PS I Love You has launched the first wine community, variety advocacy site, which is intended to benefit its members as an added value.

For the last seven years, Petite Sirah, with the assistance of the advocacy group PS I Love You, has grown by leaps and bounds, but is still only supported by the few, the brave, and the most cult among all of them. Meanwhile, the variety has become everyone’s Pet Project. As it all continues to grow, the PSILY staff has had to become extremely creative, in order to continue growing without straining every available resource for people power.

Social media networking for PSILY has been been a long time coming, as I’ve internally played with it since 2005, with the launching of this blog. With the advent of Web 2.0, that process of driving change on the Internet to a more user friendly version as the second generation of web development and web design, it seemed that PS I Love You needed to act immediately, once the technology was released. To do this properly, however, it took a few years of actually working the system.

Web 2.0 is characterized as facilitating communication, information sharing, interoperability, user-centered design, and collaboration on the World Wide Web. Given these features, the benefits for members to manage their own content on a Petite Sirah community-based Website are simply a win-win process.

As with all non-profit groups, volunteers are critical to the success of any group. Without having a strong neighborhood membership from which to pull (members are based all over the states of California, Oregon (Spangler Vineyards), and Washington (Masset Winery), much of the workload and volunteerism have fallen on a few very strong shoulders, including my own. Realizing that each brand could manage its own content, this new Website (petitesirah.ning.com) was born.

Now, the challenge is to teach each brand how to best use this type of community for its own benefit. This will take less time, now, than having to update code for each winery as the need arises.

This doesn’t replace the PSILY Website. It simply is a new feature to the existing site.

As soon as the word was put out that there was a social media network, some early adopters joined the community. This immediate reaction just proved how long the members of PS I Love You have been ready, willing, and able to manage their own content. The vehicle for doing that is this new Website. The following early adopters, including the consumer portion of this group ~ referred to as grouPieS ~ have begun the PS Community site’s activities and news:

• Clayhouse Wines
• EOS
• GrapeCrafter
• Hardy Wallace (grouPieS)
• Honey Airborne (grouPieS)
• Judds Hill
• Lanza Vineyards
• Laurin Beckhusen (grouPieS)
• Lava Cap
• Line 39
• Lowell Jacobson (grouPieS)
• Miro Cellars
• Mounts Cellars
• Parducci Wine Cellars
• Ridge
• Robert Biale
• Stags Leap
• Suisun Valley GGA
• Vezer Family Vineyard
• Vina Robles
• Wooden Valley Winery

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