World Economic Forum in Davos- Behind the Scenes, the What, Why, Who & How

In this episode, I discuss about Davos and  the World Economic Forum just concluded in January.
1) Where is the World Economic Forum
2) Who and Why did it start
3) Who attends
4) What was discussed
5) How much does it cost to attend
6) Some critical topicss- AI & Agriculture, Young people and work 

Take a listen, this episode is filled with little nuggets and fun facts.

#Davos #WorldEconomicForum #Globaleconomy  #AI #Globaltopics #climatechange #sustainability #ProtectingForests #Workforcefortheyoung 

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I'm a former tech executive, a podcast host and an entrepreneur. I work with Universities on Organizations to transition students to the corporate world and building successful leadership pipelines ensuring a healthy financial future.

If you're interested in coordinating or working with me on keynotes, workshops, or on a one on one basis, you can go to my website www.sirishakuchimanchi.com

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Transcript

0:00

Hello everyone and welcome to Live Beats with cerisha on Radio Caravan 1 0 4 0.1 FM and 700 am This is your host, Siria Kumanchi. I'm a former tech executive, a podcast host and a working mom. I host a podcast, women Career and Life. It's spelled W O M E N. C A R e r and live. You can find it on any of your favorite podcast platforms, including Spotify, apple, and Google. I talk and share stories and advice for you to achieve your career and life goals. So say that you're thinking of giving a presentation in the front of 50 people, or maybe even 5,000 people. So how do you present, how do you practice for it? it talks about finding a mentor at work, so it talks about various topics. So check out the podcast. It was in the top 30% of Spotify podcasts in 2022 and is heard over in 19 countries, and the top two being US and India. So thank you for being on today's show. In this talk show, we talk about various things. We've been talking about you. Doing a financial health check about school transitions. And last week we were talking about reviewing our paycheck and how do we goal set for the year. Today I wanted to change it up. I'm gonna try this. So this is my first time taking calls on the ad and I'm gonna take them in the last few minutes and I'm gonna plug the question now so you can think about it. I wanted to know what you, so most of us, when we are kids, think we at that point, maybe you wanted to be, drive a railway car or be a pilot. So maybe in the last five few minutes, you can call into the studio, live on air and tell us what you wanted to be at the age of 10. So please remember that question. I will plug it again just before we wrap up the show so we can talk about it. But today I wanted to talk about something d. Many of you, if you were listening to the news in January, there was a, the World Economic Forum in Davos has this huge summit attended by global leaders, and I just wanted to unwrap some of the. Impactful things they're doing, but also some of the fun facts about it because there's so much conversation around it, a lot of decisions, a lot of key players are there and on cop topics of gravitas that they are trying to drive change about. And I thought we could talk about it. So just to get started, this was idea in 1971 that. From a German and Swiss economics who started Davos conference. The World Economic Forum is a nonprofit organization that was created then, and it's been meeting for many years. So one of the things that it does is. It's held in the ski resort in Switzerland, not too far from Zurich. It's actually a fairly small town. It's got about maybe 11,000 people or more. So obviously when it has this conference, it swells very huge. A lot more people. It's really known for its downhill skiing's, cross-country screening and it's very cold. It's, this one was in January, so it's pretty cold. I was reading an article where one of the attendees was saying, you need to best essentially be buying this. Thousand dollars goose down jacket to attend us because it is going to be incredibly cold. And this year's theme was cooperation in a fragmented world. And it was held between the 16th and 20th of January for this annual meeting. So it has representatives that come from government, from civil society, from business heads of state, a lot of different leaders who are discussing priorities of the. And one of the things that's interesting when you think about it is, who sits on it? So I was looking at the board of trustees. So the forum is essentially chaired by the founder and chief executor, this Pruser Klaus Schwab, who started the World Economic Forum. And it's guided by these board of trustees who come from various walks of life. And the first name that I. That pops up on the list is Mu Barney, who's the chairman and managing director of Reliance Industry, as in one of the richest people in the world. He's again, in the back from the Asian list. On the top, it has a law for other CEOs, mark Benioff, from Salesforce, the c e o of Accenture, from BlackRock. Bain and Company Nestle. It has Algar. The former vice president of the us it has even Fabiola Giti. She's the director General of Suns, the nuclear research lab that. Crosses the borders there and does all the accelerator studies. I am an originally a physicist geek, so this totally appeals to me. It has Christine Lagarde, who's the president of the European Central Bank, the Minister of Information Communication from Rwanda, so it's got like this very vast, diverse thing. Some of the interesting people who sit on this has the cellist Yoyo Ma. It has Queen Rainier from Jordan. and also, like I said, the CEO's AF Accenture, the senior Minister of Garment from Singapore, so a nice mix of different diverse voices speaking at it. But what is it that they're trying to tackle? Basically this year they've been looking at a lot of different forums of. And obviously when we think of these world Economic Forum, maybe the image that comes to mind is from a few years ago when Greta Thunberg was, protesting for climate change. And that is still an very pivotal part of the discussion climate, but there's a lot of other things that they're looking at from an impact standpoint. They're looking at agriculture. And beverage, when you think about it. This year, the world's population crossed 8 billion. Food is a big part of that because you have to feed the world population. So one of the things they're actually looking at is this nice, lovely intersection of AI and agriculture. And the showcase that they are using is these Indian farmers who are using AI to harness technology, basically to raise productivity. The pilot project is happening in the state of Telangana, which is where my parents live, and it's looking at a couple of thousand farmers who are looking at growing chilies. For, and if, most of this network, when you hear all the radio shows, advertising from the restaurants, spicy food. So that is what they're looking at from the agricultural sector using AI when they're talking about it. Obviously there's a lot of discussion. This latest news about chat, G p T and Google give everything. It's competition. on the table and you know how artificial and intelligence is going to impact us. We will tackle all that at a different time. But I'm just looking at what the global world is looking at what their biggest concerns are. Beyond climate is agriculture, food and beverage, cyber security, because keeping everything safe. There's a lot of focus on oil and gas industry in this case, but they're really looking at cybersecurity threats everywhere. The news this week, we've had, the BA balloon being shot. over North Carolina, but the US missile. So there's a lot of discussion on just security as such. Forest. Part of climate change is investing in keeping our environment up, so investing in trees. So 80 global companies committed to basically conserving and restoring 7 billion trees in 65 countries. That is a lot. 7 billion trees is almost a tree per person that they're planting over 65 countries that they're trying to reforest. Another part is about digital inclusion and having everybody being considered when they're looking at health, education, and finance. And when we think about the digital economy, I think it's become much more imperative now, especially when we look at what happened during Covid and the access of digital economics and how people, when you just think about school and the education ecosystem that existed, how do people integrate? The other portion was on Ukraine and just having lifesaving supplies to countries that are facing humanitarian crisis. We know that Turkey and Syria were significantly impacted from the 7.4 ter scale earthquake. A lot of people have been left homeless been devastated. People have lost lives. So our hearts go out to them and in aid and support of them. So there are organizations that are supporting them. If you're able to, as. and last part is also trade and investment. I know I've covered like this gamut and you're wondering, it's like a hopscotch of different things, but if you think about it, it's about peop keeping the environment around as clean, making people feel connected. Growing food for these people. Safety and sense of cyber security and equity, inference of digital economy and having lifesaving supplies for keep people safe and having trade and investment to grow these. there's a lot of discussion around, cost of living recession and everything else that is going on around that, that they're talking about as well. So I just talked about who sits on the boards of trustees, but I actually wanted to really look at some fun facts that I took down. So just gimme a minute to grab these facts as we talk about it. So when you look at the World Economic Forum, there are a lot of countries. So I wanted just to talk about the economics of the World Economic Forum, right? Like how much does it actually cost and what does it take to be invited? This is a by way, an invite only event. About 2000 delegates come. From across the countries, companies buy membership for it. So you can buy a membership. For this, it just cost$52,000 to buy a membership. Then the ticket for it is$19,000. So essentially to attend an event, you have to buy forever$71,000 to attend an event. So that's how much it costs. And there are mostly invited delegates like I. it costs industry associates around$137,000 a week to do this. There are about a thousand companies that attend, and they're talking about, like I said, very many things. There are about 200 CEOs who attend and if it's, I think what I saw was some interesting facts. If you have obviously a head of state or a ceo, attending this event. They are not going to come to stay in a hotel. You know what? By the time you they rent the chalet in the Swiss Cha and stuff, it costs a couple of hundred thousand dollars, I think, close to. I think by the time all this billing is done, maybe about close to a half a million for a weeks' worth of stay. And the fun fact, like how much do you think a hotdog. I know you, you are not able to call into the line right now, but fun fact, how much do you think a hotdog is for this? It's almost$43 for a single hotdog during that time for you to get a divorce to eat. So there's a lot of discussion and this is a good plug for what we talk about on this show. A lot of the activity, of course, there's a lot of keynote speeches. People are going to conferences. They're talking about important topics, but a lot of the activity happens at networking events, in hallways, in conference room, in hotel suites, at dinners. All of these discussions that are also impactful are happening at these networking events that people are meeting at. And I think someone could quit saying it's like sweet networking on steroids. That's how diverse is when they're meeting together, when they're looking at it. And I thought what was important is I was going to just briefly stop the. that was conversation and really talk about networking as well. We talked about it a few weeks ago. It was just right before New Year's when we were talking about how to network, and I wanted to refresh on that. So when we are talking about network, we are talking about, what do we want to say to people? Kind of where do we stand in the room and how do we meet them? Just as a refresher, if you're thinking of meeting someone if you're going to a huge conference or you're going to like this event or a party, I think one suggestion is not to stand near the door. Stand of, stand in the middle or close it to the food station so you can meet people as they walk by. And start up a conversation. So a lot of this power that centers around this conference is happens because of the networking and the opportunities that are there as well. So a quick plug again. For those of you listening, this is Life Beats with Cerisha on 1 0 4 0.1 FM, and 700 am I'm a former tech executive and a podcast host. I host the podcast, women Carrier and Life. It's spelled W O M E N. C a r e r and live. You can find it on Spotify, on any of your favorite podcast platforms. I talk about leadership and empowerment, like how do you negotiate for a race, how do you look for board positions, like various things that would affect your everyday life. So take a listen and see which you can. Just check out whichever podcast episode appeals to you in today. Show here we are talking about the World Economic Forum and Davos and what that looks like, which is curating it because this is an event that is globally very high. Impact happens in January in the small Swiss towns ski resort, incredibly cold, and just how the economics of it are around this. Today is the first day I'm going to open up the phone lines at the end of the radio. So you have to gimme some grace as I figure out the control. But the question that I wanted you to call in the last few minutes, if you wanna go live on air is, as a child of 10, or if you are a kid who is 10, also feel free to call in. I wanna know what you dreamt about. What did you wanna do? What did you wanna be like? Did you wanna be a pilot? Did you wanna be a scientist? Did you wanna own a business? Did you wanna fly to space? Whatever it is, call in and you can go live and I, and we can have a quick chat about it. Looking forward to that conversation. One of the most interesting things is, Taos talks about climate change. That is the picture that comes to mind often when most of us think about it. But interestingly, because most of the people here flying in are heads of state CEOs, there are about a thousand planes that fly in for this conference. And when you're thinking about climate change and a thousand planes flying in for a conference that is talking about climate change, I guess the optics to me don't appear. It seems like an interesting juxtaposition. you're talking about this, but there's all this fuel being and exhaust being generated at that. So anyway, that's a reminder for them to go and revisit that conversation when they're planning this discussions around it as well. So as we are looking at it lot of the discussions in this. Are like I said, there are about 2,500 delegates flying in. Most of the conversations are informal conversation with amazing leaders that really happens after dinner events that really drives this. So in 2020 they made a manifesto. They're looking at this as the fourth industrial revolution, and they're talking about, having a fair share of. Reducing corruption in increasing diversity and equity around the world as people are looking at what needs to be done and upholding human re human rights throughout its global supply chain. And for those who work in various industries, whether you're running a business, whether you're working for a corporation, whether you are working at home by yourself or you're a homemaker. Supply chain impacted every single one of us in different ways. If you are trying to buy a car, it became ridiculously expensive to buy a car. I remember going to this car showroom just. Fun of it to check it out. And they told us they had six cars on the lot. They had sold off three and they had only three left. Of course. Now it, I think, more are available. There's of course the chip shortage to build these cars as well, and you probably heard that on the State of the Union address where they're talking about the chip act and the semiconductor chips that have to be increased. So there were supply chain constraints in like this high tech world. There were supply chain constraints in, getting. Certain foods and availability in the grocery stores as well. There was supply chain constraints. If you were running a, say a big company, probably getting your raw materials, all of that was a challenge. If you were running a business, maybe you're running a gas station and you're trying to stock your shelves, you probably didn't have access to every product you're used to having, be it beverages or food, or any specialty product. So a lot of people struggled in various aspects to source that. Even if you went to restaurants and stuff right, you would see a note saying, no availability of this, just because supply chain constraints and supply chain constraints started all the way across transportation lines, being stuck at the port. So all of this together is driving all of this. So how do they keep up? All of this is part of the discussion at. And one of the things that I thought was really interesting, and if you wanna call in I'm in a few minutes. I'm gonna go online. If anyone is gonna call you can start calling in about two minutes to take some calls. One of the ways that they really focused on here was five ways in which the workplace could serve young people better. And I think it's very important to talk about this because at this point in time, on Saturday at five 30, there might be young people listening to it. You might be parents with the young children, or you may be interacting with Alon. Lot of young people. So we see this, we hear this in the news, but what are they really talking about? So one of the first thing is everyone is saying youth employment must be a top priority worldwide because under the age of 30 there's a much higher percentage of people like just the economics of it. There are a lot of stuff, especially in Asia and Europe Africa, the median age of the population is quite young and they're trying to address, unemployment. They're just upskilling the labor. This should not surprise anyone. This comment. Young people want jobs with priorities, pur wellbeing and purpose. We've all heard of quite quitting and the meaning of work and people wanting to work in places where they feel valued, where they feel heard, and they are very engaged as a population on wanting that. The interesting steady stick is for quiet quitting. If you've heard that, if you haven't worked it, Google it and see, especially if you're in TikTok, you've probably have seen it quite quitting and meaning of work for those hashtags for quite quitting and stuff, if you Google it and great resignation, there were 500 million views between on TikTok itself for those two topics. There's a lot of conversation around it. If you are a young person, maybe you manage young people, you run an organization, you hire in a business, young people, whatever it is, this is a lens that you have to be looking through, you have to be thinking about, and maybe even having conversation with these young people to find out what is important to them because that is the generation that's also driving change. Very proactively. Very actively, and a lot of the change is much needed. think about how you wanna open those doors and really that segueways perfectly to the next thing. They want transparency from their employers. So if you are engaging with them, you should be more open to talking to them about their interest in sustainability in climate, what you're giving back, how are you keeping the world, equitable. So thinking about it from those standpoint is important and the opportunity to learn. They want opportunities to learn to grow so that they can. grow along with the Rapid G changing world they live in. And one thing is intergenerational collaboration starts with listening. And one thing I heard is it's not about just hearing us talk, but really listening to us as we talk about it. That is what is important to them. And I think to all of us, right? We want to not just be heard, but we want to be listened. So think about it from that standpoint as you're wrapping and thinking about. I'm gonna open up the phone lines. If anyone wants to call in, you can call in on air. Like I said, today is my first time trying. What I'm asking for is a fun thing for you to tell me what you wanted to do at the age of 10. And maybe if you are a young child and your parent is, I dunno what the rules of engagement are for radio and if this is not a show for young people, but if the adult wants to call in on the child's behalf and say what your child wants to do, what did you wanna do at the age of 10? Did you wanna be a pilot or, I'm sitting across from the highway, so I'm looking at trucks driving across, did you wanna be a railway driver? Did you wanna go off to space? Did you wanna always. A business owner, a farmer, what is it that you dreamt at the ageing of the age of 10? So feel free to call in the phone. Lines are open. The studio number is 2 1 4 8 1 7 3 3 3 3. And the number again is 2 1 4 8 1 7 3 1 3. Three. Three. Three. Three. The number again? Two one. Four, eight. One, seven. Three. Three. Three. Three. Feel free to call in. We have just over a minute before the show wraps up. I'm your host, Siria Kumanchi. I am a former tech exec and a podcast host. I host the podcast Women Career and. So if you have comments, if you wanna share something, you can email me and I think email's a bit outdated, so you can still try and email me. Life Beats 1 0 4 0.1 gmail.com or you can tag me on Instagram and send me a dm. It's Women Carrier and Live. It's spelled W O M E N C A R E R N L I F E. So I'll find ways so that you can reach out to me. We are wrapping up pretty soon, and maybe next time we can try and reach out on the airwaves and connect on some fun questions as we look at things. Today we were just talking about the World Economic Forum. I look forward to chatting with all of you next. And stay safe. Enjoy the lovely warm weather outside, and take care.