One of my perennial complaints about the whole “future of journalism” topic is that it seems to be predominated less by people who actually create things and more by people who either come up with trivial ideas that they proclaim will save journalism and those who instead to observe from a remove and discuss what it all means (no, I’m not naming names). Many conferences leave me similarly unenthused. Here are the journalism panels for SXSW this year. And every other week there is another panel on what Wikileaks means for journalism, but rarely any on how people have used it for journalism. (tasteless self-promotion there).

Which is why I find myself strangely excited to be attending the 2011 Computer Assisted Reporting conference this year. For those of you unfamiliar with the term, Computer Assisted Reporting is what database/web journalism was called before it got cool (and before they could put data on the web). And this year there seem to be a surprisingly large number of data journalists I know — but have never met — attending. I suppose there will be a little culture clash between the young punks and the old guard, but I also know it’ll be a conference full of people discussing how to do things, and that is what makes me excited.

Are you going to be at the CAR Conference too? If so, please say hi.