Alice's Speech for the Wine Bloggers Conference

When the founders of the North American Wine Bloggers Conference--Allan Wright of Zephyr Wine Adventures and Joel Vincent of Open Wine Consortium-- contacted me to serve up a key note speech, I nervously accepted, but when I found out the other invited speaker was the charismatic Gary Vaynerchuck, who captivates the wine world at WineLibraryTV.com, I was intimidated. Gary's Friday night speech was manic and engaging, bringing the bloggers to a frenzy with his message that if they were not bringing in six figures from their site, they were screwing up. Contemplating this on the day of my speech as I was jogging in the tank, now up to my calves in purple juice, I realized that by Gary's measure I was a slacker. I had no money message to give them, all I had was my reputation and lately that seemed to be Alice the Pot Stirrer. The conference was a sell out. Amongst the names of the 170 attendees I not only saw bloggers wanting to commune with each other but also marketers and publicists wanting to commune with the bloggers. I got closer to my theme. Isn't the heart of blogging about independent thought? About speaking with spit fire from the heart with the help of an informed head? I got out of the tank, hosed down, changed my clothes into something more suitable than sticky grape stomping clothes and headed to Sonoma and the Sebastiani winery. I decided to hang my speech on this frame: just because we give it away for free, doesn't mean we can be bought. During the speech, I made sure to deliver some lighter messages from fellow bloggers, such as this paper's chief wine critic, Eric Asimov. "Tell them, drink don't taste!" When I spiked my speech with his message it was met by thunderous applause. With such audience reactions, I began to think, "Gee, I could get used to this speech giving. It isn't half so bad." It was The Brooklyn GuyKen PaytonRemy Charest Craig CampDoug CookDeb Harkness