The trick? Shel Israel and PodcastSteve double-teamed him! NewMediaJim will be at New Communications Forum in April

As I've previously noted, as a senior fellow of the Society of New Communications Research, I'm heavily involved in organizing panels and workshops for the New Communications Forum April 22-25 in Sonoma County, CA.

Part of the planning has been a behind the scenes effort to get one of the leading crossover lights of the old-media, new-media worlds to join us, and it hasn't been through his lack of WANNA. (Remember George Carlin? "WANNA" was a sin all by itself, but I digress...)

It's been partly because of the corporate lethargy that is causing broadcast networks to continue their swoon. They simply don't understand the way their media world is changing. But Jim Long does understand.

I'm happy to report that Jim Long, NBC News Videographer and NewMediaJim to his friends on Twitter, will be joining us at the conference. Thanks to great efforts by Shel Israel and more modest persuasive efforts by my own self, Jim's been able to wrangle the richly deserved comp time and will be with us in Sonoma.

This conference will offer great opportunities to learn about the convergence, fusion, and subsequent supernova spinoff and pullaway from old media of the new channels we are all working in and learning in.

The discussion I am leading will focus on the changing face of journalism today, and we'll hear from Jim, as well as from Andria Carter, online editor and former business editor of the Trentonian, a leading tabloid in New Jersey's capital city that is wrestling with the transition between dead-tree and web-based publishing. I will also be live-blogging and podcasting from the sessions.

So why don't you charge your PDA, put another card in the digital camera or camcorder, and join us in Sonoma County later this month, huh?

SXSW is sooo yesterday, with all the corporate sponsor money now. C'mon, you guys. New Comms Forum is where the real stuff is going to happen.