Yesterday, Meridian International and Gallup pulled off the impossible--an entire day's worth of speakers and panel discussions that held the audience spellbound from start to finish. Loaded with valuable information about the development of a new global culture from a variety of perspectives, the Global Engagement Forum included a bevy of heavyweights kept on tight track by Ambassador Stuart W. Holliday, the President and CEO of Meridian International Center, who knows how to ask the right questions and yet keep the answers limited to a response time that doesn't put the crowd to sleep. The content, especially taken as a whole, was provocative and illuminated the degree to which the public and private sectors are coming to terms with a massive transformation in the perception of economic and cultural metrics.
Chuck Hagel, Nebraska's senior US Senator, didn't list the fact that he's a Republican in his bio, which struck me as a genuinely bipartisan move. This is the kind of thing, in my opinion, that helps us get past the "both sides of the aisle" cliche.
"There's really no difference today in any country between domestic and foreign policy," Hagel said. He went on to explain that the global marketplace is composed of every decision we make, from what kind of socks we buy to the alliances we choose and the energy we rely on to power growth. In response to the idea that growth always renders certain habits obsolete, he noted that even the "fool who invented the wheel put people out of work." His main point centered on the idea of relevance, a value that DIP promotes as central to the economy in the new global culture.
"The human condition has always driven the outcome of every event in history," Hagel said. "When man is without dignity, nothing else matters to that individual."
The point of the day was about gaining power by listening to the other.
Gallup CEO Jim Clifton introduced three panelists-- Rajesh Srinivasan (who directs the World Poll in Asia) Dalia Mogahed (we have seen the Executive Director of the Gallup Center for Muslim Studies discussing her findings in multiple continents, starting in Doha, Qatar at the US-Islamic World Forum, where DIP, in collaboration with the Brookings Institution, hosted a special event, LIVE FROM DOHA) and Robert D. Tortora, Principal Scientist and Chief Methodologist with Gallup, who presented findings on Africa.
"There are 6.7 billion people in the world," Clifton said. "How many of you know what they're thinking? I'm going to tell you..."
Are people thinking about religion? Not so much, Clifton says. Peace? No. Not even family. People are thinking about good jobs. That might seem simple, he said, "but it changes everything."
When he said it, I thought of the comedian Chris Rock's bit about the difference between a career (there's never enough time in the day when you've got a career) and a job (when time never passes fast enough). If you've got a career, Chris Rock warns, don't gloat about it in front of people with jobs. It's funny when Chris Rock talks about working at a restaurant, scraping shrimp for what he believes is hours on end and then learning that only fifteen minutes have passed, but the stark reality is that one out of four people want to permanently escape their own countries to migrate toward work, in many cases to be marginalized, exploited and underpaid (DIP has produced a number of reports on employment patterns and issues across sectors).
The talking heads, Clifton noted, create misperceptions about the root cause of global trends and ineffective policy is then created on wrong-thinking.
"The more you execute on that," Clifton said, "the more you lead, the worse you make the world."
Dalia Mogahed shared Gallup's top findings (detailed more in the book she co-authored, Who Speaks for Islam?)
Anti-American sentiment is not a theological disposition of Muslims, nor is it unique to Muslims.
Muslim views of other countries fall along perceived policy and not cultural or religious views.
They don't hate our freedom. They admire us for it.
Most Muslims reject violent extremism. Seven percent feel that the attacks of 9/11 were "completely justified."
Other speakers included James D. Wolfensohn, former president of the World Bank, Jane Wales, President and CEO of the World Affairs Council of Northern California and the Global Philanthropy Forum, Abby Joseph Cohen, President of the Global Markets Institute and senior investment strategist with Goldman Sachs. Ambassador David A. Gross, who has served since August 2001 as the US Coordinator for International Communications and Information Policy, Vint Cerf ( a total rock star who normally would not be included in such a mix, Cerf is the President and Chief Internet Evangelist for Google), the Honorable Henrietta H. Fore, the Acting Administrator of the US Agency for International Development (USAID), Lisa Nelson, Head of Global Government Relations for Visa, Angel Cabrera, President of Thunderbird School of Global Management, Rear Admiral Susan Blumenthal, MD, the Director of Meridian's Global Health Program and the Senior Advisor for Health and Medicine at the Center for the Study of the Presidency, Paul Meyer, five-star humanitarian extraordinaire and co-founder of Voxiva, and finally, Goli Ameri, the Assistant Secretary of State for Educational and Cultural Affairs. Normally I wouldn't feel compelled to list every speaker at such an event, but taken together, this group represents the fact that a new global culture is no longer just a fantasy held by bleeding hearts, but an economic necessity.
Although I have a proclivity for speechifying and producing long research reports, I have come to recognize the value of concise information, a by-product, for better or worse, of internet literacy. Vint Cerf, who has his wine cellar rigged up with sensors (increasingly, we've seen a number of colleagues heavily involved in major sensor projects in various countries and we recommend procedural transparency when sensors are used for various reasons in public spaces, which Cerf's wine cellar most assuredly is not). He issued a warning about IPv4 addresses running out by 2010, which he's been saying a lot lately.
The main focus of his talk was on mobile devices, which most of the world uses with increasing fluency while the United States remains shackled to clunky computers that suck up massive amounts of energy. Until I can type using technology as elegant as telepathy, I suspect my fate remains tied to a keyboard, though I have to admit I'm stunned at how fast my thumbs can fly. Cerf described the ease of collaboration with colleagues using Skype and Google docs, which enables multiple users to simultaneously edit documents, thus sparing one poor sap the job of being the group scribe. The important thing, he noted, is for people to cooperate to make investments that might benefit someone else too.
Like all aspects of the new global economy, this point falls into the idea that bureaucratic organizations must let go of the illusion of complete hierarchical control.
Stay tuned for more installments about the event. For now, I have a train to catch back to NYC.
0 comments:
Post a Comment