. Perhaps most striking, they were earning more. All else equal, they were making about an extra $100 a year at age 27 for every percentile they had moved up the test-score distribution over the course of kindergarten. A student who went from average to the 60th percentile — a typical jump for a 5-year-old with a good teacher — could expect to make about $1,000 more a year at age 27 than a student who remained at the average. Over time, the effect seems to grow, too.

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Foursquare Checkins Now Part of Customer Loyalty App for iPhone

When it comes to the bigger picture, CardStar’s Foursquare integration exemplifies the continued convergence of loyalty programs and location-sharing.

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Schreiber is knowledgeable about the history of chocolate and can recite fact after fact about its past. When he began reading about it he was intrigued by the idea of the use of chocolate as sustenance for Aztec warriors during their journey. “They didn’t treat it like candy. It was a fine food to consume like wine,“ he said.

The growth of Flatlander Chocolate : Food : Smile Politely

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The Food Truck Economy - The Atlantic

“The food truck movement, yes, of course is about the food,” says Rasula, who also runs Unique LA, an annual art and design show featuring local independent designers. “But taking a second look, it’s about the fact that small business owners have thought outside the box and realized that there’s an opportunity.”

Unlike dish- or ingredient-focused food trends, the street food phenomenon is more about form than content, making it comparable to general business movements such as the surge in new media or online shopping, Rasula says. “The truck model is fantastic,” she notes. “The mobility of it all, going to where people are and not waiting for you to come to them.” It’s a framework she believes other non-food businesses would be wise to explore.

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Sibling squabbles | News-Gazette.com

Good advice re: refereeing your kids.

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He is one of the greatest comic actors alive. A man who’s navigated his career with a peerless instinct for quality and self-respect. The man behind movies—from Caddyshack to Stripes, from Rushmore to Lost in Translation—that seem to have defined a dozen different moments in our cultural life. But he is also a man beholden to no one, not the studios, not the audience, not even an agent. And as he sits down with Dan Fierman to discuss everything from the lameness of Ron Howard to the genius of Kung Fu Hustle, you can be pretty sure he’s going to tell you exactly what he thinks.

Bill Murray on Ghostbusters 3, Get Low, Ron Howard, and Kung Fu Hustle: Celebrities: GQ