The rise of games and user-generated content on social media sites are among the themes that panelists and keynote speakers will address at this year’s Interactive Content Exchange conference in Toronto.

Organizer Ian Kelso, president of trade organization Interactive Ontario, notes that UGC was a strong focus of last year’s event, ‘but now we’ve seen a much clearer picture of just how integral the user has become and how much people are participating’ in digital media, he says.

He cites the popular Scrabulous application on the social networking site Facebook as an example of how content is being driven by users.

‘We’re focusing on where social media is meeting games…Facebook is quickly becoming a platform for media content distribution because people are recommending to others to check out videos and games on the platform,’ Kelso explains.

The game was created by brothers Rajat and Jayant Agarwalla out of Calcutta, India. Jayant will address delegates at the conference, which runs March 26-28 at the Carlu event theatre.

Lizbeth Goodman, director of the U.K.’s SMARTlab Digital Media Institute & MAGICGamelab, will lead the keynote address on the convergence of creativity and innovation, and its impact on industry. Other highlights at ICE08 include the ‘New and the Next’ game panel, featuring guest speaker Don Daglo, CEO of video game developer Stormfront Studios. The California-based company has developed adaptations of The Spiderwick Chronicles and The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers.

‘Don has become an industry expert at analyzing where some of the console platforms have evolved over time and what we may expect next,’ Kelso says. ‘We want to look at how technology integrates with the creative and the content.’

The three-day conference boasts over 30 sessions and will include delegates from advertising, marketing, film, mobile, game development and publishing, and web and broadband.