EWBC 2012 - "Sources" » keynote

EWBC 2011 Keynote – George Taber

ryan — Sat, 15 Oct 2011 19:06:47 +0000

George Taber Keynote Speech from Vrazon on Vimeo.

Emily Troutman: EWBC Keynote Speaker on Photography

ryan — Mon, 11 Jul 2011 11:02:19 +0000

We are very excited announce Emily Troutman , as our photography keynote at the EWBC! Emily will be leading a 2 hour photo walk on Saturday, October 15th, for a small group of participants, in addition to sharing some of her stories as to why photography is a fantastic medium for storytelling.

Emily Troutman began her journalism career with her blog and a Twitter account, which parlayed new media into a successful career. With a yearlong stint in post-earthquake Haiti, her work has been featured by the United Nations, Slate.com, Monocle Magazine and AOL News. This year she was a finalist for an Online Journalism Award.

Emily believes in telling meaningful, human stories through a fun, curious, heartfelt engagement with the world. Though she began as a writer, she eventually took up photography as a way to talk about things when words weren’t enough.

She studied public policy in graduate school and went on to learn Arabic, traveling in Lebanon, Iraq and Jordan. Emily spent three years in Istanbul, Turkey, where she published travel stories in publications like Time Out Magazine.

As a blogger-turned-mainstream-journalist, Emily understands the unique demands of both worlds: what it takes to grab readers’ attention, minimizing the time spent editing, and creating a photo product that appeals to the masses. She also understands that for blogs and bloggers, personal identity and a signature style can help you apart from the crowd, “Being true to your own vision of the world is important.”

Emily has taught numerous writing courses, including at government agencies like NASA, the National Park Service and the Air Force. She recently launched a course with the Creative Alliance, an art collective in Baltimore, Maryland, to teach the basics of new journalism. A frequent guest on television and radio news programs, Emily focuses on explaining complex issues in a simple way.

She has worked, lived and/or taken photos in many countries including Turkey, Italy, France, the UK, Greece, Spain, Uganda, Rwanda, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Tanzania and most recently, Haiti.

One of Emily’s most profound work was her photo essay on the tragedy of the earthquake that struck Haiti on 12 January 2010. From 2005 to 2009, Emily was a freelance writer in Istanbul and Turkey. In September 2009, Emily’s video entry for the Citizen Ambassador video-contest was selected by a committee of the United Nations. Her video, “My Message to World Leaders: One Person at a Time” reminded world leaders of the 6.7 billion real people who want to be remembered and who want a safe and good life.

Please watch the video below, which not only contains many of her photos, but a message we hope we encourage at the EWBC. Then, when you’re finished, please check out more of her work at EmilyTroutman.com

Paolo Casalis: Keynote on Videography

ryan — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 11:51:23 +0000

Paolo Casalis is a 34 year old Italian filmmaker who has dedicated his life to his passion, making meaningful documentaries that tackle the environmental and social issues that directly impact our community. Having met him at Vinix Unplugged, we were so moved by his work, we immediately asked him to be our keynote speaker on videography. And to our great fortune, he accepted.

Paolo has made three award winning films, the most recent called “Langhe Doc“, which tells a story of 3 “heretics” in the wine world that describe their perspective of the transformation of Italy into massive, commercial warehouses. The region of Langhe is universally recognized as one of the most beautiful places in Italy, a likely candidate to become a Unesco World Heritage Site, but it’s currently afflicted by uncontrolled economic development, urbanization, overbuilding and the abandonment of the less profitable areas. The stories of Maria Theresa, Silvio and Mauro intend to convey their fears of a future they neither liked, nor accepted.

Paolo will be leading an interactive workshop on videography, taking a small group of participants into Brescia to learn the practical skills of both filmmaking and editing.

We’re very excited to have Paolo Casalis join us this year and have included 3 of his trailers below, allowing you to get a sense of his work.

The Runner

Terra Madre People

The Langhe DOC

Keynote Speaker: Evan Dawson on Oral Storytelling

ryan — Sat, 25 Jun 2011 07:26:29 +0000

We are extremely honored to announce that Evan Dawson will be our 2nd Keynote Speaker at the European Wine Bloggers Conference. Evan Dawson is the author of the best selling book, “Summer in a Glass“, as well as a Contributor, Managing Editor and Finger Lakes Editor of the New York Cork Report (NYCR). His day job is morning anchor of “13 WHAM News This Morning in Rochester, NY”, broadcasting on the ABC affiliate (as well as the local CW channel).

We wanted Evan because of his passion for wine, his grassroots activism for small producers, his incredible writing skills and his fabulous charismatic way of sharing a story.

Evan will lead an interactive workshop on Saturday morning on improving your oral storytelling skills, regardless of whether you’re on camera talking about the wines grown on the slopes of Mount Etna to an audience of millions, or just leading a corporate tasting but wanting to enthuse this audience with a sense of the winemaker’s struggles.

We asked Evan to introduce himself while on vacation on the Finger Lakes in NY. Below you’ll see Evan relaxed and tanned, sharing a story about a Finger Lakes wine using his cell phone, proving that it is not the tool that makes us a good storyteller, but rather, the way in which we tell it.

Editor’s note: This is a great example of a video you can do to introduce yourself to the EWBC participants! Read more here.

George Taber: Keynote Speaker for the 2011 European Wine Blogger’s Conference

ryan — Wed, 18 May 2011 10:53:12 +0000

We’re very excited to announce our first keynote speaker, American journalist and author George M. Taber! A reporter and editor with Time magazine in the US and Europe for 21 years, Taber reported on the famous “Judgment of Paris” tasting where California wines were ranked alongside France’s best, in an event that revolutionized the world of wine. His four-paragraph story about the tasting has been called “the most significant news story ever written about wine”. In 2005 Taber published a book about the event and more recently has also written, “To Cork or Not to Cork” and “In Search of Bacchus”.

The EWBC 2011 will take the theme of “storytelling” and online wine communications, and also include several streams of smaller group sessions to generate and nurture practical discussion. Guest speakers will host these hands-on workshops, which will focus on the four disciplines of video, photography, writing and oral reporting.

Taber will speak on the topic of Telling Someone Else’s Story and draw on his many years’ experience as a reporter, editor and author to inform and inspire some 200 wine communicators who will travel from around the world to attend EWBC 2011.

Keynote Speaker: Elin McCoy of Bloomberg and Author of the Book, “The Emperor of Wine”

ryan — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 15:53:23 +0000

We are very excited to announce that Elin McCoy has agreed to share her experience and insights at the European Wine Bloggers Conference this fall! According to Elin, her talk will be based on:

“Beyond Ivory Tower Wine Criticism
The internet and the explosion of wineries and wine regions worldwide have changed the landscape of fine wine criticism forever. What will the future bring? Is the era of gurus ending? A look at what wine writing is in 2010 and how I’d like to see it evolve in the future.”

Biography: Elin is an award-winning journalist and author, focusing on the world of wine. She is a wine and spirits columnist for Bloomberg News, where she writes a bimonthly column for their global news wire as well as a monthly column for Bloomberg Markets, and a columnist at Zesterdaily.com. McCoy’s most recent book is The Emperor of Wine: The Rise of Robert M. Parker, Jr. and the Reign of American Taste, which garnered international praise and has appeared in seven foreign editions. She is also the co-author of Thinking About Wine, as well as several children’s books, a parenting book, and a travel guide.

A graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, McCoy attended graduate school at the University of London and New York University. She was a contributing editor on wine at Food & Wine for 25 years and has been a columnist for House Beautiful, Las Vegas Life, Shattered, and Drink. In addition, she has written on a wide variety of subjects for many national publications, including The New York Times and House & Garden. McCoy serves regularly as a wine judge in American and international competitions, appears on radio and television, and is a frequent speaker at wine festivals, symposia and industry events.