2005 17
When Religion meets Politics
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in General with No Comments
George Stephanopolous is the moderator. Shirin Ebadi, from Iran, first Islamic woman to win the Nobel Prize, starts speaking in Farsi. Shirin says she prefers to talk about ideology than religion. When she says ideology in Farsi the word sounds the same as in English. Ideology, she says, can be either religious or secular, as in Cuba. Ideology serves to give life a purpose. But when ideology is managed unilaterally by the state it becomes a tool for political oppresion. Islam is a religon she thinks. But Islam used to govern is an ideology. Is Islam compatible with democracy? The problem is that in the Islamic world governments manage Islamic law and people who are against the government are seen not as the opposition but as infidels. Shirin, however, believes that Islam is compatible with democracy and human rights but that it has to be reconquered from non democratic rulers. Key is to separate religion from ideology.
Read More
2005 17
Avoiding Genocide Charlayne Hunter Gault, Moderator
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in General with No Comments
This session at the Clinton Global Initiative combined the President of Rwanda, the Prime Minister of Norway and a US Envoy to Sudan, discussing what is it that governments and civil society can do to avoid genocide.
Read More
2005 17
Clinton Commitments
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in General with No Comments
If there´s something unique at the Clinton Global Initiative it is the Commitments section of this event. I have never seen anything like this. Throughout the day as sessions start, President Clinton comes to the podium and announces that such and such a person has made a certain commitment to improve the world. These commitments are very specific.
For example, a person commited to fund a program to train truck drivers in Subsaharan Africa to use condoms. It turns out that truck drivers are a leading means of transmission of HIV/AIDS as they travel, have many different sexual partners and tend to have unprotected sex. As I listen to Clinton tell this story I wonder if they teach the use of condoms as part of the curriculum to get a truck driver´s license in Subsaharan Africa.
Read More
2005 17
Google IM
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in Internet & Technology with No Comments
Last night during dinner I finally was able to tell Sergey and Larry about my idea for creating the type of IM that Google could launch that in my view could beat Instant Messenger. My concept for revolutionizing chat is based on something I said before, that text of the kind I am using right now to write this blog is obsolete. If you think about it, text is great only because you were trained for 12 years, or more in most cases, to use it. Otherwise text sucks. Have any doubt? Watch an 8 year old chatting and you will see. Younger children who have not developed the skills to type endlessly without making mistakes that others frown upon, use much less text when they chat. What they use is emoticons, skype, webcams or anything to get away from text slowness and boredom. Well my idea is a plan to include the best emoticons of all, your files as given to you by Google Desktop (if you don´t have this amazing tool download it right now!) and by Google when you chat. What makes a good chatter? To me somebody who chats very well is someone who can reply quickly and with somebody who sends you a lot of MEANING in little time. Now how can u increase the rate of MEANING going through a chat? With GOOGLE!
Read More
2005 17
Sergey and Larry´s Drops
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in General with No Comments
Last night I had dinner at the Clinton Global Initative with Sergey Brin and Larry Page. Sergey and Larry are by now as famous as Batman and Robin were when I was a child. I say this knowing that googling Sergey and Larry gave me 770,000 results but googling Batman and Robin, 2 million (so they are still not as famous at Batman and Robin). In any case, for being less than half as famous as Batmand and Robin they don´t look it. They are two smart, curious, fun guys to be with who care little about fame or glory. Sergey and Larry are curious about everything. A detail. As we were having dinner a water accidentally fell on the tablecloth. Surprisingly the tablecloth did not absorbe the water. Water stayed in neatly mercury looking shaped drops. Immediately and in the middle of the conversation Sergey began experimenting with throwing new things at the tablecloth, red wine for example, and much to his surprise he saw that it also would look like red mercury over a flat surface: in nicely shaped drops. So as we spoke Sergey started blowing into the drops to send them Larry´s way. Larry found that funny and blew them back. At that point Larry said that he wondered if we could find any liquid that would not stay in drops. I looked around and saw a candle, I poured liquid wax on the table and said, blow on this. And he did, and the wax did adhere to the tablecloth.
The following is a somewhat long article derived from the session on alleviating poverty at the Clinton Conference. Only recommended for those interested in the subject.
Read More
2005 16
Promoting Clean Energy
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in New Ideas with No Comments
I was asked to give ideas on How can Governments Promote Clean Energy:
Educational programs for the young on the tough choices on energy.
Credit strengthening of alternative energy ventures with poor financing.
Tax cars according to their emmissions.
Keep energy prices as is if they go down through taxes and only have them go up.
Idea for taxation: could we leave a part of our taxes discretionary and say that with 10% of it people can decide what they want to do. It would be like a referendum on the budget.
Change the standards for heating and air conditioning. We were all freezing in the room where the meeting was taking place!
2005 16
How to Make this Conference Better Next Year
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in General with No Comments
The Clinton Global Initiative is a great conference. In terms of size and caliber of people attending, it beat Davos on the first day. President Clinton himself is a star and a pleasure to listen to. Klaus Schwab, who plays his role at Davos, is just in a much lower league. Moreover the Clinton Global Initiative is focused on deliverables, on committments and many are being received. This does not happen at Davos. There is however an area in which Davos is still way ahead of the Clinton Global Initiative and that is in format and content. It is in these areas that the CGI needs great improvement. The following is a list with my recommendations:
The Clinton Global Initiative is a medium size conference with around 1000 people. Davos has around 3000 people. The Aspen Brainstorm, 300 people. Probably the CGI has found the perfect conference size.
Still they are not managing human capital well at this event. At this conference there´s a remarkable gathering of people many of whom have something to say. But they are not getting a chance. In this respect Davos is more efficient. In my view it is better to have more sessions, more choices for participants and more voices overall. Here there are around 10 sessions per day for 800 people. At Davos there are 60 sessions a day for 3000 people so at Davos they have 4 times the number of people but 6 times the number of sessions. Sessions here are too large and don´t give an opportunity to the very smart people who attend to contribute and interact as much. Also having more sessions is an opportunity for people who attend the conference over the internet, through bloggers or through the press to go directly to the topics of interest to them. These places are like Congress many times where speeches are made for the whole country and not necessarily for other members of Congress. Ideally though you don´t want long and uninterrupted speeches, you want instead small sessions where speakers to shift from propaganda mode to a more honest Q&A session.
There´s another problem in the CGI format and that is that people are supposed to stay on the same tables throughout the day. I didn´t I change. You come to conferences like this to interact briefly with people who seem interesting to you so you can deepen the relationship outside of the conference. CGI´s system connects you too much with people at your table and little with anyone else. So I switched tables so I could go to three tables in one day.Tracks are fine and plenaries are fine but there should be more sessions, smaller sessions and shorter sessions. Lastly there´s a problem with the format as questions can only be asked anonymously and through moderators. A conference in which nobody can raise their hands and ask a question is just undemocratic.
Read More
2005 16
Clinton on Being Out of Office
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in General with No Comments
The great thing about being out of office is that you can speak your mind, the bad thing is that nobody cares!
2005 16
American vs European style Aid
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in International with No Comments
To many Europeans, American style philanthropy evokes a mix of admiration and contempt. Admiration because America has wealthy individuals who are willing to give a significant part of their income to improve the state of the world. Contempt because they believe that we cannot leave “improving the state of the world” in the hands of wealthy individuals. Personally, I think that the the problem here is one of degree. The American government is far too stingy in helping the world compared to European governments, but American individuals are remarkably generous. Bottom line is the American government should donate more. But the wealthy citizens in Europe should definitely be more charitable. Here at the Clinton Global Initiative we see American style philanthropy at work, and it´s amazing to see that at every session there´s an announcement of somebody coming up with an amazing donation.