Dan Gillmor is going to be speaking in Palo Alto on May 20th. This is part of the SDForum Distinguished Speaker series. All of the speakers I’ve gone to see before are engineers or business people working in high tech. I’m very interested in hearing what Dan has to say. In particular it looks like he’s going to be talking about public authoring:

What happens when anyone can make and distribute news to the whole world? In this talk, columnist Dan Gillmor previews a central theme from his upcoming book. the collision of journalism and technology is transforming the roles of newsmakers, reporters, editors, and readers, as the audience becomes an active participant in the news making process.

A very cool topic, and certainly a well respected source. If you have the means this is probably going to be a good one to catch. Especially if you’re interested in blogging and RSS (or syndication formats in general) and are wondering what some of the practical large scale applications of these technologies are. Dan’s blog is part of my normal reading list, and I’m definitely interested, so I’m all registered already. See you there.