Around a third of those who attend the WEF annual meeting are there for the first time – the “Davos Virgins”.
For me, losing my Davos virginity was a blur. It was the year after Nelson Mandela, FW de Klerk and Mangosuthu Buthelezi had shared the stage together and the WEF reasoned it was a good idea to bring over some South African media next time. Myself, as economics editor of SABC Television, and the then editor of Business Day newspaper were thus invited.
The five day event provided my first exposure to many of the ANC elite, SA’s Government which then still had a year and a half in waiting. Mandela wasn’t there but I recall spending time with the schoolmasterly Kadar Asmal and Young Turks Trevor Manuel, Tito Mboweni and Ebrahim Patel – all of whom would later serve as cabinet ministers. Old Mutual’s CEO Mike Levett was the informal leader of the business delegation.
An abiding memory was having Tito stand with me in the icy cold helping to shoot a colour story with the Slovenian camera crew the SABC had hired. Budgets were tight at the National Broadcaster those days. In 1993 the WEF’s annual meeting was a much smaller affair with around half the current attendees: 800 CEOs, 150 political leaders (including 23 heads of Government) and 200 leading experts and academics.
WEF’s official history remembers the event as the first time new Russian Prime Minister Victor Chernomyrdin visited Western Europe. For me, it was sharing the same hotel as mind mapping guru Tony Buzan. I was the only journalist to pitch at his Press Conference, so got an hour alone with the fascinating man – and have been a mind mapper ever since.
In conjunction with BrightRock, we have taken to sharing the stories from our recently published World Economic Forum starter pack, ‘A Veterans Guide to Surviving Davos’ PDF with you – To download the full document, follow this link.