Every heard of Swissnex? Their mission is to connect the dots between Switzerland and North America in science, education, art, and innovation. It is an initiative of Switzerland’s State Secretariat for Education and Research (SER). The SF group is part of a network of outposts elsewhere in the globe.
Through our public events and study tours, we highlight the best of Swiss and North American ingenuity and create opportunities for networking among our diverse group of professional contacts in the San Francisco Bay Area, Silicon Valley, and beyond. http://www.swissnexsanfrancisco.org/
I was invited to a design thinking session happening next Monday which is how I heard of swissnex. When I looked at the schedule I found a session on the 2010 DAVOS World Economic Forum (WEF). The idea was a panel of 2010 WEF participants talking about their experiences.
Have to admit it wasn’t what we expected — we were over-dressed (swissnex is on the edge of the Financial district but we missed the edge cue on that), it was quite a small space (read cramped with structural columns to see around), and it was Friday night (I knew that but didn’t realize the significance soon enough re: capacity to sit and listen).
Paul Saffo was the moderator — forecaster, essayist, and visiting scholar at Media X at Stanford. He did his job well. The panelists were diverse: Jill Tarter, director of the Center for Extraterrestrial Intelligence Research; Alison Gopnik, professor of psychology and affiliate professor philosophy at UC Berkeley; and, Loic Le Meur, founder and CEO of Seesmic.com.
As I have “adopted” the DAVOS mantra of Rethink. Redesign. Rebuild. I thought that this could be an interesting session and it was — although I expected more political/business content and got more about the sociology of DAVOS. Paul Saffo pointed out that there are 3 types of participants at DAVOS: one part political, one part rich and powerful, and one part “court musicians” or the “intellectual glue”. The panelists put themselves in the latter category.
Here are some tid-bits about the sociology — highlights and topics included:
- Had 5 minutes with Bill Gates
- The creativity of hacking
- The “girl” effect in developing countries where the key to economic success is around educating and supporting young women — best way out of poverty is to educate women
- Leaders of the Future — 16 year olds
- World Cup Soccer of the Homeless
- General mood of DAVOS: “whew — it didn’t get any worse”
- Rebuilding economics — interest in behavioural economics — know more about the nature of people
- Does politics really matter? Isn’t economics more powerful?
- A dinner on the origins of morality.
- DAVOS doesn’t really have “outcomes” — it is about conversation and learning
- More private meetings than public sessions — lots of business done outside of sessions
- The Google Party was the best
I was interested in the comment that Twitter had changed DAVOS — you know where your friends and colleagues are — you can find them at parties or in a large session. You are just more connected.
And at the swissnex session we were encouraged to tweet and the tweets were up on the screen as the session evolved. But I just haven’t mastered tweeting fast on my iPhone. I am amazed at those who can tweet, listen, watch and talk at the same time.
So I went hoping to understand more about the rethink, redesign, rebuild themes — but I guess you had to be there. At DAVOS I mean.