Today, FAST announced the agenda for its widely anticipated FASTforward conference to be held on February 18, 2008 in Orlando. What makes this noteworthy is that this same gathering in 2007 proved to be one of the truly special events of the year, bringing an eclectic and original set of thinkers, visionaries, and practitioners together to talk about changes in business. The premise is simple: since search is changing the world, why not get everyone together under one big tent and talk about the business and technology impacts of search? The output was magical. But don’t just take our word for it - search the comments from Andrew McAfee, Paula Thornton, David Weinberger, Dion Hinchcliffe, and Ray Lane on what made this pow-wow Davosian.

In a series here on fastforwardblog, we will profile some of the key speakers due to talk this February.

We’ll start with Don Tapscott, author of Wikinomics and one of the best strategists around these days. Plus, Don’s a fellow Canadian.

I’ll start with a quote:

“With the publication of his earlier work on information technology, Don Tapscott established a reputation as one of the world’s leading ‘cyber-gurus.”
- Vice President Al Gore

The thing that makes Tapscott a perfect fit for FF08 is that this year’s theme is The User Revolution. We share the belief with many others that an emergent user movement is afoot, enabled by new technologies and new ways of working that are empowering people to change the way they consume information. The crux of the ‘how’ is a set of technologies around interaction management, underpinned by search which allow users to self-organize, contribute, comment, and collaborate at scale. Wikinomics is the business foundation which spells out the imperative; Tapscott is the perfect messenger.

As CEO of a think-tank New Paradigm, Don enjoys exceptional access to some remarkable people. Sure he has keynoted over 1000 conferences, executive planning sessions and other gatherings since New Paradigm was founded in 1993. But what’s really impressive is that he has presented to over half of the CEOs of the Fortune 500 companies, and has shared the stage with Heads of State such as President Bill Clinton, CEOs such as Sam Palmisano (IBM), Steve Balmer (Microsoft) and A.G. Lafley (Procter & Gamble), as well as social leaders such as Klaus Schwab (World Economic Forum) and Linus Torvalds (Linux).

I’m convinced he’s going to be a great speaker - well worth coming down on February 18th to see.