Blogging Davos 2008

Swiss Image/World Economic Forum

The first temporary denizens, of Davos, Switzerland, are beginning to trickle in for this year's annual meeting of the World Economic Forum. (The meeting doesn't officially start until Wednesday, Jan. 23, and it lasts until Sunday, Jan. 27, but the pre-meetings are getting underway.)

One person who's not going to make it to Davos this year? U.S. Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, who has his hands full at home with the subprime mortgage crisis and canceled at the last minute. Also not coming: Brangelina, the Hollywood power couple whom many Davoisie complained were a distraction from the real business at hand (I have some sympathy for this gripe, having witnessed firsthand the hoopla surrounding Brad and Angie at last year's Clinton Global Initiative).

There are still plenty of names to watch, of course. Bono is back, for one. U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is attending for the first time and will be giving Wednesday's opening address. Pakistan's tottering president, Pervez Musharraf, is sure to attract attention wherever he goes. And many of the usual Davos suspects are returning: Microsoft's Bill Gates, Larry Page and Sergey Brin of Google, Tony Blair and his protégé, Gordon Brown, not to mention former U.S. Vice President Al Gore, fresh from winning the Nobel Peace Prize.

Here on Passport, our main guide to this year's festivities will be Shashi Tharoor, an acclaimed author, one of India's most influential foreign-affairs pundits, and a former Under Secretary General of the United Nations to boot. We'll also be checking in periodically with noted author and columnist Ian Buruma, who will be giving us his take on the people and ideas he comes across at the conference, and we may hear from some other folks as time allows. And finally, my colleagues at FP and I will be keeping an eye out for the most interesting moments from among the 233 sessions on offer and from coverage elsewhere. So check back all week by clicking on the davos08 category, and enjoy the show!