Writing Boots

On communication, professional and otherwise.

Friday Happy Hour Video: Communicators to flock to the City on the Make

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IABC's World Conference is in Chicago next June for the first time in a long time. More than fifteen hundred professional communicators will be roaring into town all at once. Christ, watch your wallets!

Between conducting my Speechwriting Jam Session during one of the days and hosting pals from every continent every night, I'm clearing my schedule for the whole week, and the weekend after.

I'm pretty excited, but I did not sing the dippy version of "My Kind of Town" on IABC's official promo video. (Whoever did is not from Chicago, I can assure you.)

Here's my promo video for IABC's show in this hustler's town, this communicator's hog heaven.

Get your ass here. And pack your Writing Boots.

Chicago: Can we be elegant, simple and dumb all at the same time?

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Fancy New York developer named Ian Schrager buys the Ambassador East hotel in Chicago, and sez he's gonna restore the hotel's legendary Pump Room restaurant.

So far so good. Then the guy opens his yap, calls Chicago a "very elegant city."

We don't think of ourselves as elegant, but if he insists, we'll get out the cigarette holders.

Then he goes on.

"I think [Chicago] has probably the most beautiful architecture in all of America, and I just love the people, the simplicity, the basic honesty."

I think I know how the great Chicago columnist Mike Royko felt when novelist Nelson Algren referred to his writing as "visceral."

"He thinks I'm dumb," Royko concluded.

The general lesson here is, don't go into somebody else's city—or their house or their company, for that matter—and start making lots of authoritative editorial comments, even in praise.

Say you dig the joint, and leave it at that.