The dangers of Winter cabin fever

Winter is a dangerous time for me. I tend to get cabin fever just about the time that many conference and workshop organizers start planning their spring and summer lineups, then I start over-committing myself to a lot of interesting opportunities. It’s definitely an adventure, but makes you squeeze every 24 hour out of every day. This year is no different so far.

I’ll be at Poynter the second week of March teaching at the Essential Skills for Digital Journalists workshop , as well as leading a session for the Leading the New Newsroom: Digital Skills and Strategies for Today’s Managers

Immediately after that I’m heading back to Austin again for South by Southwest Interactive, where I’ll be moderating a panel on “Process Journalism: Getting it first while getting it right” SXSWi is always a blast, there’s a bunch of other cool panels and this one should be an interesting discussion, with the following panelists:

• Monica Guzman, Reporter for The Seattle Post-Intelligencer and blogger on The Big Blog
• Brian Lam, Editorial Director for Gizmodo.com and Assistant Managing Editor for Gawker Media (Update 3/1/10: Jesus Diaz, Gizmodo Senior Contributing Editor, will be filling Brian’s spot)
• Charles Latibeaudiere, Co-Executive Producer of TMZ (Update 3/1/10: Charles has to bow out due to a torn ACL.)
• Robert Mackey, New York Times Reporter and Blogger for The Lede Blog
• Moka Pantages, Wikimedia Foundation Communications Officer

After that I’ll be wrapped up in work on our new CMS transition and mobile development projects at the day gig until late April, when St. Louis will be hosting the Illinois Press Photographer Association convention and contest judging.

May will bring the 4th Annual National Press Photographer Association Multimedia Immersion, which I’m co-organizing again. This year we’ll be in Syracuse, New York at Newhouse and focusing more on the use of HD SLR cameras for creating multimedia, which should be a really exciting change.

Then in June, I’m teaching multimedia distribution strategies at the Maine Media Workshops, which should