What is your profession?

Since I became a mother, I decided to leave my old job (lawyer) to give a helping hand to my husband (Filippo Ronco) with TigullioVino.it and Vinix. My first activity on TigullioVino.it was to select and manage the best everyday “news” content for our weekly newsletter. In the meantime, I gave support to readers and wine lovers who sent us content. I read restaurant reviews, recipes, wine reviews and a lot of other content in order to select which of them were to be published. So, the big part of my job is with the UGC. On the other hand, I also help my husband with customer relationship management, administration, database updates on Vinix. Last, but not least, I organize one of the most renowned wine events in Italy (TigullioVino.it Meeting). This event is a meeting point for wine bloggers from Italy and other countries (this year we had bloggers from Italy, Spain, France, Belgium, Switzerland, Slovenia, UK and USA). It is a great wine tasting (this year we had 140 exhibitors from different countries, mostly from Italy) where everybody can taste and meet other people (merchants, bloggers and journalists) that love wine.

Why is wine blogging relevant to you?

Well, I’m not a blogger but working in this world I “smell” blogs and bloggers all the day I’m sure the EWBC will be a very exciting conference for me. I love to go with my husband in these kinds of events, because it is a learning experience for me and for my new job in the wine & food world.

What is the main difference between print and wine blogging?

Maybe that in the early days, the most relevant difference was related to speed, independence and interaction. Blogs can spread news and thoughts faster than others, because the system they use is more flexible and, most of all, because they’re alone and independent: they have no editorial board to face off with. Blogs have always had comments, while print doesn’t. Talking about the tool, nowadays, I see a convergence between the two roles (blogger and journalist). Blogs or something similar (articles with comments) pop out everyday on magazines too. So, I think that this separation between the two roles is going to be increasingly thin.

Are wineries, retailers, importers, etc. open to blogs in your culture?

This is an “every day” issue for my husband and me. On TigullioVino.it, we tried to open a specific operator’s blog platform but after a couple of years, we decided to give up because of the reluctance of this business area to get involved in wine communication. So, my husband decided to create a new tool that was intended to be easy to use so that wineries couldn’t have any more excuses. This new tool was vinix social network and the surprising thing was that this tool worked! Today we have a lot of wine & food related business (wineries too !) opening a blog or publishing a photo or an announcement on Vinix and it seems they can do it in an easy way. That was our wish!

As a non-blogger, at the moment, how important do you think wine blogging is today?

I think that blogging is great because it gives us a chance to have an alternative to the mainstream media but, most of all, because bloggers have demonstrated on several occasions to be able to influence the media.

Where do you see wine blogging in 10 years time?

Wow! I don’t know if I’ll still be here in ten years ! (joking). Looking to facebook, myspace and (more) to many other vertical social networks like vinix, adegga, etc, maybe smaller blogs will shift to social networks and only most trusted and relevant blogs will survive. But… who can say today!

What do you hope to gain from attending the conference?

Like I told you above, I’m sure I will learn something interesting and get in touch with people of other countries working in the same area as me. Filippo and I hope to involve some good publishers in VinoClic Advertising Network. This new advertising platform could be a real alternative to Google AdSense. Filippo will talk about it at the conference.

Do you read wine blogs (if so, can you give us a few of your favorites)?

My favorites are VinoPigro and Aristide, two friends of ours (Elisabetta Tosi and Giampiero Nadali) that will join the conference too.