Davos Newbies

Reading Scripting News’s pointers to Dan Gillmor and Dan Bricklin’s weblogs, I became convinced today of how Davos Newbies should work during Davos itself.

The home page should be a log of other interesting reflections on Davos (as I’m sure Dan Gillmor’s will be, for example). One of the items will be (perhaps I should be cautious and say, might be) a snippet of my posting, which will be a story to link to. I’ll try to provide something of the behind the scenes flavour of Davos (without betraying any confidences).

People like Dan and Dave Winer and many others will actually have the chance to absorb far more of what goes on in sessions than I will in Davos — I’ve got to run the thing! It’s kind of like giving a party: the host never gets to eat much of the food or spend much time talking with people because he or she is too busy helping everyone else.

A late and short posting today, because we had to get the programme to the printer. That’s it, no more changes.

Of course, there are inevitably last minute changes of one kind or another. The big one today was that we arrived at the Geneva offices of the Forum to find that Malaysian prime minister Mahathir bin Mohamed had cancelled his trip to Davos. If you follow events in east Asia, you probably know that Mahathir has his hands full at home. Still, it left a hole in our programme. Mahathir was one of the primary speakers at our Friday morning plenary on “It’s not the economy, it’s the society”.

Some fast footwork meant that within six hours (all we had to get it in the programme) we had confirmed Turkey’s prime minister Bulent Ecevit and New Jersey governor Christine Todd Whitman for the session. I think it’s going to be an even better discussion now: they’re joined by Kurt Biedenkopf, minister president of Saxony (known in Germany as King Kurt), George Soros and Louis Schweitzer, CEO of Renault. Hong Kong’s Ronnie Chan is in the chair.