I may have been a little detached compared to the average attendee at last weekend’s Chicago Media Future Conference.  Then again, the last time I wrote something for print that wasn’t a book, was early 2005.  People were genuinely getting worked up, relative to what you normally see at a tech-related conference.  In many ways, it reminded me more of the interaction that goes on between the panel and audience at a comic book convention (I’ve been on a few), in terms of emotion overcoming order and, to a degree, common sense.

People were so wound up, as everyone started to sit down, somebody passed out fliers about what the topics were and what he thought the panelists ought to say.  He wasn’t part of the event.  Maybe he was just mad he wasn’t asked to be on the panel.  I really don’t know, and I can’t decide whether I think it was funny or psychotic.  It was a good indicator of how riled up people were going to get, though. (more…)

Chicago’s most famous figure in the online journalism doesn’t sit at the Tribune or the Sun-Times. Instead, EveryBlock’s Adrian Holovaty captures the imagination of that beleaguered industry. Holovaty made big waves as part of the re-design team for the Lawrence (Kansas) Journal-World &News, parlayed that into a job at the Washington Post, where he managed to swing a telecommute from Chicago. You probably first heard his name either for his hand in creating the Django web famework (named after this Django, as opposed to the coffin dragging, gunslinging Django)classic mashup, or in relation to ChicagoCrime.org. ChicagoCrime.org was a sort of pilot episode for EveryBlock.com. EveryBlock has been famously funded by a $1.1 million grant from the Knight Foundation. As the timeframe attached to that grant draws closer to it’s end, a lot of people have been wondering if Holovaty will be switching venues, much of this stemming from a Valleywag report of Google courting him (to say Holovaty strongly denies… well, scroll down and see for yourself).

Holovaty was kind enough to engage Chicago Tech News in a discussion about EveryBlock, potential future revenue models and staying in Chicago. Ironically enough, he does contrast Google News with EveryBlock very early in the discussion. (more…)