Billboards promoting the city for the G-20? That's so Old Media, say the technogeeks at The Mattress Factory.

Instead, the North-Side-based museum this week unveiled www.myG20.org, "a real-time, crowd-curated guide to Pittsburgh that will take place prior to and during the G-20 summit."

What that means -- for those unfamiliar with Web parlance, or words like "crowd-curated" -- is that anyone with access to Twitter, Facebook, Flickr or the Internet can post messages about what they love about Pittsburgh -- creating a virtual, interactive, constantly evolving visitor's guide.

As the G-20 inches closer, numerous organizations and institutions have decided to promote themselves or the region by going all Webby and Twittery.

While The Mattress Factory, which has been experimenting with new methods of digital outreach, can probably boast of the most cutting-edge Web application, plenty of others are going digital, too: VisitPittsburgh, the city's tourism agency, has built an online press room, www.g20pittsburghsummit.org, and will start tweeting about the G-20 next week.

A group of local African-American professionals have launched a Web site, www.whatisG20.com, with video messages from Bill Strickland, CEO of Manchester-Bidwell Corp., and Bev Smith, a national TV talk show host, addressing what the G-20 will mean to people of color. And the University of Pittsburgh and UPMC have joined forces with Carnegie Mellon University to create www.edsmedspittsburgh.org, a site aimed at national and international journalists that localizes the commonly used buzzword "ed-med economy."

Visiting journalists can click on one link allowing them to sign up for tours of 11 different "bricks and mortar" sites, said Madelyn Ross, associate vice chancellor for national media relations at Pitt, from the new Children's Hospital -- "the first paperless hospital," she noted -- to the robotics research facilities at Carnegie Mellon to Pitt's Biomedical Science Towers.

Two weeks ago, Pitt contacted hundreds of media outlets around the world alerting them to the site.

"We're doing it with new technology, the old-fashioned way," said Ms. Ross, noting that edsmedspittsburgh.org "is a means to the more important end, which is to teach the world what we have here in Pittsburgh. There's no substitute on the Web for standing in front of researchers in a laboratory or seeing a robot walk over and greet them. The invitation is virtual, the information is virtual, the experience is real."

Moreover, some countries aren't advanced digitally as the United States, noted Beverly Morrow-Jones, VisitPittsburgh's executive director of marketing and communication. While her agency's site, launched last Friday,will feature a huge image library and 100 pages of content about the city's culture, history and quality of life -- in 20 languages -- it will also provide video in standard definition for countries that don't yet broadcast in high-definition.

Robin Beckham, a marketing consultant who created www.whatisG20.com, said that with the demise of WAMO, the city's only black-oriented radio station, it's even more important that this community become more Web-focused, she said.

"The G-20 isn't just the city or the county's event," said Ms. Beckham, who is African-American. "People of color are a part of Pittsburgh also, and we need to celebrate that fact and highlight issues of diversity here."

But when it comes to promoting Pittsburgh, the Mattress Factory feels MyG20.com is the most diverse and democratic digital approach of all.

"The crowd is organizing and defining the experience, or curating it, as we say in museum exhibitions, rather than one person or institution controlling the message. Instead of being top-down or one-way, it's two-way, ground-up," said Jeffrey Inscho, who handles the Mattress Factory's technology-based engagement initiatives and developed the site in collaboration with Deeplocal, an East Liberty Web and software design firm.

Wednesday, the fledgling site, which can also be found at MyG20.org, featured a couple dozen tweets about the city -- a Haiku contest on the Harris Theater's marquee, links to a guide to "seven great neighborhoods," and a mild debate over the virtues of Coco's vs. Dozen's cupcakes.

This is far more forward thinking, argued Nathan Martin, Deeplocal's CEO, than erecting billboards or banners around the region touting Pittsburgh, an initiative announced last week by Allegheny County Executive Dan Onorato.

"When you're advertising on a billboard, you're putting one message out there for a month, it's static, unidirectional, putting a predetermined issue in someone's face," Mr. Martin said, whereas MyG20 "is more multidirectional, and the relevance of its messages change over time."

Local news organizations also have digital plans for the G-20. The Post-Gazette is aggregating G-20 news and resources at www.post-gazette.com/g20summit/ and will launch an interactive community site for the summit in September.

Kevin Evanto, Mr. Onorato's spokesman, noted that many companies are using both traditional and new media to promote themselves during the upcoming summit. Bayer Corp., for example, will be posting banners along the Parkway West near its headquarters, "but also has a fantastic G-20 Web site," he said -- www.bayerg20pittsburgh.com.

"I think it's great what they [The Mattress Factory] are doing," Mr. Evanto said. "But there are any number of ways that this region can communicate issues and messages of welcome to people who will be visiting. The more ways we communicate with the world the better."