The Davos Question; it is yet another spinoff of the YouTube-CNN debates, in a way. Ed Sanders of the YouTube Europe team today announced on the Official Google Blog the involvement that YouTube will be playing in this year's World Economic Forum. The forum takes place in Davos, Switzerland, is billed as a conference on "how to make the world a better place," though with a charter like that, it is hard to understand why it has always been protested against so heartily.
Perhaps to combat the world's feeling of aloofness and to quell the inevitable riots at the gates of the conference, the WEF is attempting to mimic the democratization of the US Presidential campaign process in the form of taking the CNN-YouTube debates approach. They're "giving people around the world the chance to join them, and help them, by submitting their own answer to the 'Davos Question,' which is: 'What one thing do you think that countries, companies or individuals must do to make the world a better place in 2008?'"
A city full of economists are going to have very little interest in what the rank-and-file of YouTube are going to have to say, especially since many economists are already concerned with the degrading respectability of the conference after inviting celebrities to speak at the events. If, in the eyes of the participating scholerati, bringing celebrities in to speak lowers the level of debate for the conference and turns the event into a media circus, what is bringing in us regular folk via YouTube going to do for it?