News Corp chairman Rupert Murdoch, AOL CEO Tim Armstrong, Publicis boss Maurice Levy, and Google CEO Eric Schmidt are some of the luminaries who will be heading off to Abu Dhabi next month for a three-day international media summit, the first in the Persian Gulf.
We caught up with Spencer Reiss, a contributing editor to Wired, who has been programming the Monaco Forum for past several years, and is putting together next's month's event. The summit for March 9-11 is sponsored by the Abu Dhabi Media Company and is by invitation only.
Other notable speakers are Dirk Meyer, president and CEO of AMD; Jon Miller, CEO Digital Media, News Corporation; Nicholas Negroponte; James Murdoch, Chairman & CEO, Europe & Asia, News Corporation; Hartmut Ostrowksi, Chair & CEO, Bertelsmann; Skye CEO Josh Silverman; Ericsson CEO Hans Vestberg; and Samir Arora, Chair & CEO, Glam Media.
The focus of the event is media and technology in the emerging markets. Senior media and technology executives from South Korea, India, China, and the Middle East will speak and attend, including Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal, a major shareholder in Citigroup, News Corp, and other companies.
Last week at Beet's studios, I sat down with Spencer to chat about plans for the conference.
Spencer has drafted some top U.S., European, and Middle Eastern journalists to help moderate panels, including Brett Pully of Bloomberg, Jonah Bloom of Breaking Media, Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson/Media Editor of the Financial Times, and Jon Fortt of Fortune.
I am delighted to to say that I have received my press credentials and Beet.TV be reporting extensively from Abu Dhabi. Damn, but I cannot go, just slammed with commitments here. Really regret this.
Andy Plesser, Executive Producer
