Good Grape: A Wine Blog Manifesto

April 20 2008

An Open Letter and a Call for a Merger in the Wine + Technology Space

For the development, health and wealth of the industry in the quickening convergence between wine and technology, two bodies, the Open Wine Consortium and Wine 2.0, must merge in 2008.

I do not say this in a “maybe think about it, explore it and kick the tires on it” notion. I mean explicitly: Do it. Merge for the benefit of all collective members and the industry.

Set aside entrepreneurial agendas, build a mission, build an organization and do it as a quasi-for profit, non-for profit dedicated to being a central organizational body for the wine and technology space that can act as a central hub for the industry, wine technology companies and new media i.e. bloggers and online businesses.

On the cusp of Wine 2.0’s San Francisco event on April 24th and the Open Wine Consortium’s 700th member in two months time, it is time for the two to merge for a truly beneficial future for the wine industry as thought-leaders and activists in driving positive change.

You have to call a spade a spade and acknowledge that the wine industry is very fragmented—fragmented to the point that the abundance of associations like the Wine Institute and the, “in-need-of-Viagra” WineAmerica, amongst dozens of others, alongside a generally collegial environment, is a self-defense mechanism because naked absolutism, as modeled in the corporate business environment, is not as practical as relativism to the wine business.

Relativism, according to Wikipedia is:

Relativism is the idea that some element or aspect of experience or culture is relative to, i.e., dependent on, some other element or aspect. Some relativists claim that humans can understand and evaluate beliefs and behaviors only in terms of their historical or cultural context. The term often refers to truth relativism, which is the doctrine that there are no absolute truths, i.e., that truth is always relative to some particular frame of reference, such as a language or a culture.

Absolutism, according to Wikipedia is:

Moral absolutism is the belief that there are absolute standards against which moral questions can be judged, and that certain actions are right or wrong, devoid of the context of the act. “Absolutism” is often philosophically contrasted with moral relativism, which is a belief that moral truths are relative to social, cultural, historical or personal references, and to situational ethics, which holds that the morality of an act depends on the context of the act.

I bring this up because you can see the differences between two industry titans in those two social science references. Robert Mondavi? Believer is relativism? I would say absolutely. Bill Gates? Is he a believer in the absolute standards of his worldview? Absolutely!

In the limited choice game of evolution or revolution, this is one area where a wine industry revolutionary rise up by our brothers and sisters is beneficial for everybody.

Continued fragmentation serves nobody, but individual self-interest, and frankly, there is not enough diversity in this space for moral absolutism to make sense.

Wine 2.0 has a track record of putting on successful events amongst the digital avant-garde in the wine industry and has recently developed a board of advisors, which includes J. Smoke Wallin, a co-founder of WITS—the Wine Industry Technology Symposium. Wine 2.0, while representing mostly wine technology companies, with strong participation from wineries that “get it” has a developing influence with consumers in the Bay area, as well. Wine 2.0, in their own words is, “Blending the line between wine and technology.” Wine 2.0, as a phrase and name, also has a limited shelf life, as well.

The Open Wine Consortium, a wine social network, came out of nowhere in February of this year and has become the place to see and be seen in the online wine world. Now 700 members strong and growing, its burgeoning group’s portion include wine technology companies, wine bloggers, online wine stores, importers, exporters, and dozens of others. In fact, members are planning a U.S. wine blogger conference sometime later this year.

In such a small vertical like wine and an even smaller sub-vertical with technology, wine and new media, now is the time to unify and diversify instead of perpetuating the increased fragmentation that can kill momentum and hamper progress.

The wine industry manifests relativism, and now is a particularly good time for pockets of the industry to notice this notion and collaborate for the betterment of all.

Posted in, Wine: A Business Doing Pleasure. Permalink | Comments (3) | Print | Email This

Comments

On 04/21, Paul Mabray wrote:

Candidly Jeff, I think these two organizations are so very different they should NOT integrate. As a supporter of both here is the clear distinction I see:

Wine 2.0 is an event.

OWC is a network.

On 04/21, Joel wrote:

I am on my PDA so this will be brief until I get to my desk. 1) OWC is nearly 800 right now.

OWC invites partership and collaboration with any entity that furthers technology in the wine world.

Lastly, having an Electrical Eng background, I have always likened OWC to the IEEE for technology - education, driving projects to conclusion like standards, and educational events with a purpose. Again, for techies, your proposal would be like merging IEEE with the Consumer Electronics Show. Could there be tighter collaboration? Potentially. And we are exploring that with Wine2.0 and other wine related trade and consumer organizations.

So thats where my head is at. I’m glad to discuss further when I get back to my desk.

Thoughts?

btw - There is already a European Wine Blogger Conf and it and the NA version are vastly different from Wine2.0 both in content and in purpose. The link to that conference is on the front page of OWC.

On 04/23, Philip James wrote:

Jeff - Firstly, congratulations on a brave and thought provoking post. Secondly, and this will get me in trouble, I agree with you.

Yes, the two organizations are different, but in a fragmented market its important to pull the disparate strands together to reduce the splitting of the mindshare. Sure, I’m a member of both, as are most of the web people in the industry, but we only make up a small percentage of this industry, and we’ll continue to play on the fringe until we show the rest of the industry that this is important, this is what the consumer (in some cases) actually wants.

However, I realize this its not as easy to merge two entities as it is to talk about it. This post could just as easily be a call for all the wine 2.0 review sites to merge to a single entity, and whilst there are many clear benefits in that, its not a trivial step.

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