2009 EWBC Kickoff a Success at the London International Wine Fair

The interest in the 2009 European Wine Bloggers Conference is growing by leaps and bounds. Granted, you may not know this if you looked at the registrations alone, but we’re in Europe, where attending any event can be expected in a fashionably late manner. Thus, we don’t expect to see any true hike in registrations for a few months yet, but we can say, that if the London International Wine Fair was any indication of how passionate people were to attend the event, there will be a full house buzzing with winemakers, winery owners, wine bloggers, food bloggers, importers, marketers, writers, generics, researchers, exporters, and just about every other wine tradesman in between.

How did this excitement grow? I’d like to say it was wholly due to our charm, but the reality is, is that the trade is thirsty for knowledge and education. Simply reading blogs doesn’t give the depth of understanding so many are craving for in a fast changing, mind boggling, world of communication. From very basic and rudimentary questions to more advanced questions such as, “what is the difference between a blog and website” to “what is our place as an X blogger in the value chain, and how can we capitalize on it?”, attendees were grasping to learn more – and quickly!

In the coming months, we’ll start hashing out some of these questions one by one, so as to give everyone, relatively speaking, a level playing field by the start of the event. We’ll also make sure to have several roundtables that cover a wide range of educational levels, not to mention, a workshop on Friday morning, prior to the event, for any winery needing a foundational course on social media and blogging.

With that said, we would like to thank Viniportugal for having the courage to be one of the first generics in the world to actively support social media. We realize that it took a considerable amount of faith to dive head first into a medium that few are aware of within Portugal, but with any luck, your courage and innovation will motivate others to lead by example.

Questions: What questions do you hope the EWBC 2009 can answer for you? What do you think we should focus on, and what should we leave for the forums online? Answer in the comments below!