We have created a draft skeleton agenda of the 2017 Wine Bloggers Conference.
You will notice we say both “skeleton” and “draft.” The agenda is a skeleton agenda because we have no specific sessions or speakers listed. We will do a Call for Content in the fall (likely October), hold a vote of possible content sessions among our alumni, and fill in sessions and speakers from that.
The agenda is draft because things can and will change. Some of our content depends on sponsorships. We sometimes have to move items to accommodate our host hotel. Occasionally we just get a (brilliant) new idea we feel we need to add.
But, nevertheless, this agenda will at least give you an idea of which days you should plan for your November, 2017 trip to Santa Rosa. New things to note on the 2017 agenda:
- We have added Wine Education Sessions to Thursday afternoon. These small-group sessions will be limited to 25 attendees who will taste, evaluate, and learn about interesting or unique wines.
- The Expo has been moved back to Thursday evening. This will change if we find a sponsor willing to host the Friday lunch and have the Expo at the same time, as we did in both 2015 and 2016.
- We have added 30 minutes of Live Wine Blogging Followup after each of the two Live Wine Blogging sessions. This will allow attendees to talk in more depth to winemakers of interest to them or try wines from those wineries that didn’t visit their table.
- We are eliminating the Sunday morning content and instead having the Sunday Post-Con Excursions start at 9:30 AM. This will give them more daylight hours (critical in November) and allow most attendees to actually get home that day.
- In part because of the above change to Sunday and in part because of the fewer daylight hours, we are shortening the usual Friday Wine Country Excursions and renaming them Wine Country Dinner Excursions. These will be similar but generally will take place at just one winery.
We always strive to present the best conference possible and hope you appreciate these changes!
Don’t forget – early registration pricing increases on September 30th at midnight. We have over 90 registered attendees already for 2017 and will be announcing the hotel information in the coming days. Get on board for the 10th year of WBC and register today.
Those sound like beneficial changes.