Ron May was a technology columnist covering events in the Chicago area. He published, edited, reported and commentated for an influential monthly newsletter called ''The May Report'', which dealt with business issues in the high tech community in
Chicago, Illinois
Chicago is the List of municipalities in Illinois, most populous city in the U.S. state of Illinois and in the Midwestern United States. With a population of 2,746,388, as of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, it is the List of Unite ...
,
Indiana
Indiana ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern region of the United States. It borders Lake Michigan to the northwest, Michigan to the north and northeast, Ohio to the east, the Ohio River and Kentucky to the s ...
,
Michigan
Michigan ( ) is a peninsular U.S. state, state in the Great Lakes region, Great Lakes region of the Upper Midwest, Upper Midwestern United States. It shares water and land boundaries with Minnesota to the northwest, Wisconsin to the west, ...
, and
Wisconsin
Wisconsin ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Great Lakes region, Great Lakes region of the Upper Midwest of the United States. It borders Minnesota to the west, Iowa to the southwest, Illinois to the south, Lake Michigan to the east, Michig ...
.
He has been described as "a fixture on the Chicago tech scene". He was often seen at Chicago tech community events such as
BarCamp
BarCamp is an international network of user-generated conferences primarily focused on technology and the web. They are open, participatory workshop-events, the content of which is provided by participants. The first BarCamps focused on early st ...
Chicago and Tech Cocktail, and was known among the community by his trademark tape recorder which he used to record many of his conversations. He died on June 23, 2013, from complications due to diabetes.
Career
May was widely regarded as an investigative tech-industry
watch dog. In 1992, May shifted his focus from general
information technology
Information technology (IT) is a set of related fields within information and communications technology (ICT), that encompass computer systems, software, programming languages, data processing, data and information processing, and storage. Inf ...
to the discussion of high tech and software in Chicago. He was well known for his countering arguments against the ethics and effectiveness of programs, organizations, and businesses. He typically stood up for the little guy or underdog.
References
External links
*
The May Report'
American male journalists
2013 deaths
1956 births
20th-century American journalists
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