The 2009 Wine Bloggers Conference: a foundation for raising the collective spirit

Now that it’s been a few gradually less-hazy days since the 2009 Wine Bloggers Conference, it’s time for me to distill the jumble of moments I encountered while in attendance. On the whole, aside from some rather frustrating wireless bandwidth issues while in session at Santa Rosa’s Flamingo Hotel, I’d say the conference was a successful one. Why? Because the conference largely did what conferences are supposed to do: bring people and industry together to create, build and strengthen relationships with each other.

Jeff Lefevere, author of the Good Grape blog, proudly displays
his American Wine Blog Award for Best Graphics, an etched Riedel decanter.
But was the time it took to present this award ceremony of value to attendees?

I say “largely” because there was a certain background feel to the conference that suggested there was less reaching out for understanding between the various participants than there could have been. In the hotel’s meeting halls and hallways as well as in some Napa Valley venues, bridges were not particularly being built between bloggers, PR/marketing types, and winery reps. Perhaps those that were not regularly engaged in blogging or other social media avenues were on-hand merely to witness what all the fuss was about. Perhaps others hadn’t developed a clear strategy as to how to engage with bloggers. Perhaps with all the activities slated for our fast-and-happy two days, there simply wasn’t enough time for informal networking. So could certain elements of the program have remained off the docket to allow for more schmoozing? Only the survey results will tell. Having done a little reading this week, I see that other bloggers in attendance have also noted these things; we observed ourselves being observed, as if blogging and social media are a phenomenon that still exists outside the grasp of many of the entities that were present.

That’s not to say that we bloggers and twitterers - industry and non-industry alike - didn’t have a merry time of it; indeed this winehiker can assure you that very many of us embraced each other, new faces as well as old. With that kind of spirit guiding us, I hold out hope that bridges were indeed built across the boundaries of the “get-its” and the “don’t-quite-get-it-yets”. I just know that, despite the number of overtures that I made to a number of winery and other industry people that I hadn’t previously met, very few people that I didn’t already have a relationship with - whether virtual or 3D - approached me for my thoughts.

Well, perhaps that’s because Hardy Wallace and Rick Bakas were also in the room. (Love those guys, by the way - even before they became famous this past month.)

Despite this perceived fishbowl dilemma, there certainly appeared to be a more high-quality presentation at this year’s conference over last year’s, both in the wines we tasted and the wine venues we visited. I’ll be diving into those waters in a forthcoming post.

Hilarious hijinx ensues when great Russian River Valley wines flow.

Meanwhile, this week has brought its share of post-conference fallout to the wine blogging world, much of it good reading not only for the recounting of recent memories of the weekend but also for the perceptions of the Wine Bloggers Conference (a.k.a. “#wbc09“, a Twitter hashtag) and its activities, filtered through the experiences and viewpoints of many diverse and talented bloggers. Some of that fallout has once again, however, generated concentric discussion about wine bloggers, our ethics, the value we create for our readers, and the notion that some wine blogs are less than palatable for consumption. While the timing of these pronouncements relative to the conference may be no more than coincidental, I believe they represent the opinions of a mere few, and these few are entitled to them. I suppose, however, that if “bad blogs” exist - and no doubt they do - people will eventually choose not to read them. Reader loyalties may ebb away and wineries may no longer ship wines to their authors for review. But as long as such blogs maintain a readership, and as long as their authors have a desire to grow their wine passion and writing skills, I feel, as do many of my colleagues, that there is room for everybody.

Quite frankly, since they are not compelled to read “bad blogs”, nor for that matter need to be concerned about anybody else’s ethics other than their own, I simply have no idea what the naysayers are afraid of.

One has every right to criticize one’s peers, I suppose, though aside from a lot of defensive back-pedaling, I’m not sure what there is to gain from needless criticism. (Bad press and/or a lot of comments on one’s blog may be considered good press, I suppose, but it’s still bad press.) I postulate that if one is not also taking steps to engage with one’s peers where they reside in the social arena, I suspect he or she is merely observing the bulk of their peers from over against the wall - in which case his or her motives may be suspect, even his or her credibility. Yes, I’m not naming names. I suspect I don’t have to.

There is room for everybody. And so we come back to the possibilities for which the Wine Bloggers Conference was created: to bring wine bloggers and the wine industry together to create, build and strengthen relationships with one another.

In the collective cauldron of creativity that passion for wine brings to the wine country and to the social sphere, I believe our collective goal is not to expound upon the the glory that wine writing might once have portrayed, nor should we be confused about where wine blogging is heading (for nothing is ever certain). Instead, our purpose is to embrace all that which is wine blogging today so that we may together seek our path toward guiding tomorrow’s wine-loving readers.

~winehiker

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 30th, 2009 at 5:14 pm and is filed under grape squeezins. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.