“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.

Are you interested in helping plan the first ever WineCampPDX?  Our next planning meeting will be…….

When: October 29th, from 6-7:30pm

Where: Pour Wine Bar
2755 NE Broadway
Portland, OR 97232

Agenda:

• logos
  sample logos
  http://maxisnow.com/WineCampPDX_logo_v2.pdf
• topics we want to include in the camp (Topics page)
• do we want one day or two?
• sponsors

Minutes

Attendees:

@maxisnow
@Rhodesjpdx
@MikeCanDoIt
@MissCollada

Logos

• Agreed to use the logo on the upper right, but with the darker colors.
• @maxisnowwill work with designer to get a .jpg of the logo

Topics

• Trying to decide if we should have “tracks” or “main categories”
• Suggested categories are; Wine in Technology, Wine 101, Wine Science, and Wine Mythos
• Need to decide if the “camp” will be one day or two.

Presenters

• We went back and forth over when to start soliciting for presenters.

We determined that in our next meeting we’ll create groups to work on each aspect ; location, presenters, sponsors

Next Steps

Need to publicise the meeting more to get more people involved in the planning.

Next planning meeting will be October 29th @ 6pm… location to be confirmed/determined.

Wow, I’m so excited to see so many people interested in the idea of a WineCamp here in Portland, Oregon! In little more than a week 23 people have entered their email to be notified of WineCampPDX news. That’s pretty impressive.

It’s obvious that there is a lot of interest in WineCampPDX. The next natural step is to get those interested in planning the event together.

Those that completed the subscription form on the September post should have an invitation to the planning meeting October 13th.

If you want to attend, but don’t have an invite, please email me, Jona Titus, at jonatitus@winecamppdx.com or tweet @winecamppdx /or @jltitus on Twitter.

WineCampPDX is an unconference to combine drinking wine, learning about all things wine, and networking. WineCampPDX’s main goal is to educate people about wine with open participatory workshop-events. WineCamp sessions may include wine 101 for newbies, types of wine, wine pairing, wine making, and more.

Get involved!

If you’d like to get involved in WineCampPDX, please contribute to the WineCampPDX wiki.

What is an unconference?

An unconference is an ad-hoc, participant-driven conference centered around a specific theme or purpose. It features workshop-style events whose content is provided by participants. Sessions are determined in the morning and then attended by whoever is interested in the topic at hand.

When? Where? How much?

WineCamp hasn’t begun the planning stage. This web site has been created to gauge the interest in an event like this. If there are enough people interest in the idea, we can make it happen. WineCampPDX will be help in Portland, Oregon and admission will be minimal ($20-30 max.)

How can I get involved?

If you would like to help make WineCampPDX happen, please email Jona Titus at jonatitus@winecamppdx.com and follow @winecamppdx and/or @jltitus on Twitter.