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Registration has begun for Ifra's PublishAsia 2008, to be held April 2-3 in Macau, China. Macau is the former Portuguese colony on the Chinese coast.

The Web seems to be the major focus. Ifra's announcement cites these topics:

• Threats and opportunities of partnerships with Internet pure-players
• Cashing in with community sites
• Going hyper local! The Washington Post experience
• Web analytics, segmentation, profiling, enterprise marketing…
• Reaching new audiences, creating new revenue streams: The Daily magazine
  model
• Creating value on multimedia advertising platforms
• Integrated mobile media and the consumer
• Social media & hyper targeting: customer knowledge as an asset

I'll speaking along with Lara Ayoub, Harry Bouwman, Mark Challinor, Jim Chisholm, Rob Curley, Gert Edlinge, Mario Garcia and Paul Ginocchio.

Ifra's Citizen Media Summit in Malaysia looked like it might not happen, but the word this morning was that the class enrollment was sufficient, so we're greenlighted. If you're interested in attending, there's probably still space available. The three-day, workshop-style conference will be held July 2-4 at the Parkroyal Kuala Lumpur Hotel.

Upcoming in July: a citizen media workshop in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, under the aegis of the international newspaper technology organization Ifra. From the webpage:

First Time In Asia! Citizen Media Summit

How to Ride on the Wave of the Digital Deluge

Date: 2 - 4 July 2007
Location: Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
Language(s): English

Summary / Composition / Zusammenfassung

The newspaper is under attack by the new media. All over the world, citizen journalism sites are popping up like mushrooms. And as the internet matures, you can be sure there will be more blogs, more aggregators, more Googles and more tools will give the reader a huge range of options to choose from.

How can your company cope with the biggest challenge it has ever faced? Come join us to learn from the panel of experts from Korea, USA and UK for 3 days workshop.

I'm scheduled to be on the "faculty" along with Kevin Anderson of the Guardian, Jean Min of OhMyNews, and Robb Montgomery of VisualEditors.com. Download the brochure.

Mike Ward sends word from the University of Lancaster that a "Journalism Leaders Forum" Tuesday will be webcast live, and that one of the key participants, Tim Porter, will appear via weblink "from the States."

Dan Gillmor did a bit of telepresence for the University of Lancaster earlier this year from Hong Kong, as I recall. A few months ago, when I called on Dan to talk with the newsroom of the Savannah Morning News, we pulled it off with a couple of webcams, saving several thousand dollars and a lot of travel time.

Do we still need to travel? I hope we do, as I love to travel and always find that traveling abroad changes me in unexpected ways. But webcams and ubiquitous broadband are opening virtual doors that we only imagined not too long ago.

I've been on the road a bit lately doing actual work on some projects. Upcoming I have several conferences:

New York Press Association convention. For some reason it's in Vermont. I've never been to Vermont but I hear they make good ice cream. Flying to Albany Thursday, speaking Friday, and theoretically home Friday night. We'll see.

NewspaperNext final symposium, Sept. 27 in Washington (actually northern Virginia, although that's probably an oxymoron). N2 will have some interesting presentations and announcements, and that's all I'll say at this point.

J-Lab Citizens Media Summit II where I'm on a panel Oct. 5, again in Washington. And immediately following, the Online News Association annual convention.

I'm in Minnesota today at a workshop on digital storytelling pulled together by Nora Paul of the University of Minnesota's New Media Institute. It's a bit of old home week for me -- we're meeting at the Star Tribune. Participants include Ken Riddick, Will Tacy, Jamie Hutt and Matt Thompson, all currently at startribune.com, as well as longtime site designer Jamie Hutt, former editors Rusty Coats and myself, and various current and former competitors.

There's been a lot of talk about engagement, passive vs. interactive interfaces, social vs. personal experiences, pydias vs. ludis. (The last comes from Matt and I have no idea how to spell it, and Google ain't helping.) It's been energizing to spend some time with smart people talking about journalism and storytelling.

Tonight I'll fly to Dulles for an API seminar, where I'm leading a session tomorrow on internet strategy for community newspapers.

From Moscow, just a short note (because I am on the world's slowest so-called 54-mb network):

It's been fascinating in the last 24 hours to hear Thomas Jefferson quoted from the podium. Last night at the Moscow Music Theater, Russian TV personality Syatoslav Belza recited for 1,700 or so world press delegates Jefferson's famous claim that if presented the alternative between a government with no newspapers or newspapers with no government, he would choose the latter. Moscow mayor Yuri Luzkhov talked of the importance of the "fourth power" -- information -- and of the need for impartiality in the press.

Today WAN president Gavin O'Reilly challenged Russian president Vladimir Putin on charges that Russian leaders have been "reluctant to forgo control and influence over the media." Putin, for his part, pointed out that the discussion was taking place in the former grand meeting hall of the Communist Party and said that "without a free press, such large-scale change can be impossible." Putin went on to say that a free press must be not only free of government interference, but also free of oligarchical control, and cited the creation of some 53,000 periodicals and a wide variety of choice in the regional press.

As an American walking for the first time on Russian soil, it is striking how certain American values have spread throughout the world. We did not invent free expression, of course, but the protections embodied in the Constitution have served as a model. No nation is without the stain of transgressions against freedom of expression, including ours, but I am proud to be from a culture that has helped lead the world in this area.

Now we must muster the courage to stick with those convictions, and with the rest of the Bill of Rights.