2014 WBIS

about
the second
2014
When I first heard about the second WBIS, Wine Business Innovation Summit,
I just found out that the first has been in the previous year in Brussels.
Besides that I had some ?? But even more, quite some ¿¿¿
The special offer price for WSET diploma holders still was at 149 Euro and in
combination with ¿?¿?¿ that didn't sound tempting, at first.
Being much into wine and being from Munich, I decided to go there and see what
Faye, Marc and Jens had put up.
Fortunately it was in Munich and so I went to experience two full days of getting
fantastic seminars on many different subjects about the business of wine, how
innovative one can start his own business in wine and meet interesting people from
all parts of the industry.
That really was great and worth every second but the best of all at that event was,
especially for me, caught in a German business behaviour, the experience of how
open everyone shared their ideas and even business models.
Quite in the spirit of the first session I attended,
" New Financing Options & Crowd-Funding Experiences"
where Jan Kennedy started with his presentation and said "share your idea!"
so did Marc Clemens, founder of "Sommelier Prive".

In this exact spirit, all two days went on and experts in their field shared most
interesting insights in what looked like niches in the wine market, but isn't that how
that fruit computer guy once started?
I can not report about the content of all the seminars given, reaching a span from
crowdsourcing, bloggers and their influence, branding, wine clubs, consumer
treatment, marketing aspects of brand and place, new packaging, the Chinese
market, consumer interaction and many more.
But actually, it wouldn't even make any sense if I did so.
As this event is all about sharing, the programme and sessions still can be found at
http://wbis.eu/programme.
Well, so what ? Right, so what if you also can see all the presenters, get their bio and
background, and can look at every single presentation at "Slideshare" ?
Well, then you see what sharing ideas is all about and WBISs core competence is
connecting sharing people.
Another point at the programme was the #WBIS Business Award.
Eight start ups presented their business and were judged.
The winner was André Ribeirinhos "Smart wine Glass", a fantastic idea and a win win
solution, giving the consumer a total review of all wines he tasted during an event
and the exhibitor the contact of the visitor who liked his wine.
If that, as I do hope, becomes a standard on all wine events, I will save tons of paper
and time! Great Job !!
Find further informations about the runner up and third place as well as for the
"Smart Wine Glass" at http://wbis.eu/wbis-business-award/.
If you should want to know, who participated at the event, well as you probably
guessed, you can find the list at http://wbis.eu/participants/.
Besides the two seminar rooms where sessions were held simultaneously, making it
hard to decide which one to miss, there were fully catered coffee and lunch breaks
and a full dinner at the Augustiner on Saturday evening.
The relaxed atmosphere, great seminars with so much content, great people, being
fully taken care of from A to Z, in short the entire WBIS 2014 in Munich to me was an
outstanding event and an absolute success.
Having said this, yes it absolutely is worth the money, and yes, I am looking forward
to the WBIS 2015, wherever it may be.
Finally, if you think of opening a new business in the wine industry, consider talking to
some of the speakers of this event.
Following the mind set of the entire event,
please do not hesitate to share this article :-)
Stefan Metzner