More than 2,000 people from throughout the industry and world are expected to attend the second annual Wine2Wine Conference, an innovative B2B event organized by Vinitaly and scheduled to be held in Verona, Italy Dec. 2 and 3rd, 2015.

“The spotlight this year will be on the U.S. – the world’s largest wine market,” said Stevie Kim who runs Vinitaly. America will be well represented through presentations by Danny Brager of Nielsen, Levi Dalton of the ‘I’ll Drink to That’ podcast, Cristina Mariani May of Banfi and  me–Steve Raye of Bevology.

I’ll be making two presentations in my session, one a workshop tutorial on U.S. price structures and the other being 20 tips on Understanding the Culture and Doing Business with Americans.  I’ll also be on a panel moderated by Gino Colangelo on the changing media landscape in the U.S. along with writer Leslie Gevirtz, Pierrick Bouquet, founder of La Nuit En Rosé event, and Adam Teeter of Vine Pair.

The event will span over 50 sessions on four separate tracks with a focus on practical information on what’s driving the market now and in the future. Particular areas of focus include emerging marketing tools and strategies, finance, communications and international markets, particularly the U.S.

A large number of sessions will also be dedicated to wine communications offering attendees practical information on how to better leverage communications through social media and state-of-the-art communication strategies. Among these, Robert Joseph, Founder of Wine International and Editor at Meininger’s Wine Business International together with Torben Mottes, VP Product Manager at Vivino, will address the critical question of who (or what) will be replacing traditional wine critics in the near future and who wine producers and distributors can turn to for a reliable opinion.

Wine2Wine will also debut several innovative sessions including speed-dating for wineries and prospective importers, and presentations that are more workshop than lecture.

“We decided on putting on Wine2Wine because we recognized that attendees at Vinitaly want to stay focused on the show floor meeting buyers. So while we had fabulous speakers in the past, we realized we would be providing better value to Vinitaly attendees and presenters by creating an entirely separate venue in which we can focus on the issues of the day,” concluded Kim.

Details and registration information on Wine2Wine can be found at http://www.wine2wine.net/event