We conducted a post-conference survey and 87 participants from the 08 Wine Bloggers Conference submitted their opinions. Because this conference was always about you, the bloggers and wine industry, we wanted to make these results public, both good ratings and bad.
We used a five-point scale where 1=needs improvement, 2=fair, 3=good, 4=very good, and 5=outstanding. Overall, the conference scored a 4.12 with 83% of you rating the conference Very Good or Outstanding. How are those results? Well, we happen to have some good comparative feedback because this is the same scale I use with my tour customers at Zephyr Wine Adventures. Let me simply say that the overall results were very good but we can do better next year.
As for specific events at the conference, following are the ratings in order:
| 4.69 | Vineyard Walks | |||
| 4.23 | Keynote with Gary Vaynerchuk | |||
| 4.16 | Kick Ranch Tasting & Lunch | |||
| 3.86 | Evening at Sebastiani | |||
| 3.79 | Unconference | |||
| 3.76 | Grand Tasting of Sonoma Wines | |||
| 3.57 | Dinner with Dry Creek Valley Wines | |||
| 3.49 | Keynote with Alice Feiring | |||
| 3.39 | Luxe Sonoma Lunch & Tasting | |||
| 3.36 | Breakout Sessions | |||
| 3.35 | Live Wine Blogging | |||
| 3.28 | New Zealand Self-Paced Tasting | |||
| 2.75 | Blind Tasting Challenge | |||
As you can see – and making me quite proud – the Vineyard Walks scored the highest of anything by a good margin. Kick Ranch and Sebastiani will be pleased to know they are third and fourth, behind only the Vineyard Walks and Gary Vaynerchuk. Also of note is that the Unconference, which was lightly attended, scored fairly high and three of our most unique sessions (Live Wine Blogging, NZ Self-Paced Tasting, and Blind Tasting Challenge) scored at the bottom. We knew these items were risky and I think they were fun – we’ll either change them or find something new for 2009.
As for 2009, 98.8% of respondents said they were very interested (89.5%) or somewhat interested (9.3%) to attend in 2009. When we asked about location, the preponderence of California participants certainly came through. Leading the list was to repeat the conference in Sonoma, followed by Paso Robles/SLO, Oregon, Washington, and New York, with a wide disparity in ratings. This is obviously very important to us and, while we would like to hold the conference in other locations, we might end up holding it in Sonoma again (or Napa) in 2009 before moving it elsewhere in 2010. That will give us time to perfect the details. More news on this soon.
Finally, I should say we received many, many good suggestions on how to improve the conference and will be putting on an even better event in 2009. Thanks to those of you who completed the survey and we’ll see you in 2009.
However, if you have a bit more depth to your evaluation process, and are willing to find out blind date uncensored what is inside a person before you decide if you like them, then blind dates should hold little terror.
The annual CA Wine Tasting Championships in Anderson Valley may provide some insights. It avoids the considerable temptation to compete in front of a crowd, with all the reality TV excitement it creates, until the final stage in their 3-stage contest.
Stage one involves individual (or team) tasting to identifying wines with great typicity. Points may be granted for new vs. old world, varietal, and vintage date. The bottom X% of scores would be eliminated from stage II, or at least eliminated from competing in stage II.
Stage II could involve more complex and subtle wines, and adds additional points for correctly identifying region and producer.
Stage III involves the top X scorers in a public taste-off, with an MC guiding them through their paces.
This approach has the benefit of broad initial participation, privacy if your palate bombs, and the excitement of a face-off competition in the final stage. Use it if you like!
Cheers!
Dave Chambers
SidewaysWineClub.com
I like that idea, Gwendolyn, and like the idea of events helping people to meet other participants!
A “team” tasting challenge could double as mixer if the team membership was randomly selected–maybe with 5 people per team?
I think there were two reasons, both addressable. The main reason is the Blind Tasting Challenge was structured so that once someone was out, they just sat there as a bystander. It would be much better to have those who get out of the contest still participate, at least until the final round. A minor reason is that some people were very leery of publicly testing their skills or, like me, just didn’t have the skills necessary. This could be solved by having a Group Tasting Challenge, with teams of say three people, which might be more educational anyway. Thoughts?
Why do you think the Blind Tasting Challenge ranked so low?
Allan and the OWC:
We would be thrilled if you could come back to Sonoma County next year. Please let us know what we can do to help. And, as always, all the meetings mumbo-jumbo can be found here:
http://www.sonomacounty.com/meeting
Thanks all-
Tim