Marketeers assemble in Dubai this month

The organisers of The Marketing Forum which convenes in Dubai from October 21-23 expect around 300 delegates for its sixth annual gathering. Its theme, Best Marketing Practice in Action, should bring some interesting and controversial insights for Gulf marketing professionals.

'Canon is a global brand, but we all benefit from this type of conference,' comments one of the sponsors, Michel Sabbagh, marketing manager of Canon. 'This is a really good opportunity for Canon to meet other people working in the same field. After all, our document handling is for everyone.'

Likewise Land Rover's Matthew McClurg adds, 'It is to the advantage of everyone to see best practice in marketing in this region.'

Keynote speakers at the event include Jim Harris a leading authority on strategic planning and leadership development and Simon Woodruff, the founder of YO! Sushi, on 'daring to create the new'. Both speakers are new to the region.

In addition, the former actor and charismatic chairman of AP Associates in India, Alyque Padamsee will return for this year's event. And chairman of Saatchi and Saatchi Middle East, Khamis Al Muqla will make the case for 'best practice in advertising'.

There will also be a session on e-business with Mohammed Shurrab, founder and ceo of zgrocer.com in Saudi Arabia. He says that to succeed e-business principles have to be married with traditional management practice and that the Middle East can learn from the dot-com crash.

At $1,300 a time, this is not a cheap conference but it should appeal to a broad range of marketing professionals in the region, not least because they do not often have a chance to get together. Networking as ever is part of marketing best practice, and The Marketing Forum has cornered this particular market.