If you're in Austin this week, come check out the Association for Asian American Studies (AAAS) annual conference.  It's being hosted by the University of Texas, Austin Center for Asian American Studies (that's their lovely artwork up top! I dig the fingerprint!).

I'll be speaking on a roundtable on Asian Americans and blogging that was coordinated by erin from Hyphen Magazine, Jeff Yang (Asian Pop), Oliver Wang (aka O-Dub) of PopLicks and SoulSides, and Sandip Roy of New America Media.

Here's erin's post at Hyphen about our roundtable. Come out and talk BLOGS with nerds if you're around!

Publish and Perish: We're Talking about You

Actually, we're talking about Asian Americans online: the bloggers, the journalists, the Youtube celebs, and you -- the readers and viewers of above fare. And here's the kind of stuff we'll be dishing:

With newspapers and magazines folding like dominoes around us, what's a journalist to do? Much less one who thinks this niche called Asian America needs covering?

If bloggers (and KevJumba) are the rising voices of Asian American media, then does great responsibility come with great power?

And here's a spin on these topics that's new to me, maybe new to you:

What say we bring Asian American journalism back to school?

Some of the very first pan-Asian news publications were Movement papers, many of them run by students, some of them housed at colleges and universities. The same moment that gave rise to the term, the politics, the study (artistic, demographic, psychological, historical) of Asian Americans -- that moment also birthed Asian American journalism. We were Chinese, Japanese, Filipino before; we were Chinese-language, Japanese-language (and were there Tagalog papers in the US?) before. We became Asian American, Asian American studies, and Asian American journalism since.

With journalism's financial sustainability in crisis, but its mission as important as ever, is this time to imagine bringing the academic and the reporter back under the same roof?

I think it might be. Am doing it on Friday, anyway.

We're getting journalists, bloggers, and Asian American studies academics (the type who already moonlight as press) into a room together to think-tank this. Here's who'll be there:

- Sandip Roy, editor at New American Media (NAM helped fund this panel! thank you, NAM!)

- Jeff Yang, columnist of SF Gate's Asian Pop

- Oliver Wang, music critic and faculty at CSU Long Beach

- Oiyan Poon, APAs for Progress blogger and research fellow at UMass, Boston

- and me (besides co-editing this blog, I teach at UC Santa Barbara)

Got questions for us? Things we should talk about? Do leave us comments here, or email me: erin[at]hyphenmagazine.com

Or better yet, if you happen to be in Austin, TX, this Friday the 9th, join us. We'll be at the Association for Asian American Studies conference at the Omni hotel downtown. Panel starts at 4.30; calling all concerned parties.