Davos Newbies

Davos (or the Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum, as it’s formally known) can be bewildering for first-time visitors. I’m going to try to use this website for the next month to help Davos newbies.

First, you should know that the Forum tries hard to offer a personalised service that, in my experience, has no equivalents elsewhere. If you know me, Lance Knobel, you can always ask for advice directly.

Otherwise, if you are coming to Davos for the Annual Meeting, there will be someone within the Forum who is responsible for looking after you. They will do whatever they can to provide information. If, in extremis, you send an email to contact@weforum.org, there really is someone who tries to reply swiftly.

One of the confusing aspects of Davos is that there are many Davoses. In addition to the Annual Meeting programme (the official programme which all participants can attend), there are Governors meetings (just for a select group of individual industry CEOs), special programmes for Global Leaders for Tomorrow (GLTs), Emerging Market Leaders and Tech Pioneers, and, of course, a host of private functions at cocktail hour. For media leaders there’s “Barbara’s Davos”, a distinct series of events organised by Barbara Erskine, director of communications at the Forum. So if you find that someone is talking excitedly about something that you didn’t even know was happening, don’t worry too much.

I’ll try to update daily with thoughts to help Davos newbies. You can always post specific queries in the discussion group.