[Chicago] local media

[Brian Ray]

On Jan 23, 2008, at 2:27 PM, Catherine Devlin wrote:

> Finally - this is a biggie - if anybody has any *personal* contacts
> with anybody in one of those publications, or any other local media
> outlet (TV, Chicago Tribune, etc.), please let me know!

Hello,

I  have been working with marketers in Chicago for a long time.   
Chicago is a busy city with lots of things going on--often times at  
the same time. You get accustom to having a menu of options of what  
you want to do every weekend. I appreciate your efforts in getting  
PyCon on everyone calender.

It so happens, I will be meeting with the publisher of Chicago Scene http://chicago-scene.com/ 
  on Friday afternoon. In regards to attracting the young hip scene to  
any event, he is the expert. I will ask his advice on PyCon.

Also, I like to think I have done good things for publicizing ChiPy  
over the years. Although, as many of you know, I would love to pat  
myself on the back; however, I really had little to do with its  
growing success beyond getting the ChiPy name out to the right people.  
What I mean by the "right" people is mostly the open source,  
scientific, academics, financial sleuths, hackers,  and collaborative  
"next-wave" technologists. In other words, its the linux user groups,  
the tech-social groups, Bar campers, schools, and the other similar  
language-oriented followings you should focus on. Encourage postings  
to these mailing lists, getting bloggers, and (most importantly) word  
of mouth, approaches. Most Python advocates will actively pursue  
information on PyCon.

Lastly, there is an aspect of the publicity of Python game that  
consists of dragging oft-times shy, brilliant, yet guarded Python  
users out of the woodwork.  And sometimes making PyCon appealing yet  
not to intimidating is also a key.

Its important to stay true to the Pythonic way. If it were a different  
trade show for a different language I may encourage direct mail, ad  
placement in the Red-Eye and The Reader. and some other avenues.  
However, I am not sure these tactics will have the same calculated  
effect in this case.

Good Luck, I will let you know what else I can find out.

Brian Ray
bray at sent.com
http://kazavoo.com/blog