“What is WinecampPDX?”
How do we describe WinecampPDX? .

“WinecampPDX…. the wine experience in the world today”

Why? They like wine, want to learn more about wine, they may be “techie” and want to know how to integrate technology with wine.

Location

We talked about several locations. Our main concern is a good space, good wifi connections, and ability to serve wine. We’d like a location with a main room and two additional rooms for other sessions. We’re also looking at locations close to food an wine should we want to continue with an happy hour after the Saturday sessions. We talked about several locations but one that we’re strongly considering is Worksound.

Worksound seems like a good place, the question is can it hold 100-150 people? It does have one large room and two smaller rooms for breakout sessions. Worksound also has a bar area and is allowed to pour wine so that may not be an issue.

Max will be checking with Worksound to see if we can have the event there. If anyone has other suggestions, we’re still open to the idea.

When

This will be a two day, weekend event. We’re looking at the month of April for the conference, but not the first weekend of April.  The exact weekend will depend on the location. We’ll have more once we know the exact location.

Presentations

We plan on having a “main” presentation in the largest room of the location. We’ll use the other two breakout areas for unconference sessions. Some of these may be preplanned but others will be adhoc.

We know that the last hour on Saturday will be a Red vs. White Smackdown. Sunday we’d like to do a round table session with several winemakers.

We went through the presentation list from the wiki and narrowed down the scope to the following. We may need to reduce even more.

Sponsors

We’ll be looking for people, groups, organizations, and wineries to help sponsor the event. We’ll accept money, to help subsidize the cost(s) of the event, door prizes, space for the event, bottles of wine for the “wall of wine”.

For those that sponsor we will:

• Mention on web site
• Include them in the rolling slide show in the “break” area
• Give them time to speak to crowd
• Swag table
• Use them for after party location (to bring them business)
• Any other promotion that we or they can think of

If you’re reading this and want to sponsor contact jonatitus@winecamppdx.com.

Wall of wine

We talked about have a “wall of wine” side activity. Assuming we have some wine donations, we wrap wine bottles in brown paper to disguise the wine. Attendees can bid and buy a “mystery” bottle for consumption at home, or at the after party location. We’re still working out details on this one. It will also depend on the sorts of donations we get.

Website

The website is up and running but not great. Jona and Max will be working on the site to improve it.

Promotion

We have our logo thanks to a friend of Max’s. The logo is up on our blog. We plan to use Twitter, blogging, emailing, and word of mouth to publicize the event. We’ll also keep in close conversation with PDX contacts, such as PDX Events, to promote the event.

Cost

Our goal is for this to be a free event. If we have to charge, it will be a minimal cost ($10-20 max).

Action items

Max is going t check with Worksound and see if we can have our event there.  If needed we’ll look at other locations that meet our requirements.

Website (Max & Jona)
Worksound (Max)
Presenters (Christina & Jona)
Sponsors (Christina & Jona)

Next steps

1. Get more people involved in the planning
2. Secure a date/location

Next meeting

Our next meeting will be December 10th. The time and location are still TBD.