Development of an Enology Outreach Program

There has been a chronic underinvestment in extension and outreach for the wine industry. The specific goal of this proposal is the development of a comprehensive web site that will serve both researchers in enology and winery personnel. With the plethora of information sources currently available on the internet, searching effectively and efficiently for pertinent and accurate information has become challenging. This site will function as a means to link researchers across the United States and internationally that have an active program or interest in enology. The aim of the site is to share information within the research and production communities, facilitate collaboration, eliminate unnecessary redundancy, and foster communication on issues of regional, national or global importance. The site was renamed “Enology Access” and launched under this name with an inaugural webinar in August of 2008. This current year focused on analysis of site software packages with the goal of making sure that the interactive types of programming that we are planning could be supported by the software. Joomla was found to have the best capabilities including being able to interact with other types of programming. Videos, text content and an interactive comprehensive glossary have been uploaded to the site. Other materials are under development and will be uploaded soon. Researchers and institutions are being invited to register on the site and many have already done so. Webinars and live seminar broadcasting has been successfully implemented via the Adobe Connect software maintained on campus. Thus the site has been successfully launched and content is continuing to be developed. In the next year we will develop more interactive educational capabilities.