Category — Tech

June 30, 2008
Tonight I laid in bed for about an hour before I realized there was no way I was sleeping a wink.  Tonight was not my night for sleep I guess.  However, it is now 2:21 am and I have seriously discovered some of the coolest things for my mac book that will definitely add to my productivity in the near future.  

Safari 3.1 Opening new links in a new tab and NOT a new window automatically
I have been using Mozilla Firefox religiously since I first heard of it a few years back.  The Tab feature is glorious.  In one web browser window I could tab it up with everything from email, news, and anything else I was working on.  I now use a mac and after attempting all browsers from Opera, Camino, Shiira, Seamonkey, and good ol’ fashion Firefox for Mac, I ultimately liked Safari the most….but when you click a new link it always opens up a new window.  Of course you can command click it every time but come on!  And to no avail in the prefs Apple apparently hasn’t had 12 million requests yet for this feature because you can’t adjust this…they must only be at 9 million so far.  
After reading up on some forums I found this magical piece of code that makes my life sweet.  

Open source mac software for just about anything…its free and legal and it kicks ass!
 I love new features and fucntionality and I like Free.  Once more, I like if the free things kick ass.  Here is an awesome site for really making your Mac killer.  From word processors, podcasting, web browsers, and financial software, this site has a bit of everything.  

Pandora as an application, not a browser window…..so you don’t accidentally close it like I do every ten seconds!

Pandora.com totally rocks, great music streams, solid variety, and commercial free besides visual ads.  However, I am a clumsy web surfer and sometimes my speed at which I modify my tabs or windows exceeds my ability to preserve my current Pandora song.  I find myself always closing the tab mid song and thats a bummer!  Well after a google search I found that Pandora now offers a desktop software (in beta) to make it run as a windows program or Mac application.  This is totally rocking.  Go to Pandora and pick it up!

Cheers,

Lloyd 

So maybe you have heard of Gary Vaynerchuk…maybe not either way you need to know more about him and the impact he is making in the US wine scene. Get a bead on him by watching this video.

Some things to note. This video is already out dated. Gary now sees over $70 million in sales through his store in NJ and recieves a modest 80,000 views a day on his show WineLibrary TV.

People who believe Gary is not impacting this industry are dead wrong. Gary in one year, has broken down many barriers to entry for the US wine scene. More Americans will drink wine due to his efforts. His stance is simple, Real, Authentic, and Transparent. RAT is what Gary lives by and I firmly suggest wineries adopt a similar approach.

“The Gary Factor” Broken down into three simple points:

1) He is straight forward, honest, and passionate. Gary maintains an extreme ethic, to never be false, accept bribes, or operate with alternative motives.

2) He knows his shit. Gary has been opeating the largest wine retail operation in the United States for nearly ten years. He has tried thousands if not hundreds of thousands of wines and is an expert in Descriptive Analysis. See information about Ann Noble, I went to her seminar and she is the only other expert in Descriptive Analysis, I know of.

3) Gary is accessible. If you email Gary he will return your email. This is an actual response I recieved from Gary a few months ago, “LB whats up my man! Matt pls sched something with LB when I am up in WASH!
LB MS will make it happen, lunch b-fast something…” Not perfect English but who gives a rip, this guy is totally there for his community. He devotes every second of his day to ensuring his community is fed well.

But don’t take my word for it, let Gary tell you why he rocks!

Gary on “cutting through the noise!?”

Gary on how to please everyone

Gary Vaynerchuk is on the rise, catch the wave, and ride it and have fun

Cheers,

Lloyd Benedict

Lloyd@AmericanWinery.com

I was lucky enought to be invited to speak at the Walla Walla Wine Marketing Summit being held at the Walla Walla Enology and Viticulture Center.  I will be speaking about “Innovative Ways to Market Wine on the Web.”

I am so stoked to do this because I have so much to say.  With FREE sites like Twitter, Facebook, Digg, My Space, and many more, marketing and building relationships to consumers has never been cheaper–for the first time your resulting sales made through this channel are only dependent on how much effort you expend.

This is a big deal because the net levels the playing field in so many ways for small wineries…the type of wineries the make up the majority of WW producers.  

Some areas Im going to explore in my hour and fifteen minutes.

Basic “Best Practice” web marketing initiatives–from emai aquisition programs, frequent communications, blogs and video journals.

The Facebook and Google Phenomenon–What this means to your winery and the future of marketing.

SMO–Social Media Optimization, FREE ways to get the word out about your wines and let your wine lovers sell your wine!

SEO–Basic Introduction to Search Engine Optimization and the importance of being the top results on Google.

This is sure to be a great event for northwest wineries looking to build bulletproof marketing plans.

Cheers,

Lloyd Benedict

Details For The Walla Walla Wine Marketing Summit

When? 
June 15.16.17, 2008

Where? 
Center for Enology & Viticulture
500 Tausick Way 
Walla Walla, Washington 99362

Who Should Attend?
Wine marketers, wine sales, concierge staff, tasting room staff, winery owners and anyone desiring a professional understanding of the marketing and sales of wine from the Pacific Northwest.

What will you learn? 
Participants will learn about new channel focused methods and tools for selling wine direct, to retail and to on-premise accounts. Industry experts and innovators will lead informative sessions that include:

• Finding New Markets for your Wines
• Marketing Sustainability – Understanding Consumer Market Trends
• New Ways to Rethink Your Direct Sales
• How to Maximize your Selling Potential with Wine Club Members
• Get Your Wines on the “List” – Working with Restaurant Wine Buyers
• How to Partner with Retail to Extend Your Brand
• Distributors, Agents and the Likes… Understanding the World of Distribution
• Plus much more!

Cost 
$295 for the two day conference. Cost includes Welcome Reception, lunch each day and comparative tasting (must be 21 years old).

Register Now!

Last Thursday I got my butt out of bed about 4:30 am to get to Pasco to catch a flight to Chicago for something called the SEED Conference, “A ONE-DAY CONFERENCE on DESIGN, ENTREPRENEURSHIP and INSPIRATION” the site declares. My Lead Designer and Development Manager begged me to attend this conference a few months back and I was so glad I came along. I have been to a few shows in the last year, wine related and entreprener related but this one takees the cake as the show that left me wanting for more—more from myself, more from my company, and more to give to my customers.

Among the speakers were Jason Fried, Founder of 37 Signals, Gary Vaynerchuk of Wine Library TV, and the dynamic creative duo from Threadless, Jake Nickell (Founder) and Jeffrey Kalmikoff (Creative Director). Also represented was Carlos Segura from Segura Inc. as well as Jim Coudal of Coudal Partners, and Edward Lifson–a NPR Correspondant for Architecture.

Friday began around 8 am with name tags, organic coffee, and brief chit chats between web 2.0′ers and Designers from all walks of life. I sat near a cool guy named Eric Franklin, a Senior Program Manager at Amazon, and a fellow Walla Walla property owner…small world eh?

The conference lasted around 10 hours including the tasting hosted by Gary V, he selected a NZ Sauv Blanc from his shop, not a domestic wine as I would have preferred but good none the less.

Three Key Points I took away from this show were:

Build Now…Tweak Later. Jason Fried spoke heavily on User Interface design and strategy and the improtance of clear and easily managed interfaces, but the idea of “Get it out the door and make it better as you go” rang home for me. We can spend hours, days, weeks, thinking but you can waste lots of time and money if you spend more time talking then building. It rings to an old school motto I grew up with, “Just Do It.” The panel at the show swore heavily and amended the urgency of this call to action, “Just F-ing Do It… Now.”

RAT–Real, Authentic, and Transparent–Gary Vaynerchuk spoke on the concepts of building and living as a breathing brand that people can access and follow. He also delivered his strong emotions about not trying to be something you are not. The thinking behind this is that technology and the speed by which information passes these days will sting you in the ass before you utter the last breath of your falsity. So in short, don’t be something you are not, and be RAT, and be very accessible and committed to your following no matter how small or large.

Your Employee’s Happiness Matters as much as your Customer’s–maybe more. Jake and Jeffrey both delivered a clear message on investing in your company’s most valuable resource, your employees. Building fun, productive, and creative work atmospheres in the web space is essential. They both mentioned it makes terminating employees that much more difficult but performance is the key indicator of an employees activity in the company, a measurable component. Im not sure my office has space for foos-ball or Ping Pong tables but ensuring my employees are happy will remain a constant in my daily role as CEO of American Winery LLC.

The SEED Conference closed with one of the most educational Q and A sessions that I have ever attended, not to mention there were more F-bombs than the last Wu Tang Album, but the relaxed atmosphere of the SEED conference will be something that makes this show sell out time and time again. Whats better than hearing the most successful people in Web and Design dropping a few F-words?

There was rumors of a SEED show that would be 12 hours of Q and A, if so, I’m in, all I ask is that we can toast the show with some quality US wine from AmericanWinery.com!

Cheers,

Lloyd