Simon Collister has posed an interesting question on his excellent blog simonsays and tagged a number of others for their opinion. Who would be our dream third keynote speaker for this year’s CIPR Northern Conference?

Our event management company Don't Panic are pleased to be working with the CIPR Yorkshire and Lincolnshire group to stage the fifth annual Northern Conference which is taking place in Leeds on the 6th of July and has become an essential highlight of the Northern PR events calendar.

The lineup is already extremely strong and features keynotes from John Willman, UK Business Editor of the Financial Times and Rob Skinner, Chief Press Officer of First Direct and Marks & Spencer Money however we’ve all currently got our heads together to secure our third keynote.

There are also nine extremely valuable and varied workshops - the big dilemma for delegates will be which three to choose to attend - and yes, one of those sessions will be on the ‘New PR’ and hosted by Stuart Bruce and Philip Young. Both Simon and ourselves began blogging as a direct result of the University of Sunderland’s unmissable ‘Delivering the New PR’ conference series and we expect a similar explosion after their workshop in Leeds.

Back to the question and, as Simon chose intrepid reporter Tin Tin, let’s not forget this is a bit of fun.

Our choice would be the wonderfully anonymous artist and self publicist Banksy whose work adorns some of the UK’s best walls and always raises a smile with us. He’s also the guy who decided to take it upon himself to ‘exhibit’ some of his own work in the world’s most prestigious art galleries. Hilariously, it took gallery staff days and even weeks to notice the meticulously framed additions to their collections.

Due to the semi-legitimate nature of his chosen medium, he’d have to be the first keynote to deliver a presentation from behind a screen but I’d love to ask his views on guerilla marketing and the whole mainstreaming of his spray paint style particularly amongst youth orientated brands.

We’re tagging – Stuart Bruce, Philip Young and David Phillips.