Wine Country Goes High Tech

ST. HELENA, CALIFORNIA - The Napa Valley Vintners Association knows how to push the right buttons--and this season, they're digital.

The recent 23rd annual Napa Valley Wine Auction went uncharacteristically high-tech while raising $6.47 million for charities. Since security is tight at the world's largest charity auction, this year all 2000 attendees at the grand four-day food and wine feast wore a lanyard with a tiny IButton.

Press Palm to Enter

The lanyard, a chain necklace with a thumb-size plastic fob that included a 64K flash memory button, was issued to each guest. At the gate, a greeter held the button to a reader connected to a Palm M130 personal digital assistant. The PDA noted the admission dates and times allowed for that particular pass.

Scanning produced either a "Welcome" message or an alert, routing the guest to a troubleshooting desk. Permitted admission times were also discreetly color-coded onto the fob, as a nondigital backup in case of unforeseen technical problems.

The process was the brainchild of Ligouri Associates, the Napa, California, security consultants to the Napa Valley Vintners Association. It was used for the first time this year.

"I felt like I had to go around the world to assemble that device," says Connie Kreighbaum, the information systems executive with Ligouri Associates. The actual plastic housing I found in Australia, the memory button came from IButton, and the scanning device to read the button came from Security Products of Coursegold, California.

"We had less than a month to assemble more than six thousand admissions devices," Kreighbaum says. "Total cost for each was about $4, but that's a bargain since they can be used again and again."

Tech Dubbed Chic

Kreighbaum and a staff of volunteers spent a weekend programming the buttons. The process amounted to syncing each one's specific days of admission to the Palm reader.

Best of all, the Napa Valley Wine Auction experienced no technical glitches.

Despite attendance by thousands of paddle holders and other guests who came either for the full event or for particular single days, hundreds of volunteers and staffers, and a valley full of vintners, only a handful of participants were sent to the troubleshooting desk when seeking admission.

The high-flying guests actually liked the convenience and unobtrusiveness of the lanyards, Kreighbaum says. And the auction, a nonprofit charity event, now has access to a reusable device that accurately tallies attendance and helps with planning future auctions.

No doubt attendees were pleased. People who spend $2500 per couple for admission to an invitation-only affair, and tens of thousands of dollars on wine lots, may not appreciate having to put a tacky badge on a $10,000 designer gown.

Sonoma Digitizes

Not to be outdone, this year's Sonoma County Showcase of Wine and Food, its annual wine auction for county charities, featured instant coverage on the Web with photos uploaded in real time using the Sanyo 8100 camera phone.

"We are excited about being one of the first media outlets to use portable state-of-the-art cellular digital technology as a live publishing mechanism," says Michael DeLoach, who with Gina Gallo hosts Wine Country Live on radio and the Web.

"We can bring this exclusive event to Wine and Food fans worldwide pictorially, as it happens," DeLoach says.

Images were posted on a Yahoo Groups page as the charity auction unfolded. With an attendance of about 1500 people and a weekend package costing $1525 per couple, the Sonoma event is much more low-key than the Napa auction and raised a more modest $330,000.

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