When delegates and journalists gather in Pittsburgh for the G-20 economic summit, the Allegheny Conference on Community Development wants to make sure they hear how Pittsburgh has escaped the fate of many Rust Belt cities and remains economically vibrant.

There is always a risk, however, that despite the best efforts of community organizations and local officials, Pittsburgh's attempts to tell its success story could be overshadowed.

That's what happened in Seattle during the infamous World Trade Ministerial Conference of 1999.

"I think Seattle got a really bad rap," said Steve Gerritson, the manager of business development for Enterprise Seattle, a local economic development organization there.

Mr. Gerritson said the world focused on the protests, and local leaders couldn't get near the convention center to talk to delegates about the region.

"I don't think we got much in terms of economic development," he said.

"We didn't see much of any long-term or permanent results," although Seattle hotels and restaurants enjoyed a bump in activity during the meetings.

Local leaders here are hoping to be more effective in getting out the message that Pittsburgh wasn't named the Most Livable City for nothing.

Dennis Yablonsky, the Allegheny Conference's executive director, said his staff was going to spend the next two months developing ways to tell the region's story to the world over the two-day convention next month.

"We need to get the message out about the Pittsburgh economy and the Pittsburgh transformation story," he said. "We're going to use that media attention to generate a pipeline of companies thinking about Pittsburgh."

Mr. Yablonsky said the conference was going to amplify President Barack Obama's reasons for choosing Pittsburgh for the G-20 meetings:

• While the region's steel production has declined, Pittsburgh is still a huge center of manufacturing and an innovation center for robotics and electronics.

• The local economy is rounded out by being a center for business and financial services, including PNC Financial Services Group, BNY Mellon and the two large law firms of Reed Smith and K&L Gates.

• In addition to the local universities, medical centers and corporations, which spend more than $1 billion a year on research and development, the Pittsburgh region also is home to the National Energy Technology Laboratory in South Park, which has an $800 million annual research budget.

"Put that all together and we have a nice, balanced, diversified economy," Mr. Yablonsky said.

To get that message out, the conference is putting together information kits and coming up with angles that reporters can use to tell the story of Pittsburgh's transformation from 1983, when unemployment rate was 18.3 percent, to now, when the Pittsburgh's employment numbers are better than the rest of the country.

In May, the most recent month for which figures were available, the Pittsburgh region had a combined unemployment rate of 7.5 percent when the national rate was 9.4 percent.

Kelley Denny, a principal at the prwerks public relations firm, said there already has been an inquiry from The Wall Street Journal to tell the story of why the president chose to have the meetings in Pittsburgh.

Susan Everingham, who moved here last fall from Southern California to head the local office of the Rand Corp., isn't surprised the president chose Pittsburgh for the international spotlight.

A decade ago, after interviewing local government officials and spending thousands of hours analyzing innumerable spreadsheets concerning costs and transportation, the Rand Corp. chose to locate its third office in Pittsburgh.

When the nonprofit research firm opened its doors in 2001, the director of the Pittsburgh office, Barry Balmat, said the corporation was having a hard time persuading people to live in Santa Monica, Calif., or Washington, D.C.

Pittsburgh, he said, offered an affordable lifestyle, easy commutes and the ability to move quickly around the country because it was a US Airways hub.

Eight years later, Ms. Everingham says two out of three isn't bad.

Researchers still can get to Washington and back, but they tend to drive now, rather than be constrained by the fewer flights serving Pittsburgh International Airport now that it no longer is a US Airways hub.

But the benefits of being located in Pittsburgh, she said, are numerous: Local governments have been open and welcoming; the city is home to many Fortune 100 companies that Rand needs for its research, which is conducted at the nexus of business and government; Pittsburgh is home to the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, which Rand uses much as it does the UCLA Medical Center for health care policy research; and the universities in Pittsburgh have facilities and expertise that Rand researchers tap into all the time.

Ms. Everingham said that after her early visits to Pittsburgh she took home to California tales of the region's transformation.

She added that her stress level and blood pressure had both dropped since she moved here.

Though she has to travel on Route 28 and the Highland Park Bridge to get to work, in California she had to drive 30 miles on five freeways to get to work.

Here she is thinking about the possibility of riding her bike.

And Rand is having no trouble bringing in experts from all over the world to work in the Pittsburgh office.

"This is a great place to live," she said.

That's one message community leaders won't mind sharing with the world.