After a short winter break, I want to look back on a strange January in this year's first newsletter. While much of humanity lies awake over wars in Ukraine, Gaza and Syria, and half the world's population votes on major issues in over 50 countries this year, including India, Mexico, the United Kingdom, Russia and the United States, January was one big celebration month in the tech world. No dry January, the new year kicked off as a month-long party.
800 women on a mountain seems more than it is
Speaking of parties, the annual reunion of old white men on a mountain was another great success. The World Economic Forum (WEF) congratulated itself on the participation of 800 women in the official program, a whopping 28% of participants.
It should not get much crazier, if they are not careful WEF will count almost one woman to every two guys this century! The question arises as to whether secretaries were counted as delegates, as participants reported that the number of women they encountered at Davos was as high as the number of MMA fighters at the annual Ladies Hairdressers Day.
Women are in short supply at WEF, as are dark-skinned people. Like motorcyclists on a drive or penguins in a zoo, I have caught myself in Davos politely waving back or nodding to other fellow pigmented people.
A week later, no WEF participant can remember what else was discussed or agreed upon, because unlike the COP climate conferences, for example, Davos is not about jointly formulating measurable goals. There is old-fashioned networking and job hunting.
Global domination started at WEF?
I am sorry to disappoint the conspiracy thinkers, but there is no talk at WEF of world domination by a small, ruling elite at the expense of the common people; there is not much thought about the future at all. WEF excels mainly in zizagging into the future, looking in the rearview mirror - with our glasses in the cheese fondue.
Don't get me wrong: that annual January week in Davos is above all an opportunity to very efficiently have many meetings in a short period of time, and that saves travel time in the rest of the year. In the years I attended the WEF, 2018 for the last time, I met several people who crammed up to 20(!) appointments into a day. But those discussions were almost exclusively about the here and now. Only on rare occasions was the day of tomorrow discussed, let alone the rest of the century.
Just look at the WEF agendas of the last 50 years: in the 1970s, after the oil crisis, the main topics discussed were ... oil and energy. Today, it is conferencing AI and climate change. But that happens after ChatGPT took the world by storm, in the wettest and warmest year in history.
Just as the Internet was barely discussed at the WEF in the 1990s, until it had become indisputably the fastest-growing medium in history, climate change was a secondary issue at Davos for many years. Rather, there was dithering and interesting snouts on topics like the Fourth Industrial Revolution, typically one of those WEF topics you never hear anyone talk about anymore.
Gucci has a trust layer
A standout moment of WEF 2024 was the monologue delivered by Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff during an otherwise soporific panel. It remains fascinating how easily and casually many Americans can present, tossing around one catchphrase after another like snowballs at a winter children's party.
Benioff mentioned that Salesforce has an AI product, humbly christened Einstein, and casually remarked, "it has a trust layer. People in Durex's marketing department must have spontaneously burst into a crying fit that they hadn't coined that cry for their latest generation of thin condoms. 'It is a trust layer.' So much better than Durex's slogan: 'made to make you last longer.'
It was delightful to see the poker face of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman when Benioff publicly described him as "my good friend Sam." Not just his friend; that would be too little honor. Altman is his good friend.
Those likely to be less friendly with Benioff after this panel are the people at Gucci. Benioff proudly mentioned that he had just visited Gucci's help desk in Milan, where hundreds of employees use Salesforce software to return broken Gucci products and call customers who want their money back. Probably not information Gucci would want the world to hear about. That Salesforce trust layer did not reach Marc Benioff's mouth.
