Preparing Davos 2008

Davos 2008 will be my 8th World Economic Forum Annual Meeting in a row (thanks for inviting me!), I was invited as a Young Global Leader, then launched their World Economic Forum blog in April 2004 and been helping them since then, Matthias Luefkens has also been helping us so much with LeWeb3 as a panelist. I have been podcasting tens of entries in the last years in video and audio.

This year is the first time there will be so many bloggers invited, I do not know exactly how many, but I know that both Michael Arrington and Robert Scoble are joining which is great news. The World Economic Forum has been very good inviting Web 2.0 speakers every year (for example they had Mark Zuckerberg speak last year before there was so much buzz around Facebook) but very few bloggers actually went but it's changing and it's good (Dave and Joi Ito went years ago, Arianna Huffington last year with Jeff Jarvis...).

As every year, the World Economic Forum puts lots of efforts spreading the amazing content discussed during the week on the web on its site and also using web2.0 tools. Highlights of this year are the Davos Conversation page where I will be contributing with other bloggers and media and more original the YouTube Davos Question ("What one thing do you think that countries, companies or individuals must do to make the world a better place in 2008?"), look for many Seesmic posts too, and I will get questions from Seesmic to the participants. The World Economic Forum also started twittering.

The World Economic Forum also hosts an Open Forum that everybody can join. This year I will be the moderator of a session on Virtual Worlds with Reid Hoffman, Philip Rosedale, and Joseph Weizenbaum. Here are a few questions we will cover and te context. " Tools such as Second Life are new ways of extending life to the virtual space, for example, allowing us to attend Wimbledon while standing next to one of the players or living out our social desires anonymously without restraints or risk of sanctions. More and more people are turning to virtual reality to establish who they are, what they know, who they interact with and how. This will influence how society is structured in the future and how real or fictive this virtuality will be."

-In the context of the virtual worlds we are creating, what is the difference between fiction and reality?
-with the ease of access to these virtual worlds, how do different generations react?
-How does this world of immediate access, limitless social skills and unrestrained behaviour influence our moral framework?
-should the focus be on the technological or human side of progress?

I will also moderate a session within the World Economic Forum summit (private but we will probably make it available online in one way or another): Add a Friend: Accept or Decline
While the hype around life in virtual worlds has somewhat subsided, they still hold the promise of what might come next in terms of interfaces and new networking tools. Is Second Life, like the other social networking sites that appeared before Facebook, ahead of its time? How can virtual worlds be used beyond socializing as a tool for content creation, testing new concepts, and relationship and brand building?
· Danah Boyd**, Researcher
· George F. Colony**, Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive
Officer, Forrester Research, USA
· Mitchell Kapor**, President, Kapor Enterprises, USA
· Fernando Madeira*, Chief Executive Officer, Terra Latin America,
Brazil; Young Global Leader
· Donald Tapscott*, Chief Executive Officer, New Paradigm Learning
Corporation, Canada