I am honored to be invited by French President, Mr. Nicolas Sarkozy, to an invite-only gathering of global digital leaders, right before this year’s G8 Summit in Paris. The e-G8 Forum will include heads of state as well as key tech personalities like Eric Schmidt of Google, Jeff Bezos of Amazon, and Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg all expected to attend. The event is hosted and chaired by Publicis Groupe CEO, Mr. Maurice Lévy.

President Sarkozy is currently heading the Group of Eight (G8) with Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States. The major topic of the upcoming summit will be the state and the future of the Internet and the digital ecosystem on a global level. The goal of the e-G8 is to provide the G8 leaders with fresh-ideas and key insights.

Well, fresh ideas and digital know-how is something I can definitely bring into this diverse gathering in Paris. Since the publication of the Vision of Mobile Media for the year 2020 (Mocom2020) and several innovation projects at Ahead of Time, this is someting I had been asked before, but not by a President of a state. Exciting.

Discussions at the two-day Forum will be a mixture of plenary sessions and in-depth workshops where a wide variety of themes will be addressed, including:
– The Internet as key driver for economic growth
– The emergence of global digital citizenship
– The digital technologies of the future
– How best to promote innovation clusters
– The mobile revolution and its impact on commerce, media and advertising
– Privacy and IP protection

President Nicolas Sarkozy will himself deliver the opening keynote address.