POWER RANGERS: At left, Bill Clinton talks with reporters outside the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI), convened annually in New York City and dedicated to turning ideas into action. Above, an international panel of tech-company CEOs met at CGI in 2010 to talk about access to technology in the developing world.
filmmaker Spike Lee. This March, the second annual“Women in theWorld: Stories and Solutions” summit—launched last year by Brown in partnership with a United Nations founda- tion—will convene an international forum inNewYork City, seeking ways to protect the world’s women and girls from sex trafficking and empower them economically. And then there’s PopTech. Founded 15 years ago as the
CamdenTechnology Conference, in Camden,Maine, the event brings 600 to 650 diverse thinkers and leaders together every year—“everyone from polar explorers to poets,” according to executive director Andrew Zolli—with one shared goal: to accelerate the positive impact of world-changing people, proj- ects, and ideas. “People like Andrew Zolli know that move- ments can be spawned around the social interactions that are generated at conferences,” said Jason Severs, principal designer at Frog Design, which has done work for PopTech. On the surface, these meetings may seem as different as
night and day, but they have a lot in common. As they fill their stages with the world’s leading thinkers, they deliber- ately court diversity. Their organizers use digital tools, includ- ing video, webcasting, and blogging, to make meeting content accessible to a very broad audience and to create networks that are active year-round. And the organizers are commit- ted not just to creating successful events but also to effecting measurable change.
‘Davos Meets Main Street’ When Maria Shriver, wife of California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, took over theWomen’s Conference, the two- decades-oldmeeting hosted by theGolden State’s governor and first lady had already grownbeyond its origin as a half-day net- working event for women interested in small-business loans, and had become a day-long forum at the Long Beach Con- vention&Entertainment Center. But Shriver — a member of the Kennedy family politi-
cal dynasty and a former correspondent for NBC News— wanted to do more. Her vision, said Matthew DiGirolamo, a communications strategist for the Women’s Conference, was not just to help women make business connections, but to use the conference to empower women to be “architects of change.” Shriver’s father, Sargent Shriver, was the founder and first director of the Peace Corps, and his daughter has