The World Economic Forum '07 wound down this weekend in Davos, Switzerland. I have never been invited. I am not sure that I have ever aspired to go. Since I am not an economist, CEO of Walmart (or other suitably country-sized corporation) or world political leader, I never expected to attend.
Then how come Jeff Jarvis was there? It turns out that a chunk of Davos was focused on social media or "what's happenining in the digital space" or whatever you want to call it. There is a great (nice design) Web site dedicated to coverage and a good repository of archival coverage at davosconversations. There were a series of official bloggers including Jeff and Ariana Huffington. There were also a bunch of alternately interesting, not-so-interesting videos. I love the guys from YouTube, don't get me wrong. But Chad's video is silly. He is obvioulsy daunted by the breadth of some of the questions - "how do you see the future of the Internet, of the world?" It begs the question of what insight this current wave of entrepeneurs has to offer. I am certain they are all smart. I am certain that none of them planned or predicted their explosive growth.
It does sound like an amazing line-up of overall smart folks. Here is an excerpt from John Newton - Co-founder Documentum and Alfresco's post on a session that sounds like a lot of fun and intersects with my interest in co-creation and innovation from the outside in:
"Yesterday, I attended a session on innovation that was moderated by a correspondent for CNBC and observed by Tim Brown, the CEO of Ideo, and a professor from a Swiss Institute. I was in a group that included C. K. Prahalad, one of the greatest thinkers on the subject. Each group was tasked with the creation of a new product using different innovation models. We created a new game and film company that would take advantage of new gaming technologies with a sort of market-based collaboration between designers and customers. We were up against stiff and I was the one who presented our results. Bernard Liautaud, Chairman of Business Objects, did a fantastic job of presenting a carbon-trading fashion company using a terrorist cell market model and I believe that got the most votes. Our product didn't do very well, but it was an honor to be able to work with CK."
There are a lot of blog posts from interesting business and political leaders. getting them to open up and publish is a great step forward. I know have a much clearer picture of what goes on in Davos.
Another nice discovery - DayLife. Essentially another news aggregation service with an eye towards simplicity. Their "covers" as in magazine-like covers is wonderfully visual. They produced the davosconversation site. I tried personalizing and it didn't take but I am willing to try again.Â
The other phenomena was Reuters Second Life coverage dragging attendees into the virtual world for interviews. Not sure how this grid will reproduce, but here are the links to those interviews:
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Note: These interviews have already concluded. Click on a name for a recording of the interview. | ||||
Wednesday 24 January | Thursday 25 January | Friday 26 January | Saturday 27 January | |
12:35AM | Richard Edelman | Mark Warner | Martin Sorrell | |
1:05AM | Peter Gabriel | Jarne Elleholm | ||
3:20AM | John Battelle | Gavin Newsom | Maurice Lévy | |
5:15AM | John B. Osborn | Mitch Kapor | Fareed Zakaria | |
6:30AM | Niklas Zennstrom | |||
7:00AM | Davos closing | |||
9:45AM | Stelios Haji-Ioannou | |||
10:15AM | Arianna Huffington |
http://johnbell.typepad.com/weblog/2007/01/davos_d...