Ane Miren said:

Hi everyone,

I live very close to both Bilbao and Bilbao airport. For those of you who arrive early, I would be more than happy to meet you at the airport and show you around the area a little before we catch the bus to Logroño at 1:30 pm.

I have a 7-seater car so this offer is for a maximum of 6 people.

Let me know if you’re interested.

I live very close to both Bilbao and Bilbao airport. For those of you who arrive early, I would be more than happy to meet you at the airport and show you around the area a little before we catch the bus to Logroño at 1:30 pm.

I have a 7-seater car so this offer is for a maximum of 6 people.

Let me know if you're interested.

thirstforwine@gmail.com

Robert

Also anyone landing on the early morning Stansted flight want to share the journey?

Also I would like to book my hotel - can someone let me have the details please?
Thanks

Here’s the explanation on our blog http://blog.adegga.com/choose-a-wine-from-portugal-well-bring-it/

Great to see you at Tapas Fantasticas. I thought Olly was a class act; my positive post about his masterclass will 'autopublish' tomorrow.

Regarding the European Wine Conference, whilst I appreciate it is European in focus rather than simply a party for transplanted U.K. bloggers(!), I do feel the arrangements somewhat ostracise those travelling from the capital.

The only vaguely viable option I spy is the EasyJet / Stanstead one, which leaves at 07:15 in the morning, Friday. In all honesty, I have no idea how to get to Stansted in time for check-in using public transport. Furthermore, if I did camp out all night under Norman Foster's albeit airy terminal roof, the plane arrives over three hours before the organised bus gets into Logrono. To catch a plane back on the Sunday would be impossible in the current schedule, forcing another night onto the schedule with a very early departure to get back to Logrono.

I am also concerned about the costs. Although my site may have affluent inclinations, being a relatively younger member of the vinous blogosphere and largely freelance, the costs are adding up sharply, detailed as follows (Euros converted to £'s at today's rates):

Conference cost (paid) £40; Flight: £97; Hotel for two nights at discounted rate: £84; Further night: £56; Transfer to airport, day four: £20 (estimated); Wine for Invitational tasting: £80 = a total approaching £400.

Quite aside from the costs, however is my nervousness about actually getting there. Have any other London bloggers raised similar concerns, and if so, how were their qualms qualmed?

Sorry to pester you with these niggles.

Very much looking forward to hearing from you,

Douglas.

living in the online wine publishing since 2000, I think that the business model / monetizazion, is one of the most relevant topics of the conference. How to monetize the time spent in wine blogging ?

I think that one blog, alone, can't make moneys because of the small bergaining power that each one has individually. The things change if you pur a lot of bloggers togheter, but it is not enough. You need to have power and influence in the wine sector, you need some top publishers for each country you're going to involve in the network and you need to cover a big part of the long tail.

Following this philosofhy, and relying on the experience matured in the online wine publishing and in the online advertising, I have created a wine & food advertising network wich works as a collector for all websites and bloggers that have as the specific topic wine and/or food.

This project - http://www.vinoclic.it - starts in Italy but now I'm working hard for expanding it in Europe and USA because I think that higher is the number of countries involved, higher is the opportunity to attract advertisers from different countries wich look to reach different countries but similar targets.

Today we've almost fifty wine & food related websites & blogs and we plan to increase the number of publishers in a short time, taking from the european and north america area. In this way we can talk to advertisers and media agencies as a single professional referent on an equal power.

VinoClic - this is the name of the adv network - has given ethical rules to be respected. The important thing, infact, is to add advertising on blogs preserving the integrity of each blogger who join the network. Here you can read some of the most relevant rules and rights that every publisher must agree before joining the network.

- each publisher should not mix advertising and content

- each publisher should not talk about an advertiser in a complacent way

- each publisher has to strives in giving a correct and gennuine information to readers

- each publisher has the power to ask vinoclic that a certain campaign should not appear on his/her blog

- vinoclic must work hard to choose only high quality sponsors

- vinoclic shouldn't sell payed posts.

I think that EWBC 2008 will be a great moment to present this project and to answer a lot of questions.

Bye, Fil
--
My detailed profile :
http://www.vinix.it/detail.php?ID=25016

I think we will almost certainly have to include this topic in some way. Our issue will not be what topics to cover, but how to keep the topics sufficiently focused that we can achieve something in the limited time available. Wine Communities and the role of bloggers is definitely important and we need to think a little about this as it relates to how/what/where we write and also what systems we might use so that it can be shared with others.

Keep the ideas coming and we can see how many we can incorporate in the final plans, and thanks for the suggestion

Note: I am running a wine community in Germany (Verkostet.de) which means I am biased on the one hand, but have some views from the other side, too.

If you have not heard from us maybe you could drop us an email via the site and give us your email address (rather than publishing it for all to see).

Thanks again for your support