Today was the final day (for this year) of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland and the question always gets asked "was anything achieved" or is there more rhetoric than results? I for one think it's a great concept and find it very amusing that celebrities share a podium with business leaders and politicians.
Last year was the first year that a Blog was deployed for the WEF and a collective of writers empowered to share their observations (see:www.forumblog.org), now this has quickly become the most popular way for the world to learn more about this one-of-a-kind event. There's also great resources of documents for the meeting summaries and an excellent archive of videos to access from home computers but definitely the Blog has been the big topic of discussion this year. Today, since it's the last day, there were some great articles reviewing the highlights.
China was the biggest theme of the event and apparently every session related to this massive emerging market was a full house. As always, Bill Gates had some very insightful comments related to conducting business in China, despite the problems Microsoft faces with IP theft he was very enthusiastic about the prospects for the world economy that the awakening of the sleeping giant represents.
In today's post of the ForumBlog there's an article about George Soro's comment on Lula and Chirac's proposal for a system of Global Taxation, a great story called "China on the Brain", a report from a tech guru about what he learned regarding the future plans of Japan and Germany, as well as some amusing stories about Sharon Stone raising $1M in about 15 minutes and the efforts of Angelina Jolie to fight poverty.
For me one of the most interesting aspects is all the discussions about Blogs, here's an excerpt from;
The Forum's formats; Business and Blogs By David Kirkpatrick of Fortune
-The blogging dinner on Thursday night was fascinating, as Rebecca explains below. Here's a link to my cover story in a recent Fortune about the impact of blogs on business. It's big. The power of the individual is growing in society, and blogs are one of the most concrete ways it is being manifested. The Forum this year is not sufficiently including in the program sessions devoted to this macro trend: bottom-up empowerment. Every company represented here would be well-advised to pay heed to how empowered consumers and customers will change the way they have to do business. The Forum's willingness to empower those of us invited to blog here is commendable. It demonstrates openness. Companies need to have a similar spirit. Some businesses are already hosting blogs and bulletin boards in which customers can criticize them and not have their remarks erased. In the long run it makes the business stronger. Worth mentioning: Amazon's customer comments were one of the real breakthroughs along these lines, some years ago.
