With a couple of days to go the excitement is building for our EMEA event Imagine 07 in Paris on 2nd October – a confirmed delegate list of over 600 senior decision-makers from across EMEA and a fantastic line up of speakers from Microsoft and the advertising and media industry.

I am honoured to host this event and welcome this big crowd. Also extremely excited to hear from the speakers who all are experts in their fields. Our CEO Steve Ballmer will deliver the Keynote: Microsoft’s vision for leadership in an evolving market. Chris Dobson will open with the MS vision for advertising followed by Brian McAndrews who plans to share his perspective on the aQuantive acquisition and what it means to our customers. Derrick Connell will then share our vision for the future of search. Ivan Pollard, Partner at Naked Communications then takes the stage to talk about media neutral thinking in an always-on, all-in one world and this will be followed by an interview by Chris Dobson with Tess Alps, CEO of Thinkbox where Tess will be asked to consider what convergence means, what challenges the TV industry is facing; how these changes are affecting consumers and her view on what advertisers want from TV now and in the future. This will be followed by a session with Terri Richardson, Group Marketing Manager from Microsoft TV talking around what MS are doing in the IPTV space and how Mediaroom is powering new types of advertising.

We also welcome Marc-Henri Magdelenat, CMO Screen Tonic, who will cover the rise and rise of the small screen – the quality of mobile marketing communications and how you can best target customers on the move. This is followed by an engaging session on Entertainment: The Evolution of Engagement with Jeff Bell, and a client presentation from Stephen Hunt, Head of Media at Paramount Pictures UK where he will deliver a case study on the hugely successful Transformers launch. I’ll then lead a lively panel and debate on Telling stories in the digital age: the relationship between creativity and technology. Fantastic panelists from leading creative agencies have accepted our invitation: Ajaz Ahmed – AKQA, Jonny Vulkan – Anomaly, Winston Binch – Crispin Porter + Bogusky.

Hamish Pringle, Director of the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising (IPA) plans to look to the future and consider what advertising and agencies will look like in 10 years time. Our last external speaker of the day is Martin Lindstrom – best-selling author and leading online brand strategist. Martin is going to look at what the brand builder needs to do to make meaningful contact with ‘Generation Tomorrow’. Our VP EMEA John Mangelaars will close the day with his vision for EMEA. All set to go. Have a great weekend in the meantime.