Emanuel Pitches Chicago At SXSW

(CBS) -- Mayor Rahm Emanuel never passes up an opportunity to sell Chicago as he made a business trip to Austin, Texas for the South by Southwest festival.

CBS 2 Chief Correspondent Jay Levine reports the Mayor was hoping to pitch the cutting edge crowd on what he considered our cutting edge economy.

It's an event best known for progressive forms of music and entertainment. But more and more, it has also morphed into interactive, high-tech communications and digital applications, like Easel, the software design program and a desktop milling machine.

Chicago based Inventables CEO Zak Kaplan showed Mayor Emanuel how to create a personalized bottle opener, with the name Rahm engraved on the handle.
The Mayor brought a couple of Goose Island 312 bottles to test it out.

This was exactly the kind of digitally designed product a White House grant announced two weeks ago will help Chicago specialize it.

The Mayor took full advantage of it, as he toured the convention floor being treated like a celebrity, posing for pictures between pitches at the Chicago booth where laptops controlled power drills, and software programs provided up to the minute crowd surveys at Chicago nightspots.

"This booth has been alive with activity from manufacturing to technology artists event throughout the day," said Don Welsh.

"We are gonna showcase Chicago like in a way that it has never been seen because we've got an incredible world-class city that the world needs to know about," said Choose Chicago Chair Desiree Rogers.