Art Predator on the Prowl for Murphy-Goode Wine Blogging Job

So I know you’re wondering, “what’s up with this Murphy-Goode wine blogging job you’re going for?”

Glad you asked! In this June 5 LA Times article, Murphy-Goode winemaker Dave Ready Jr admits they jumped on the “best job in the world” idea and made it their own by offering $10,000 a month for six months and a house in Healdsburg in the heart of Sonoma County wine country to the winning applicant via a 60 second video:

Ready said he got the idea of hiring a “lifestyle correspondent” via video application from the Australian state of Queensland. Early this year, tourism officials there caused an online sensation by inviting people to submit videos for “The Best Job in the World.” The gig: spending six months as caretaker of a palm-fringed island surrounded by azure sea, and using blogs, video updates, photo diaries and other online media to promote tourism. More than 34,000 people applied for the roughly $120,000 job, which went to Ben Southall, a self-described adventurer from Britain.

“We thought, ‘Wow, can we apply this to the wine industry?’ I guess we can,” Ready said as applicants joined him in sipping samples of Murphy-Goode wine. Many said they had learned of the job — which calls for an imaginative, inquisitive “people person” who is also a communications whiz — through e-mail lists or from friends.

With the deadline looming on Friday, Murphy-Goode has over 1300 videos posted on their website; they’ve warned they won’t accept more than 5,000. But according to Ready:

the main weakness among the applicants so far was their inability to show a passion for wine or for life in the bucolic Alexander Valley, not their mastery of the Web as a marketing tool.

Hmmn passion, passion, passion…I just think that’s an Art Predator attribute if there ever was one. And passion for wine? For life in the great outdoors in a special place like the Alexander Valley? Hhmmmm, I would say while there’s plenty of evidence for that all over this blog, it’s gonna be up to me to lead the Murphy-Goode folks there!  And I need to make sure that comes through in my video as we finish editing it!

Because, honestly? The tech stuff and how to use social media stuff can be learned rather quickly by anyone who’s a good writer.

Being passionate, enthusiastic? Ahhh, now see, that I have learned, my friends, that I have learned is one of my gifts. It was my passion and enthusiasm, the poetry I had for describing coffee which got me a tasting room job at Ridge Winery in my early 20s.

I am like the Pied Piper, leading my charge on bicycles with 50 people along for the ride in Santa suits or prom dresses, by organizing community cleanups and planting days, or simply in the college classroom, keeping my students awake, showing them how to be ALIVE, encouraging them to be human. To lead a life full of aesthetic, participatory experiences, not anaesthetic spectator ones.

Hmmn, now isn’t that what social media is all about anyway? Being human and interacting with each other?