CONFERENCING
If you've visited the Melbourne Gastronome page in the last few days, you may have noticed this logo in the right hand column. That's right, bloggers: the inaugural Eat. Drink. Blog. Australian Food and Drink Bloggers' Conference is being held here in Melbourne on Sunday 21 March 2010 (dovetailing nicely with the end of the Melbourne Food & Wine Festival, as an added incentive for you interstaters to make the trip to Melbourne). Ed Charles and several other bloggers have put in lots of hard work to get this thing up and running, with some great sessions planned and excellent sponsors on board. I'm looking forward to it!
Attendee numbers are strictly limited due to venue size, so be sure to register your interest if you haven't already done so, bloggers. Also, given that Melbourne Gastronome's Clark Kent alter ego is that of a lawyer, I've been asked to chair the panel on copyright, legality and ethics of blogging. I'm still finalising the content and format of the panel, so feel free to email me if you have any ideas or helpful suggestions.
PHOTOGRAPHING
Even if you can't make it to the conference itself, I urge you to join in the fun (if you're an Australian on New Zealander food/drink blogger) and enter the Food/Drink Blogger Photo Exhibition, sponsored by none other than SBS Food.
Details are as follows:
Enter your pictures
To enter simply submit your pictures to the Eat.Drink.Blog.2010 Flickr group (our judges are being sorted in the next few days)
DEADLINE: Midnight Sunday March 7 2010
The Guidelines and small print
1. Submissions are open to Australian and New Zealand food and drink blogs only.
2. Try and limit your submissions to half a dozen or less.
3. Each picture will be framed and the entrant will received the framed copy. At some point we will need to get hold of a high resolution copy of the pic for printing.
4. The pictures should be original works from 2009/2010, have been blogged and the copyright owned by the entrant.
5. In return for SBS Food’s support, I’ve said they can include each of the pictures in the exhibition in an online slideshow which will include a blogger profile on the SBS Food website. By entering you will be agreeing to this.
6. That’s about it. All entrants will be invited to the cocktail launch.
7. Judges cannot vote on their own work but we’d love them all to enter.
8. That’s all.
I've had a look through the photos already submitted and am completely intimidated by all the amazing DSLR photos. I don't consider myself a Photographer - when I take photos for the blog I just point and shoot, without staging any sort of photo shoot, using a camera that's small enough to fit into my jeans pocket.
Here's where I'd LOVE for your input, dear readers: can you suggest any of the photos I've put on the blog in 2009 or 2010 as potential exhibition entrants?? Provided I get a few suggestions, on Saturday I'll ask my sister Birdie (who unlike me studied photography) to choose her favourites from the suggestions: if your suggestion makes the cut, I'll happily give you the framed photograph as a present once the exhibition is over. :)
MAPPING
Oh, and one last thing while we're talking recent additions to the right hand column of the Melbourne Gastronome page: you may have noticed the latest browsing feature, the Melbourne Gastronome map, which plots all Melbourne venues that I've reviewed on a Google map (with links back to the reviews). Once you click on the map you can enter in your current destination, then click on 'Melbourne Gastronome' in the bottom left corner to show how far you are from the nearest venue I've reviewed. I hope it's a useful resource for you - my Google mapping skills are fairly rudimentary, and if you have any feedback I would welcome it.
One look at the map shows an embarrassing geographical bias in favour of the city and inner northern/eastern/southern suburbs in terms of places I've reviewed. Try as I might to shift blame onto the fact that I work in the city, live very close to the city and don't own a car, I acknowledge that a couple of trips to the outer suburbs and out west are PAINFULLY overdue. Any particular recommendations?
8 comments:
Hola! I'm terrible at taking photos (and not in the least bit qualified to judge the quality of them) but on a purely subjective level I really like the last photo you attached as part of this post. I also like the photo of the heirloom tomatoes you took in San Francisco, and the panino at Liaison because of the cool blue background.
Melbourne Gastronome for the win!
Oh! I don't use a DSLR! Get into it! Looking forward to catching up at the conference!
Ooo, I hope I can come to the conference. Thanks for alerting me - only just getting back to my blog means I've missed a lot of stuff (including hearing about the conference) but I've picked a good time with all this extra motivation around.
I struggle with photos too, given my camera is 5 years old - an absolute dinosaur.
You could try three amazing soups of the West: pho from Hung Vuong in Footscray, laksa from Laksa King in Flemington, and Bangladeshi haleem from Madhumoti, also in Footscray. Maybe not all in one day though!
There's also lots of fantastic Ethiopian restaurants around these parts.
Kyneton is so hot right now, and you can get there by friendly V-Line. The Royal George was great and we look forward to getting back to try the rest. But book ahead for Sunday lunch.
Out west try Delizia Cucina in Victoria St Seddon.
Claire, try The Abyssinian (http://www.theabyssinian.com.au/) on Racecourse Rd in Flemington. It is not too far out from the center of town but will creep out your google flags just a little!
Its got a good little reputation and you get to eat with your hands!
Oh, and I forget, The Duchess of Spotswood has recently opened in tiny little Spotswood and it is lovely! Andy the chef hails from The Station Hotel in Footscray and his food is really wonderful. It is only open as a day cafe at the moment with plans to extend into the evenings later.
Their menu is simple but consistently good quality. There was a pate on the menu when they opened that appeared to be simply heaven by all with me who ordered it, being pregnant I had to avoid! Plus, they serve SmallBatch coffee just to prove that they use quality ingredients!
That one should extend your map a little!
(While you are over this way, The Station Hotel is rumored to be good too!)
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