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ShaperTalk: Insights from Davos Attendees — Part II

SF Global Shapers hosted several people who’ve been to the World Economic Forum’s Annual Meeting in Davos on Tuesday, 3/12, and we wanted to share key takeaways from the event:

  • Shapers were struck by how human the people at Davos were. Despite their status and wealth, people at Davos still dealt with a lot of the same challenges as everyone else, like difficulty parenting teenagers.
  • Shapers went through a 3-day bootcamp before Davos where they were instructed to focus on their personal story and not try to be the expert. One panelist was familiar with the experience Shapers had the first time they went to Davos, and it was much more structured now—Shapers led many of the panels that took place during the event.
  • One panelist described an experience that a Global Shaper who co-chaired Davos, Mohammed Hassan Mohamud, had. He has lived in a refugee camp in Kenya for the past 20 years, and after hearing his story, several people said they wanted to contribute to things like better schools in the camp. Mohammed was taken aback and replied, “I don’t think you understand what I said. We don’t want to live in refugee camps.
  • The level of knowledge of artificial intelligence among attendees is shockingly low for something that’s going to have a big impact on the world in the coming decades. Davos is helpful because, while it’s impossible for them to become an expert on the topic at an event as short as Davos, it allows them to figure out what they don’t know and learn the questions they should be asking.

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