With the Oregon Brewers Festival wrapped up, the next big beer event is the Beer Bloggers Conference in Portland in a few weeks. I am happy to report that I am officially signed up, and will definitely be attending!

Since I’d last posted about the BBC, the agenda has crystallized a lot more:

Thursday, August 18, 2011
5:30 PM           Portland Pub Crawl organized by Portland Beer Bloggers

Friday, August 19, 2011
12:00 noon       Registration & Meet the Sponsors (no lunch included)
1:30 PM             Welcome
1:40 PM             Introduction by Julia Herz from the Brewers Association / CraftBeer.com
2:10 PM             Keynote speech by Fred Eckhardt and John Foyston
3:00 PM            How to Brew on Your Own Stovetop (While Blogging on Your Laptop)
4:00 PM            Depart for the hop fields for tour and dinner courtesy of the Oregon Brewers Guild
7:30 PM             Bus returns to Doubletree Portland hotel
8:30 PM            Night of Many Bottles

Saturday, August 20, 2011
9:30 AM           Panel: Learning from Industry Beer Bloggers
10:30 AM         Panel: Working With Your Local Brewery
11:30 AM          Lunch on your own at local restaurants and pubs
1:30 PM            Panel: Lessons from Portland as a Beer (and Beer Blogging) City
2:30 PM           Blogging About (and Changing) Beer Laws
3:20 PM            The Beer Steward Program from the Master Brewers Assoc. of the Americas
4:00 PM            Live Beer Blogging
6:30 PM            Dinner at BridgePort Brewery
8:30 PM            Evening Party – The Love of Beer

Sunday, August 21, 2011
9:30 AM            Blogger Presentations: 8 Presentations by 8 Bloggers on 8 Subjects
11:00 AM           Keynote speech by blogger Jay Wilson on “Standing Out from the Crowd”
11:45 AM           Wrapup
12:00 noon       Conference finish

All of which looks really good. A couple of things to note:

The “Night of Many Bottles” is where everyone is “asked to bring a six pack of his or her favorite beer – often local – and share it with fellow attendees”—this should be fun, but begs the question as to what I should bring. I figure everybody’s had Deschutes before, so I’m thinking I should look to bringing something more non-typical from Bend. Should it be some bottles from Bend Brewing? Silver Moon? 10 Barrel? Perhaps some growlers of something harder-to-get?

The next night is the premier of “The Love of Beer” movie at the Bagdad Theater which should be a great showing; I’m not entirely clear though if the BBC attendees will have guaranteed seats/admission to the movie, since you can also buy tickets separately.

And the Saturday “Lunch on your own”—this of course should definitely be a beer lunch, and of course I have some ideas of what to suggest. Maybe try to organize a beer pairing lunch of some sort? Who’d be interested in joining me for that?

The Conference is only two and a half weeks away—I’m already getting excited for it.