Whew! What a day! Ohio State Extension hosted a terrific program on Monday at the Lodge. A whole day jam-packed with the big-hitters in Ohio – Dr. Mike Ellie, Dr. Imed Dami, and Todd Steiner – and they even let me jump in with a few comments on using technology in the vineyard and winery. As I promised in the last post, I’ll provide the presentation here for your perusal at your leisure (see below). Wines and Vines covered this topic a few years ago with great detail, and the article there is definitely worth a read.
Leave any comments on apps or software that you like to use in your operation. What helps you organize your business? I say there’s no wrong way, as long as it makes sense to those in your operation and you maintain consistency in record-keeping.
Enjoy!
Bringing Smartphones and Tablets into the Vineyard and Winery
P.S. I just came across this Growing Produce article on Trimble’s Connected Farm app. Looks very useful, but you’d have to inquire about the cost.
From Class to Glass 
Thanks for the link to the helpful presentation. We have been using Vitsmarter and have found it useful. I can think of all kinds of uses for google forms now…. recording responses from harvest worker invitations, recording pruning weight data, field observations….. where to start!
Thanks, Ross, for the input! I’d love to know more on the usefulness of Vitsmarter. Do you use it for daily operations or tracking? Do your employees use it?
Thank you for the comment!
So far, we have used Vitsmarter primarily as a searchable record of past tasks that we can use while planning (such as, “how many buds did we leave last year and how long did the pruning take?”). To a lesser extent, we have used it to generate printed work orders with instructions in the comments section so that everyone on the team is clear on the parameters for the task at hand (these instructions also help with the record aspect). I can definitely foresee a day when we use the application itself as a communication tool between managers and employees, but we don’t fully utilize it that way currently.