How did that get published in Forbes?

The Fact Sheet

In 2018 URISA published a Fact Sheet about open source GIS. One sentence in the sheet reads:

Forbes magazine publishes articles encouraging corporate managers to involve their staff members in open source development, and highlighting the advantages of open source.

The sentence includes links to two articles. Shweta Saraf 's article is titled Why Your Engineers Should Spend More Time Writing Open Source Software Code. Laurence Bradford's piece is How Open-Source Development Is Democratizing The Tech Industry. That's what prompted the question in the title and two others:

• Does Forbes endorse open source software via these articles? 
• Does the fact that these articles are published on Forbes.com give them authority?  

Making a Generic Media Pitch Personal: GIS Edition

Pitching is Personal

Pitching a story to the media is part art and part science. Pitching, in general, says the dictionary means "to present … for consideration." I've seen a lot of pitches in my inbox. The vast majority are generic; the same e-mail is sent to multiple people in different positions at different publications with different beats (areas of coverage). One of my favorites had the salutation, "Dear Susan." I'm sure it was intended for Susan Smith at GIS Cafe!

Image "Zack Greinke" by Keith Allison
under CC BY-SA 2.0

The rest of the pitches I recall stand out exactly because they were personal. I act on pitches from people I know first; they are from people who've taken the time to form a relationship with me. The first time personal pitches, where the relationship is just beginning, require more consideration. I'm most likely to consider pitches that convince me they know who I am and that I will be interested in what they have to say. I met Elliot Cohen that way and not long after wrote about his company, CityMaps. That relationship has continued; I was just in contact with CityMaps president the other day because they were back in the news with a funding deal.