Notes from the SATW NE-ACC Meeting: Why Pittsburgh Rocks

[Ed Wetschler]

1. Pittsburgh’s three rivers, golden church cupolas and green/futuristic buildings sparkled during a week of sunny skies. “Boy, did I get some great photos,” a photographer told me. Hey, even writers got great photos.
2. The restaurants sparkled, too. Never before have so many jaded travel media folks come back from a  dine-around with so much praise.
3. This was a joint meeting with the Atlantic-Caribbean and Northeast chapters. Aside from the professional pluses and the pleasure of getting to know so many good people from the other East Coast chapter, the ACC contingent balanced the northeastern accents with a few drawls and some much-needed “r” sounds in  words like “car.”
4. Useful professional development sessions, thanks to excellent panelists.
5. The Marketplace setup at the Phipps Conservatory pleased Associates, Actives and sponsors. A rare trifecta.
6. The Andy Warhol Museum, the Carnegie Art and Natural History museums, the Frick Art & Historical Center, the Mattress Factory and other attractions were wonderful.
7. Ditto the prosciutto, biscotti, cheeses and chocolates on The Strip.
8. It was reassuring to know that if anyone got sick or injured, we were in a city where, thanks to the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, 53 percent of the locals are medical doctors.
9. This being June, the Steelers were off somewhere playing golf.
10. The VisitPittsburgh people, meeting sponsors and several scores of SATW volunteers really made it all happen.

[Darryl Musick]

Completely agree, Ed. Pittsburgh is a wonderful town.

[Allan Lynch]

Hi Ed,

 

I attended the Travel Classics conference in Dublin in June. And in July I was in the Canadian Rockies on a golf fam with seven US golf writers. In Ireland we had 30 writers - mostly US-based - at the conference. I think seven did a post conference tour - a colleague from California and I had a car and bumped into the group twice. In Ireland and in Alberta all of the writers wondered how you cover a destination when so many of your competitors are about?

 

The SATW conference was mentioned. While there were SATW members or former members in both groups, no one was very positive about the experience of travelling around a city with 20-40-50 or more of their professional colleagues and competitors. On a fam trip, at least the hosts have worked to keep direct competitors from receiving invitations. 

 

The general consciences was that if you ask a good question along the way, everyone writes it down and uses the answer or angle in their piece. A number of photographers and writer/photographers have complained that if you get a good angle on a shot, they have a dozen standing over their shoulder using it for their work.

 

So it seems difficult to work this way. And I have also heard from a couple of destinations that the cost of hosting so many writers is becoming prohibitive and the return on investment hasn't been or isn't there. 

Your thoughts?

 

[Ed Wetschler]

Allan, these are all valid comments about the drawbacks of group travel. The observation that photographers made about their colleagues copying their shots is particularly spot on. I sometimes find myself doing it, too, and I cringe at my own bad behavior. 

When we surveyed chapter members about these meetings, though, we found that the professional development and networking were as important as -- and for many people, more important than -- the destination. That's certainly how I felt about the Guadalajara meeting, because Guadalajara just doesn't send me as much as other parts of Mexico.

As for Pittsburgh, we just lucked out. I knew the city well, but most people didn't, and they were blown away. Will they all write the same story? I think that not even the ones who took the same daytrips will write the same stories. I often look at things I wrote and at things other writers on the same tours wrote, and I wonder if we were on the same planet. That's not a knock on them at all; it's just that we each filter everything through our own sensibilities. Do that too much, of course, and we turn into the blind Indians who tried to describe an elephant. 

[Allan Lynch]

Hi again,

 

Some people think I'm argumentative, I prefer to think of taking on the role as Devil's Advocate ...

 

When it comes to networking, I believe effective networking helps you move up. I've been chair of my provincial writers' federation, I've been a board member of several other professional writers' groups, so I'm never short on having other writers to hang out with. But when it comes to professional networking, I want to hang out with editors, people who can assign me stories and contribute to my bottom line. Hanging with other writers mostly ends up in a bitch session about how things aren't what they used to be.

 

And I agree that everyone sees a destination differently. I'm reading my colleague's daily postings of our trip drive around Ireland and astonished and how quietly and throughly he researched places. But even with all of us having a different vision of a place still muddies the waters for readers.