Identity area
Type of entity
Person
Authorized form of name
Smith, Dave
Parallel form(s) of name
Standardized form(s) of name according to other rules
Other form(s) of name
Identifiers for corporate bodies
Description area
Dates of existence
1965-
History
Dave Smith is a beer journalist and publisher based in British Columbia's Lower Mainland. Since 2015 Smith has edited and published What's Brewing Magazine, the journal of BC's craft beer movement.
Smith was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba in 1965. After his family relocated to BC, Smith went on to study Computer Science at the University of British Columbia (1982-1984) and Business Management and Communications at BCIT (1992-1994). During the late 1980s and 1990s Smith worked at technology-related businesses, eventually focussing around the Internet. He established Dave Smith Consulting Services in 1999, which eventually evolved into web services company Line49 Design Group Inc., where Smith continues as principal.
In the late 1990s and early 2000s, Smith became interested in craft beer and the collection of breweriana (items such as beer bottles) as a hobby. With his wife Ivana he found a shared passion for beer tourism and soon began attending beer festivals and related events. The pair joined the fledgling Vancouver branch of the Campaign for Real Ale Society of British Columbia (CAMRA BC) in 2005, at which point they began volunteering at beer events regularly. Smith also served as a technical consultant for CAMRA Vancouver, establishing their website’s domain name and email system.
By 2013, this activity had sparked an interest in beer writing that led to contributions to CAMRA BC's long-running magazine-style newsletter, What's Brewing. When it suspended publication in 2014, Smith and other contributors found themselves without a forum for beer writing in BC. By tapping into the web publishing resources available through Line49 Design, Smith was able to evolve What’s Brewing into a digital-first magazine. Through the remainder of the 2010s, dozens of BC craft beverage enthusiasts and professionals would voluntarily contribute to this new platform, which eventually included a comprehensive weekly newsletter, events calendar, Tasting Panel and profiles of numerous BC craft community members.
In 2018, Line49 also took over publication of Beer Me BC—a website founded in 2012 which had become BC’s most prominent source of ongoing beer reviews, job postings and resources. At the end of 2020, What's Brewing joined its sister publication as an online-only service, and the pair of websites continue to be sources of BC craft brewing community news via web and social media.