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 wish this website would devote a lot more space and effort to a ‘welcome to this website’ paragraph that no one will ever read instead of prominently listing their hours of operation.”

—ironic praise for bad restaurant websites, Not anyone

I criticize a lot of websites for having ugly landing pages with cheesy flash animations, loud music, and no useful information.

It’s easy to cut out the flash animation and loud music… but what constitutes useful information?

One important story that should be included in every winery website is a biographical history section.  But how do you write that history?  How do you convey the right information?  And how much is too much?

Writing your history

People want to know about your history, but they will only remember things that are really unique and notable.  You don’t need to put this information on the landing page of your website.  It can be safely tucked away in a “Biography” section or “About” section.

And keep it short.  You can include a manifesto hidden deep within your website, if you must.  But there should be an easy to read, brief biography somewhere close to the landing page.  If you have trouble keeping the bio short, visit ten other winery websites and delete anything in your history that also appears in their history.

The fact is almost all winery history sections fall into two categories “we’ve been making wine for x generations in the proud tradition of Lord Soandso of Somethingrather” or “I’m passionate about wine so I started making it y years ago and it’s been hard but worth it.”  Unless you have something really special to say, this is the part of the website that people will forget ten minutes after reading it.  So only say the special stuff.

And again, it doesn’t have to be on the first page.  Even though you think your story is super interesting, people might be more interested in accessing basic information about your wines, where they’re available, and what food they go with.   So writing a website is about balancing all this information and presenting it in a convenient way for the impatient Internet surfer.

How O’Vineyards handles it

I try to show our personality on every page of the website.  The closest thing to a concrete biography is currently located in the “wines” section that talks about our winemaking.  But you’ll also learn a bit about my philosophy on tourism by clicking on the “visit” section.  There used to be a “Bio” section about our history, but I merged it into wine because it’s more useful there.  Still debating this one internally and you might see me move it around more in the future.  But it’s not very long and it’s certainly not the landing page.