PORTLAND, Ore. — Deadstock Coffee, located in the heart of Portland's Old Town neighborhood, opened in 2018. Founder and owner Ian Williams designed it to unite communities through a love of coffee and sneakers.
"I just really love people coming together and cafes are a place where people get to do that, but especially my love for the sneaker community in Portland," he said. "So the goal was to create a place where sneaker people come together."
Williams is one of several speakers for this year's TEDxPortland event. It will happen on Saturday at the Keller Auditorium.
"Deadstock is a sneaker term. It really just means like brand new or something that you've been holding on to for a long time," Williams said.
He’s the recipient of the 2023 James Beard Broadcast Media Award and the 2022 Travel Portland President’s Award.
Williams said he enjoys having conversations with people from every walk of life who come through his coffee shop. A conversation is inevitable because there's no menu to order from.
"It gives people opportunity to just like talk and we will ask somebody like what do you want? What do you like?" Williams said.
At TEDxPortland, Williams said his talk will be about community.
"Community has to be built from within, as much as we want to talk about community or people try to force build community, you have to be a part of it to be able to build it," Williams said.
He said he also wants to build confidence within others, showing the people of Portland that anyone can do what he's doing.
"A lot of times the stage is not necessarily reserved, but expected for, you know, scientists and doctors and crazy designers and, you know, philanthropists and all that stuff, but I'm just like a regular dude so hopefully, people get the opportunity to see that regular dudes get to do cool stuff to get to, do big things as well," Williams said.
Tickets are available for Saturday's event at tedxportland.com.
VIDEO PLAYLIST: TEDxPortland