Loic Le Meur Blog

The future WE will create: after TED notes & thoughts

I am already back home from an amazing experience, the TED conference. It is one of the two best conferences I have been with Davos and as many speakers joked all week long, I agee, "it does something to your brain". Here are a few ideas and notes I will keep in mind from the conference.

The world is getting flat and smaller. We're all citizens of the world and borders and nations matter less.

More and more of us

-population growth.
The facts. 6.5 billion, growing at 77 million a year, 2.4 people every second, in 2050 10 billion people in the world. Population is aging and by 2050 the number of old people will exceed the number of young people for the first time in history.
-resources
We have limited resources in food, water and energy and population growth means increasing needs, for example, we need to double the food production to satisfy demand

Globalization is good

Globalization means increased wealth around the world, the gap reduces fast: the chinese economy is already the 4th largest economy. 4 countries will get most of the growth: Brazil, Russia, India and China will create a deep shift. These countries will by 2025 create 50% of the G6 Countries, overtake the G6 by 2040.

Hans Rosling gave his amazing speech on how countries evolve with globalization and how the Internet helps. Again, check it if you don't know these animations, it is very straightforward, it has been designed to be understood by kids !

Key challenges we talked about

Environment. Al Gore gave a mind blowing speech I had already heard in Davos. I podcasted it but unfortunately the TED organisers asked me to take it down for copyright reasons. I understand and apologized to them for my podcast, I regret not being able to help spread the word faster on such an important topic and trust TED or Al Gore will share it online soon with the non-TEDizens.

Al Gore suggested also that we all started to help now, here are a few suggestions:
-reduce emissions in your home
-reduce emissions from your car
-buy the most energy efficient appliances and other products: be a green consumer
-live a carbon neutral life: you can calculate your own carbon production level at http://www.climatrecrisis.net
-make your business carbon neutral (it's not as hard as you think)
-invest sustainably in companies and funds that are part of the solution
-become a catalyst change in your community
-help raising awareness by promoting an inconvenient truth
let's rebrand global warming: climate crisis and planetary emergency

Al Gore updated us on the last day as January 2005 was the record-high ever month in human's history in temperature showing that the global warming trend continues.

Poverty. The 225 richest people in the world have accumulated the wealth of 2.7 billion individuals at the bottom of the pyramid.

Health.

Larry Brilliant, a public health visionary who did an extraordinary job at eradicating smallpox in the world and who was just appointed head of Google's philantropy, http://www.Google.org. Larry described world's health challenges, how smallpox was eradicated and the importance of "early detection early prevention". It took 4 million people going door to door in affected countries to come to grip with polio. He explained pandemic bird flu and the scary fact that we will not have a vaccine if it occurs in the next three years. Larry explained that bird flu is already at stage 3 on the WHO scale and if it reaches stage 4 (pandemic) there will be no planes and no traveling anymore, people will stay home and avoid any contact whatsoever with others, avoid movie theatres, it would be a total disorder and disaster. Larry pointed us to a survey they have conducted amongst the top specialists of bird flu in the world and asked them a very simple question: what is the likelihood ? 15% said a pandemic will happen in the near future and 90% said it will happen within their children's life. Up to 650 million to 2.8 billion people will be sick, there will be $1 to 3$ trillion in costs and 25 million to 165 Million deaths.

Larry explained as well the epidemic curve and how any virus can touch the entire world within three weeks. SARS did not occur because it was found 3 months before WHO announced it thanks to web crawling !!! (GPHIN). Up do now the WHO would learn about a virus from the governments sending reports but it takes ages to identify the viruses. GPHIN crawled the web and especially the local press of all countries and searched reports about children deaths, sudden illnesses appearing, etc and these reports were way faster to identify the viruses. Very quickly these reports were treated as very important by the WHO and now they account for 75% of the reports sent to WHO with a budget close to 0 (in the past 100% of the reports came from the states at high cost of production). Nobody would have every thought before that you can find diseases early by crawling the web ! Larry made an interesting point about the fact that the search should be totally multilingual: "these bad viruses really don't have an intention to show up in english, spanish, french or in the other main spoken languages in the world, they just show up in any language and we need to adapt".

Larry concluded his speech with a wish to help "early detection early prevention": build an early warning system to protect us agains humanities worst nightmares, that he would call INSTEDD. He got a standing ovation by the TEDizens in the room and let's hope he reaches his goal, I bet his new role at the Google fundation will help and that's good.

Creative ideas and projects

Burt Rutan was very insipiring as he explained his company's program to develop and produce a commercial suborbital spaceship system, intended for routine flights outside the earth's atmosphere. These are being structured for a high level of safety and with operating costs intended to support flying a large number of the public. Burt explained how the military would be outpaced by the civilians in suborbital flight.

Design. There were many design projects presented, it is very difficult to just write about them so I'll pass, but it was very inspiring.

Richard Baraniuk - Connexions wants to set knowledge free by launching a platform for authors around the world to get the books they write for free and in as many languages as possible. Very interesting, I have to check it again.

Animal Copyright. One of the craziest idea of TED was Gregory Colbert's speech. His analysis is that animals' image is constantly used in advertising and else through in pictures and videos. When we always recognize the importance of copyright for brands, artists and the like, we don't for animals because they have no means to claim and defend them. His idea is to create a Animal Copyright that would be devoted to preserve animal life on earth and funded without charity each time a photo or video of an animal is used and especially in advertising. The room agreed that it was so crazy it may actually work. Ethan has more.

Aging ! One of the most provocative presentation was given by Aubrey de Grey, a biomedical gerontologist. Aubrey claims that aging is both ghastly and potentially treatable. He works towards such treatments. Ethan also has much more.

3 minutes speeches from participants. I loved this idea, anybody could have the opportunity to submit a 3 minutes presentation about... anything. Ethan gave us "12 great reasons to learn Mandarin" and was brilliant as always, Peter Skillman gave an amazing presentation on the genius of kindergarten designers, performing better on the same simple design test than business school students or people in corporations. He demonstrated how our mind was losing creativity as we grew up. Scary thought but so impactful and true, how can we get it back ?

Find a purpose for your life

Do we need God ? One of the best moment of TED was "the Jesus guy" just followed by "the anti-Jesus guy":

Rick Warren, author of the #2 nonfiction selling book in history after the bible, -the purpose driven life- and pastor has become one of the most influential Christian voices worldwide. The Saddleback Church, which began as a small group in his home, now averages over 20,000 in attendance each weekend.
Rick Warren explained that spiritual emptiness was our largest disease: most humans are not living they are just existing and worse, they "feel like a fake" and always have to pretend they are more than they really are. People need to understand what they are betting their lives on. They need to understand their worldview, it determines everything they do, their behaviour, what they become. We all have to test our worldviews and the best way to do that is not in good times, it is how you act the days before your funerals, what you believe makes a big difference. Materialims is all about getting, is all about more.
good life is about looking good, feeling good and having the goods ! The wealthiest people in the world are not the happiest. Look at your shape, what are you wired to do ? What are you doing with what you have been given ? If you are influential it is not by chance, use it to speak-up for others and make the world a better place.

Dan Dennett, philosopher and atheist challenged Rick's views, it was very interesting. Dan explained we should all (especially the kids at school) study all religions, without influence, the facts, the history, the texts, music, requirements... He says "democracy depends on an informed citizenship", misinformed consent does not count.
Now about Rick's book. Dan finds the base goals good: "to bring purpose to the lives of millions is a good deal" and Rick's book is "a brilliant redesign of traditional religious themes updating them and has excellent insights into human psychology". However Rick then criticizes strongly Rick's statements about the necessity of God when he says "if there was no God, we would all be accidents, the result of astronomical random chance in the universe". Dan claims that "we don't need a meaning in God to be good". He also pointed us to http://www.adherents.com

4. wishes and achievements

TED Wishes. I liked to see the achievements of TED wishes last year (Bono's one.org to fight poverty). We also talked about the http://www.worldchanging.com initiative launched by Jamais Cascio. Worldchanging is a weblog focusing on the intersection of sustainable design, emerging technologies, global development and collaborative networks. Check this year's wishes as Ethan reported them:
Larry Brilliant Wish
Jehane Noujaim's Wish
Cameron Sinclair's Wish

Topics we covered that I did not write about: plenty, including love, sex, war and death ! That's all for now, more later, congrats again to the TED team for an amazing event that will keep me thinking for a long time.

Technorati Tags: TED2006

Podcast: Al Gore's speech on environment and the current emergency to act and save our planet

update: podcast taken offline at TED's request.

Al Gore has an amazing speech on how the world is in danger if we don't act now to preserve it. I can only urge you to listen to it if you haven't, it is really rich and interesting. Be careful this speech will have an effect on you and your vision of our world. I listened to it twice, once in Davos and the second time yesterday and I got scared like hell each time. You can either download the podcast as an mp4a, mp3 or just listen to it directly on this post.

Technorati Tags: AlGore, environment, TED2006

Containing a global Pandemic ?

(Davos session podcasted with authorization from the speakers and the WEF media team)

This session was extremely informative on most questions that we all have about bird flu and pandemic viruses. It is really worth listening to if you are interested in these topics. The room was packed, it has been one of the most popular sessions in Davos this year.

With confirmed cases in Turkey, the menace of a potential bird flu pandemic has raised questions about the ability of the international community and national governments to respond to a severe global health crisis.

1) Can the global community adequately prepare for a global pandemic, and how ?
2) Who should take the lead and where can collaboration bear most fruit ?
3) What steps can companies take to protect their employees and activities when it comes to a health crisis ?

Speakers:
Ira Flatow, executive Producer and Host, Science Friday, National public radio, USA
Anthony S. Fauci, Director, National Institue of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, USA
David Nabarro, UN System Senior Coordinator for Avian and Human Influenza, United Nations, New York
Elena Salgado, Minister of Health of Spain
David Stout, President, Pharmaceuticals, GlaxoSmithKline

Follow Rita on Google Maps

Frightening. via Boing Boing

Rebecca goes after Cisco because they sell routers to the Chinese Security Bureau

Rebecca about Cisco training the Chinese Public Secutiry Bureau on how to filter the Internet for political reasons:

"The fact that Cisco clearly has no qualms about doing business with the Chinese Public Security Bureau is odious. We should change the law to make it illegal for companies like Cisco to sell networking and telecommunications equipment to police agencies in countries like China where the practice of law enforcement includes things like beating up little old ladies who demonstrate peacefully for their religious rights in Tiananmen Square, routine torture of people jailed without due process, and ongoing crackdowns against political dissent of all kinds."

Thomas Dahlgren, one of Rebecca's readers, says in comments:

"Apalling, but unsurprising. Cisco is engaged in business that is morally odious but potentially quite lucrative. Corporations do not have a conscience and it is unrealistic to expect them to limit their behavior in the absence of legal or financial consequences."

I remember Nestlé's CEO, Peter Brabeck, saying in Davos a few years ago that "the only goal of a company is to increase value for its stockholders".

Rebecca, what do you think then of Philip Morris killing millions every year ? Probably worse than Cisco selling routers to the Chinese Governement, as a company, they just do their job: increase sales and drive growth.

It is the business based model that is flawed, not Cisco. However, I have no suggestions for a better one at that time, being myself a business person...

Muslim blogosphere reacts to London Blast

Rebecca reports what bloggers are saying in Arabic, Farsi and other languages. Mahmood at Mahmood's Den sends his condolences to the bereaved and calls the terrorists animals:

"The way to beat them is not to give in to them, and more democracy and democratic institutions, a complete overhaul of the education system in the Arab and Muslim worlds and the full separation of Mosque and State.
The time is now. We have to get this done. Otherwise we will be completely left behind and will suffer much more at the hands of these terrorists. My heart and thoughts go to the people of the United Kingdom in this very difficult time. "

Technorati Tags: london

Global Voices Online needs your help as a european blogger

If any of you is interested, I would do it with pleasure if I was not so busy, Rebecca MacKinnon says:

"Global Voices Online is looking for European "bridge-bloggers."

What is a bridge-blogger? Somebody who acts as a "bridge" between their blogging community and the rest of the world. Lots of blogospheres are springing up around the world, in lots of languages, but many of them don't communicate with each other, which is too bad. We'd like to help change that. For examples of bridge-blogging, here's a post I did summarizing Chinese blogs: http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/globalvoices/?p=273

Here's one on Mexican blogs, bridging between Spanish and English:http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/globalvoices/?p=254
And here is some bridge-blogging about the Kenyan and Kiswahili blogospheres:
http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/globalvoices/index.php?cat=18

If you're interested in bridge-blogging from your country's blogosphere to the outside world, we'd love to know. The best way to start is by doing some bridge-blogging posts on your own blog (for example: write a post in English with links to the original posts about what the Polish blogosphere is buzzing about this week, or tell us what the German bloggers are saying about the latest vote, what the Portugese blogs are talking about lately, or what the Francophone blogosphere is currently reacting to). Once you've done this, please email us with the link at: globalvoices DOT dailylinks AT gmail DOT com, and we'll be sure to point to it.

Then, after doing this a few times, if you like the response to your work and feel that this is something you have the time and energy to do regularly on the Global Voices site, please let us know at globalvoices DOT online AT gmail.com."

Off to Zermatt at the Young Global Leaders summit

I am in Zermatt, Switzerland for 4 days at the World Economic Forum's Summit of Young Global Leaders. It is amazing the concentration of forward-looking minds I met tonight. I had a great conversation with Nicklas Zennstrom, founder of Skype and I learnt a lot, Skype has around 40 million users now, 140 people worldwide (even one person in France I'd love to meet too) and growing. I congratulated Nicklas for his Skype official blog, Niklas says the company is really interested by blogs and understands how it helps getting closer to customers. Skype has raised around $20M and has now more money that wants to be invested in it than needed, how surprising. We talked also about how Skype IM and voice was encrypted at 256 bits making it difficult to for anybody to listen to these conversations, probably more from the volume of data transferred than the complexity to break the encryption. Interesting to insist on the fact that Skype is a european startup spreading around the World like wildfire.

Anyway, a few days out of the daily business to think about where we are going and to broaden our views can only help get the big picture. I'll post more about the sessions and the participants I discuss with. Off-to bed now.

Three Iranian bloggers jailed, one faces court date with no legal representation, Hossein goes to Tehran

According to the Committee to Protect Bloggers

Omid Shekhan was arrested last year and faces a court date of October 8 without the benefit of representation Arash Sigarchi was sentenced to fourteen years in prison and Mojtaba Saminejad to two years

Unlike Sigarchi and Saminejad, Shekhan does not have a lawyer.

Our friend Hossein Derakhshan who blogs as Hoder is off to visit Tehran and posted a request that we keep an eye on him.

"While I'm doing all this, I may get into trouble. It could vary from polite questioning for a few hours to days of detention in secret places, less than politely."

Related links
Committee to Protect Bloggers
sign the Petition to free Motjaba Saminejad, I just did.
English blog for Mojtaba
The association of Iranian Blogwriters (Penlog)
Blogger Mojtaba gets two-year prison sentence
BBC: the price paid for blogging Iran

It is difficult to blog in English

Nir Ofir, who invited me to have breakfast in Tel Aviv recently, has just started to blog in English (he has one in hebrew, too). Nil joins the friends I have there who blog in english (along with Ouriel).

"I'm a little frustrated that the stuff that we are doing here stays here. I mean that almost no one can get information about Digital lifestyle, Social software, Blogging and Internet Innovation in Israel."

That is one of the reason I blog in English, too. I have always been frustrated to feel late compared to the US on too many things so sharing in english helps you catch up and stay in permanent touch with your friends around the world. The problem is to do it daily. It is not natural, not as natural as to express yourself in your mother tongue. I have three to four times as many comments on my French blog as my English blog and this says something. Of course my english is much worse than my french but also when I have a joke it comes in french and is always difficult to translate. Keep going Nir, you'll see on the long run it is worth the time you spend writing in English.

19 countries will be present at our blog event on April 25th !

19 countries will be represented at our blog day in Paris. The full list of participants is here. Of course I regret more countries could not join (from Africa and Eastern Europe for example) but it is already very impressive for something just communicated on blogs. Thank you all for your help to spread the word.

Europe : 245
Belgium : 9
Luxembourg : 1
Denmark : 2
Finland : 1
France : 160
Germany : 20
Greece : 1
Irland : 2
Italy : 8
Spain : 4
Sweden : 3
Switzerland : 3
The Netherlands : 22
U.K.: 19

North America : 18
Canada : 2
USA : 16

Asia : 2
China : 1
Japan : 1

Middle-East : 2
Iran : 1
Israel: 1

Israel rocks. לויק לה מר

Arrival in Israel
It was my very first time there and obviously I had some "clichés" in mind. I was told the security was crazy at the airport and I was not disappointed. It started at the gate in Europe, special gate, additional security checks. Arrived there, I spend 15 minutes in front of the police officer asking weird questions. Is this your first time in Israel ? Yes. Do you have family here ? No. Do you have relatives ? Yes. What kind ? Friends. What friends ? Business friends and just friends. What are their names ? Yossi Vardi, Ouriel Ohayon and others. Where did you meet them ? In Davos and at business school. What is Davos ? It is the World Economic Forum event. What business school ? HEC in Paris. Who is Yossi Vardi ? The founder of the Israeli company ICQ (I joked on that with Yossi who said it was an insult). What is ICQ ? Are you joking ? No. It is an Internet company. What kind ? Instant messaging. When were you at school with Ouriel Ohayon ? I told you, in Paris at HEC. Is he living here ? Yes. For how long ? A year and a half etc etc. And now the fun part, I arrived without having an exact address, just the city name, Kinneret. What hotel do you stay ? I don't stay in a hotel. Why ? I participate in a conference. There is no hotel ? No, it is a camp. What is the address ? I don't know. Wrong answer :-) It took me another five minutes... Yat Siu had exactly the same problem, even worse actually as he asked the officer not to chop his passport because he goes regularly to Arab countries that may not like it and he got another special interview for asking that. Anyway, it was not so bad as contrarily to other countries, most police officers are very nice and young Israeli girls... which helps continuing the conversation.

Kinnernet

Thanks again Yossi for having invited me to this crazy event. The theme is creativity and about one hundred Israeli geeks and entrepreneurs participated, as well as ten participants from abroad. Everybody came with their favorite gadgets, from the very oldest computers and calculators to small helicopters, weird "motorbikes" and even small rockets were launched, a fully equipped truck was taking video from a sky balloon. Creativity was everywhere and I was very happy to meet all the geeks and entrepreneurs. Everybody came back to some kind of children way of thinking, open to anything and thinking that everything was possible, it is quite hard to keep this way of thinking as you get older and that was very refreshing. There are lots of Kinnernet2005 pictures available here.

Export Institute
I was also invited to make a presentation at the Israel Export & International Cooperation Institute and meet the Israeli VCs and entrepreneurs. There was also Simon Levene of Yahoo, Edmund Fish of AOL and Steffi Cerzny of Burda on the panel. It was fun for me to see that Six Apart was at the same level as Yahoo and AOL on the invitation. Anyway, I moblogged the audience and started by explaining how easy it is to moblog even from a phone, drove them into political blogging (One Voice that tries to help solving the palestinian conflict with a weblog, DSK, monputeaux), into "you and me" blogging (c'est moi qui l'ai fait and xslf local Israeli blogger friend), CEO bloggers, etc. After the conference I met with many entrepreneurs and I was amazed (actually during the whole trip) on how this country is entrepreneurial, creative and has passion with high-tech and Internet. The surprise came when I realized that there are only around 10 000 weblogs in Israel, I would have thought that people that get so much the Internet would be more active with blogs.

During my trip I could meet with blog entrepreneurs, representing notes.co.il, a closed blog community targeted at journalists, politicians, CEOs, and Nir Ofir of Tapuz.co.il, more targeted to the Young Israelis (thanks again for the sunny breakfast, Ofir).

Thank you Ido Kenan for having written this article about Six Apart and me in one of the main daily newspaper in Israel.

Thanks to my friend Ouriel I could discover Tel Aviv and the cool bars at night, the nightlife is very active. Ouriel says that it is difficult to have artists coming to Tel Aviv therefore there are few cultural events as we have in Paris (theatre for example) and that is why the Israeli like so much to socialize in the evening, it is the activity they like the most. There is one hip and cool bar every 50 meters in some Tel Aviv areas. It is common there that somebody you do not know starts speaking to you and it is very nice. Israeli are happy to meet and always very warm welcoming foreigners. Thanks again Ouriel for hosting me there.

Security.

With great emphasis in the last two years, everything we hear about Tel Aviv on TV is the terrorism so the image we have is obviously that of a totally insecure and frightening city. I had several discussions about this with the people I met and you feel immediately that it is in everybody's minds as most of the Tel Aviv inhabitants either know somebody who lost friends or family or lost a relative themselves. For the last six months, there have been no incidents in Tel Aviv and I should say I felt very secure. I walked around late at night and took cabs alone, went in many public places where each time I felt very well. Of course the fact that you are screened before entering any place or bars reinforces this feeling. The very few negative impressions I had is when I saw several civilians carrying guns as you carry your mobile phone (actually we shared rooms at Kinnernet and my room mate, a young teacher in robotics, had one so it was my first night sleeping with a gun in my room) and also the fact that everybody told me to avoid taking busses and actually to just avoid getting too close to busses.

I could have visited Jerusalem today but fortunately I did not as there were tensions there.

I was also surprised that most Tel Aviv inhabitants do not really care about religion. Tel Aviv is quieter on Friday and Saturday but still quite busy, restaurants and bars are full at night, and I do not think I have even noticed a kosher restaurant (I did not pay too much attention either I should say) and all my friends said that the best restaurants were not kosher and were packed.

I had excellent food in Tel Aviv, all kind, excellent meat and of course shaksuka.

The answer I was often given by the friends I discussed with is that the Jews outside of Israel were much more respectful of their religion than in Tel Aviv because they were far away and that is how they "keep the culture and spirit", where the Tel Aviv inhabitants do not seem to care much. There is a large non-jew community in Israel, as an example one million russians were accepted to immigrate into Israel in the last few years, most of them non jews.

Everybody speaks good english in Israel, I wonder why european countries and France do not push more the kids to learn more english, a key for better integration in our globalized world.

I was warned that I needed 2.5 hours before my return flight home to get to the airport and that was a good advise, the security and the questions asked going back are even longer. My bags were screened like never before, the officer took the shoes I had in my bad and spent 5 minutes on each of them, as well as on my laptop and any electronic device, ipod, even the french monthly magazines I had took 30 seconds each (I wonder if one can hide explosives in a paper magazine).

Anyway, I came safely back home the head full of good memories of my trip and all the people I met there. See you all soon again and thanks for all the fun. For those of you wondering what the end of this post title is, לויק לה מר is my name in Hebrew.

Off to Tel Aviv

I will be in Tel Aviv for three days, so happy for having been invited by Yossi Vardi, the founder of ICQ, to participate in the KinnerNet camp. Looks like a lot of fun will happen there.

I will also be speaking at a panel at the Export Institute in Tel Aviv, where a hundred israeli entrepreneurs and venture capitalists are expected, as well as a few meetings, not to forget the fun part with Ouriel.

They have installed broadband wifi for the camp in the middle of nowhere, so I should get my emails and be able to... blog.

Values for world leaders: what are your issues ?

Le premier webcast de la réunion annuelle de Davos 2005 a été publiée ici.

I am in the Town Hall meeting right now and all the participants are voting on the most important priorities and values for world leaders today.

Rebecca will post on the WEF blogs the results but in the same time, what are YOUR most important priorities and values to improve our world ?

You can list as many issues as you like, please answer on the WEF Blog.

Giving birth when you are 67 years old

A 67 years old Romanian woman gave birth today. "A new record, the previous one was held by a 62 years old Italian woman".

Do you think we should let this happen ?

Shaping the world in 2020

The World Economic Forum has just launched a new initiative, the 2020 Young Global Leaders. With hundreds of young people around the world, we have to shape a shared vision of the world in 2020 and create tasks forces to try to improve it. I thank the nomination committee for selecting me to join this initiative, it is a real honor and I will do everything possible to help this exciting taskforce.

The majority of the members of the YGL are non business members, such as politicians, intellectuals, or artists.

I will blog as much as I can everything and hope you can also help me because if the honor is huge, the task will not be easy to complete.

Sukellus helped the Finns in the Tsunami

The blog Sukellus.fi (it means diving.fi) became the reference list for survivors of the tsunami and got huge recognition in Finland on how it helped everybody, especially to find your missing friends and loved ones. Great work, Alex.

Update: Antti writes a very detailed story in english about what happened with Sukellus.

It is amazing to see how many european initiatives around. How about your Countries ?

One Voice launches its blog

OneVoice is a non profit launched by Social Entrepreneur Daniel Lubetzky that is trying to help solve the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians:

"OneVoice is a global undertaking designed to amplify the voice of the people and to empower Israelis and Palestinian on the ground to achieve a consensus on core issues that can form a roadmap for conflict resolution." Link

Daniel and his team just launched the OneVoice blog

Earthquake and tidal waves kill more than 3000 people in SE Asia

Restaurants on Bang Tao islands (Phuket, Thailand), a picture taken by Maurice de Jong, a BBC reader.

An 8.9 magnitude earthquake created massive tidal waves today in SE Asia, a wall of water that sped across thousands of kilometers of sea. The strongest quake in the world for 40 years.

More than 3000 dead people. The Maldives Islands which is only one meter above the sea had its Capital two thirds under water.

The BBC fears for 750 000 British tourists in Thailand:

"Mary Picking, a British tourist in Phuket, told BBC News about the moment disaster struck.

She said: "We saw this enormous tidal wave approaching the beach and people started to run. "

Massive waves suddenly appeared. The BBC explains how the tsunami happened.

"This earthquake been one of the largest ever, one of the great earthquakes. There has been a rupture along a fault about 1,000km long, and that has generated a vertical displacement of about 10m. The displacement in the sea floor has generated this huge tsunami."

What's amazing is our inability to predict these terrifying events.

Coverage:
BBC: sea surges kill thousands in Asia
BBC Pictures
on CNN

China accounts for the majority of air pollution threat

According to today's WSJ (content available for subscribers only):

"just as China's industrial might is integrating the country into the global economy, its pollution is also becoming a global concern. Among the biggest worries: the impact of China's vast and growing power industry, mostly fueled by coal, on the buildup of mercury in the world's water and food supply."

"One reason China's power industry spews out so much pollution is that under the nation's rules, many plants have the option of paying the government annual fees rather than installing antipollution equipment."

"Some scientists now say 30% or more of the mercury settling into U.S. ground soil and waterways comes from other countries -- in particular, China."

I am not an environmentalist, but looks like this is one of the aspects of globalization we can't do anything about and which is quite frightening for our children, don't you think ?

A new movement launched to defend free speech

All started on blogs and spreading fast. Rebecca McKinnon:

" 1) we believe in free speech – and act to defend it and extend it

2) we believe in direct connection between people in ways which allow us to consider ourselves part of a bigger here and wider us – and we act to bring flows of tools, money and attention to bear on creating channels for those connections to develop

3) we believe in planetary citizenship along international norms – and we act to empower campaigns to make the world fairer, freer, more prosperous and more sustainable."

Check the Global Voices blog.

Poison that hit Yushchenko's face is not really cool

Boing Boing says it is the result of Dioxin poisoning. What we can do with poison today is really frightening, that is one of our big threats ahead, imagine a substance like this spread in the underground...
(also via CNN).

China to become the #1 tourism Country very soon

Last week at the China Summit I attended a very interesting session on Tourism and China. We learnt that incoming tourism is growing at a fast pace with more than 100 million tourists visiting China every year. At this pace, it will very fast become the #1 tourism destination in the World and a very large market both for Chinese and foreign companies in the tourism sector.

Mr Haji-Ioannou, head of Easy Jet shown his interest in China tourism sector by participating at several Summit sessions. He said he qualified to speak about China tourism as a current tourist and noted that there were many opportunities not only in the airlines sector but in any products and services to be provided to this new flow of tourist. Mr Haji-Ioannou mentioned China starting to welcome international companies such as Starbucks, already present in the Forbidden City.

I learnt that China Airlines is growing at 50% a year and after a slow down in growth with the 2003 SARS effects, its number of passengers is very high again.

Another business opportunity to consider is the number of Chinese starting to have the means to travel abroad. The participants noted though that it was still difficult to get a visa for Chinese to leave their Country: it requires a one hour face-to-face interview that can be taken in very few places and costs about $100, the fee being not reimbursed in case of failure to obtain the visa. With such a large population and the per capita income increasing rapidly we can expect the Chinese to visit our cities very soon in large numbers, when China eases its Visa process.

Cross-posted on the World Economic Forum weblog.

"China's growth is a tougher event than anything we faced since World War Two" - Jeffrey E. Garten, Dean, Yale School of Management

I am here in Beijing attending the World Economic Forum's China summit (there are summaries of most sessions available online). I only spent a few days in China so I am trying to get as many feelings as I can and try to sum them up.

China's growth has been very high in the last years, and you can feel it everywhere. China and Russia had a similar politic and economic situation a few years ago and I am trying to understand how the Chinese made possible this growth, compared to Russia. What I learnt today is that one of the reason of China's success is that Russia changed at the same time its politics system and its economy, where China moved to a market economy keeping a very stable political system. I agree, I think that doing both at the same time has created many unexpected issues in Russia.

China has grown at 8% per year for many years, it is the sixth economy in the World. The standard of living has improved dramatically with an average per capita income above $1000, it was only $300 twenty years ago. 400 million Chinese are now above the global poverty line.

What strikes me the most is how unprepared the US and Europe are to China's growth. The impact of China's economic development is now already huge on the Global Economy. The first consequence that is very often seen is of course jobs being transferred to China but the impact of China's internal demand for energy for example is equally important, China is for example now the second largest importer of oil and second largest electricity consumer. This has an impact on global energy prices and it will only increase.

I think generally in the USA and Europe we do not realize the impact of China's growth and we are totally unprepared because of the speed at which the change happens. It is impossible for Countries and people used to live in comfort to react to this new competition at the same pace.

Vice-premier of the People's Republic of China Zeng Peiyan shared with us today his vision of China becoming a 4 trillion dollar GDP Country by 2020. I was impressed by how many times the word Entrepreneur was quoted. China is definitely committed to creating an open door market environment favorable to Entrepreneurs and private companies. Another reason of China's success has been its shift towards accepting foreign investments. China has been the Country in the World that has received the largest investments last year, ahead of the US and the participation of many international investors and venture capital firms to this Summit shows their interest and their willingness to invest in China. Many new funds are created to invest only in China and I met many investors who where focusing before on the US or Europe that moved here. Robert Yung for example used to work for Intel in the USA and he is now based in Beijing, raising a $75M private equity fund totally dedicated to early stage Chinese startups. In the Technology session, Robert said that five of the ten most successful IPOs at the Nasdaq recently have been Chinese (Robert quoted SINA or SOHU for example), some of them are multi-billion dollar market cap companies and he predicts we will soon see the first ones that are valued above ten billion dollar.

The technology education available in China is according to Robert to World Class Standards. China graduates 2 to 2.5 million students a year and 60% of them are in the technology sector, where India graduates 1 million for 50% in technology and the USA 2 million a year with only 25% in technology.

We mostly think about toys or clothes production when we think about China. China has become the manufacture of the World but with such high standards of education and such a high number of highly qualified technology graduates China is now ready to move to the next step and create World Class leaders and companies. It would be a big mistake to consider China's competition to the US, Europe and Japan as low cost subcontracting capabilities only. The innovation capability I have felt all around these days, the speed at which information circulates in today's information Society and the level of globalization enables China to move from the positioning of the manufacture of the World into the fastest growing innovation center of the World. Microsoft's head of Research in Asia Harry Shum insisted on the contribution of his Chinese team into new Microsoft's worldwide products. I quite agree when the Technology panel said that the question is not if China will be the R&D center of the world, the question is when.

Seen from the US and Europe, the threat is generally understood as loosing jobs subcontracted in China. It should probably be understood more as new fast moving Chinese companies created and not only addressing their local market but becoming new leaders. I had a great dinner with the New Asian Leaders which is a very active community of young entrepreneurs and investors of the World Economic Forum and they are not wondering how they will increase their revenues by getting more business from subcontracting but rather how they can help building new Chinese World leaders.

Of course there are also important challenges ahead and Jeffrey E. Garten, Dean of Yale School of Management said that "the whole movement of globalization is going to slow down. China's growing impact on global manufacturing is going to put enormous pressure to western economies and it turn put enormous pressure to China." Mr Garten does not see China's growth to continue without a major crisis in the next years.

It is absolutely possible, but the energy and the fast pace we can all feel both at a Government and an Entrepreneurial level in China is incomparable with the way Europe for example got used to live in comfort.

The reaction of the USA and Europe could be to protect their markets from this threat for their economies and Kristin Forbes of the Office of the President of the United States insisted on the fact that free trade was the only way to go and that building trade barriers was useless. I agree, but the impact will be so huge on jobs and on the competitiveness of European and US companies that it will become harder and harder for Governments not to react.

How do you feel China's growth impact in your Countries and what do you think should be the reaction of both US and European Governments and businesses to this new situation ?

Please comment on the World Economic Forum Weblog, where I cross-posted this note.

How to avoid a likely to happen terrorist nuclear weapon

This nytimes article reminds us about Epicure "live the current moment" [hasardous translation from French] and enjoy life, who knows what may happen again:

"If a 10-kiloton terrorist nuclear weapon explodes beside the New York Stock Exchange or the U.S. Capitol, or in Times Square, as many nuclear experts believe is likely in the next decade, then the next 9/11 commission will write a devastating critique of how we allowed that to happen.

[...] Such an attack could kill 500,000 people."

If the world were a village...

Via Cyberlibris blog

"Two years ago I bought a nice and inspiring children book for my daughter: "If the World Were a Village" by David J. Smith (published by Kids Can Press, Toronto, Canada).

While surfing on the Net, I just bumped into a sequel to Smith's book written by Donella Meadows. Dr. Donella H. Meadows (Ph.D. in biophysics, Harvard University), the founder of the Sustainability Institute, was a professor at Dartmouth College, a long-time organic farmer, a journalist, and a systems analyst. She was honored both as a Pew Scholar in Conservation and Environment and as a MacArthur Fellow.

For 16 years Donella wrote a weekly column called "The Global Citizen", commenting on world events. It appeared in more than twenty newspapers, received the Walter C. Paine Science Education Award in 1990, and was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in 1991.

Here is Donella's Meadows' sequel:

"If the world were a village of 1,000 people, it would include:

· 584 Asians
· 124 Africans
· 95 East and West Europeans
· 84 Latin Americans
· 55 Soviets (including for the moment Lithuanians, Latvians, Estonians and other national groups)
· 52 North Americans
· 6 Australians and New Zealanders

The people of the village have considerable difficulty in communicating:

· 165 people speak Mandarin
· 86 English
· 83 Hindi/Urdu
· 64 Spanish
· 58 Russian
· 37 Arabic

That list accounts for the mother tongues of only half the villagers. The other half speak (in descending order of frequency) Bengali, Portuguese, Indonesian, Japanese, German, French and 200 other languages.

"Indians Go Home, but Don't Leave U.S. Behind", is globalization good for India ?

This interesting NY Times article about Indians going back home makes me think about globalization, of course.

"Drawn by a booming economy, in which outsourcing is playing a crucial role, and the money to buy the lifestyle they had in America, Indians are returning in large numbers, many to this high-technology hub.

What began as a trickle in the late 1990's is now substantial enough to be talked about as a "reverse brain drain.'' By one estimate, there are 35,000 "returned nonresident Indians'' in Bangalore, with many more scattered across India.

For this still developing country, the implications of the reverse migration are potentially vast. "

Obviously we all know how high is the Indian growth, and I am convinced that Indians having learnt in the US coming back plays a major role.

"This impulse is not universally welcomed by some Indians who never left and who see a globalized elite - many of whom now carry American passports, not Indian - importing a Western culture as distorting in its way as British colonialism.

Still, returned reformers are already sparking change. Srikanth Nadhamuni, who helped design the Intel Pentium chip, is now applying his formidable skills to designing a software platform that could revolutionize the administration of India's local governments. "

I remember having heard a US head of a company at the World Economic Forum say "soon our kids will take their MBAs in India", which was a pretty tough comment of course.

It is a tough question but I actually think globalization has been good for India in the sense that it restores growth. It is good that India grows so fast, it pushes us to react to it, and Old Europe and France have troubles ahead if they do not restore their own growth. The raise of India and China may help it.

What is your opinion on this effect of globalization ?