At the end of this month I’m lucky enough to be heading over to Paris to cover an event that will include some of the best minds in digital and football.

The event is the inaugural ‘Football Production Summit‘ which will take place in the iconic French national stadium, Stade de Paris, on 29th February.

What interests me most about the conference is that it will be first chance to hear (and hopefully meet up with) the new Head of Digital at Manchester City, Russell Stopford.  He has taken over from the interim boss of the last year Richard Ayers, who is working for City still from his London base.

The panel session that Russell will be taking part in is on ‘Football Club Perspectives’ and also includes Guiliano Giogetti (Head of New Wed & New Media at AC Milan), Kieron Kilbride (Director of Biz Development at Football League) and Warren Perk (MD, Northern Europe at Perform).

The panel is being moderated by an old aquaintance in Cas Knight, formerly the MD of Chelsea Digital and now SVP at Wasserman Media Group.  If nothing else it is worth heading along to hear these people give their thoughts and, hopefully, get to meet them too.

To help set our expectations here is what the panel session is about;

“Clubs have more ways of engaging with their fans than ever, with a spectrum of possibilities that run from social networking initiatives all the way up to running their own TV channels. What are the perils and pitfalls of joining the broadcasting business? How much does the equipment cost? What is the minimum technical spec that should be considered? And how do clubs monetise one of the most precious assets that they have; their archive?”

There is more to this show than the one panel, though that is where most of my interest is going to lie.

There is also a EURO 2012 overview from the Head of TV Production at EUFA.  A panel session on broadcast technologies with FIFA, STATS, Opta and deltatre.  Finishing off with a panel session on next-generate technologies (3D, 4k, etc).

Its an awesome line up for what promises to be a really interesting event.  If you fancy hopping onto the Eurostar to Paris then head to http://svgeurope.org/football-production/ first to book your place.

Hopefully see you there!