Forrester is hosting its annual IT Forum next month in Las Vegas, and I am looking forward to hearing what happens.  Despite the malaise in the economy and a general downturn in conference going over the past year, Forrester has put together an impressive event that is bound to yield some interesting results.

Some of the must hear speakers include:

I met James Grovernor, a cofounder of RedMonk, at an IBM Information Privacy retreat (in 2003 I believe).  His analyst firm had just gotten off the ground, and he was excited to tell everyone about the nexus that exists between Redmond and Armonk – hence the name.

What I thought as quite unusual then – and brilliant today – is their open source model for IT research.  Basically, anything they publish for general consumption is available for free with no strings attached.