The West Midlands region continues to build a reputation as an environment for modern ICT businesses to thrive and prosper - as evidenced in the March 2007 ICT Directory Strategic Survey. Businesses within the region continue to innovate their products and services with IT at the heart of their business and operational improvements.

So what does this mean for the West Midlands? Essentially, the outlook is very positive, over 80% of the regions businesses expect their turnover to increase over the next three years to 2010 - increasing their reach and business efficiencies through better and more integration of technology.

This renewed competitiveness of West Midlands businesses has not gone unnoticed by the International customers - over the past two years over 59% of the regions businesses recorded significant increase in the development of their overseas markets.

The 2007 ICT Conference will enable you to continue to stay one step ahead of your competitors, with a showcase of ICT Excellence in the region. Alternatively, if you'd like to join this Technology Revolution, the conference could be your catalyst to a better understanding of the benefits ICT could make to your business.

The conference programme will provide access to technology partners, thought leaders, business innovators - together with insight from those that have achieved real success within the region.

Sessions will provide opportunities to hear from organisations from the West Midlands SME sector sharing their successes and failures. There will also be a practical session focussing on Business Innovation through ICT which will look at real technology application for business success.

A case study session will focus on key challenges for SMEs:

• Marketing
• Funding
• Networking
• Sales

The afternoon at the conference will have a mix of presentations and interactive workshop sessions. They will be parallel sessions which may include:

• RFID
• Open Source & Freesource technologies
• VoIP
• Digital and creative media
• Green IT
• E-Business and m-business technologies
• Mobile computing

This year the conference will incorporate the 2007 West Midlands ICT Excellence Awards, hosted by Scott Dodds, General Manager, Small Business Division, Microsoft.

Nominations are invited for the following categories and should be submitted by 28th September 2007:

• ICT Excellence in Innovation (Product)
• ICT Excellence in Innovation (Service)
• ICT Excellence in Public Sector ICT Projects
• ICT Excellence in Skills
• ICT Excellence in Creative Partnerships

An overall Regional Champion will be selected by the Awards Panel from the winners of the above individual awards. The Regional Champion will receive additional recognition, Award and prize in this category. To complete the awards the ICT Cluster Opportunity Group allocate an Honorary Award for the Best Corporate SME Partnership.

For further information on the awards categories and how to enter please contact [email protected].

Places are complimentary, however due to the heavy demand for places a charge of £49 + VAT will be implied for non-attendance.

Sponsorship packages are available for this conference, for further information please contact [email protected].