Every year the mix of events I attend changes and I sit back and ask – should I have gone to this one? Should I have made a greater effort to go an event I missed?
My event choices are driven by several decisions – will the event help my consulting or sponsor clients? Will I find new perspectives or products to showcase in my books and blogs? Can I watch the bulk of sessions on the web and save the body wear and tear? Will the event be covered by other analysts that I respect?
It is a complex decision matrix but the net result is I have not been to the Nasscom annual leadership meeting since 2007, Dreamforce and HIMSS in a few years. May be time to go back.
As the WEF meeting kicks off in Davos this week, I was thinking I would have enjoyed last year’s event. The theme of the Fourth Industrial Revolution was enticing – not because it was new. I have been writing about it and IoT and robotics for years. But the theme of the year defines the breakouts and the audience. Interviewing Malcolm Frank of Cognizant after the event I definitely had the “I should have been there” vibe. Also, it would have been nice to see Xi Jinping, the premier of China present. I see him as one of the few global leaders who is more of a technocrat than a politician.
This year, the agenda is far less alluring. The theme is “Creating a Shared Future in a Fractured World”. I do believe the world is changing after three decades of the Soviet Union’s demise. But I believe other rich countries need to step up in many areas as I wrote in the Post-Trump world post. I am not convinced the WEF audience has yet bought into the premise that other countries need to join the US as locomotives in the front, middle and back of the increasingly strenuous global train. I will watch some of the stuff on the web but in general the WEF panels are not that lively. They tend to be a bit too respectful of the global leaders who show up.
Then there is the miserable weather this year. And the circus around President Trump and whether he will even show up with the US Federal shutdown.
I look forward to hearing from friends who happen to be there. They just might me make me change my mind it was worth missing.
