Analysis: Tech issues a no-show at WEF

From...

By Stacy Cowley

(IDG) -- The World Economic Forum's main raison d'etre is its annual meeting, which it bills as a chance for the world's corporate, political, academic and social leaders to come together for high-level discussions of global issues. Many of the issues the meeting claims to be addressing this year -- sustainable growth, security, challenges to international business, reducing poverty -- are areas that are substantially affected by technology. But if technology issues were seriously pondered by the attendees at this year's meeting, there was almost no way for the public and most reporters covering the conference to know.

Often accused of elitism, the WEF said it would open this year's meeting to the public through live Web casts and extensive postings about meetings on its Web site. But when the forum's Web site crashed shortly after the annual meeting began, WEF Director of Communications Charles McLean said repairing the site was "not exactly a top priority." The WEF eventually resurrected its site Friday night and began Webcasting Saturday. Archives of those Webcasts, however, won't be available for several weeks, according to conference officials.

IDG.net INFOCENTER ITWorld.com home ITWorld.com Webcasts ITWorld.com forums Free e-mail newsletters Related IDG.net Stories WEF: U.S. tops index of IT-network readiness World Economic Forum target of possible DoS attack WEF: IT execs join assembly pondering global issues Features PC World.com Product Finder All about Microsoft .Net Top 10 rules for e-business success Visit an IDG site Choose a site: IDG.net CIO Computerworld Darwin Dummies.com GamePro.com The Industry Standard ITWorld.com InfoWorld.com JavaWorld LinuxWorld Macworld Online Network World Fusion PC World Publish.com UnixInsider IDG.net search

The Webcasts are far from comprehensive: Of the dozens of conference sessions that took place daily, no more than five per day were available online.

That's all that the majority of reporters at the conference had access to, as well. Of the thousands who requested credentials to cover the conference, only around 450 were granted "reporting press" passes. Citing space and security concerns, WEF conference organizers restricted those reporters to a media center a block away from the conference's main venue, the Waldorf-Astoria. Up to seven sessions a day -- sometimes live, sometimes delayed for hours -- were broadcast to the media center, but if a session didn't make it onto the broadcast schedule, there was no way for reporters to cover it.

Well, most reporters. In addition to the corps of reporting press, WEF conference organizers designated some 350 "media fellows": journalists, primarily from large organizations, who were granted participant status at the conference and given unimpeded access to all of its sessions. Those journalists were able to report on sessions not broadcast to the media center and to chat with meeting participants in the Waldorf-Astoria's halls and during the conference's liberal smattering of after-hours schmoozefests.

From the view outside the Waldorf, few tech issues appear to have made it onto the radar during the WEF meeting. Oracle Corp. Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Larry Ellison did not turn up for the two panel discussions at which he was scheduled to speak; Oracle representatives have not returned calls seeking comment on his absence. Compaq Computer Corp. CEO Michael Capellas and Dell Computer Corp. CEO Michael Dell cancelled a planned joint press conference, while a press briefing with Federal Communications Commission Chairman Michael Powell and NTT DoCoMo Inc. CEO Keiji Tachikawa on the state of the telecommunication industry was rescheduled, then scrapped.

Talk about the digital divide, once a hot topic among WEF members, was nearly invisible this year, while debate about security issues and economic troubles dominated discussions. Tech industry executives were featured primarily in sessions on topics tangential to the industry. Microsoft Corp.'s Bill Gates used his public appearances at the meeting to promote health care aid for developing nations, while AOL Time Warner Inc. CEO-to-be Richard Parsons and Cisco Systems Inc. CEO John Chambers pondered the philanthropic and social responsibilities of corporations. (AOL Time Warner is the parent company of CNN.com.)

Whatever discussions took place at the meeting's handful of IT-themed sessions -- on intellectual property rights, digital convergence, the state of global wireless initiatives, bioinformatics and technology's lasting impact on productivity -- will remain shrouded from public view.