:: suzanne yada ::

Photo by John C. Liau for the SF Public Press,
a news organization participating in Journalism Innovations III.

I don’t really blog about Bay Area journalism-related events often, but there’s just too many coming up this month to keep to myself. So if there’s a journalist out there in the San Francisco or San Jose areas wanting to network, brush up on some digital skills or just goof around, you got plenty of opportunities coming up soon:

• Journalism Innovations III happens this weekend, April 30-May 2 at USF. Register soon — it’s the most affordable journalism conference you’ll love. I’ve been to last year’s event and it was awesome. This year promises to be even bigger, with sessions on:
  • journalism career coaching
  • the status of Bay Area college media
  • new storytelling ideas
  • using new media tools for reporting
  • future business models for news
  • life after journalism school
  • examining old-fashioned journalism ethics in a new media world
  • building an open-source newsroom

• Also, RemakeCamp is happening May 2 in partnership with JI3. It’s a half-day unconference where all things journo-geeky will be discussed. The beauty about unconferences is that you never know who will show up and decide to speak. The unplanned nature is half the fun.

• The SJSU Magazine Club is sponsoring a panel of editors from McSweeney’s 6 p.m. Monday, May 3, room to be determined. The panel will talk about the San Francisco Panorama, the latest edition of their literary mag that is a super amazing cool newspaper. (I had a very small hand in the production of it: I provided them a high-resolution vector logo for the SF Public Press, and I helped fund the cover story through Spot.Us. But I still treat the paper as my own.)

• On May 7-9 there’s a big collaborative project called the 48 Hour Magazine (@48hrmag), where writers and artists from pubs like Rolling Stone, Wired, Dwell, Gizmodo and GOOD are going to put together a magazine in two days. May 7 the theme is announced, May 8 everything is due, and the magazine is sent to print May 9. Headquarters are in the Bay Area and you’re allowed to produce your work there, within reason methinks.

• If you are interested in developing journalism for the iPad, don’t walk, run to the Hacks/Hackers Unite on May 21-23. There a hack (that’s the journalist) and the hacker (the programmer) will work in teams to explore the unique storytelling capabilities of the journalism’s newest darling, the iPad. It sounds really exciting. I’ve never worked directly with a programmer to tell as story before. I’ve never had the opportunity. Until now, of course.