The 1WD @ The WBC08 (or "How Drunk You Can Expect Me to Be This Weekend")

What do you, me, and the upcoming first-ever North American Wine Bloggers Conference (Oct. 24-26 2008 - yes, it's on a weekend, presumably because none of us wine bloggers make any money blogging so we have day jobs during the week) have in common?

I dunno, either.

Uhm.... We're all carbon-based life forms consisting mostly of water, that like to drink wine?

Other than that, I'm not really sure. And okay, conferences technically don't drink wine; conference attendees drink wine.

Anyway, this week I'm off to the Flamingo Resort in the greater Sonoma area to take part in the 2008 WBC. What this means is that you can expect to see some poorly scheduled and erratic posting activity from me over the next 10 days as I try to capture at least some of what the WBC event is all about. Plus, I've got some time off in Sonoma after the WBC to hang out with Mrs. Dudette and the little Dude-el. Family QT, here I come!

I'm not sure exactly which parts of the 2008 WBC I'm going to cover. I'm sure that the event is going to be a blast for us wine bloggers, and I expect a good number of my wine blogging colleagues to cover the event in detail. What you shouldn't expect from me during the next week and half are any boring recaps of the WBC breakout topics. Nothing against my fellow wine bloggers or the WBC organizers (who have done a fantastic job with the agenda), but I just can't imagine the average wine-drinking dude or dudette 1WineDude.com reader has much interest in reading about how to monetize wine blogs, or the waxing philosphic of how wine blogging can achieve media credibility.

Hell, I'm a wine blogger and I barely care about those topics. But... I think that you might care about some of the other awesome stuff that is going down at the WBC this week (click here for details).

What you can expect from me during the next week and half:

• Live Tasting right here on 1WineDude.com! At 6:30 PM ET on Oct. 24 (Friday), I will be blogging LIVE with tasting notes from the WBC Live Wine Blogging "Taste-a-thon" (wherein bloggers like me will be seated at tables to which wineries will 'rotate' with a very limited window for us to taste and blog about the wines). You can come right here to 1WineDude.com to track my (increasingly drunken?) progress during the tasting. We'll be trying out CoverItLive.com for this... hopefully it works... Anyway, I'm going to try my best to adhere to my own advice (hint: it invloves spitting) when it comes to pacing myself during the first day of the event, which has us inundated with wine tastings, but I can't promise I'll be entirely sober for this one!
  
• Recaps (eventually) of the Kiwi Wine Tasting, Sonoma Grand Tasting, and the Vineyard and Winery visits that are planned during the weekend.
  
• Opus One Winery visit. I've been invited by the venerable Opus One winery to visit them as part of a series of posts that I will be doing on West Coast vs. East Coast wine making... which will culminate next month in a blind taste-off between the Left & Right coasts! Stay tuned...
  
• General goofiness as it ensues. Well... duh...
  

For more on the Wine Bloggers Conference agenda and setup, check out winebloggersconference.org. For detail on just how much wine is going to be put in front of us during the conference, check out WBC coordinator Allan Wright's interview at WineBizRadio.com. Let's just say we will almost always be presented with the option to refuse some wine during the weekend.

Cheers!
(images: 1WineDude.com, maps.google.com)