2000, Baby!
October 17th, 2008
OpenWine Consortium Logo.
In just over half a year, the OpenWine Consortium has gathered 2000 members. They have been bloggers, writers, marketers, growers, producers, importers and exporters, retailers and wine enthusiasts. They have organized into diverse groups focused on interest, region, pursuit and wine industry sector. As one of the community’s administrators, it has been very exciting for me to be part of that growth.
The OWC now has members on every continent. This global, online network with administrators in North America and the European Union has reached people from different sectors of the wine industry. People located on opposite sides of the globe can now interact in a meaningful way.
OWC Founder and Executive Director, Joel Vincent, says:
“Its extremely exciting to reach the 2000 member milestone. We’ve always envisioned the OWC to be a place where wine business leaders and visionaries came together to interact, learn, and network. Now we can see those roots starting to take hold.
The OWC network is creating value in the wine industry every day and changing the way people are interacting with each other, with business partners, and with their customers. You can see many new networks spawning as a result of seeing and learning from the OWC, more and more businesses using Twitter, blogging and other social media outlets, and that is a great achievement of this community - businesses are becoming familiar with the technology, learning from other members, and putting it to good use!
2000 members is only the beginning. OWC is entering a new phase of growth and we’re beginning to execute on new strategies that will continue to benefit business, demonstrate the power of a business network, and continue to change the world of wine through the use of technology.”
Member (and fellow administrator) Randy Resnick is based in Bordeaux, France. He also conducts the New Wine Consumers Wednesday Conference. He says “…the OWC has brought new people in to participate. More professionals are involved and it is easy to contact people in every part of the business as a result of OWC.”
The most important and potentially most influential endeavor of the OWC, to date, is the coming Wine Bloggers Conference. It is not the first of its kind, to be exact, as there was a European Wine Bloggers Conference held in LaRioja Spain August 29th to 31st. That conference saw an attendance of 40 bloggers and aspiring bloggers from 11 countries. Topics included: “Wine Blogging Standards” (a favorite topic of mine) and “Monetization” (a favorite topic of, no doubt, all bloggers).
Ryano Opaz, blogger at Catavino (and fellow OWC administrator), recounts: “…we didn’t expect the turnout we got so we had to turn some people down….Next year we’ll be ready! We already have plans underway for the 2009 edition“. You can read about the event in greater detail here. Also visit Vinustv and click on EWBC to see coverage of the event.
The North American Wine Bloggers Conference is emblematic of the OWC’s reaching a size which carries momentum and potential for change in the wine world. It is undeniable that the OWC is now a presence to contend with. It has drawn 163 bloggers from from as far away as Massachusetts and Virginia who will descend on Sonoma this October 24th through 27th for a first of its kind three day event.
Topic addressed will be: “Increasing Visitors To Your Blog”, “Wine Blogger Credibility” (very key issue, in my opinion), “Making Money From Your Blog”, “Blogging for Your Wine Business” and “Wine Industry & Blogger Interaction”. The last topic is also important, because it will, no doubt, touch on issues of ethics and integrity.
In the coming days, I will post a series of pieces offering my thoughts on each of these topics. Stay tuned.
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