These are fast times. I used to think about “getting back to normal” and then I started talking about what the “new normal” would look like. Now I don’t really know what normal is — it’s a “new now” every day.

Crossing the River, Feeling the Stones

Planning for the future in the “new now” era reminds me of the Chinese saying about crossing a river by feeling the stones with your feet. Know where you are going but be sure to take each step one at a time.

I am struck by the degree that the program for the Unified Symposium this year reflects the “new now” of the global economy. The environment has long been a concern, for example, but now there is a timely immediacy that spans the global to the local. The Unified examines the issues starting with Dr. Steven Ostoja’s Tuesday luncheon presentation on “Changing Climate, Extreme Weather and Water Scarcity: What It All Means for the Future of Farming” and extending into sessions on vineyard adaptation, living with climate change, and wild fire smoke issues.

Labor has long been a critical issue in the wine industry, but we often focused on vineyard labor and sometimes, as in Napa, the problem of attracting and retaining cellar staff in a region with sky-high living costs. The labor problem in the “new now,” however, extends throughout the organization, so human resource issues are front and center.

These are just two of the important “new now” issues the Unified will examine this year. Check out the complete program to see what else is on tap. And don’t miss the trade show, which is where new ideas are put into practice.

State of the Industry Now

I will be hosting the State of the Industry session on Wednesday morning and I think you can expect a lot of “new now” thinking from the all-star speaker lineup: Jeff Bitter (Allied Grape Browers), Danny Brager (Brager Beverage Alcohol Consulting), Steve Fredricks (Turrentine Brokerage), and Mario Zepponi (Zepponi & Company). Their collective expertise spans the issues — demand, supply, markets, and investment.

The State of the Industry session looks back at 2021 and ahead to 2022 and beyond but a “new now” problem is understanding exactly where we are at today given the big swings in wine demand, sales channels, and grape harvests that we have seen. It can be hard see through the thicket of short-term events to pick out the real longer-term trends. Prediction is difficult, they say — especially about the future when the present in unclear. But I guarantee that the team will have revealing insights to share.

New Now Sacramento

If you want to get a sense of “new now” maybe the best example of change and adaptation is the Unified itself. It starts with the newly remodeled SAFE Credit Union Convention Center. I haven’t seen it yet but I am told it is state of the art — bigger and better — and safer — than before. I am really looking forward to the new trade show and session spaces.

And then there is the health and safety element of the “new now.” Bringing together thousands of wine industry people during this pandemic and doing so responsibly requires organization, cooperation, and critical analysis.

As Cyril Penn reported recently on WineBusiness.com, the organizers have retained a health data analytics firm to model the Unified from a covid safety standpoint.

Epistemix develops simulations that approximate risk based on venue, audience and anticipated virus levels with proprietary software developed by a team from the University of Pittsburg School of Public Health. The firm partnered with the Exhibitions and Conferences Alliance a year ago and has worked on risk assessments for conferences and conventions in twenty cities. Reiser said Epistemix has been 95 percent accurate in making event projections thus far.

The models take into account the number of attendees and their vaccine and testing status, the prevalence of the covid variants, the mitigation protocols, the varieties of activities that the convention entails, and the various ways that the groups are likely to mix.

The modeling indicates Unified’s masking and vaccination/testing policy at the newly-remodeled Sacramento Convention Center will create a controlled environment with an expected case rate of one in ten-thousand, according to Lindsey Solden Reiser, PhD, Managing Director of Professional Services for Epistemix, Inc. That modeling assumes 12,000 people attend Unified.

If the projections are correct, the convention will have a much lower expected case rate than Sacramento itself, which has a projected rate of eight cases per ten-thousand persons.

Wine and the New Now

The point is that the new now of trade shows and conventions is very different from the old normal, where people like me mainly worried about mundane things like whether the slide-advance “clicker” would work for the PowerPoint presentation.  I am sure I never gave a moment’s thought to the idea that data modeling of pandemic spread would be needed or desired. But here we are now.

And I think the wine business is in the same situation. We need to analyze the new now and to try to understand it, but without assuming that it will somehow revert to the old normal or remain fixed in place as the new normal, either.

Better take off your shoes and socks. Time to get your feet wet.