Prompt's TechBlog
Davos goes public, but is it really conversation?
26 January 2007
Posted by Fiona Campbell-HowesThe secret cabal that takes place every year at Davos in Switzerland is no longer quite so secret.
For the first time, this year's World Economic Forum summit - which brings together the world's most powerful CEOs, politicians, influencers and technocrats to thrash out the issues of the day - is being blogged on a plethora of websites.
Principal among them is The Davos Conversation, masterminded by social media expert Jeff Jarvis. It pulls together blog posts written by Davos attendees and commentators, as well as mainstream media coverage of the event, profiles of key speakers and videos of real life and (groan) Second Life conference sessions.
At previous Davos summits, anti-capitalists and other activists devised cunning ways to get the attention of attendees, including projecting their grievances on to the snowy slopes outside the resort's hotels. Now, in this brave new Web 2.0 world, they can interact with Davos attendees from the comfort of their own bunkers, by commenting on participants' blog posts.
The only trouble is, they don't seem to be. A glance down the 'previous posts' page on The Davos Conversation reveals that most of the blog entries go completely unremarked upon. Posts on even the most contentious subjects - climate change, Iraq - are suffixed with a stark 'No Comments'.
I find this strange. Surely political dissenters should see The Davos Conversation as a golden opportunity to engage in debate with the world's most powerful people?
A clue lies in those posts that *are* commented upon. While people are allowed to leave comments, I couldn't find a single instance of the original blog writer joining in the discussion. Until its bloggers actually start to engage with their commenters, The Davos Conversation should perhaps consider renaming itself The Davos Showcase.
tags: davos07 | davos | world economic forum
Comments:
I do think this is possibly an example of a stylistic or cultural blog divide; that is, in some blog subcommunities, the standard behavior is for blog writers to respond to comments in their comments thread, and commenters know to read the comments for further discussion. In others, comments are responded to by private email and/or in subsequent postings. Finally, some receive no response at all, which of course is, as you say, not a conversation. I'm not sure if it's clear yet which of these is occurring in this case? Maybe it is; but I'm not sure enough time has yet passed to tell. But perhaps if you come from a community where the norm is a conversation-in-comments, this has a different emotional impact than if you don't?
Hi Valerie, and welcome! I have no doubt that a lot of correspondence takes place off-blog, as you say, but I was honestly surprised not to see more people leaving comments on the Davos blogs. Even the Davos posts that appear on the Guardian's Comment is Free site seem oddly deserted, and that place is usually awash with polemic.
Maybe it is just early days, or maybe people feel intimidated by the subject matter or the writers, or maybe, for all its focus this year on social media and participation, the people who are interested in the World Economic Forum just aren't the kind of people who enjoy having chats in comments boxes...
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