The Brew SiteThere needs to be a Beer Bloggers Conference
It came to my attention that the 2010 Wine Bloggers Conference is coming to Walla Walla, Washington, this June, and it got me reflecting on that fact that there even is a Wine Bloggers Conference. I don’t read any wine blogs (I should probably start) but it seems to me that they’re probably not too much different from beer blogs, at least in concept; so the question that naturally comes to my mind is:
Where’s the Beer Bloggers Conference?
There needs to be one. In fact, it seems like a no-brainer! Now I don’t know jack about organizing such a thing, but I’d gladly participate if someone who knows these things did. I will suggest the location for the first Conference though: Portland, Oregon (of course).
Stan touched upon this topic back in November of 2008; and I just found this thread on the Beer Bloggers forum on Ning asking and discussing this very question from the middle of last year. (Interesting takeaway: it’s possible one may be organized for 2010, in Colorado.)
Interesting discussion you pointed to, Jon. Alas, the last post in the thread was in early August (maybe another one popped up?)
I see the http://www.beerbloggersconference.org/ site is still under construction. Yet while the Wine Bloggers Conference isn’t until the end of June, but that site is full of information. Makes me wonder about 2010 for beer bloggers.
This is Allan Wright from Zephyr Adventures, organizers of the Wine Bloggers Conference and owners of the URL http://www.beerbloggersconference.org. We are still planning to create a Beer Bloggers Conference and Portland is one possibility. Boulder, Colorado (where I live) is another. We hope to have an announcement by March.
Our concern is whether there are enough beer bloggers who will travel to make the conference successful. We’ll give it a shot and see!
Stan: Unfortunately, I didn’t find anything more recent than that thread.
Allan: You raise a good question; I honestly don’t know how many beer bloggers are serious enough to travel. I would be—depending on the dates, of course—and I’m sure there are at least a handful more. What the minimum number of attendees such a conference would need to break even?
I would also be in (if it fits into the schedule). I would even be interested in assisting but I too have no conference experience except for being forced to go to a couple extremely boring ones. I would be really interested to get feedback on my site.
I am thinking 100 bloggers would make for a good conference. We are in our third year of the Wine Bloggers Conference and will cut off participation at 300. We are also organizing the International Food Bloggers Conference with an outfit called Foodista, so we definitely have the experience to pull off a Beer Bloggers Conference. And make no mistake – it will be fun! Give me a couple months to secure a location and date.
I would travel all the way to Portland!
Allan,
Depending on the date I would travel to either Boulder or Portland.
I wouldn’t try to tie it into GABF because the schedule just gets too crowded.
100 bloggers seems like a lot. Not that many make it to GABF.
Whoa Jeff, don’t overdo it. 😉
100 bloggers does seem like a lot; I follow nearly 150 beer blogs in Google Reader and since I’m sure quite a few less would be able to attend a conference, I couldn’t hazard a guess as to how many we’d really be able to get. 30? 50? Not sure what an optimistic number would be…