Wine Industry Tech Symposium

The 2007 Wine Industry Technology Symposium was held in Napa today. This year's theme was "Technology Best Practices for the Wine Industry" and it featured some interesting speakers with fascinating advice...

The CIO of FedEx Kinko's, Richard Maranville, said, "You guys are just at the beginning of using technology. If it's not something you're doing today, it's definitely something you're going to be doing tomorrow, because your competitors are doing it."

The wine industry's "shock jock," Gary Vaynerchuk* of WineLibrary.com (TV) encouraged wineries to embrace the web to find and understand wine consumers and to sell more wine. He went on to say, "Take control of your brand. Put out the information you want out there. Reach the consumer direct, so you're not at the mercy of anyone….You have to care. If you're good, you're going to win. Doing the right thing always wins."

...my unbiased summary?

"USE THE WEB TO DO THE RIGHT THING."

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* Gary described a wine as "not obnoxiously over the top and fake as many of these types of wines are. Instead of a full face-lift and boob job and suction and all of that, maybe this just got a nose job."