Napa Napa Here We Come! We started Day 2 with a windy ride over the hill from Sonoma County to Napa Valley to the The Real CIA where we enjoyed a delicious spread followed by two keynote addresses by Barry Schuler on “The Future of Blogging and Social Media” and by Jim Gordon: Wine Trends Worth Blogging About.

Schuler calls himself an authentic internet historian, and he’s got the cred for that claim, for sure. According to the conference website, “Barry’s multimedia firm Medior created interactive technologies for AOL; after Medior was acquired by AOL, Barry worked his way up to be Chairman and CEO of that company. Today, as managing director of Draper Fisher Jurvetson, he’s funding next-thing projects in the tech world. Barry also serves on the board of Synthetic Geonomics and is CEO of Raydiance, which is developing laser technology for healthcare use. He and wife Tracy co-own Meteor Vineyard, located in the Coombsville region of the Napa Valley, with winemakers Bill and Darnine Dyer.”

In his talk, Schuler points out:

There is no analog to wine in other businesses.

Every bottle holds a story.

Every tasting is an adventure.

Wine is larger than life.

According to Schuler, there is an insatiable desire for information about wine which hasn’t been met in the past by traditional media, so this is an industry in need of expanded methods of communication. He thinks wine has a hard time marketing itself which seems surprising to me, but what I think he means is, it is hard for the wine industry to get the story across, the story they want to tell, to the public.

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