{"id":5964,"date":"2012-11-07T22:18:19","date_gmt":"2012-11-07T22:18:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/?p=5964"},"modified":"2012-11-07T22:18:19","modified_gmt":"2012-11-07T22:18:19","slug":"off-to-turkey-for-the-bloggers-conference","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/uncategorized\/off-to-turkey-for-the-bloggers-conference","title":{"rendered":"Off to Turkey, for the bloggers conference"},"content":{"rendered":"

So, at some unearthly hour tomorrow I am off to Turkey for the 2012 European Wine Bloggers’ Conference (http:\/\/ewbc.vrazon.com\/<\/a>), although it is now dubbed the Digital Wine Communication Conference in light of the fact that social media has grown in importance of late.<\/p>\n

I am really looking forward to it. There will be some great people there. Indeed, I suspect the main reason that many folks will be attending is to meet each other. I’m hoping we’ll have a lot of fun.<\/p>\n

But I am also a bit nervous. The problem is, I think some people misunderstand me. I worry that they might judge me badly because I’m one of the invited speakers, and that they anticipate that I’ll have a big ego to match.<\/p>\n

In truth, I am just like many of the participants there, who blog, tweet and facebook\u00a0about wine from the perspective of enthusiasts, not professionals. I love wine. I started writing about it on the internet after catching the wine bug, and by 2001 I was blogging, just because I loved wine.<\/p>\n

That’s what I’m still doing. But I’ve been lucky enough over the last few years to have enough wine writing work, and supportive sponsors of this site, that I can make wine writing my living. This doesn’t mean that I think for one moment that I am a big shot, or that I am any different from ‘amateur’ bloggers (I hate this term ‘amateur’ – very often these amateurs know more than ‘professionals’, are smarter, and can write better to boot).<\/p>\n

So I hope that being a pro won’t count against me in this environment. I am just someone who loves wine, probably drinks a bit more of it than I should, and tries to shares some of my experiences online. I have been lucky in my timing – being one of the first to write online, and having the second oldest wine blog (the late Joe Dressner was first, I believe), has helped a great deal. If I were starting out now, the competition would be intense.<\/p>\n

I am really looking forward to four days of interaction with some great people, beginning with the BYOB dinner tomorrow night. I am just bubble wrapping the magnum I am bringing now, which I will have to check in – let’s hope it makes it to Izmir.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So, at some unearthly hour tomorrow I am off to Turkey for the 2012 European Wine Bloggers’ Conference (http:\/\/ewbc.vrazon.com\/), although it is now dubbed the Digital Wine Communication Conference in…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5964","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5964","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5964"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5964\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5974,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5964\/revisions\/5974"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5964"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5964"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5964"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}