I’ve gotten a lot of questions about what I’m up to at work these days so I thought I’d share this little update about some of the things I’m working on at the moment. At the Forum we like to say that we “wear a lot of hats,” which is a polite way of saying our job descriptions are too complicated to be captured within one role. 
World Economic Forum’s Annual Meeting 2011:
Davos was absolutely amazing this year. The team put on an incredible program for our Tech Pioneers, and one of my sessions was an intimate and interactive sit down with Bill Gates. Hearing Mr. Gates talk about his experiences as an entrepreneur and some of the challenges he faced was one of my career highlights. His sense of humor really took me by surprise, he had the room in stitches several times! (Unfortunately it was an off-the-record session so I can’t repeat any of his jokes here, lol.)
I did an extensive debrief over at the TP Blog including videos of the TPs answering all sorts of questions for our YouTube Channel and an interview done for Facebook Live with Randi Zuckerberg.
Tech Pioneers 2012
We’re in full hunting mode for the next class of Tech Pioneers. Since, I’m responsible for the Web & IT category, I’ve spent the last few weeks after Davos scouring the internet for new candidates and encouraging people to nominate companies they think would make good additions to our community. The deadline for submission is in a few days and then our Selection Committee begins the arduous task of picking 30 companies out of the hundreds submitted. We’ll reveal the list in September!
I’ll be doing monthly interviews with some of our Selection Committee members on the TP blog in the next few weeks, as well as interviews with the Partner companies who support our wonderful program.
Regional Meetings:
Right now, we have two upcoming regional events at the Forum. Our Latin America meeting takes place at the end of April in Rio, followed by our Africa meeting in early May that’s being held in Cape Town. We’re still figuring out the details of the Tech Pioneers’ involvement so I’ll update more once I have a better idea of the program.
We’re currently meeting with our regional team colleagues and trying to sort everything out. It’s fascinating to see an event like this take shape and to know that you had a small part in designing that agenda. I also get an enormous satisfaction from seeing our Tech Pioneers wow attendees with their cutting edge technologies and ideas.
Innovation Report:
I’m thrilled (!!) to be leading the Tech Pioneer Innovation Report this year. I’m currently finalizing the outline and structure and can’t wait to get started. I’ll be covering trends within the IT, Bio Tech and Clean Tech industries as well as conducting case studies with our community of entrepreneurs. I’m hoping to make the report something unique and fun to read. Having worked on syndicated research reports in the past, it feels amazing to have the chance to lead the vision creation for a knowledge product and then to build it from the ground up.
I should have an outline by April and then a first draft by June. The report will be finished in August and launched in September 2011 at our Annual Meeting of New Champions in Dalian, China.
SPRING!!
Whew! There are a ton of other really exiting initiatives I’m building internally, but none are at the stage where I can publicly share them yet. This was more of an overview, and the next updates will dive into specifics of some of things I’ve mentioned here.
In the mean time, I am desperately looking forward to the day when it gets hot enough that I can fully enjoy our office’s large sunny patio. I plan to set up a table and work there all day.
As always, come and say hi on the Tech Pioneer blog and follow me on our official @techpioneer twitter account.
- Foush
