Fortune’s David Kirkpatrick does a piece in CNN Money on the buzz and discussion at the recent Davos event in Switzerland. The line up and other thorough and engaging summaries can be found here.
Panelists and attendees discussed a wide range of issues, including: “what is dignity?,” world trade, climate change, action to resolve the Middle East crisis, new models needed for global healthcare, relinguishing control of web content, how web 2.0 will moud the future, balancing the need for security with the need for privacy, the new era of petropolitics, the fight against terrorism, uniting for stability in Iraq, and a first life perspective on avatars and the virtual world.
Taken from World Economic Forum website
We learn about Nestle CEO Peter Brabeck-Letmathe, who was on stage asserting that global warming doesn’t much matter, that Al Gore deliberately omitted contradictory information from his movie “An Inconvenient Truth,” and that the world would be better off using money it is spending to comply with the Kyoto Protocol to improve water supplies.
He ran into Vinod Khosla, an entrepreneur and VC who invests in clean-energy start-ups, who many of us know in Silicon Valley. His response on what he thought of Brabeck-Letmathe’s comments: “He should see his proctologist to find his head……and you can quote me.”
Kirkpatrick writes on Brabeck-Letmathe’s ill-considered remarks, “they were especially noteworthy because the 2,500 attendees – including corporate chieftains -seemed to have reached near-universal consensus that global warming is real and businesses and governments must thus change their behavior.”
And on technology discussions, apparently last year’s focus was on voice net and game learning — this year, they talked about social networking and the move towards 3D functionality.
Renee Blodgett is the founder of We Blog the World. The site combines the magic of an online culture and travel magazine with a global blog network and has contributors from every continent in the world. Having lived in 10 countries and explored nearly 80, she is an avid traveler, and a lover, observer and participant in cultural diversity.
She is also the CEO and founder of Magic Sauce Media, a new media services consultancy focused on viral marketing, social media, branding, events and PR. For over 20 years, she has helped companies from 12 countries get traction in the market. Known for her global and organic approach to product and corporate launches, Renee practices what she pitches and as an active user of social media, she helps clients navigate digital waters from around the world. Renee has been blogging for over 16 years and regularly writes on her personal blog Down the Avenue, Huffington Post, BlogHer, We Blog the World and other sites. She was ranked #12 Social Media Influencer by Forbes Magazine and is listed as a new media influencer and game changer on various sites and books on the new media revolution. In 2013, she was listed as the 6th most influential woman in social media by Forbes Magazine on a Top 20 List.
Her passion for art, storytelling and photography led to the launch of Magic Sauce Photography, which is a visual extension of her writing, the result of which has led to producing six photo books: Galapagos Islands, London, South Africa, Rome, Urbanization and Ecuador.
Renee is also the co-founder of Traveling Geeks, an initiative that brings entrepreneurs, thought leaders, bloggers, creators, curators and influencers to other countries to share and learn from peers, governments, corporations, and the general public in order to educate, share, evaluate, and promote innovative technologies.
