I began this blog on Tuesday by saying that it had started snowing. The big issue for many of the less well-heeled among us — those without heavy duty limos and helicopters — is whether the snow that has built up all day will let us get home now that the World Economic Forum’s meeting [...]
Davos is nothing if not international. So it seemed no big deal when lunch on Friday turned out to be a Saudi Arabian buffet. It was brought to us by people “proudly investing in the future of Saudia Arabia”. And very nice it was too.
Some ravenous attendees — including journalists, I’m sorry to report — [...]
What business wants business (often) gets. Many of the executives popping in and out of panel discussions in Davos this week have been pushing harder than usual for a resumption of the stalled Doha round of world trade talks. Abracadabra! A meeting of government ministers on the sidelines, to use the jargon, agreed to get [...]
Royal-watchers could have had a pretty good time in Davos. The king and queen of Jordan, who host a Middle East Davos most years on the banks of the Dead Sea, have been speaking. Britain’s Duke of York has been wandering about. So has Belgium’s Prince Philippe.
But one Royal that has not been here is [...]
The snow is falling heavily and there is a kind of end-of-term feeling in Davos as the WEF annual meeting enters its last full day. Not a bad time, then, to ask why people really bother to come here.
There is a lot of scepticism among outsiders that Davos is just a big talking shop, full [...]
A single demonstrator has broken through the World Economic Forum’s otherwise thorough security cordon, sneaking past rows of efficient guards to wave a large anti-Davos placard right in the temple itself.
Ok, so he’s an avatar (online alter ego). But he still did it. luemmel Lemmon of the WEF protest group DaDavos walked into the Second [...]
The idea of bloggers writing about bloggers is less than bracing, but at Davos the phenomenon is so widespread and talked about that Monty Python’s Spam sketch comes to mind – blog, blog, blog, blog etc.
It is actually next to impossible to calculate how many people are blogging the event. As well as high profile media [...]
The titles of panel meetings at the World Economic Forum can sometimes be pretty dire. Frankly, “Strategies for a New Power Equation” or “The Future of Urban Mobility” do not really set the pulse racing. So it was with some delight that I came across this gem being moderated by Laura Tyson, Bill Clinton’s former [...]
I didn’t come out here to go celeb-spotting but the fact that celebrities are short on the ground in Davos hasn’t escaped the notice of some of the myriad journalists and bloggers following events at the World Economic Forum.
While it’s possibly true that this year’s event may be lacking in true A list attendees my colleague Mark [...]
So what is the World Economic Forum really? Talking shop, manna for conspiracy theorists or a useful get-together for the great and the good?
It’s certainly a mysterious institution for many. It’s privately run and unabashedly self-promoting, a meet-and-greet that brings together enough of the world’s super-powerful to delight any conspiracy theorist worthy of the name. [...]
