18 January 2017 (Davos) – The most coveted badge in all of Davos is one with a shiny holographic sticker on it — despite the fact that most attendees, and even some Forum employees, don’t actually know what the sticker actually means. It’s seen on the badge of every head of state, so some people thinks it means you are a head of state. It doesn’t. In fact, the shiny hologram grants you entry to the hyper-exclusive “Davos-within-Davos” known as IGWEL, or the Informal Gathering of World Economic Leaders.
To get in, you need to be a senior government policymaker — think finance minister, or trade minister, or one of their sherpas — or one of a very select group of WEF employees. And in fact the exclusivity does seem to help: if anything useful has ever been achieved at Davos, it has probably been achieved at IGWEL, which remains one of very few occasions where international politicians can meet informally, off the record, to talk about their biggest aspirations.
Me? I have a purple badge – that’s reserved for technicians who work behind the scenes. I get one every few years from one my long-time media clients. And I actually have to work and schlep media equipment to earn it 🙂 But it gives me access to all of the media representatives here, plus a tsunami of the content presented and being produced, and I can often “slide” into some of the presentations.
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