Aligning goals and attuning personalities: How to partner with the media.

Learn how to get your small business, or startup covered by the media. Michael Barnes (https://twitter.com/@outandabout), longtime reporter, and Out & About Social Columnist at the Austin American-Statesman, will lead an interactive workshop that demonstrates how to establish a rapport with members of the media and, subsequently, to pitch winning ideas to them.

This will be ATXI's first interactive workshop. Participants will be divided into cooperative teams. Each small team will choose a real person, place, event or trend to promote, then work up progressively more finely tuned media pitches designed, separately, for social media, email, phone and in-person exchanges with a real reporter, who will respond gently, but honestly to the pitches.

Winning pitches will be featured in Barnes’ reporting. Tip: Read his work in advance at http://society.blog.austin360.com and http://mystatesman.com , and follow him at @outandabout (Twitter), @outandaboutatx (Instagram), Out & About (Facebook) and Indelible Austin (Facebook).

6:00pm to 6:20pm: Meet & Greet Networking

6:20pm to 6:30pm: Introduction

6:30pm to 7:30pm: Presentation

7:30pm to 7:50pm: Q&A

7:55pm: Meeting ends and participants are requested to move to the main bar