Davos Diary Day 3: Getting inspired by visionaries Jim Wallace, Bertrand Piccard and Paulo Coelho

Jeanette Hogg and Koos Bekker at an IMC dinner at the World Economic Forum
Jeanette Hogg and Koos Bekker at an IMC dinner at the World Economic Forum

It was another star-studded day for Alec Hogg in Davos, Switzerland at the World Economic Forum. Alec takes us through the days events in his podcast, ‘Davos Diary Day 3’ starting off with an enlightening session focused on ‘Inequality’ where he was able to interview, Jim Wallis, an internationally renowned faith-based activist. Next up Alec attended the International Media Council’s (IMC) session focused on the challenges facing global journalists in light of threats to freedom of speech as well as the impending danger that comes with reporting from the front-line, this session was graced by heavyweights such as Yahoo CEO, Marissa Mayer and Turkish PM, Ahmet Davutoglu. Alec’s busy day was continued by attending a fascinating talk by modern-day explorer, Bertrand Piccard who will be circumnavigating the world in a solar powered plane. The day’s events then wound down with festivities at an IMC dinner where Paulo Coelho spoke on the art of story-telling and Alec bumped into Naspers’ Koos Bekker and Business Insider’s Henry Blodget. Alec fills us in on all the experiential insights he has gained as he explores the WEF at full-throttle. – LF

ALEC HOGG: This Podcast was made possible by BrightRock, the company that introduced the first ever needs-matched life insurance.

Yes, that’s me. I’m happy…happy, happy it’s been another long day here at the World Economic Forum in Davos. That’s a guy who was entertaining us at the IMC – the International Media Council – dinner. It’s held every Thursday night and more of that in a little while. Some very memorable meetings and connections I made there, and bumped into none other than South Africa’s media mogul Koos Bekker.

Day three at Davos – Davos Diary – coming to you from the highest town in Switzerland.

Well, it started off, for me today with an assignment for The Guardian newspaper in London.

What happened was en route here I got a call from The Guardian to say there was a particular area that they’d like covered, because they had a last minute sponsorship and would I help. It isn’t an area that I know a lot about, or certainly not one that I’ve been focusing on much (the whole inequality), but it is something I’ve been wanting to get my teeth into for a while, and there was an opportunity. It meant a nine-o’-clock start, with a session called ‘Stop to Think Who Matters’.

Interviewing Jim Wallis, faith-based activist, man who closed Davis 2014, friend of SA at #WEF15 #lovechange
Interviewing Jim Wallis, faith-based activist, man who closed Davis 2014, friend of SA at #WEF15 #lovechange

Jim Wallace chaired the session and we got a terrific interview with him on Biznews. In fact, we have three interviews from that session, also one with Helen Clark, the former Prime Minister of New Zealand, who is now running the developmental side of the United Nations – a most impressive woman she is. I’ve known Jim for some years. I’ve bumped into him many times here, at the World Economic Forum, and he was the… He calls himself a ‘faith based activist’. He says he’s not religious, but deeply spiritual. He closed Davos in 2014. He had the closing address, so it gives you an idea of the esteem with which he’s held.

What I particularly like about Jim is he’s a big fan of South Africa’s and everywhere he goes he wears his South African scarf, although he is very much a boy from Detroit – an American.

So who does matter? Well, the short answer is everybody and there were some positives and some negatives out of all of this. Different stages of evolution in societies, in cultures and once cultures evolve to a higher level they tend to be a lot more tolerant of others, and that was an issue that came up very strongly in another of the sessions that I spent quite a lot of time in, this afternoon.

What happens every Thursday is that the International Media Council has its day for the members and the guests, and I get invited to that. There really is a high calibre of attendee and, as a consequence, the questions are quite telling. You’d have, for instance, the Executive Editor of The Washington Post, the Editor of USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and you name it, they were there, even Marissa Mayer, the Chief Executive of Yahoo was in our session today.

The session today was all about the challenge to global journalism and what is happening to journalists around the world is that as they keep trying to do their jobs, they tend to be losing their lives, in an increasing number as a result of it. This was the focus of the IMC session first up. I can’t really go into detail because it was off the record. However, what I can tell you was what made this a most unusual session, is that we had one of the participants (an anchor from Turkish Television) who had been fired after Tweeting support for two editors, who had been arrested – presumably, or certainly as far as the media people are concerned – on trumped up charges.

Turkey Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu talking to media leaders at #WEF15
Turkey Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu talking to media leaders at #WEF15

Well, what makes this so interesting was that after hearing these stories and how journalists are having a very difficult time around the world, next up was the Turkish Prime Minister himself, Ahmet Davutoğlu, who struck me as the consummate politician. He walked into the room with his bodyguards, quite prominently positioned and with a big smile, which I’m not sure it reached his eyes, came around to each of us, and shook our hands as warmly as one might imagine, on day three of a very hectic schedule for him. I know how busy mine is, so I can just imagine what the Prime Minister of Turkey has been doing for the last three days.

He was quite forceful – quite forthright. He said things that were in fairly harsh contradiction to what we’d heard before. Without going again, into the detail about this because it was an off-the-record session, but as the session started drawing to a close, no one had spoken to him about the elephant in the room, which was this Turkish anchor who’d been fired, who was sitting two seats away from me.

As they wound it up, I intervened and said, “Mr. Prime Minister, we’ve just sat here all day and listening” (well it was all afternoon really) “listening to how the press are not free in your country, and you’ve just spent an hour telling us how press freedom is respected in your country. So why then, did you fire this television anchor?” It became a very heated conversation, between the anchor and the Prime Minister, but I think at the end of the day, he will be returning to his home to investigate, because he said he hadn’t heard anything about it.

What did strike me as strange is in China we know that there are censors in every newsroom. You can’t simply, like in South Africa, publish for a publication, write something, publish, and off you go. In China, it goes through a censorship and a filtering process. Well, I was unaware, until today, that there’s a similar situation that exists in Turkey. As the conversation developed, I became aware for the first time as well, that only one in seven people on earth are served by a free press. Another reason why one can be a ‘very proudly South African’; when you consider that the constitution in South Africa enshrines the freedom of the press, and supports, despite the fact that politicians all over the world hate being pulled up, sometimes unfairly admittedly by the media. It is something that they would prefer not to have a free press but in South Africa, I think pretty much everyone now respects that that is a deep part of our psyche. It was a fascinating afternoon, and I’ve learnt so much that I’ll be able to apply when I get home.

From there it was off to the ‘party time’, and I popped into see what Bertrand Piccard, who’s one of the great explorers in the world, is up to. Five years ago, I facilitated a session here in Davos, with

Explorer Bertrand Piccard at #WEF15 #lovechange
Explorer Bertrand Piccard at #WEF15 #lovechange

Bertrand Piccard. Jane Goodall, who you’ll, might know as the lady who did a lot of work on chimpanzees and changed the way that science looks at animals, and also Mike Useem, who’s a leadership professor at Wharton University. Who does unusual things with his student but primarily he takes them mountaineering. He takes them all off every MBA class to base camp at Mount Everest, and it was a memorable evening. I recall it so well, and being impressed by all three of them, Bertrand in particular because he’s a third generation explorer. He’s grandfather was the inspiration for Professor Calculus in the Tintin books because, at the time, his grandfather was the man who had gone higher than anyone on earth and gone deeper than anyone before him.

Bertrand Piccard, at the time that I met him, five years ago, had just become the first man to circumnavigate the world in a hot air balloon, within a particular time period. I don’t recall how long it was but I do recall that it was him versus Richard Branson, and he won. Well, what Bertrand is up to at the moment is he, together with ABB, which is a major Swiss engineering company (Bertrand himself is Swiss), is they have gotten together and they are going to circumnavigate the world in a plane that is powered purely by solar. So no fuel whatsoever, and this aeroplane has a 76-metre wingspan, that’s as big as a Boeing 747, yet it weighs less than a Range Rover (about 1,500kgs). The plane itself was unveiled on Monday in Abu Dhabi and Bertrand was in Davos today to take us through exactly what he is hoping to achieve from it. It was such an inspirational speech that I recorded it and we will have that up on Biznews a little later for you. It is one of those things to really go along and have a look at. Listen to it carefully because this is one of the modern-day explorers and a man who talks a lot of sense, and is trying to change the world in his own way.

After seeing Bertrand in action, I popped over to the IMC Media dinner. This time it was all about telling stories or the art of storytelling. That was interestingly enough, from different people around the world. The star attraction there was Paulo Coelho, a best-selling author. The author of The Alchemist. Probably a book that, if you know his name you would probably have read it and what was more interesting to me though was bumping into Koos Bekker, who is, you might recall, in his year of sabbatical. His second sabbatical, the former Chief Executive of Naspers. He’s the Chairman-in-waiting for Naspers and we swapped stories. He’s having a good time. Learning a lot. I found it fascinating that he was there, paying close attention to all of the stories that were being told, and at the end of the evening I said to him, and it was a very friendly conversation (as it always is with Mr. Bekker) – I said to him, “Koos, will you pop around for an interview, towards the end of Davos, so we can get your thoughts on it?” He said, ‘no, he’s off-duty’. He’s here just to watch and observe and learn, and he’d like to do it any time but not this time. I respect that.

Best selling Brazilian author Paolo “The Alchemist” Coelho. Star attraction at our dinner tonight at #WEF15 #davos

Of course, another person that I met there, who was really interesting, was Henry Blodget. Henry is a former analyst with Merrill Lynch, who has turned the business, online media world on its head. He started a company called Business Insider, whose reach now is greater than The Wall Street Journal. Henry was a journalist, who then became a stock broking analyst, and after being forced, I think it was, to leave after the internet bubble, went back into journalism with a business partner, and together they’ve built an amazing organisation. It was really interesting being able to swap notes and listen to what Henry Blodget has done with his life. He’s tall, thin, very shy, and funny. Funnily enough Koos Bekker also a fairly shy person. Maybe that what it takes to be a great entrepreneur. Well, tomorrow is day four, but this has been Alec Hogg in Davos, at the World Economic Forum with Davos Diary, Day three.

This Podcast was made possible by BrightRock, the company that introduced the first ever, needs-matched life insurance.

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