Pants on the ground!
Looking over the proposed panel topics for The 2010 Wine Bloggers Conference, I'm scratching my head...
Last year a large complaint was that people felt the conference was made weird by creeper, lurker, non-blogger marketers and PR (think the dudes with their clothes on at the nude beach). So this year, though 79% of attendees are bloggers, oddly a lot of the top sessions seem to be about or focused on what? Wine marketing.
Maybe I'm a weirdo (scratch that, I am a total weirdo), but what is the most useful thing about WBC? (Besides the "hell-yeah" free jungle-juice passed out between sessions by wines of Aruba-stan? Wine served in a life-sized pineapple!) No- It is hanging out and talking with other bloggers and finding out what they are all freaking jazzed about, and what will take this whole medium one or two steps further. It isn't about marketing or riding the S.S. Gravy Train... It is about how to make more killer content and continuing to move the dial.
I also want to get some time and hang with people like Jeff Lefevre, and Remy Charest, who I only see at WBC-- free from panels, tastings, excursions. I want to taste some wines that bloggers are fired about, and find out why. I want to meet people face to face that I only know online, and walk away learning a shiz-ton from peeps I don't even know (but who put me in a sleeper hold when I try to show off my deep south Karate at 4AM in the hotel hallway... "Go to sleep! Go to sleep!"). Is there a session for that?
Don't turn this thing into a bowl of milk-toast. This is your chance to ride this sweaty unicorn of blawg-someness this to another level. And who doesn't need more sweaty unicorn?
We have to face it-- Critics taste way more goo, pro writers write more eloquently, and bloggers are here to prove that via blog / tweet / vlog /or some sweet nurgle, that it doesn't matter!
Hats off to the organizers and sponsors, because putting this together is not as easy task, but when it comes to content and time that bloggers influence (whether sessions or 'tween time), We should leave Walla Walla so freaking pumped-up that our pants don't fit!
This isn't a boon-doggle, this is SPARTA!
(Other than a room far away from my late-night, pants on the ground, kara-tay!)
