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Beer Bloggers Conference 2010 Saturday(Day 2) Review

On Saturday, I got a little late start getting to the Beer Bloggers Conference so I missed the first sessions on Blogging and Technology. It was supposedly a tutorial on how to get the best out of intermingling all aspects of social media together to work seemlessly.

I arrived a few minutes before the session on "Craft Beer and Women", to get set up for the days events. Once the well-respected panel of Sebbi @ChocolateStout, Tamre GirlsPintOut, and Julia Brewers Association got down to business, there were no holds barred. While the panel wasn't being demeaning in my opinion, there was an female attendee that didn't appreciate the tone and style of what the ladies had to say or suggest. It actually became such a heated exchange I had to add to the list of comments that were being thrown back and forth. It was a wild session, leaving me wondering if this really helped the cause for the ladies or to some extent hurt it. During all of this the ladies did give out "Do's" & "Don'ts" to attract more females to your blog, again informative. At the end all of the ladies that attended got together for a group photo to mark the occassion.

With 2:30 coming they closed up the ladies session and we moved on to one of the events I was looking forward to the most for the conference...Greg Koch @StoneGreg from Stone Brewing Co. I had met him a little over a month early back home in Baltimore for the Stone Total Tap Tower Takeover event. He discussed "Why Bloggers are important to Craft Brewers and the Craft Beer movement". It was a really informative session, starting out talking about the three-tier-system and then onto a number of other topics. He took questions from the bloggers and thanked us for our support. I videoed the whole session and the video is located just below.

Stone Greg BBC10 from BeerCruiser on Vimeo.

The next event was "Speed Blogging"...Just like speed dating but with breweries coming to each table, letting you try some of the beers they brought and explaining about the brewery itself. There were 12 breweries representing, from all over the country...From Deschutes & Rogue in Oregon to Great Lakes Brewing in Cleveland and Dogfish Head from Delaware. There was some very good beer to be tried too. Some were rarities or one offs that I won't taste again, while there was one that was a vintage from 2006. I had a few favs, but won't come right out and say what they were.

Boulder Brewing Co. was the next stop for the day. I got there a little bit before the rest of the bloggers due to me having a rental car. I went in and looked around took some pics, and chatted with the staff about all things beer. At 7pm we went on a tour of the brewery. Again, I gained some very good info on the behind the scenes things involving the beer industry.

So with this review I am finished for the weekend. There is a session for 3 or so hours on Sunday but, I am staying at The Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, about an hour away from the Conference, so not the most easiest trip through the mountains to get there. I will post more info I deem important along with some photos down the line. Thanks BBC10 for a great conference and all the fun and information you provided. I also thank the new friends met during the weekend, for conversation and feedback presented.

Beer Bloggers Conference 2010 Friday(Day 1) Review

On Friday started the inaugural Beer Bloggers Conference in Boulder and I couldn't have been more pumped...Another great Craft Beer town and a chance to learn a few things to make my site better.

First thing I did when arriving at the conference location was to register, get ID'd, grab some swag, and get our credntials for the weekend. After doing those things, I sat at the bar and had a beer, while watching the fellow bloggers shuffle in and go through the same routine I did.

Once 2pm arrived, we were able to find a seat in the conference room, and get down to business. First up was Allan Wright, from Zephyr Adventures and The BBC 2010 organizer. He told us about some basic rules for the conference, and the host facility. Next up was the Chief Blogger for the event, Alshley V. Routson a.k.a. The Beer Wench , She welcomed us to the event and expressed the similarities along with the differences between wine blogging and Beer blogging. Her rant was informative and motivational, as well as being down to earth and personable at the same time.

The main speakers at the event started with Julia Herz, from the Brewers Association. She talked about how us Beer Bloggers are furthering the revolution of craft beer. She gave us alot of figures, but also reinforced about how it was important to make a plan and stick with it. Her best quote was "Plan your work, Work your plan".

Draft Magazine's Jessica Daynor was up next with "Where Print and Blogs Collide" a decent little dity about how to gain respect from your readers and how to expand from one media to others. Also gave a basic refresher on how to properly write and the reason for doing it right.

Dustin Woodward, an expert of SEO(Search Engine Optimizations) critiqued five blogs live. He explained what the sites were doing well in regards to attracting web-traffic and what they weren't doing so well...Very informative and techy. If you do your own site building, this part would been a very important part of the conference.

The science of Beer and Food Pairing , was a more laid-back session. It was started with people dropping buckets of Avery Brewing Co. beers at our tables to sample and try to match with different food styles to gain a better understanding of how the two work together. The only downfall of this presentation was that there wasn't any food to actually interact with the beers to get the whole purpose of the session.

Once we finished at the formal conference we had buses waiting for us to take us to the Oskar Blues Brewing Co. Brewery in Longmont, CO. When we arrived we were greeted by the OBB staff and Chad Melis. We were given free rein of two of the brews...Old Chub, and Dales Pale Ale. The food was good also, pulled pork, mac & cheese, Chicken wings, Soups and salads. There were brewery tours for those who wanted to partake, and ot the Tap Room next door there was merchandise to buy, along with a number of beers from the Brewery, and one special dry hopped from a frikin.

All in all, it was a pleasurably experience to say the least. I met some new friends, matched faces to twitter/blog handles and learned a good amount. The rest of the weekend should be just as informative and entertaining as today, if not even better. Looking forward to the Speed blogging segment, which we get five minutes with a brewery to taste and comment about the beers served then the breweries rotate to the next table. Also Saturday brings a PubCrawl on Pearl St. in Boulder, plus another brewery tour at Boulder Brewing Co.