EWBC 2012 - "Sources" » On the Web

12 Countries Currently Represented at the EWBC 2009!!

ryan — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 08:00:33 +0000

For those of you not familiar with the original European Wine Bloggers Conference, its unsuspecting and awe inspiring (at least to us organizers) inception began in La Rioja. The original plan was simply to gather a few wine bloggers together to not only network beyond the virtual realm, but also wrestle through some of the issues tackling the ever growing field of wine blogging such as: monetization, writing and ratings.

Yet, unbeknown to us, the interest was much greater than we expected and suddenly we had 50 participants from 11 different countries. From wine retail bloggers to winery bloggers, we covered the gamut, each one bringing to the table a unique professional, cultural and individual perspective.

People have asked time and time again, what makes the European Wine Bloggers Conference unique, and the answer is two-fold: passion and diversity. As this idea started on a grassroots level – between 3 bloggers who are passionate not only about the medium, but more importantly, about the subject – it is of no surprise that we wanted the participants to walk away feeling connected to a community, more knowledgeable on the subject of wine blogging, and inspired to experiment on their own blog. But what we didn’t anticipate would be vast amount of information provided by each culture. A subject so straightforward as wine blog writing turned into a heated debate based on each culture’s perspective on what is ethical, effective and professional.

The seed of this inspiration stemmed from the fact that we normally don’t read blogs in various languages. Therefore, it takes an event like an international conference to bring us together and motivate us to share ideas in whatever language we can muster. And although our communication skills may not always be eloquent, our passion to learn from one another pushes our levels of understanding forward to the point where true learning is achieved.

This is why I want us to reach our goal of 20 countries this year! To date, we have 12 countries represented, including: Sweden, Holland, England, Ireland, Spain, Portugal, USA, France, Italy, Austria, Germany and Switzerland, but we want 20! We want to ensure that this conference bridges cultural gaps in wine blogging to create a vast and powerful network of people communicating ideas across the globe.

If you are a wine blogger, or know of a blogger, from outside of these 12 countries, please join us! Whether you’re from Bulgaria or Mexico, we want your contribution to this conference!

Calling all Bloggers Associated with Food, Tech, Travel, Design, Wine…, the EWBC is for YOU!

ryan — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 08:46:27 +0000

Understandably, if you read our press release, or even glance at the title of the conference, you imagine the European Wine Blogger Conference is exclusively for wine bloggers. But allow me to make this absolutely clear, it’s NOT.

The EWBC is for anyone interested in learning more about the future of wine, social media and blogging, or who would like to network and brainstorm with a large group of wine bloggers.

Why would we push such a message? Simple, if we restrict ourselves exclusively to wine bloggers, we block out all of the creative and innovative juice streaming in from other fields. We lose the rich experience of a chef who’s found incredible ways to promote their cookbooks online, or a programmer who might be able to see and craft the ultimate wine blog tool we’ve all been waiting for. Wouldn’t you want their creative genius with us? I know we do!

Wine is enjoyed by everyone (or it should be), so everyone can add to the online discussion about wine and help build “The Social Wine Brand”.

If there is a field you would like represented outside of wine, let us know or invite your contacts. As we’ve preached many times over, this conference is about you. (Flickr photo by Robert McIntosh)

EWBC’ers @Twitter – Please Use a # with Relevant Tweets

ryan — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 12:26:20 +0000

Ok, now that I reread that headline, I have to laugh. It looks like a foreign language, and in all reality, it is. And some of you will get the odd characters and overall meaning, while others…not so much.

But what should you derive from this bizarre headline? Get on Twitter!! And, if you are on Twitter and you want to talk about the EWBC (European Wine Bloggers Conference), add a hashtag!

Example of a Tweet on Twitter:

European Wine Blogger Conference announced for Lisbon, Portugal #EWBC

Hashtags (words on Twitter beginning with #) are temporal and relate to a event based on time. We use hashtags to easily categorize information so that we may search for it quickly and easily.

What Hashtag Should be Used for the EWBC on Twitter?

The issue being, there are a wide range of options of how we can categorize information related to the EWBC on Twitter, but it’s best if we all agree on one. So rather than have the hashtag related to a year (ex. #EWBC 2009), whereby splitting up information over the course of time, we propose using #EWBC for all of our tweets related to the event.

What do you think? Mind you, it’s best that we choose are strategy now before we get too far into planning everything! Plus, the sidebar to the left is displaying all the latest #EWBC tweets that go out.

And if you’re still completely confused about hashtags, read this: http://twitter.pbwiki.com/Hashtags