The schedule for the fourth annual New Media Expo has been announced by event organizer Tim Bourquin. Formerly known as the Podcast and New Media Expo, and/or the Portable Media Expo, this year’s updated and expanded event sports a new name, and has moved from California to Las Vegas.

The New Media Expo, which runs from August 14 – 16, still sorts sessions into subject-area “tracks,” ranging from beginner topics to advanced. Attendees are welcome to mix-and-match sessions from any track. The first day alone features twenty different panels and presentations that range from building community, to corporate podcast success stories, to government podcasting, to storytelling, sound editing, and “premium” podcasting.

I asked Tim about the changes for this year’s Expo.

Elisabeth McLaury Lewin: Why drop the word “podcasting” from the name of the event?

Tim Bourquin: Even though the event still has a major focus on podcasting, we took the word out of the name of the event because it was becoming redundant – like calling an event the “Book and Publishing Expo.” Podcasting is another form of new media and most of our attendees have blogs, use twitter and video blog as well so it just made sense to include that content as well. We wanted people to know we were about much more than just podcasts.

Elisabeth McLaury Lewin: What precipitated the move from Ontario (California) to Vegas?

Tim Bourquin: We moved the event to Las Vegas for a couple reasons. After three years in Ontario, we wanted to take the event to a more destination city to make it easier for our East Coast attendees to fly in, but also having the conference in Las Vegas shows we’re serious about growing the industry. Having the event is a major tradeshow city is one way we’re shooing the world that new media can compete with traditional media and is not just on the sidelines that has their convention in an out-of-the-way location.

The fourth annual New Media Expo runs August 14 – 16, 2008, at the Las Vegas Convention Center, Las Vegas, Nevada.