As the dates for the Edinburgh Interactive Festival 2009 draw closer - it's Thursday 13th August to Friday 14th August - it's time to check the list of talks to see what looks like it will be interesting.

The keynote comes from EA Sports president Peter Moore. He's talking about Challenge of Reinventing the Iconic Sports Brand Game, which may or may not include some titbits about iPhone. After all, Madden 10 will have an integrated iPhone app for the console versions.

In terms of what's going on with social gaming - including iPhone we expect - Kristian Segerstrale, CEO and co-founder of Playfish is always worth listening to. He'll be talking about the impact of trends such as free-to-play, games as a service, social game design, user-generated content and digital distribution.

Plenty to fit in there.

Similar thoughts will no doubt be thrown up in the It's All in the Browser panel, which sees participants from the likes of Habbo Hotel and Runescape talking about their experiences.

We're also interested in the talk from Martin Owen of Smalti Technology; a startup that makes smart objects - that is small blocks which interact in different ways depending on what you do with them and what else is in their environment.

Friday has a less obvious Pocket Gamer bent, although we're hopeful Peter Cowley, MD of Digital Media at Endemol (the producers of Big Brother and Deal or no Deal), will have something significant to say about the convergence of TV game shows within games.

You can find out more details about the Edinburgh Interactive Festival 2009, and the full line-up of speakers on the official website.