World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2007 – Enlarging the Davos Conversation

Davos participants to be interviewed in Second Life; Open Forum programme on a Wiki

Geneva, Switzerland 9 January 2007 – The World Economic Forum will be using new Web applications to extend the discussions at the Annual Meeting 2007 to a much wider audience. Held under the theme The Shifting Power Equation, the debates and discussions at the Meeting will be open to the general public via traditional broadcast channels, but also via webcasts, podcasts and for the first time, vodcasts. Internet users can field questions to participants via blogs and videoblogs and selected participants will be interviewed live in the virtual world of Second Life. As in previous years, all participants are encouraged to take part in the Forum’s blog to participate in the Davos Conversation – and this year a range of bloggers will contribute their thoughts to the discussions.

"There’s much talk about the hype surrounding Web 2.0 and whether there really is a sea change in how the Internet is delivering to Web users – but what is for sure is how many new opportunities we are getting to enlarge the Davos conversation and to include a far wider group of people both at the Annual Meeting and in the wider world to a truly global audience," said Mark Adams, Director, Head of Communications.

The Forum is continuing to develop the ways that views can be exchanged both at the Annual Meeting and beyond with a wider public. Among the innovations:

· In partnership with the world’s most renowned bloggers, the World Economic Forum is developing a Davos Conversation page, a "bloggregator" that will bundle all blog posts, video blogs, photo blogs and video feeds from and about the Forum’s Annual Meeting 2007. The partners of the project – Huffington Post, the Guardian, the BBC and BuzzMachine are inviting their readers to record and submit video questions and comments. The page is powered by Daylife, a new news platform just launched in New York . A selection of these will be presented on the Davos conversation page with responses from the participants at the Forum’s Annual Meeting. Anyone wishing to participate in the Davos Conversation needs to tag their posts "davos07" to be picked up by the Davos Conversation page. http://www.weforum.org/davosconversation

· To enlarge the Davos Conversation, every participant of the Annual Meeting – ranging from business leaders to political leaders, heads of NGOs, religious leaders, academics and journalists – has been asked to join the Forum blog. At its Annual Meeting in January 2005, the World Economic Forum became the first international organization to set up a blog; the upcoming Annual Meeting will see a significant development in the experiment. All of the more than 2,200 participants, including presidents and prime ministers, will be asked to provide at least one posting for the blog. http://www.forumblog.org

· The Open Forum 2007, co-organized by the World Economic Forum and the Federation of Swiss Protestant Churches, will truly live up to its name. Not only will the sessions, held in the auditorium of the Alpine High School (Alpine Mittelschule), Guggerbachstrasse 3, Davos Platz, be open to the general public but, to broaden the audience, the entire programme of the Open Forum has been placed on a Wiki so the global audience can field questions and comments to the moderators.

· The best pictures of the day from the Annual Meeting taken by the World Economic Forum’s official photographers, Swiss-Image, will be available on a public photostream on: http://www.flickr.com/photos/worldeconomicforum/.

· For the first time, selected participants of the Annual Meeting will be interviewed in the 3D virtual world of Second Life. Second Life residents can submit their questions to Adam Reuters, Reuters’ Second Life correspondent, who will conduct the interview in the Reuters auditorium in Second Life. Internet users can watch the interviews online at: http://secondlife.reuters.com.

· The Forum will webcast over 50 of the 220 sessions of the Annual Meeting. 31 of the sessions will be webcast live and a further 20 will be available for download once the session is over. All webcasts will be available also as pod- and vodcasts for download from Google video. The World Economic Forum has been webcasting from Davos since 2001. All webcasts and vodcasts can be accessed on the Forum’s website at: http://www.weforum.org/annualmeeting/webcasts.

· The Forum’s Annual Meeting will again be covered by major broadcasting organizations, ranging from CNN, BBC World, CNBC and Al Jazeera, to national broadcasters such as NHK, ARD, ZDF, TVE and RAI. Broadcasters not present in Davos can pick up the video feeds from Eurovision Operations, which is planning to carry live feeds from up to 10 sessions each day. A daily video news release highlighting each day’s events will be distributed by the World Economic Forum for free downlink via Eurovision World Feed at: http://www.eurovision.net/net/distribution.php.

· Additionally, host broadcaster Swiss National Television will show large parts of the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting on its freely accessible channel, SFinfo. The programmes will be both in German and in the original language and can be viewed both in Switzerland and abroad.

Notes to Editors:

· Everything about the Annual Meeting 2007 can be found here: www.weforum.org/annualmeeting

· In depth Interviews with key business participants are here: www.weforum.org/annualmeeting/indepth

· The Programme can be downloaded here: www.weforum.org/annualmeeting/programme

· Follow the discussions and read the Session summaries here: www.weforum.org/annualmeeting/summaries2007

· Follow key debates webcast live or download them as vodcasts or podcasts at: www.weforum.org/annualmeeting/webcasts

· Join the Davos Conversation (www.weforum.org/davosconversation) or leave your comments in our Weblog at: www.forumblog.org

· Subscribe to our Press Releases

· Download print-quality high resolution Photographs of the Annual Meeting free of charge here: www.swiss-image.ch/webwef/INDEX.htm (login: world; password: forum)

__________________________________________

The World Economic Forum is an independent international organization committed to improving the state of the world by engaging leaders in partnerships to shape global, regional and industry agendas.

Incorporated as a foundation in 1971, and based in Geneva, Switzerland, the World Economic Forum is impartial and not-for-profit; it is tied to no political, partisan or national interests. (www.weforum.org)