In the ring at the Mediabistro Circus

Paramacharya Palaniswami and Sannyasin Senthilnathaswami are in New York attending the Mediabistro Circus, "a two-day summit about the digital platforms and trends that are changing media." (Photo: Paramacharya Palaniswami speaks with folks from Texterity about their digital edition platform just before the first session)

Palaniswami is the Editor-in-Chief of Hinduism Today Magazine, published from Kauai's Hindu Monastery in Hawaii. Senthilnathaswami is an Assistant Editor. Hinduism Today has been publishing since 1979, and after evolving through the small-form newspaper format to the multi-color broadsheet format, became a glossy, full-color magazine in late 1996. In 1994 the monks opened a website which has since become one of the premier websites on the Hindu religion on the planet. In 2006, the magazine launched its Digital Edition, a simple, PDF-based edition available for free online.

The monks are confident in their abilities to produce print media after almost five decades of serving the broader, billion-strong global Hindu congregation through this two-dimensional format of little black characters, and the images that prevent them from bumping into each other, vying for position on flattened pieces of wood pulp. Currently, they see the need to make their materials available to the current generation of Hindus who, as members of nearly every nation in the world, are no less technosavvy than their peers of other faiths, and nonfaiths. With the ever-changing atmosphere of Web 2.0 technologies being embraced by today's webocrats, the editors of Hinduism Today recognized a need to get up to speed listening to the experienced speak on what they have done, what they are doing, what is working, what isn't work, and the exciting new directions in which web-based media technologies are going. That's what the Mediabistro Circus, put on by the fine folks at Mediabistro, is all about.

Today's sessions were:

• Publishing: From Print to Digital
  
• Blogging
  
• Keynote: Chris Anderson
  
• Video
  
• Social Media

Photo: Anil Dash, Elisa Camahort Page, Eric Hellweg and Noah Shachtman answer questions after the session on blogging

Needless to say, we are excited about blogging and other Web 2.0 technologies presented today, and here we are writing a blog about our journey here.

Stay tuned tomorrow as we post photos and short reports directly to this blog from our iPhone (yes, monks with iPhones).

Photos courtesy Mediabistro Circus flickr set here.