Surprises and Twists

So it is late afternoon on Thursday and as I sat down between sessions to up date the blog, someone asked if they might share the small table I am sitting at. It happens to be Dan Quayle our former VP. The irony is that I spent part of the morning with his much more interesting successor Al Gore.

The day began very early at 7 Am with Paul Saffo and I leading a session for CNBC sponsored by Infosys on scenario planning. It was both creative and fun. In the end the consensus of the group of about 80 people was short term pessimism and long term optimism. Then went on to the session announcing Google.orgs new initiative with Larry Brilliant, Larry Page and Sergey Brin. Managed to have a nice conversation with Al Gore and he conveyed his gratitude to GBN for the work we did on Current TV. Van Jones from Oakland made an impassioned appeal to keep the green issues and the poverty issues linked by helping gain opportunity from responding to climate change.

I cam back to the Kongress Hall to do a bit of work. First was Musharraf's talk/ He said that he had acted only constitutionally in suspending the constitution (HUH!) and promised a truly fair election. I am not sure how credible he is. Then got caught up in a conversation with baroness Susan Greenfield of the UK a brilliant and controversial neuro-scientist who is one of the few who believes that human modification is inevitable. As she was getting up who sits down but Gavin Newsom and his new fiance. We had a long talk and he promised to come by the office. As it happens I was just about to have a meeting with Peter Piot the Head of the UN AIDS program with whom we are planning a major meeting in SF in March. Not surprisingly Peter managed to get Gavin to agree to participate. Peter and I will do an oped together on the future of AIDS.

Then went to a session of A new Concert of Powers with a few of the key foreign Ministers, France, Russia, Henry Kissenger, Shimon Peres and my friend George Yeo the Foreign Minister of Singapore. Mostly fairly uncontroversial except for the closing comments of Kudrin of Russia in which he said perhaps the world no longer needs blocs like NATO, because of course both Russia and China now need to on the inside. In talking with George Yeo afterwards he commented that the current financial crisis and the realignment of finance that developed with the developing countries providing funds to the rich world suggests that as we come out of this recession will also lead to major realignment of power. More later tonight following my session on carbon trading.