There’s an odd hiatus at the World Economic Forum. Davos is over (but we are still both generating and reading post-Davos thank you letters). The spring regional meetings of the Forum are just beginning to pick up steam (China, which opens on 16 April in Beijing, is the first). So it’s a time for more long-range, strategic thinking and, for many, some holiday time.
Among the issues I’m wrestling with is how soon is realistic to begin filling in the blanks for Davos 2001. We hold our Davos Global Issues Group brainstorming every spring, usually in April. We may need to move it ahead a few weeks this year to late March. Have useful ideas started to coalesce at that point? Or are another few weeks necessary for the right seeds to begin germinating?
I’ll keep you informed of the ideas we begin to sniff out as the process for 2001 gathers speed.
As an enthusiastic reader of you website (I am not now any may probably never be a participant in the World Economic Forum), I was wondering if you will be reporting on the spring regional meetings. I know they are nowhere near to being in the same league as Davos, but I am interested in finding out if they are as collegial as Davos itself.
Damien,
Good idea. I’ll do what I can on some of the regional meetings, and certainly the ones I attend myself.
One of the peculiarities of the Forum is that the people responsible for Davos are not that deeply involved in the regional meetings. My team and I spend the whole 12 months working towards Davos. Given my impulses to be involved (or to meddle, depending on your point of view), I will contribute various thoughts to the regional teams. But it’s not my responsibility.
On the collegial nature of the regional meetings, the best of them are even more so than Davos. My nomination for the best? It’s undoubtedly the Southern Africa Economic Summit, which will be in Durban, 21-23 June.