The Media Abby will be held on 8 April, followed by the Creative Abby on 9 April.

The speaker‘s list at the fest includes Talenthouse creative director and founder Amos Pizzey, Engine CEO Peter Scott, Lowe & Partners Worldwide global CEO Michael Wall, TBWA Worldwide chief marketing officer Laurie Coots and LiquidThread president and MD Brian J Terkelsen.

The creative and media Abby‘s will be managed by the nine-member Awards Governing Council (AGC) under the chairmanship of Shashi Sinha. Other members of the AGC include Arvind Sharma, Sundar Swamy, Sunil Lulla, Ajay Chandwani, Ajay Kakkar, Suman Srivastaa, AAAI president Nagesh Alai and ACB president Bhaskar Das.

Says Goafest 2011 chairperson Lynn de Souza, "Goafest 2011 will provide a unique learning environment for creative, marketing and media practioners and the opportunity to recognize and award excellent work from all over the country. We hope to take this event onto newer heights and bring it on par with other international events."

The Festival of Media, Montreux, will specially host two of its categories - ‘best communication strategy‘ and ‘best contribution to a campaign by a media owner‘ at the Goafest at specially reduced entry fees. The winners and runners-up of these categories will be fast-tracked into to the Festival of Media finals.

Shashi Sinha adds, "We will be coming up with the complete list of the categories in a few days. The Goafest is all about creativity and networking."

The five-day festival will kick off with a unique event in association with Advertising Standards Council of India (ASCI) specially featuring 100 young creative people. They will be required to conceive and execute installation art works based on the theme ‘Creativity with a conscience‘. The final pieces will be displayed in the Ad Village for the duration of the festival.

To be held on 7 April, the topic for the Industry Advertising Conclave this year is ‘Preparing the profession for the new decade‘ and will be led by Sundar Swamy.