Gary Vaynerchuk in London
Photo credit: The hard working Tara Hunt

For those that do not know Gary, Wine Library TV, or Cork’d – let me take a second to catch you up to speed. Gary Vaynerchuk is the Director of Operations for Wine Library and began his career in wine at the ripe age of 17 (someone call the cops). He’s visited every major wine region on the planet, has probably tasted more wine this week than most people do in their adult lives, and is single handedly trying to “change the wine world” (or, trying to bring the community into every aspect of wine instead of it being an elitist club as it has been for so long).

Gary’s main mode of attack has been Wine Library TV, his daily video blog, where he tastes wine and rates it “live”. Even though he has personal relationships with most if not all of the vineyards that have their wine in his store, Gary does not hold back with his criticisms nor his accolades. His honesty, charisma, and passion for wine has made his video blog one of the top video blogs on the Internet and certainly the number one vlog for wine!

Cork’d, the brain-child of Dan Benjamin and Dan Cederholm, is a social network centered on keeping a wine journal and creating a list of wines you’d like to try based on what you’re friends have had. Cork’d is well built, beautifully designed, and bustling with active fans of wine.

For all of the above reasons – the merging of Gary Vaynerchuk’s empire with Cork’d is synergy++.

So now that you’re all caught up to speed, I thought I’d ask Gary a few questions about his acquisition of Cork’d and what it will mean for his current WLTV audience (of which I’ve been a member of since the very beginning).

When did you first discover Cork’d and when did you get interested it in as a property for Wine Library?

Gary: “Last May and last May! LOL. I knew this was it, I have been dreaming of launching a name I own, ratingwines.com, for 6 years (look it up) and when i saw Cork’d my dreams were dashed ”

I thought it was interesting that Gary knew he wanted to do something like Cork’d from the very beginning. This alone shows his dedication to his mantra or “changing the wine world”. Obviously the entire industry has been geared more towards paying attention to only a select few for wine ratings. Now, using Cork’d, one can see the consensus of the entire community rather than just one person using one rating system.

To show a little history here, Dan Benjamin shows that Wine Library was the longest running sponsor for Cork’d, which shows that Gary was always in the prime position to tap into this community and that Gary was always trying to help Cork’d become the best it possibly can be:

“One of our longest running advertisers was Wine Library TV, Gary Vaynerchuk’s excellent wine videocast. Each month, Gary would call us and buy out the top-spot in the Cork’d sidebar. Behind the scenes, he was always talking about partnering with us, coming up with ways we could enhance Cork’d, tie us in to his huge database of wines and wine labels – he really wanted to see Cork’d succeed.” — [source]

It is this dedication to helping something that he didn’t even own at the time that shows that Cork’d is in great hands going forward.

The synergy between Wine Library, Wine Library TV, your wine label service, and Cork’d are obvious! How long before we start to see all of these services mashed together, and what do you think the first thing to be integrated will be?

I’m a Vayniac – at Seneca Lake, NY
Get your shirt!

Gary: “Very soon! Give us 30-45 days to start wowing you!”

I’ve already seen and spoke to the WLTV crew about a few of the things they are working on. Obviously, being Viddler‘s Community Evangelist, I was interested to know how each episode of Wine Library TV (down to tasting each wine) would fit into this deal. Look for some pretty cool tie ins between Wine Library TV, Cork’d, and Viddler’s “linking to any moment” technology. However, as a “Vayniac”, I’m even more excited about having access to Gary’s tastings across this entire network of sites.

What part of this entire deal has you the most excited? I know for me its being able to watch the video of you tasting a wine that I may have had right from the Cork’d site. What about you?

Gary: “The fact that people can share and enjoy each other. Cork’d has given the infrastructure needed to create the wine community I dream of. I can’t wait to see wines have 100 reviews on them each, that will be fun!”

This also supports his mantra. At the end of each show, Gary emphasizes “You, with a little bit of me, we’re changing the wine world. Aren’t we?” Well now more than ever Gary is trying to put that power into the hands of the community rather than himself. Sure he’s the ring leader (and a very good one at that) but now all of us have the ability to say what we think about the wine’s we’re tasting and actually have it matter instead of falling on deaf ears.

You’ve got a ton of loyal Vayniacs that use the WineLibrary TV forums right now. Are all of us Vayniacs going to have to sign up to Cork’d and manage both accounts, or will you try to tie those two systems together somehow?

Gary: “I think the Vayniacs and everyone else will see the use. We will have a function that allows people to post a review on Cork’d and allow that review to go right to the WL Forum’s tasting notes, making it a whole 360 experience. My hope is people will see the huge value in using Cork’d though since it will also cellar your wines, keep a wish list, ect.”

The Cork’d blog (currently going through some DNS issues) has been silent for awhile, and never really took off. Do you see this as having more potential than just a random post every now and then? Do you have any plans for the Cork’d blog? I know you have a wine related blog already – can they be tied together somehow or will they remain separate?

Gary: “Not sure on this front but I think this is Cork’d's voice and it needs to be talkative. We mostly want to share thoughts and interact, I’m sure we will explore all possibilities.”

I’m a big proponent of blogging so I hope to see some of Cork’d's future plans, updates, and community efforts verbalized through their blog and on WLTV.

What will the JETS record be this year now that you’ve gone to the draft?

Gary: “16-0 with an easy win over the EAGLES;) honestly the 1st 2 games are brutal but a 10-6 is possible for sure!”

I’m pretty sure that jab is directed at Chris but I’ll let him respond.

Thanks for taking the time to answer a few questions Gary. Personally I look forward to the developments that are sure to come in the near future to tie all of these great things together and really help us change the wine world one day at a time.

Additional coverage

There has been a pretty good amount of coverage since this acquisition was announced. Dan Cederholm and Dan Benjamin both wrote some really great background on the entire deal. Read Cederholm’s post and Benjamin’s post on their personal blogs. CenterNetworks was the first to get wind of this deal, but without having all the specifics they covered only the redesign of Wine Library TV’s main site. I’m thinking that someone over there is definitely doing their job. Mashable covered the actual deal but failed to get into many specifics and even got a few of their facts wrong. I think it is interesting to see, when you have inside knowledge of a “deal”, just how accurate some of these stories are (or are not). All in all I think the best coverage comes from those that keep their ear to the ground, are willing to ask for information before they post it, and strive to get every fact straight before they are willing to publish.

Update: Here is a photo of Gary wearing a Viddler shirt on Digg Nation.

[slug]interview-gary-vaynerchuk[/slug]

I suppose to best cover what I thought of the meetup, I’ll split it into “the good” and “the bad”. Though – more fittingly “the bad” should be labeled as “things I’d change for May”.

The good

The meetup is free! It isn’t everyday that you can attend a well organized, professional meetup like this without flying across the country, booking a hotel room, and paying some large entrance fee. Granted the meetup only lasts about two hours by design, but that is actually a good thing.

The meetup is structured in such a way that it is interactive, collaborative, and yet has enough constraints to not become a free-for-all where time could definitely be wasted, and focus lost. I saw many parallels between this meetup and Web2Open (or any *Camp for that matter) in that while someone “has the floor”, the audience can steer the discussion in any direction it’d prefer simply by asking questions.

Photo Credit: Eileen Barroso, Copyright: CU

The venue, Uris Hall at Columbia University on the west side of New York City, is nearly the perfect fit for the size of the audience and the meetup itself. A large projector and a podium for the presenter make it probably the best way to demo and take questions. Obviously, this being a classroom, makes it the perfect design for a meetup like this.

Yaron Samid, of Pando, is the meetup organizer and also moderates the meetup. I think Yaron does a superb job of keeping the discussion moving forward, getting the audience involved in the conversation, and treating everyone from presenter to attendee with respect. He also doesn’t try to promote himself or his company while he is moderating the meetup, something I’ve seen done before and never quite felt right. I’ve been to many meetups, expos, and events this year and Yaron is probably the best meetup organizer/moderator I’ve seen yet.

The bad

Or – what I think could be adjusted over the next few meetups.

Each presenter is given five minutes to demo their product/service to the audience, and then the audience is given five minutes to ask questions of the presenter. I like this balance of time – but I’d much rather see less presenters and more time allotted for demoing and Q & A. I think the meetup would benefit greatly by reducing the number of presenters each month by half, and allowing double the amount of time for demo and questions. How can you possibly demo a rich application with hundreds of features in five minutes? Ten minutes may still not be enough time, but at least it’d be enough time to give the highlights. Several of the demos that were given at this particular meetup, were cut short due to time – and although people can just go look at these sites themselves when they get home – I think that being able to show off the product/service in full would make for much better Q&A afterwards.

The Q&A session afterwards was nice, but I almost like the way that the panels handled it at South by Southwest a little better. People approached a microphone and stood in line waiting their turn. Although this venue doesn’t really adapt itself to that – perhaps raising your hand and leaving it up should be the way you’d be “in line”. Or even standing – instead of people just yelling out questions. I saw one person who left their comments on Meetup.com about the event say that they thought some of the questions got to be a little “snarky”. I agree. Though the attendees aren’t journalists trying to make nice – the hard questions are the ones that people want to ask the most. I’d love to see a little more structure here – but overall it seemed to work well.

And finally, there was supposed to be time for “announcements” by the attendees at the end. Some people were looking to hire, some were looking for jobs, others wanted to announce something. I think that this is a huge problem to solve since it’d be nearly impossible to give everyone in the room the time they need. That, and once the presentations and Q&A are over, many people left rather quickly. Perhaps an announcement could be given at the beginning, that any person/company with an announcement should stay afterwards and would be given 30 seconds. Then they’d at least have the opportunity to say something like – “I’m looking for a good graphic designer, please see me if you’re interested.”. This opportunity was lost this time – and I heard many people expressing that they were upset about that.

Photo Credit: Yaron Samid
Geno from AOL and I

Oh, one more thing that I’m just going to inject into this post – the NY Video 2.0 Meetup needs a photographer to attend. Many events on the west coast get great photo coverage – and I’m sure video coverage won’t be too big of an issue – but I’ve yet to find many photos of the event online so I think that someone should step up to the plate that lives in or near NYC.

Note: If you were at the NY Video 2.0 Meetup in New York and had an announcement – run over to Viddler, create a free account, use our “record with webcam” feature and put your announcement there. Be sure to share it with me or tag it with video2meetup, and I’ll try to get it in from of Yaron so that we can help broadcast those announcements to all the attendees.

Conclusion

If you have the chance to get to one of these meetups, I highly recommend it. I had a great time – I love trying to support east coast events like this, and it was a good opportunity to meet people that work in our industry at some level. I’m looking forward to the next time I have the opportunity to meetup.

If you’d like to watch all of the presentations I was able to record them all on video and put them on Viddler. For a recap in text-form, I recommend reading through CenterNetworks coverage of the event.

[tags]new york city, nyc, video 2.0, meetup, yaron samid, centernetworks, video, viddler, columbia university[/tags]
[slug]nyvideo2meetup-thoughts[/slug]