A small town full of big people: the rise and rise of the WEF

“You should definitely go. If I were a journalist, I would definitely go. You’d get a lot of stories and everybody is there. Everybody.”

So said Marc Benioff to me back in, I dunno, maybe 2006, at the door of his Soho Hotel, London suite after showing me, a journalist back then, the pitch for the company he had started, Salesforce.com.

Name-dropping, I know, but what impressed me was the enthusiasm — beyond even the thunderous sense of wonder he could conjure for his own product — with which Benioff was promoting the World Economic Forum. And he is a very good pitchman indeed.

That brief discussion backed up my growing sense that the WEF in the small city of Davos in Switzerland (population: 11,000 and some) had become the new nexus for the world’s movers-and-shakers and makers. And since then, the conference has grown to become a shared space for everybody from politicians to pop stars, captains of industry, idealists, visionaries and dreamers… not to mention a smattering of self-publicists.

It is a place where the very biggest questions are asked. Why are the poor always with us when there is so much wealth? What happens to privacy in the internet age? How should we raise and educate our children? Is capitalism good or bad? How do we move about our crowded cities? How do you prevent pandemics and cure the sick? Why did the global banking system fail and how do we prevent that happening again? What are the long-tail effects of globalisation?

Over canapés and cocktails, in meeting rooms and the temporary corridors of power, the great and good swap notions and hatch plans that even the most powerful governments and super-states cannot hope to emulate.

This year Mick Jagger has already cancelled plans to turn up but Lily Cole is there, Bill Gates has called for agricultural research to stop food running out, capitalism has been defended by the Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper, and President Obama has pledged to defend and secure the US’s global supply chain.

Of course, as with any talking shop, many good plans will fail and projects peter out, even when their merits are acclaimed by the world’s most powerful men and women. But Benioff was right: it has become the planet’s most important conversation and, even if you can’t get there in person, it’s not to be missed.

Tagged as: Davos, economy, WEF