A pre crack-of-dawn flight from Gatwick tomorrow will take me to Barcelona, Spain, and the New Media in Marketing & Communications Strategy conference that starts tomorrow Wednesday November 26 and runs through the end of Thursday November 27.

The event is organized by Icon Events International, an event organizer based in Barcelona. This is my first relationship with them and I’m looking forward to meeting Niall and David for the first time.

I’ll be there as conference chair which gives me a unique opportunity to learn a great deal from each of the session leaders and the results of their interaction to engage with the people participating who come to Barcelona from across Europe.

‘Engage’ is the operative word, given that this event broadly addresses the role of social media in the marketing mix. I’m really looking forward to hearing the thoughts and about the experiences in engaging with customers and other stakeholders from communicators in the companies whose logos you see pictured here.

Some will be as familiar to you you as they are to me as early adopters in embracing social media in their communication activities. Who hasn’t heard what Dell has been doing, for instance (and see how Dell views social media as a strategic marketing tool). IBM, too. Or General Motors, not only in the US but also in Europe.

So during the next two days, we’ll be hearing from such early adopters as well as the other participating companies and what they have to say about social media. I’ll also be doing my best to discover who among the people participating are doing what with social media.

I doubt I’ll have time to blog anything – I need to pay attention to what’s going on – although I hope to tweet now and again at least (and will encourage everyone there to do the same). With that in mind, here’s a hashtag to follow: #socialbarcelona.

As conference chair, I have the closing presentation slot on Thursday afternoon to wrap up the proceedings and present for 30 minutes or so on what the future might look like. Gazing into a crystal ball, always a risky yet pleasurable venture!

But that’s two days away still. Meanwhile, there’s an event to chair, people to meet and lots to learn.