The response on an alternative to the Melbourne Food & Wine festival appears to be positive. Another Outspoken Female suggested a committee which apparently is code for a glass of wine and food at the Gertrude Street Enoteca (free wireless; we’ll be the ones with Mac Powerbooks) on Thursday 8th March 12.30ish and all comers are welcome (and at the very least we will discover whether or not she really is a Nazi).
If you remember, AOF noted that the session Out of the Frying Pan: A Conference on the future of food and media totally ignores all new media.
Here are some ideas:
1. An online writing project where bloggers map out the online (and possible offline) food media landscape in a group wiki on a site foodbloggersguide.com. We can profile each other, make entries about non-blog sites, restaurant listing sites, recipe sites. Inevitably a lot of content will be about global sites.
2. Melbourne food bloggers meet properly for breakfast between 17 and 30 March.
3. Jamie over at The Breakfast Blog reckons we stage the filiming of a reality-TV-blogosphere-YouTube mashup along side a MFWF event. He says: “Our recipe could be:
1 cup of Jamie’s Kitchen
2 cups of Dancing with the Stars
1 teaspoon of Borat
And a dash of Steven Seagal…
4. Jamie: Or, we could gatecrash some event, Chaser-style, and start asking funny (but pointed) questions… again, on video.
5. Jamie: Or, maybe we need to create our own Borat? A food critic from Khazakstahn? That has great potential 
6. Some time in the future stage the Melbourne Alternative Food Festival. We take over some godforsaken laneway and have proper hawker food and a few modern variations – stuff cooked in liquid nitrogen. Lord mayor John So has his own stall.
7. Your ideas
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{ 14 comments… read them below or add one }
Well I guess I could have passed for an aryan as a child. But will i critique the unhealthy food on your plate…hmmm?
I haven’t met a wiki yet, though I have heard of the magical beast. Images of Borat wrestling do rather put me off my tofu burger though.
See you on Thursday with macbook and a smile.
I’m glad it’s a late breakfast as I’ve got night classes that night…and though I’ll also have a shiny new macbook, the smile is dependent on whether or not I get lost trying to find the venue!
Unfortunately me and my non-mac-hiavellian ways (I do sway to a PC beat) will be at work.
But I am more than happy to participate, so keep me posted!
I’ll have to be with you all in spirit – so make sure you send out Qld-strength vibes. Have fun.
Janet.
AOF, see you then I I think we need to consider whether we need to book a table or not. Unhealthy food me? I’m even thinking of cycling.
Ellie, glad you can make it and have solved your computer problems with a MAc.
Mellie, shame you can’t make it bt keep reading for info.
Janet, will send out Qld vibes.
Despite my claim that lunch is a wasted opportunity for breakfast, I am pre-booked for lunch on that day so cannot make it. You have some of my interim stupid ideas, and I am keen to be involved, and to do stuff, which is dangerous because now you, the committee, can allocate all unsavoury tasks to me.
Firstly, I’m typing this one-handed as I shake my other fist at you all for being in a nation which has more than one food blogger and therefore can breakfast together.
Secondly, as an idea for the festival, instead of laneway/John So action (at least for the first year), how about some guerilla eating in the style of Ghetto Gourmet http://www.theghet.com/website/ I’m not sure how you’d pull this off and remain in the least bit inclusive, but it would be cheaper than insuring something. Maybe some sort of “flash mob” mass picnic.
Phil,
My thoughs are with you but at least you have all that great street food and few pretentious food festivals. Flash mob mass eating might be the idea. like it.
Sounds like a great plan. Unfort I wont be able to make it just yet as am now tied down with a new bub, looking fwd to hearing what you come up with!
I will be with you in spirit as I am currently enjoying some grey, drab, rainy English weather.
Jamie, Sorry about the clas the date suggestion just evolved from some emails with AOF but I’m sure we will have the Food fest follow-up.
Ang,
Been meaning to say congratulations but i’ve had some problems with my bloger identity post the introduction of the new version.
Cin
Lucky you. If you get time try tamarind the only two Michelin Star Indian restaurant and apparentlt quite good value.
Dear Ed,
Been reading your comments on Tomato and Food Nazi with interest regarding the “Frying Pan” event.
The final session of the day actually was devoted to the growing clash between traditional media and the new emerging sources for food information be they blogs, mobile access, IPTV and the commercialization of the blogging genre.
Also I find it strange you make comments about the Festival ignoring bloggers when I emailed you c/o the Tomato website and asked you to participate on this panel. We would have loved to have had you on that panel!
The eventual line-up included the likes of Helen Razer and Mike Van Niekirk who both have a fair amount of online experience along with a food TV producer, glossy food mag editor, food book publisher, etc. Van Niekirk’s claim that commercial TV would be dead in five years was one of the more interesting statements of the session.
I also know that the audience contained at least a couple of bloggers – and obviously all sessions were open to comments from the floor.
As Duncan notes there were numerous mentions of blogging and its potential across the sessions and we’d love to do more next year – either within Frying Pan with a dedicated session… or as part of the general festival. We take an inclusive attitude to interesting well-run events so happy to chat about ideas for events you might want to run as part of the Festival.
I also should name-check Jason Wright at this point. Jason is the NYC based web-designer who co-presented with Will Goldfarb at MasterClass. The session explored their adventures in cyberspace and the latest generation of their virtual restaurant. We reckon it’s the first time an international chef guest has bought at designer, rather than a sous chef, to help him! It will not be the last!
We are also keen to keep all those bloggers who are interested updated with Festival announcements. This was the first year that we started to compile a dedicated media list of online media and we’d love that to grow. If any one wants to email us so we can add them to out media database that would be great. Send your details (name, blog title, email address and mobile) to the Festival at ann@foodfest.com.au. I’d appreciate if you could circulate this request around those bloggers that you know.
All the best,
Matt
PS Also please tell Mellie that i was eating som tum from Ying Thai at the Thai Food Festival – and that Jennifer “Bones” McLagan was the foodie celeb she saw!
Thanks for the comments Matt. I don’t know what happened but I definately didn’t recieve the email although Susan Bugg from the Herald Sun did call to ask if it was OK to give you my phone number, which I said it was. Saying that though I’ve been so bloody busy that I even had to cancel my Wine group lunch with Burgundies this week and haven’t been kite surfing for a month so probably wouldn’t have made it (as you can probably tell from my lack of blogging). I will post on this soon but I think the problem I have is that none of the people speaking had, tp my knowleddge, any experience of food blogging. A lot of what is said about blogging, especially foood blogging, is simply people who have experience in a different part of the food media giving their opinion and often simply wrong and misinformed. I’m trying to get a wiki going for what we planned to do online although technology seems to be getting in the way right now!
Matt also posted the same comment on my blog which I responded to in what I now see by reading yours, is a similar vein.
I noticed the date of my original post – 6 weeks ago – and some time after the actual event!