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 Guy

"If we want our writing to be anything more than just blathering opinions taking up webspace, we must truthfully define ourselves through our writing - and be honest about what we know and what we don't know. So keep it real!"

That did not get them laughing but it sure got people thinking and as long as we balance it out with laughter and thought, we'll be okay.

 I headed over to the Flamingo Hotel (pink bird and everything) where, I heard, AF approved wines were waiting for drinkers.  I looked forward to meeting up at the Flamingo Hotel wine mosh pit and putting some faces to the blogs and to some who have reached out to me in the past:

Ken Payton Remy Charest Craig Camp

And, then there was Doug Cook

I was intrigued to discover had developed what he is calling the Google of the wine world.
 
Lucky for us, it was Doug's birthday and he along with
Deb Harkness poured the wines.