Should I make appointments with people before I arrive in Davos?

Someone the other day told me that they heard there was no point coming to Davos unless they arranged appointments in advance. It’s true that if you want to have 20 minutes with Bill Gates, Ray Gilmartin, Sir John Browne or Noboyuki Idei, you should have organised it already. The really heavy hitters arrive in Davos with a pretty full schedule of bilateral meetings, as well as an agenda of programme sessions they want to attend.

In my experience, however, most people in Davos are reasonably accessible, either in a serendipitous way or by less formal arrangements. If there is someone you know you want to see, drop them a line before Davos suggesting you hook up. In Davos, rather than relying on a chance encounter, you can use the internal email system. Use of these, on stations called Kiosks, has increased each year. It’s not foolproof: a lot of the Davos crowd isn’t particularly keyboard-friendly (even now!), but my guess is that anyone reading Davos Newbies will only want to meet with other people who will read their own emails.

***Advance congratulations and regrets

We’ve just had notice that Jeff Bezos will not be coming to Davos after all. It isn’t because he doesn’t want to defend the Amazon.com policy on patents (see Scripting News passim). It’s because his wife is imminently expecting their first child.