The Association of Alternative Newsweeklies announced today that its first-ever Web Publishing Conference will be held Oct. 5-7 at the Holiday Inn Golden Gateway in San Francisco.

The conference will be designed to help AAN publishers and editors strategize their online presence and adapt new electronic-publishing formats and technologies. Newsprint addicts are encouraged to bring their electronic-publishing personnel to help ground the discussion.

The program will be organized with the help of San Francisco-based consulting firm West Gold Editorial. Firm principals Susan West and Michael Gold led two seminars at the AAN Convention, “Goof-Proof Your Web Site” and “The 10-Minute Web Site Remake,” that received overwhelmingly positive reviews from convention attendees. “The web seminars were outstanding. I learned a ton and have already started implementing the ideas to my paper’s site,” one AAN member wrote in the post-convention survey.

The Holiday Inn Golden Gateway is the same hotel at which AAN West has been held on several occasions, including this past January. AAN was able to secure a $129 single or double room rate — a remarkable rate for San Francisco in October.

Seminars and workshops will be held all day on Friday, October 6, and Saturday, October 7. Lunch will be catered at the hotel, and participants will be on their own for dinners.

More details and registration materials will be made available on this site in August.