Bloggers who want to break into food, wine and travel will have an excellent opportunity to get a sample of these hot genres at The Taste of Travel symposium presented by the BC Association of Travel Writers.
The Taste of Travel is an all-day event at the River Rock Casino Resort in Richmond, BC on Saturday, May 17th. The program is designed to inspire you to eat, drink, write and shoot on your way around the world.
As the BCATW Communications Director, I feel inspired to shamelessly promote the event I’m helping to organize, so here goes.
Words and Pictures
Our 
conference room is beautiful, with high windows that overlook yachting docks on the Fraser River, all the better to practice photographing our lunch following a food photography seminar by Craig Minielly. Later, we’ll upload our favourite shots in a food photo contest to be judged by Craig.
Wine Blog Award winner and keynote speaker Lauren Mowery will tell us about her approach to writing about food, wine, tea and coffee while on the road. Based in New York and writing for the Village Voice and fodors.com, Lauren will be on her own tour of BC, sniffing out stories. I wonder what she’ll cook up.
Eric Pateman of Edible Canada, Sonu Purhar of Vancouver Tourism, author Jennifer Schelland Travel Guru Percy von Lipinski are the ingredients for an industry panel that will serve up ideas about how to pitch, write and sell stories about following our palates.
Later, after the drawing prizes are handed out and the photos contest winner is announced, we’ll get to the most fun part: a tasting.
Taste of Travel Tasting
And not just any tasting, but a speed tasting. You’ve heard of speed dating? This is like speed dating but with winemakers.
In ten minute increments, groups will move from one BC wine, beer and spirits producer to the next to fill up on tastes, stories and contacts. After an hour, the tasting will turn into a casual mixer for food pairing and more networking.
Attendance fees include lunch, dessert, and the tasting, and you might even get lucky with the drawings.
Non members are welcome, so please register here. The early-bird price of $60 lasts until April 15th, then it goes up to $70.
The River Rock is offering BCATW a $129 rate but they’re booking up fast.
Please help us promote The Taste of Travel on social media using the #bcatw2014 hashtag and the http://bcatw.org/bcatw2014 link.
If you can’t attend in person, you’ll be able to watch it live on Google Hangouts on Air. Stay tuned for that!
See you at The Taste of Travel Symposium!