At the European Wine Bloggers Conference (EWBC), Ryan Opaz talked about new web tools that allow people to tell stories more effectively online.  I’ve embedded the video of his presentation below, his slideshow, a list of all the tools he mentioned, and then a couple attempts to use the tools.

Storytelling Technology w/Ryan Opaz from Vrazon on Vimeo.

Web tools mentioned

These are broken down into some amorphous categories in Ryan’s presentation.  I don’t agree with all of them, but I’ll stick to his order for the sake of simplicity.

Blog publishing platforms

• Blogger – a blogging platform, less awesome than the others on this list
• WordPress.com – WordPress hosted site, great free platform
• WordPress.org – self-hosted blog with wordpress content management system.  This is how I publish the blog you are currently reading.
• Tumblr – Perfect for telling short stories with quick uploads or highlighting links/photos/media in an easy, aesthetic way.  Might belong in the microblogging category.
• Posterous Spaces– One post here and posterous will turn around and post your update everywhere (ie any blog you set up, any social media account, etc.)
• Squarespace – A premium website creator that is apparently pretty intricate.  For your typical 1000 € website that lots of wineries make, this makes just as much sense (if you have decent design sense) as hiring an outside contractor.  Never used it myself though.

Microblogging

• Facebook – duh.
• Twitter – duh.
• Linkedin – why?
• Alternativeto.net –  Alternativesto totally doesn’t belong in the middle of the microblogging slides, but SUCH is life.  It’s awesome for finding new tools in any of these categories.
• Google+ – awesome?

Audio

• RSS/Podcasting explanation – Really Simple Syndication is a system that lets people know when you’ve updated your website.  Podcasts are audio recordings that use RSS to appear in your mailbox or mp3 player or whatever everytime they’re released.
• AudioBoo – ultra easy way to record audio and immediately publish it

Video

• YouTube – duh
• Qik – like audioboo for video. that is to say pushbutton recording and publishing for your camera phone.
• Animoto – effortlessly make jazzy looking slideshow presentations by uploading photos and music

Weird alternative forms

• Timetoast – timeline creation
• Dipity – more interactie timelines
• Bundlr – like a publishing platform for bookmarks
• Del.icio.us – like a publishing platform for bookmarks
• Pinterest – like a publishing platform for bookmarks
• Flickr galleries – like a bookmark platform just for photos on flickr
• Storify – compile tweets, videos, facebook stuff, etc. to make interesting narrative storylines

Multipurpose tools

• Prezi prepare dynamic slideshows
• Aviary browser based photo editing / art software
• Gimp like photoshop but free and open
• Audacity free audio editing software
• Vimeo amazing video platform; like youtube but better quality (and less community interaction/traffic)  Why isn’t this in the video section?
• Evernote – take notes on everything in one place; lists too
• Voice2Note – voice recordings made easy
• Google Apps – google’s suite of office applications, totally free, includes gmail masked through your domain name
• Scrivener – writing suite that will change the way you think about word processors
• Hover – domain management

Tools not mentioned

• ustream – super simple streaming video recordings
• vocaroo – quick audio recordings; sort of a poor man’s audioboo
• viadeo – billing themselves as something like the French LinkedIn, it’s not surprising Ryan Opaz glossed over them.  It’s very French and very business-y.  But a lot of people swear by it.
• adegga, vinogusto, winedemon – Ryan didn’t really talk about social media sites devoted to wine but these can be an important stomping ground for wineries to tell their stories.  some sites like cellartracker really don’t offer that opportunity to winemakers, but others like Adegga allow for a lot of interaction and “ownership” on the part of producers.

Effort to use the tools

Animoto – I made an animated slideshow for my B&B with animoto.  It was pretty painless but the free version is pretty amateur.  It beats most of the ridiculously boring slideshow software I’ve seen, but it’s a far cry from the quality level I like.  It’s great for a little slideshow for fun.  I wouldn’t be proud enough to put it permanently on the landing page of my website.  I bet the premium version is awesome though and it only costs like 5 bucks to do an unlimited number of videos for a month.

Create your own video slideshow at animoto.com.

Dipity – I used this timeline tool and I think I should have used it for something else.  I decided to start compiling a history of wines of carcassonne (upcoming book project), but I realize now that I missed the mark.  This tool is really designed for contemporary, breaking news events.  Or personal uploads.  Regardless, here’s my first work in progress on the site.

Bundlr – I started using bundlr for an upcoming Carcassonne audio guide project which also ties into the geolocation presentation I’ll be giving at Vin 2.0 in Paris this December.

Storify – I tried to use storify to make something about the EWBC but it was already November and most of the tweets from the EWBC were already buried in the archives.  Unless I’m missing something, storify is really meant to be used AS the event is unfolding.  So I missed the opportunity to do one for the EWBC.   But Wine Future Hong Kong was happening that day so I made a storify for it.  The interface was very easy to learn and I’d say this whole experience was good.  I like it.  The finished product looked professional and was easy to read.  And people loved my summary.  It got a lot of retweets and attention.  And it just involved me picking out my favorite tweets, photos and links (and I mostly pulled these photos and links from tweets too).  And then it serves as link bait because everybody mentioned in your storify is proud that you cited them.  Plus sometimes you get the opportunity to be pretty funny.  One complaint: I didn’t realize that the URL wasn’t customizable so my hong kong wine future storify still has a soave italy url. Ooops.

View the story “Hong Kong Wine Futures 2011” on Storify

I want to present at SXSW in Austin next year on the topic of non-verbal wine communication.  I think there’s a great deal to be said about visual storytelling, infographics, and non verbal ways of describing certain subjects (especially inherently sensory experiences like food and wine).

As I researched my first few posts about the words we use to describe wine, I worried that my topic was too weird and esoteric.  But SXSW has just revealed the full list of 3,266 panel proposals and an astounding number are about similar topics of non-verbal communication!

So I’ve rounded up some panels that look very interesting and talk about a similar topic of post-verbal or non-verbal data.  I hope to get in touch with all these presenters eventually because I think we have a lot to discuss.

Live Visual Blogging – Realtime Social Drawing

A presentation about live visual annotation of lectures/speeches/etc.  One can also imagine this being applied to wine tastings and tutored tastings?  Imagine live tasting notes being drawn by the audience as they learn about wines of Languedoc and our sunshine, winds and mountains.  The final result could be more interesting than any list of words!

Culture, Crowdsourcing & Creating New Wine Words

This is crazy.  Another wine guy actually proposed a panel about semantics and language just like I did!  This group in South Africa has banned a list of the silliest words that turn up in tasting notes and is crowdsourcing wine reviews to develop a new language to describe wine.  Pretty cool idea.

The Power of Visual Storytelling

This is probably the most straightforward panel.  A group of content creators talking about individual cases of creating visual content.

Text.Snap.Capture.Record : Create with Mobile

Cell phones are reshaping how people think about content creation.  Oftentimes, a quick snap or video recording on the fly made at the moment will be more important than a well-written article that takes hours and hours of research and editing.

Visualize This! Data and the Future of Research

A more academic look at how visualization can affect research and data sharing amongst professionals.

Shut up & DRAW! A Non-Artist Way to Think Visually

It’s great that everybody’s excited about visual presentation, unless you suck at art. This panel will offer ways for non-artists to employ  visualization techniques.

Data Visualization for Social Change

Can data visualization be refined to help change minds and create social change?  Examples of current visualization strategies include abortion statistics and unintended pregnancy infographics

Beyond Chart Porn: Data Vis for Action

This duo is worried that visual data presentation is so sexy and slick that people are overusing it.  The panel will look at ways to keep data visualization meaningful.

Lend Me Your Earballs: Sound + Interaction Design

This panel aims to look at audio design.  It’s true that we’re veeery visual. And we tend to hate any kind of audio in webdesign.  So is there a future for well-crafted audio?

Maps of Time: Big Data as Narrative

An interesting and ambitious panel that wants to visualize data over time and “change the way we do data visualization forever”.  I’ve often considered writing a blog aggregator for winemakers that just scrapes all of our photos and posts them on a timeline.  And maybe then doing a sort by hue if photos land on the same date.  I expect this would create a sort of wave that moves from green to red/brown over the course of the calendar year (assuming we stick to all northern hemisphere or all southern hemisphere vineyards).

Visualizing Social Media for Educational Use

This presentation proposal seems a bit vague at first, promising to deliver social media tools that educators can use to assist visual learning.  The powerpoint attached has a lot more detail, including a list of simple tools like wordle, many eyes, twitterfall, and so on.  Potentially an interesting topic.

Data is Sexier than Sex… And I’ll Prove It

I wanted to mention this for the title alone.

O'Vineyards winemaker dinner

We were interviewed for Food and Wine Talk, a radio program based out of Miami and hosted by Simone Diament and Carole Kotkin.

Winemaker interview for Domaine O’Vineyards

This was an event organized about a year ago by the CIVL and they had a little winemaker dinner with some American press.  Since our wines had been selected for the US Ambassador tour, we were poked to do this very fun dinner in the medieval castle city of Carcassonne.  There was another larger producer in the Malpere present, so it was a fun western-Languedoc dinner.  Not enough focus on the Malpere and Cabardes, two Languedoc appelations with very peculiar varietals available to them (eg. Merlot, Cabernet)

Here’s the full article about Carole’s Languedoc travels.