April was “conference month” on two continents:

• International Journalism Festival, Perugia, Italy: I participated in a panel discussion on networked journalism and gave a presentation on alternative story forms.
• International Symposium on Online Journalism, Austin: Just watched and listened.
• BarCamp NewsInnovation, Philadelphia: I led a discussion on information overload (notes here).

In May I visited old friends and colleagues in L.A. and Kansas City and family in Atlanta and Boston. I also traveled back to my alma mater, the University of Missouri (from which I’d graduated exactly 10 years earlier), to attend IRE’s excellent Django boot camp. I highly recommend this to anybody who wants to build web interfaces to newsy data. IRE offers a couple such classes a year, including at its annual conference. This one was run by a fellow Mizzou J alum, NYT’s Brian Hamman.

In June I went to Japan with my little brother. It was mostly a leisure trip, but in Tokyo I sat down with some folks from a telecom think tank to talk about paid content on mobile devices. There’s a write-up here.

That piece marks the start of an occasional column I’ll be writing for De Nieuwe Reporter, a Dutch blog that covers developments in online journalism. (I volunteered to write in Dutch, but thankfully they were happy with English. Which is good because I write Dutch at a pre-K level.)

Now I’m preparing to leave for a two-month Arthur Burns Fellowship in Germany. I’ll be working in Berlin for the web-only international edition of Der Spiegel, Germany’s leading newsweekly (and operator of the country’s most popular news website). I’ll also spend some time traveling within Germany and investigating trends in online journalism there. The orientation is next week in Washington, D.C., and I’ll arrive in Berlin Monday, July 27.

Stay tuned. I promise to check in soon.

I returned to the States earlier this week, after about three months abroad. I have lots of notes and ideas, and now I just have to find the focus to turn them into blog posts. Wish me luck.

What’s next? I’ll be visiting Japan in June, and while I’m there I hope to answer this question: How, in one of the most wired countries in the world, is the newspaper industry still thriving? (If you have any contacts in newspapers there, please let me know.)

And in July I’ll head back to Europe for a two-month fellowship in a German news organization (TBA), during which time I’ll also be traveling within Germany and blogging on trends in newsrooms there.

The itinerary is now updated to reflect all this.

Meanwhile, I’m in Austin for the International Symposium on Online Journalism. If you’re around, say hi.