The cream of the international development community is heading down to the south coast for the Develop Conference and Expo 2007, to be held from July 24th to July 26th at the Brighton Hilton Metropole.

Launched last summer, the Develop conference has this year attracted more well-known speakers, including Lionhead's Peter Molyneux and VFX guru Peter Chiang. Studios such as SCEE, Rare and Blitz have also already declared their support.

The main conference, which takes place on July 25th and 26th, boasts 45 sessions across the seven tracks of design, production, coding, business, art, audio and world vision. The latter is brand new for 2007, promising a glimpse into games development around the world. Four key themes underpin the conference: community, connectivity, creativity and control, which emphasise topics such as user-generated content, network-backed games and new control schemes.

“As we leave GDC behind, we couldn’t have asked for a better following wind for our second Develop Conference this July,” said advisory board chair Owain Bennallack.

“One of our long-standing key themes, social networking and its impact on games, surprised many as the talk of San Francisco, thanks largely to Phil Harrison’s key speech revealing PlayStation Home and Media Molecule’s Little Big Planet. Developers are now ready to hear a lot more about how the lessons of Web 2.0 can make their games better and more successful, and the Develop conference in Brighton is the only place to do so, as well as picking up plenty more traditional hints and tips about programming, art, audio, and production.”

Running alongside the conference is the Develop Expo, which brings together around 40 of Europe's leading development companies.

July 24th, meanwhile, sees the return of Develop Mobile, a one-day conference dedicated to wireless game development, and GAMES:EDU the Skillset-backed one-day conference looking at games education.

Develop publisher Intent Media is also hosting its popular Develop Industry Excellence Awards on the evening of July 25th at the Metropole.

“We are confident that Develop Conference & Expo 2007 has everything to deliver a thought-provoking, educational, inspirational and business-changing experience for our delegates,“ stated Andy Lane, Tandem Events’ managing director. “It really is the must-attend event for anyone in European development community this summer.”

Delegates can register for passes at www.developconference.com