Global Online Video Whisky Tasting

Great idea in principle, happy to be involved.

Have to see what limits there are to technology e.g. how many video streams can we have in Skype for the average person (and if not adequate perhaps there are other tools we could look at e.g. WebEx, AccessGrid, EVO/SeeVogh which might be more suited e.g. the latter can have 50 participants at "lower" quality video - I doubt Skype could do that).

Also I guess availability of a particular expression of whisky might be an issue for some geographic locations so would need to be selected carefully or to overcome this, each location might want a coordinator to send samples to the other participants - that way, not every participant needs a bottle on hand to participate.

Perhaps the way to play it is to start small; run a session in one country and/or neighbouring countries to start (i.e. yours!) or maybe 2 distinct world-wide areas / time zones max, and assess the logistics and prove the concept before expanding to include others. Just my opinon of course!

@systemdown Awesome! I think we have something here.

Initially I thought it might be a good idea to get 4 or 5 people to come over to my place. Have another 4 or 5 assemble at the other location. That way both 'hosts' have a few people over.

Then connect the tasting through a video link --- so essentially you would need just one video link. We can prepare in advance so that both sides have the same expressions. Something easy to find, obviously.

And I think we can accomodate a time difference of up to 4-6 hours either side.

What do you think?

@tabarakRazvi I see what you were getting at now - I was imaging one video per participant. Of course if we can physically bring people together in one location (probably no problem for larger cities throughout the world) then that would definitely make it easier technololgy-wise.

However, we shouldn't exclude single participants in remote locations either (or those without any close-by whisky friends! I think I'm in that boat, unfortunately).

As for time difference, may not be an issue until you start talking between Australia/NZ and U.K.or U.S. with 10+ hours time shift for example. Easy for the Europeans / Africas / Mid-East though to hook up together.

As for North America / South America - they'd also have time zone issues with pretty much everybody unless they're on the eastern seaboard (to U.K. and Europe).

Anyway. Minor details!

RE: using easy to find whisky for a tasting - I'm not convinced that it'd be good in all cases - might be okay for new whisky drinkers, but the seasoned whisky anorak would probably want something more interesting wouldn't you say? But of course that means potential difficulty in sourcing - although if we swapped cabinet lists for example, we'd probably see a few "interesting" bottles that overlap.. I feel the whisky "anoraks" amongst us probably find a way to obtain what they want, no matter where they are, so hopefully not too big of an issue.

I already said to @tabarakRazvi that I may not be the best participant for this event (e.g. don't have the equipment) but I support the idea. Sounds a little bit complicated with the whisky-sharing and the different time zones but I guess for experienced users with a huge cabinet that is a nice idea.

Keep us informed plz :)