As you might already know, I'm taking a super-neat class this quarter called "Twitter and Organizational Communications." For those of you on Twitter, we're @uwtwtrbook and often tag #uwtwtrbook. The purpose of the class is to write a book on Twitter. Cool, huh? I can see my name in print already! We've got a huge repository on the class blog at http://twitter09.wordpress.com already, so if you're interested in Twitter it's worth a look.
Each of us is to contribute a chapter for the book and I got the green light to write on how the wine industry uses Twitter. How awesome is that? I already drink wine while I'm on Twitter, so I'm practically an expert.
Over the next few weeks, I'm going to dive into research (with a glass of red, of course) and determine how best wineries and wine associations use Twitter all over the world to promote, engage and listen. I'm just breaking ground on finding sources now, so if you have any connections to wineries that use Twitter, send them my way! I'm planning on hitting the road for some interviews, so I'll take event and itinerary recommendations as well.
And I'll be drinking a lot of wine just to make sure I... um... understand the industry.
For all of you who lost me at #uwtwtrbook, you might read Paul Constant's Twitter article in The Stranger. Upon learning that the UW is hosting a class on Twitter, one article commenter wrote, "...please send me a list of anybody who actually signs up for that Twitter class, so that for future reference we can all remember that they have zero credibility in anything they do, ever. Which, since they're taking a class on Twitter, will probably not be much of anything but building their thumb muscles and already bloated conceit."
So yeah, I'm super stoked about writing this book.