Growers are responsible for cultivating the vines, eradicating disease, and controlling, to the best of their ability, things such as temperature and oxidation. They must perform constant inspections and evaluations and collect vast amounts of data regarding the number of buds on a vine, when the buds break, when the berries flower, and the growth stage of each vine.

The job of collecting this data at the Columbia Crest vineyard goes to Wylie's team of three viticulturists and four technicians. When these men and women originally went out amongst the rows of vines to gather this data, they carried paper forms on clipboards, writing in their observations by hand. Around one or two o'clock in the afternoon, they'd return to the office in order to have enough time to enter their data into a Microsoft Access database before the end of the workday. There weren't enough computers for everyone, however, so there was a constant hover pattern around the five computers with people repeatedly asking, "Are you done yet?"

Not only was this task of entering data dull and repetitive, it cut into the time the workers could spend out in the field actually collecting the data. Highly trained viticulturists were spending a good two hours per day doing simple data entry work, which wasn't cost effective for the company or a heck of a lot of fun for the men and women doing the job.

Automating the data collection process
One of Eric Wylie's first goals when he started with Stimson Lane back in 1990 was to automate the data collection process. Giving everyone laptops to carry out into the vineyard was clearly an absurd notion. Instead, Wylie begin by outfitting a few of the viticulturists with Apple Newtons. To this day, Wylie believes the Newton had a great operating system, but ultimately the device proved too bulky. They experimented with more dedicated systems but weren't very happy with the result. The viticulturists and technicians at Columbia Crest saw one model of personal digital assistant after another pass through their hands until they came across Palm computers.

Powerful, effective, and relatively inexpensive, Wylie knew he had a winner. Each member of the staff--including the viticulturists and technicians, the summer interns, and the two employees in grower's services--was outfitted with one of Palm, Inc.'s original PalmPilots. As Palm released new products, the company gradually upgraded. Today they use all varieties of Palm devices, including a couple of PalmPilot Professionals that are still in working order.

Once the hardware was chosen, Wylie sought out the best piece of software to meet the vineyard's needs. Eventually it came down to Pumatech Software's Satellite Forms, at http://www.pumatech.com/Satellite_Forms_Standard.html. The advantage of this particular Palm application is that it allowed the staff at Columbia Crest to work on a desktop computer to create a custom form specific to their needs. With the help of an easy-to-use Application Designer, they were able to design an appropriate user interface by dragging and dropping Satellite Forms controls. They were then able to add functionality by setting control properties, actions, and filters. Once the design was complete, the form was installed on each employee's Palm device.