# **PSC EP 218 Notes**

*How I was going to approach this episode changed as a result of correspondence with Martin.* 

What follows are excerpts of a longer email thread.

**On July 5th: Martin to me:**  
I hope you are well. We saw your post in Well Tempered, thanks for covering IICCT.

We're wondering what your approach is to this and what your aims are? If it's friendly or at least neutral, please let us know if we can support you in any way or help with background, contacts or information about our alumni community.

**My response (in part):**  
Martin and Maricel:

Thanks for reaching out.

As an independent journalist, I don't typically share my approach, aims, and topics with the entities I intend to write about, beforehand. Your offer to assist only \[at least, that’s my interpretation of your offer\] if what I write is “…friendly, or at least neutral…,” is one reason why I don’t. 

I do have questions about the IICCT alumni community if you have some recommendations. Some non-alumni community questions that I hope you will answer:   
\* Who owns the data entered into personal profiles? IICCT or the person who enters it?   
\* Can members ask for a download of all of the personal profile data they have entered?  
\* Can a member who decides to close their account request/demand that IICCT delete the personal data and all personal profile (review) data in the database?  
\* Are there Privacy and Data usage policies that are linked to anywhere on the site that I can read?

**Martin’s response to me:**  
Regarding the data we keep, our policy is inline with EU GDPR policy and our platform (WordPress based) supports the tools for download, data deletion and review of all data in the database. IICCT Level 1 Chocolate Tasting in English is a recognised vocational qualification in the UK, accredited by FDQ and regulated by Ofqual, the UK government educational body for England and Wales. We are required to follow their procedures and policies and we are checked annually on this. Our current policy documents related to this are here https://www.chocolatetastinginstitute.org/iicct-policy-documents/

**My response to Martin:**  
\[...\] I don’t see an explicit reference to "our policy is inline with EU GDPR policy and our platform (WordPress based) supports the tools for download, data deletion and review of all data in the database" on the page you cite.

Furthermore, the page you point to is on the chocolatetastinginstutute website, NOT the seventypercent website, which is where someone signs up for a personal account. Best practices suggest that relevant policy documents should be available on the associated website(s). That’s an observation I hope you will consider addressing. Just like my observation that the copyright notice in the footer on the chocolatetastinginstitute still says 2025; and I don’t see a copyright notice on the seventypercent website.

**Martin responded back:**  
Regarding systems and interfaces, please point me to the perfect system for comparison. You don't help your case as being collaborative or an ally by picking over small points and imperfections. We are craft not corporate. Corporate chocolate awards, sponsored by, say Valrhona, would be a whole different thing and something I think none of us would like. What has checking up on an organisations data policy or copyright notices got to do with its contribution to pushing forward craft chocolate?

**I replied:**  
I had to sit with your response because one assertion left me gobsmacked:

“We are craft not corporate.”

I cannot express how disappointed I am in that unfortunate justification of your position.

That sentence explains the why for what I do – and do not – see in the materials you publish. Again, I cannot tell you how sad that phrase leaves me feeling.

**Martin shot back:**  
Sometimes in the world different people don't understand each other, which is a fact of life and I guess a reason for so much conflict in the world, sadly.

I don't really get where you're coming from with your point, but just to be really clear, we are:

"Proudly craft not corporate"

**To which I replied:**  
When you use “proudly craft” as an excuse for not attending to fixing minor details – that’s where I see the problem. And, I suspect, it’s why you can’t see where I am coming from.

I have not heard back.

# **What to Ask**

1. Understand what you want to get out of the classes before you sign up. Have specific goals in mind.  
   1.  Are you a chocolate lover looking to up your tasting game and don’t have any professional aspirations?  
   2. Are you already involved in chocolate education and see the certificate as enhancing business prospects?  
   3. Are you a chocolate maker looking for tools you can use to improve your chocolate?  
   4. Do you want to be a competition judge?  
   5. Only Level 1 is independently accredited  
      1. Level 1 Plus classes are probably not independently accredited.  
      2. All other courses that are promoted as “certificate programs” are self-certified, which means there is no agency that audits the curriculum itself and how it is delivered, against external standards  
      3. That accreditation may only be “accepted” in the UK.  
      4. Does independent accreditation matter to you?  
   6. TL;DR: ROI calculations can only be determined if there are goals going in that can be measured against.


2. Assess the curriculum and instructors before you sign up to ensure that they will help you meet your goals.  
   1. Inquire who will be your instructor(s) for your particular class sessions. IICCT partners do not deliver all (or any) of the content at Levels 1 and 2\.  
   2. If one of the IICCT partners is not giving a class session, ask who is and what their background and qualifications are.


3. As a part of your ROI calculations, assess follow-up support options available to you after you take the classes and pass the exams.  
   1. Professional networking  
      1. Career development  
      2. Business development
  
           
           
4. As a part of your due diligence:  
   1. Are basic business details like copyright notices correct?  
   2. Are the relationships between entities clearly spelled out? (Important for privacy and terms of service policies.)  
   3. Are there missing images?  
   4. Are there broken links?  
   5. Are dates correct?  
   6.  If you enter data (beyond that required to sign up for mailing lists), who owns it? Are there explicit policies you can read that are clearly accessible on the website?  
   7.  NONE of this may matter to you. However, if they are lax about the minor details, it may signal they are not paying sufficient  attention to the major details.  
   8. Understand WHO you are paying.


# 

# **Summary of Interviews**

## **Points of Agreement
**

**The classes are strong on tasting exposure and community, weak on pedagogy.**   
The most consistently positive theme across all of the interviews is that the classes put a lot of chocolate in front of students and (in-person, not remote classes) put you in a room with interesting people. All of you valued the exposure to high-quality chocolate you might not have access to otherwise and, above all, the community from the Level 3 experience. Several of you said the education "opened their mind" and "broadened flavor vocabulary." One of you especially appreciated the jump in tasting volume at Level 2 (50–60 chocolates) and defect-tracking in the IICCT software. 

But in nearly every case that positive note was immediately qualified; one of you praised the tasting and software but "felt the overall pedagogical approach was lacking," another of you framed Level 3 as a whole "was worth the investment in time and money … despite the logistical issues and organizational shortcomings."

**The written/history content is disconnected from practical need.**  
Two of you independently criticized the curriculum for what it teaches versus what a practitioner needs. 

One of you (a chocolate maker) found the classes "heavily focused on the history of chocolate, \[and were\] boring and repetitive" and the exams focused on history rather than making skills. One of you similarly noted the written exam tested cultural and farm-level fermentation content "rather than the classroom instruction provided," and that Level 3 "skipped sensory fundamentals" (taste vs. flavor, retronasal/orthonasal olfaction) altogether.

**The flavor-mapping/profiling system is over-engineered.**  
One of you called the profiling system "overly complex" with an overwhelming number of sub-categories and a mechanical structure not useful for real-world feedback. Two of you tied its neural-network foundation to categorizations that don't map cleanly to practical understanding and use.

**The assessment methodology is opaque and of questionable utility.**   
Two of you singled out the matching/triangulation exams. One of you found matching four random chocolates to four examiner profiles "counterintuitive" because profiling is subjective; another questioned the blind-tasting requirement and said she "never received a clear explanation for this testing methodology."

**Only Level 1 is accredited; the rest are self-certified**  
Only Level 1 is FDQ-accredited while Levels 2 and 3 are self-certified, with no formal appeal process \[if you are denied certification because you failed the exam\] beyond pressing your case personally with the instructor.

**Data ownership is an unresolved concern.**   
This is a concern that I \[Clay\] flagged and raised in every interview, but none of you knew what the policies are with respect to data entered into the IICCT software at SeventyPercent.com; there appear to be no stated terms of service, privacy, and/or ownership policies for the personal profiles students create on either of the IICCT websites.

**No clear professional payoff, but some legitimacy in a field that lacks standards.**   
All of you expressed that the credential doesn't guarantee a living and that there's no public alumni roster to verify outcomes, while also conceding it confers "some legitimacy in a field that lacks other standards." This is the clearest example of a comment that is simultaneously a defense and a critique.

## **Points of disagreement or divergence**

**Instructor quality — a real split.**   
There was one outlier: one of you who had participated as an instructor supporting Martin. They speak of that experience positively, whereas one of you expressed they were "dissatisfied with the quality of the instructors," finding non-Martin instructors to be "small, amateur-level shops." Another of you faulted instructors (Martin and Maricel) for deflecting responsibility when problems arose.

**Institutional bias.**   
None of you explicitly perceived strong institutional bias toward particular bean types (while still flagging an emphasis on Peruvian Chuncho and thin instructor knowledge of other origins generally). None of you affirmatively defends the classes as unbiased, but none of you strongly contradicts the others either, so this is more a solo observation than a point of disagreement.

**Where the value actually lands.**   
All of you position the return on investment in different places, which produces friendly disagreement rather than conflict: For one of you, the value is community and networking; for another it is mind-opening and vocabulary-building; for another, it is concrete tasting exposure and some very specific lessons. None of you locate the value in the formal curriculum, exams, or the credential itself.

**Level-to-level consistency.**   
There's an implicit disagreement about what each Level delivers. 

One of you found Levels 1–2 comparatively well-supported (a book and formal methodology) and Level 3 the weak point (little curricular support). One critique lands mostly on Levels 1–2 (history-heavy content, exam administration, tasting instruction); that person did not take Level 3\. 

Read together, no level escapes criticism, but there is no consensus on where the program is weakest.

## **Net picture**

**Interview comments converge more than they diverge. 
**  
Across all of the conversations, the classes are credited with good tasting exposure, community, and some genuine mind-opening; but the Levels were consistently faulted for opaque methodology, history-heavy and impractical content, an over-complex profiling system, questionable exams, lack of accreditation beyond Level 1, and no consistently demonstrable professional return. 

*The sharpest genuine disagreement is over instructor quality, where the insider/instructor vantage one of you had resulted in  a materially more positive assessment than the others.*