That's our big theme for November: for all the flood of digital astonishments, it's still barely dawn in the brave new media world. Computers in a every pocket. User-generated context. Tera-clouds of data and giga-bit video streams. Media simultaneously global and personal, free and expensive, deeply controlled and wildly democratic. Grasp those paradoxes, run out the trend lines, and fasten your seat belt.

For the long view, MMF 3.0 serves up our trademark team of big-picture co-chairs--returning veterans Maurice Levy of Publicis Groupe and News Corp's James Murdoch, joined for 2008 by Google EMEA chief Nikesh Arora, Vivendi's Jean-Bernard Levy, Riugang Li of Shanghai Media Group, NBCU's Ben Silverman and Joost's Nik Zennstrom. Click the photos at left for details.

Drill down and the feature set gets even richer. At the risk of stepping on toes, here're some more big guns: Robert Thomson of the Wall Street Journal. Mark Thompson of the BBC. David Kenny of Digitas, Real Networks' Rob Glaser and Chris De Wolfe from MySpace. There's the FT's Lionel Barber, Bloomberg's Norm Pearlstine, Jim Spanfeller of Forbes, CNBC's Zafar Siddiqi. From the money side, Accel Partners' Joe Schoendorf, Softbank's Eric Hippeau, Rich Greenfield of Pali Capital, Lehman's Makram Azar, Danny Rimer from Index. Serial builders and e-entrepreneurs. FON's Martin Varsavsky, Glam's Samir Arora, Loic Le Meur of Seesmic, Blinkx's Suranga Chandratillake, Rafat Ali of ContentNext and literally too many more to name (though watch this space). Plus wave-makers non-pareils - Denuo's Rishad Tobaccowala, EDventures' Esther Dyson, Randy Rothenberg of IAB. And MMF's real stars: 350 of the smartest, hottest, coolest technologists, content creators, managers, marketers and
bank-rollers who for three days every year make Monte Carlo the epicenter of global media.

MMF's tireless program director, Wired's Spencer Reiss, is spending his summer plotting a fiesta of high-energy questions and pointed ideas. Old media in new business models. Mobile platform wars. Automated marketing & portable data. Real-world gaming. Regulating privacy. Taste-making algorithms. Wither music's middlemen? How long will broadcast last? Can anything save newspapers?

The official invitations went out last week, to a mix of MMF veterans and compelling new players. If you're on the list, don't hang back--space is absolutely limited. If you're not and think you should be, feel free to write and tell us why--there's always next year.