When I was down in San Francisco a couple of weeks ago visiting with the Vinfolio folks I also happened to sit down with Jancis Robinson for half an hour (she was passing through SF on her way to IPNC). And the end of our chat she asked if I minded giving her a quick interview (on her super cool FLIP video, those are AWESOME!)
Anyway, here I am captured in the sunshine. Can you tell that I don’t get out in the sun very often?
Very nice interview. You deserve all the success and attention! Clearly a labor of love!
Just my $0.02, but I’m not sure I want more graphic design on the website. One of the very impressive beauties of CT is it’s extreme utilitarian functionality. It’s really cool to just play with sometimes! I would only want more graphic design if it didn’t bog anything down and didn’t take away from the ease of use.
If you want to add some fun fluff pieces, I would encourage making the “Winelist” feature more robust. Better able to group wines for printing and better font incorporation. I would like to routinely make mini-custom winelists depending on our guests for dinner. (Very small item for me, though)
Very nice interview. You come across on video as I pictured you from your writing. I expect the next growth spurt for CellarTracker is going to come from television exposure of the founder.
Trust me, and I think this is obvious from the current state of CellarTracker, I am a utilitarian at heart. Even with some new rounded corners and a prettier face, the hardcore edge of CT is not going away. Quite the opposite, part of what I want from the new design is a better design for jamming even more information on the screen (without overwhelming people) than I can today.
Anyway, now that I am largely wrapped up with my work on the Vinfolio Marketplace I am diving back headlong into the site redesign. And I am committed to offering the new site in parallel with the current site for at least a couple of months so that people will be able to try both, give me feedback, switch back and forth etc. I think there is a lot of feedback that current users might have on day 1, but I am much more interested in the “day 7” sort of feedback once people really get to using the new interface and learn. I want to do this in parallel so I can incorporate the top feedback items before I switch everyone over to the new UI.
Jancis is great. We have nothing signed, but we have had a number of productive conversations. Actually, I have had productive conversations with pretty much all of the major critics save one.
Good interview Eric.Reminds a little of our own chat over coffee—i.e in other words you came across very naturally.
And please remember you promised that if and when you come to London,you will let me know so that I can organise a dinner with some nice wines and food, with people who wish to thank you for the service you give to the wine community.