Tech Matters: Using tech for positive social change

Amazing how fast we slide right back into "real life." Davos was only a couple of days ago and already I'm neck deep into my normal work. It is worth taking a moment to reflect on the many faces of the Davos experience. Each person attending has many options to choose among, and you can't do it all. Here are just a few of the Davos' I saw in action last week. Deal Davos (aka bilateral Davos) You come to Davos to meet with a handful of specific people who are also there at the same time. Your time is dedicated to a moderate room in some Davos hotel, as your team runs a steady stream of key customers, suppliers and potential partners through. Davos as nexus for minimizing global travel. Political Davos You see Davos as a place to get exposed to leading politicians from around the world, where you can hear Tony Blair, Angela Merkel and King Abdallah of Jordan and a hot of others. A place where American politicians get exposed to world opinion and protest, not...

Every year there's a big party at the WEF on the last night (Saturday). Countries vie to sponsor the main event, throwing a big show and serving up their best food. Of course, the reason is economic development. After the opening show, we were treated to a short video extolling the virtues of investing in Malaysia. Knowing their audience it prominently featured a beautiful golf course (and of course beautiful Malaysian women). I was surprised how attentive the audience was to this commercial. Willing participants in a transaction of an evening of entertainment for a four minute video. The Malaysians had brought a dance troupe, and it was fun. It had more of a feeling of a traditional cultural experience than last year's India party (which was Bollywood to the max). After singing some Malaysian songs, the four top singers switched to popular (American) music. Lots of Motown. And of course, we were dancing up a storm. There was also two other venues for music: one was s...

Over the five years I've attended the WEF, the level of protesting has gone way down. I like to think that inviting social entrepreneurs and other representatives of wider society has played a role in this. Of course, the issues are different and the U.S. presence seems lower. I did run into a nice protester on the street. Uli was protesting against the Swiss banks taking five times more money in from the developing world than it puts back out. His direct concern was about corrupt elites that stash their ill-gotten gains in Switzerland. He was advocating for legal changes that would allow more transparency in such cases and permit countries to recover looted assets. We had quite a pleasant chat. Of course, not all of the interactions were pleasant. One night after a party, one of my fellow social entrepreneurs got hit in the head by a snowball thrown by some punks shouting slogans. However, my buddy felt it was just drunk kids acting up rather than a political act!

People are often surprised when I tell them how social entrepreneurs are well received at Davos. We're full participants in panels, including being speakers. I think the reason for this integration is the strong support of the WEF's founder, Prof. Klaus Schwab, for the regard of social entrepreneurs. One great example of this was a major reception held last night with the following hosts: Marc Benioff (CEO of Salesforce.com), Prof. & Mrs. Schwab, Michael Dell, Peter Gabriel (rockstar and founder of Witness), Alan Hassenfeld (Hasbro) and Marilyn Carlson Nelson (Carlson Travel). The reception was held in honor of social entrepreneurs and marking the release of a new book edited by Marc Benioff entitled The Business of Changing the World , which is a compendium of essays about business people and their engagement with the social sector. I had some great conversations with people explaining what Benetech does. Talking to other Social Entrepreneurs At least half of the high...

I attended the Internet governance panel this morning (lest you think that Davos is all play and no work). Fascinating panel: Vint Cerf (Google), Michael Dell(), John Markoff (New York Times), Hamadoun Toure (ITU), Jonathan Zittrain (Oxford) and moderated by Paul Saffo (Institute for the Future). Just a few snapshots: John Markoff did an effective job of telling us how bad things are. Botnets (infected PCs under the control of bad guys) represent over 10% of the PCs connected to the Internet. Microsoft Vista illegal copies are already for sale in China, in spite of Microsoft's efforts. According to Microsoft, over a third of illegal copies of their OSs come with trojan infections pre-installed. He noted that Microsoft has spent tremendous amounts of effort in Vista protecting premium content. By extension, wondered what things would be like if Microsoft had spent as much efforts on protecting your private information. His bottom line: It's as bad as you could possibly i...