I have pulled some of the hot quotes out:

Jimmy Wales ‘People now receive the majority of their education in an informal way’

Shelly Esque ‘Technology is just a tool.  But people need local content relevant to their lives – they need both Software and Hardware’.

Nicholas Negroponte ‘Need to distinguish teaching and learning.  In Afghanistan 25% of teachers are illiterate.  Another 25% are one grade ahead of the children.  We need to focus on the children themselves.  By getting a laptop to the children themselves you can get past the challenges of school.  Almost all children involved in one laptop per child are now teaching their parents to read and write’.

Melinda Gates ‘There is an opening of education.  We should encourage universities to put their content online.  There is great innovation happening with technology allowing people to download their lectures to get access to the best teachers.  We need an effective Teacher in every class room’.

Melinda Gates: ‘You should only go into an area if you can play a catalytic role.’

Knowledgedia.com – Social media for the new world of education

Listening to Melinda Gates and Jimmy Wales I have just come up with an idea. People are now consumers of education.  Students are paying for their studies and now have more choices than ever before.  What will the future look like?  Will there be teaching sites where students rate their teachers (like TripAdvisor for online teaching)?  The most popular teachers would get the most viewers.  Think back to your favourite teacher when you grew up.  Think how they inspired you – how they helped to make the person you are today.  Now imagine if as a consumer of education people will be able to find teachers of this quality online.  Teachers will compete for followers as on Twitter.  The worlds most inspirational teachers could then have class sizes of literally millions of children.

While the teacher is training the class  the students will be able to engage with each other in a feedback stream.  Support teachers could pick up their questions live on the feed.  Students could come together from every country in the world.

If anyone knows of a good site that allows teachers to train people online and in turn allow students to rate their teachers please let me know – lucian@bravenewtalent.com

The day started at 4am from London – after missing my first flight on Tuesday – I made it on the 2nd to Zurich.  The WEF then kindly provided a door to door service from teh airport where I got talking to:

Sloane Berrent (@Sloane) – Forunder of www.thecausemopilitan.com Sloane won a citizen journalism competition from the Wall Street Journal, News International and MySpace to come to Davos to blog.  A very interesting young person.

Parmod Bhasin – CEO Genpact (www.GenPact.com); one of India’s greatest Outsourcing success stories. 

I got settled in my hotel, set up an event for next week entitled ‘A conversation on Social Recruitment’ (see http://smwbnt.eventbrite.com).  Lunch was with friends from Google and Brandfuel and:

Antoine Verdon    (@Antoine_) the Co-Foundr and CEO of www.sandbox-network.com, a global network of the world’s most talented people between the ages of 20-30.  There are now over 30 cities in the network that meet for real world events. 

Following this I collected my Belvedere badge (Davos’ main hotel) and caught up with our One Young World team here.  We are raising funds here for more delegates to come to the conference.  I am amazed at just how many people here now know about One Young World.  I am so excited to have been part of it.

I had a lovely catch up with Mohammad Yunus, Nobel Prize winner and Founder of Grameen Bank.  I am a huge fan of Professor Yunus and his model for social business.  I am very please that Professor Yunus will be coming as a counsellor at One Young World.

The parties then started – it began with the South Africa party.  The had sent the most beautiful girls as hosts at the event.  Delicious South African wine but no Biltong as customs stopped it coming in…

The Bajaj party

The Bajaj family is one of India’s most successful business houses.  The party had the whos who of Indian business.  I spoke about Baba Amte  (http://www.takeheartindia.org/mss.htm) and BraveNewTalent’s new India office to Shekhar Bajaj, Niraj Bajaj, Shubhendu Amitabh (Aditya Birla), Siddharta Dubey (ET Now), Saurabh Srivastava (Computer Associates), Aroon Purie (India Today).  All offered support in launching BraveNewTalent in India…  Watch that space!

DLD party

This was the hot ticket of the night.  Absolutely packed.  I caught up with friends from last year including:

Loic Le Meur – @Loic is Founder of www.Seesmic.com and organiser of Le Web (One of the world’s largest technology events).

Don Tapscott and family – @Dtapscott is a writing legend, author of Wikinomics, Grown Up Digital, and much more.  Don is one of the world’s leading writers on the internet and digital generation.

Chad Hurley – @Chad_Hurley – an internet superstar, Founder of www.YouTube.com.  Chad is such a cool guy – very down to earth and a great sense of humour.  He keeps the Piano Bar (Davos’s after hours party) rocking.

Patrik Liotard – A serial entrepreneur who has now just bought a major stake in www.SmallWorld.net and steped in as CEO.  Aged 25 he is extremely impressive.  He is founder of over 50 businesses included The Worlds best clubs. 

Nuno Coelho Martins – Founder  of www.Savanza.com; Nuno is pioneering small loans in South America.  He has a very smart model in that Savanza lends people money for education but they secure it with the universities.  If the student does not pay back the loan they are unable to graduate.  This means the default rate is much lower meaning that the interest rate can be much lower than other services.

The party then went onto Piano bar – where Davos comes alive into the early hours…

Although all Police and security are saying all signs point to suicide I feel something more sinister might be going on.  Why would the Head of the Police commit suicide right be before the start of the biggest economic conference if the year.  Did Dr Markus Reinhardt know something we don’t?

Are we in the midst of a ‘Cold War’ with the Capitalist, democratic neo-liberal West on one side and the Islamic fundamentalists on the other side?  If this is the case what better target that the 2500 capitalist elite that  are currently in Davos?  Through the banking crisis there have been calls for a better economic system than capitalism.  What lengths would people go to achieve this?  I am a capitalist through and through – any entrepreneur is.  However, I do believe we will see some challenges to this system in the coming years. 

My mother just said to me ‘ Lucian be careful in Davos – it’s an obvious terrorist target’.   My response, in jest was ‘Mum I think the world will have more to worry about if Davos was attacked.  I am the least important person.’  I am beginning to think of my Mothers words…