Many of my colleagues in the eBusiness & Channel Strategy team at Forrester have been working extremely hard for the past few weeks, preparing for next week's Consumer Forum, which is taking place at the Hilton in Chicago on October 28th and 29th. Among my colleagues who are presenting their latest research are Brian Walker, Diane Clarkson and Zia Daniell Wigder, while Carrie Johnson is hosting the entire event. I'm sure it will be two days well spent.

Those of you who are in Europe, like me, still have to wait a little longer for next month's Marketing & Strategy Forum, which is taking place at Chelsea Football Club in London on November 18th and 19th. I'm already looking forward to it. For the first time in 12 years at Forrester, I won't be doing a presentation on stage. That means I'll have more time to absorb the lessons from the executives who are coming to talk about their strategies.  I'm particularly pleased that two eBusiness executives I have a great deal of respect for -- Joan Mattocks of Barclaycard and Alessandro Colafranceschi of UniCredit -- have agreed to come and talk about their strategies and some of the challenges they have overcome in building highly successful eBusinesses. And although it's not strictly eBusiness or channel strategy, I'm also looking forward to hearing from Sophie Heller of ING Direct, both because of my respect for her and because I think ING Direct is a great company (I admire the firm's strategy so much I wrote a case study of it a few years ago). I know I'll also learn from the speakers I haven't met before.

But most of all I'm looking forward to seeing and meeting many of you there because of what I learn from you and the great questions you always ask. Our work at Forrester is never done. Just when we think we have a half-decent answer to a question, you our clients set us a new research challenge by asking a question or posing a problem we haven't come across before.

I hope to see you there.

Benjamin