New Wine 2.0 Competition Video

As promised, here's an embedded copy of the new video for the Wine 2.0 competition at Vator.tv.



We'll be doing our (last) push on asking folks to vote for this new promo in the next week or so before the end of the contest (interestingly, Vator.tv *just now* added a "Vote" button for the Wine 2.0 competition - which is apparently different from "rating" a video, so for anyone who has a moment to go vote for our pitch, we'd much appreciate it!

NoCal Report

We had an awesome trip (again) up to San Francisco and Napa.

Larry & I got the opportunity to do an interview with Bambi Francisco and the folks at Vator.tv (watch for it in the near future on the Vator.tv site), and also to have a great chat with Michael Stajer of WineCommune and JJ Buckley. We love getting to know more people in the wine industry as a whole, especially when it's someone who's worked hard to build his business over the last 8 years as Michael has. (We also love buying wines from them, and you should too!).

On the ride up, I attempted to finish editing, compositing and doing the audio work on our latest promo/pitch for our startup. The pitch is now up at Vator HERE, but I'm also going to embed it in it's own post following this one.

I can't say I ever tried editing on a laptop on a bumpy highway at 90 miles an hour. All I can say is that I can't really recommend it. It's hard. Here's a pic Larry snapped off on the way. I look happy in there, right?


I finished the piece as we pulled into the Vator TV shooting location at The Presidio, with the final render coming out at 2:53pm, our scheduled meeting time was 3:00, so we quickly changed shirts in the parking garage and boogeyed upstairs. (which, all we can say is *wow* - amazing architecture and offices there...)

It was great to meet and talk with Bambi, Roland, Meliza and Carl from the Vator team - thanks for making the interview a great experience!

We also took a few hours on Friday to check in with our friend over at Bacchus Caves, David Provost, who graciously took us to check out his companies latest masterpiece up in the hills of Napa. The work they've just completed at a private family's cave was just astounding and made us all that much more enthusiastic about our partnership with them.

Innovation vs. Invention

Everyone we talk to invariably responds with something along the lines of "that's a great idea," and we feel they're right. We've also already been getting calls from folks in other states either obviously interested in trying to figure us out and "rip off" our idea, or inquire about whether we've considered building in their state.

However, a great post over on TechDirt today draws a wonderful distinction between ideas, and the implementation of said ideas.

On this front, I'm profoundly happy that we are *not* an IP heavy company that's going to market with a bunch of patents (that may or may not be rightfully granted) that we're going to have to spend tons of legal dollars defending or suing other people for. That's not innovation in my book, that's extortion, and not a business I want to be in.

We're a company whose success is 100% based on our ability to successfully execute our concepts to the level of quality and detail that we have already set forth as our standard. The first step to executing a great idea is communicating it in a way that all the people that the project requires "get it."

We're there, and we're not just the next "great idea."

(Great) Sign of the Times

Web 2.0 really is an amazing thing to watch as online applications, communities and services all finally start to fulfill the promises that we were so deflated by just 10 years ago when the web first came to be.

I clearly remember the days of such heady promise of all the things you "could do" - the possibilities were endless!

Right up until you sat down to start coding pages, and then the possibilities ended. The tech standards, the languages, more importantly the browsers, the bandwidth and the audiences, just weren't there yet.

And now, here we are at Web 2.0, with amazing things coming out everyday. Great applications, awesome interfaces and things we only dreamed of doing not long ago.

Now hot on the heels of "what REALLY CAN be done," Wine 2.0 emerges.

If there is any doubt in anyone's mind that the wine business is radically changing (for the better), these are great signs of the times all being tracked and watched by this rapidly growing industry community.

There are things happening that one never would have dreamed of just a couple of years ago. For instance, Vator.TV is holding Venture Capital competitions JUST FOR innovative wine industry companies (not just wineries, but any supporting services as well - we will have our full video pitch up for viewing on their competitive site within a few weeks from now).

There are a million-and-one social networking/wine enthusiast sites that offer free cellar management tools and niche networking that are being enabled by the coincidence of Web 2.0 technologies and the enormous growth in the wine business.

This is all really exciting for us - it validates the research and the market out there for the unique blend of services we'll be offering and the more research we do on other cellar management tools out there, the more we see how very different our interface and application really is.

Being able to check out all these communities only helps us further define what we do and do not want to be (we're not *all things* to all folks, for sure) and clarify what tools will be more useful than others by the adoption and use rates on existing apps.

The real defining point for Vino Veritas, however, is that our app isn't just an app - it's a means of delivering premium services tied to physical, climate controlled storage for our members.

It's going to be a great marriage of 2.0 tech, and 2.0 wine geeks... oh, and it's GREAT marketing that doesn't cost us a ton of money (relatively speaking).

Wine 2.0. Dig it! (in our case, literally!)