Update: If you want to know how my conference experience ended up check out my daily summaries from Day 1, Day 2 and Day 3 of the conference.

Tomorrow morning I’m getting up bright and early to make the 5 hour drive to Walla Walla to attend my first Wine Bloggers Conference.

I have no clue what to expect.

I’ve been reading the Facebook page for the event and monitoring the blogs of fellow attendees to get an idea of what to look forward to.

I really liked fellow WBC-newbie Anne of Aspiring Winos post on her pre-conference prep and what she is hoping to get out of it. Not only does Anne’s post give me great packing reminders (note to self: don’t forget the portable battery!) but also encouraged me to sit down and think about what I hope to get out of this conference (see below).

Another hugely helpful post came courtesy of Noelle of Outwines who had her husband, and frequent conference attendee in the tax world, write up some super useful Conference Survival Tips. Lots of good stuff here and I eagerly look forward to meeting up with the Outwines duo to get the 411 on the secret bathroom locations that they’ve scouted out at the Marcus Whitman.

The State of Wine Blogging Today

But probably the most thought provoking post came from Tom Wark of the Fermentation Wine Blog on why he is attending this year’s conference after a few years absence. After looking at GoogleTrend data highlighting the peak and subsequent wane in interest of wine blogging from 2010 to 2017, he made one observation that really struck me.

Those of us who have been following and reading wine blogs since their start, we can look at a partial list of attendees at the upcoming conference and notice that no more than a small handful of those folks who started out blogging during the format’s peak time of interest are attending the conference. It’s understandable. On the one hand, many of these people no longer blog. Others may still be blogging, but no longer find interest in the conference. — Tom Wark, Fermentation Wine Blog, 9/10/2018

Yeah I used to be quite active on the Wikipedia Wine Project.

I was an avid reader of several wine blogs from 2007-2013 during the heart of my Wikipedia wine writing days. I didn’t take the jump into blogging back then since writing those wine articles on Wikipedia already gave me a geeky outlet. Plus I’ve never really cared about “attracting brands” or becoming “an influencer”.

Eventually the sexism and mind-numbing politics of Wikipedia finally got to me so I stepped away from writing completely. It took me several years to get the itch again. Instead of going back to Wikipedia, I decided to finally hunker down and get serious about blogging. But as I look at the landscape of current wine blogs as well as Twitter and Instagram, there is a part of me that wonders reading Wark’s nostalgia for those early conference years–did I missed out on these “glory days” of blogging?

Does someone like me–who would rather curl up with a wine book than pose with a bottle–really belong with today’s breed of social media influencers?

What Do I Want To Get Out Of This Conference?

With that back drop, here are my hopes for the next few days.

1.) Find my lost tribe of wine geeks. I know of a few that are out there which I looking forward to meeting. My hope is that I will find more.

2.) Learn about Sherry with the Lustau Sherry Wine Specialist Certification seminar on Thursday. This has always been a weak spot for me.

3.) Separate the wheat from the chaff with my Washington-centric bias. Looking at the attendee list, there is a good chunk of non-Washington wine people that will be attending and sampling lots of local Washington wine. I try hard not to have a “homer palate” but sometimes I can’t hide my unabashed love for Washington wine. I’m looking forward to hearing other perspectives.

4.) Figure out if I want to go to next year’s Wine Bloggers Conference in Australia. I’ve always wanted to visit Australia and this conference could be the perfect reason to finally put those plans in action. Ultimately it will depend on if I feel like I get anything worthwhile out of attending this year’s event.

5.) Just have fun.