I'll be participating in the US-Russia Bilateral Presidential Commission Sub-Working Group on Media meeting in St. Petersburg July 31 - August 3, after which I'll travel north to Petrozavodsk to continue work from last year in Russia. As part of this meeting, I received a US Speaker and Specialist Grant from the US Department of State. My contribution to the American delegation will be to discuss the US-Russia Young Media Professionals Exchange I went on last year. I wrote a little about the exchange and this upcoming meeting on my blog. I'll also be posting images on instagram during the trip: @msbrauer. Other members of the American delegation include: Elizabeth Ballantine, a director of the McClatchy Company; Joyce Barnathan, President of the International Center for Journalists; Charles Bierbauer, dean of the College of Mass Communications and Information Studies at the University of South Carolina; John Cochran, former ABC News chief Capitol Hill correspondent; Bill Gentile, independent journalist and documentary filmmaker teaching at American University in Washington, DC; Barbara Cochran, the Curtis B. Hurley Chair in Public Affairs Journalism with the Missouri School of Journalism; and Gary Kebbel, former dean of the College of Journalism and Mass Communications at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Editors: please get in touch if you have any needs from Russia over the next two weeks. Young journalists: the next exchange will be happening this fall and you can apply to go until August, 9, 2013. I highly recommend the exchange.