Category Archives: Events

ADRIAN DAVID CHEOK joins 245 leading executives, public figures and intellectuals – all age 40 or younger – chosen from around the world

Geneva, Switzerland, 11 March 2008 – The World Economic Forum today announced Adrian David Cheok has been selected as a Young Global Leader 2008. This honor is bestowed each year by the World Economic Forum to recognize and acknowledge the top 200-300 young leaders from around the world for the professional accomplishments, commitment to society and potential to contribute to shaping the future of the world.

The Young Global Leaders for 2008 include 121 business leaders, as well as leaders from government, academia, media and society at large from 65 countries. The new class represents all regions, including East Asia (64), Europe (58), Middle East and North Africa (12), North America (45), South Asia (24), sub-Saharan Africa (21) and Latin America (21).

“The World Economic Forum is a true multi-stakeholder community of global decision-makers. We need the Young Global Leaders to be a voice for the future in the global thought process and as a catalyst for initiatives in the global public interest.” Said Klaus Schwab, Founder and Executive Chairman of the World Economic Forum.

Drawn from a pool of almost 5,000 candidates, the Young Global Leaders 2008 were chosen by a selection committee of 31 eminent international media leaders, including Thomas H. Glocer, Chief Executive Officer, Reuters, United Kingdom; Arthur Sulzberg, Chairman and Publisher, The New York Times, USA; Robert Thomson, Publisher, Dow Jones & Company and The Wall Street Journal, USA; and Hisashi Hieda, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Fuji Television Network, Japan. The selection committee is chaired by H.M. Queen Rania Al Abdullah of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.
The current community of Young Global Leaders represents over 60 countries and includes Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Co-Founders of Google, USA; Crown Prince Haakon of Norway; Malvinder M. Singh, Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director, Ranbaxy Laboratories, India; Hiroshi Nakada, Mayor of Yokohama, Japan; Nicky Newton-King, Deputy Chief Executive Officer, JSE, South Africa; Carlos Danel, Co-Chief Executive Officer, Banco Compartamos, Mexico; and Jack Ma Yun, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Alibaba Group, People’s Republic of China.

“It is our belief that this community of committed individuals can actually change the status quo. They are not only a preview of what effective, collaborative leadership in the 21st century might look like, they are actually putting it into practice today,” said David Aikman, Senior Director and Head of the Forum of Young Global Leaders. “It is our privilege to work with such inspirational leaders and to bring them together in a global network that builds their insights and skills even further, providing them with a global platform to tackle the key challenges of our generation.

Established in 2004 by Professor Klaus Schwab, The Forum of Young Global Leaders is a unique, multistakeholder to community of the world’s most extraordinary young leaders, who dedicate a part of their time to jointly address global challenges and who are committed to devote some of their knowledge and energy to collectively work towards a better future. As part of their engagement, the Young Global Leaders give their time to task forces to initiate, develop and drive innovative solutions on important, globally-oriented issues, including health, education, the environment, global governance and security, and development and poverty.

For more information and a detailed list of all Young Global Leaders, visit www.younggloballeaders.org,http://www.weforum.org/en/index.htm

The Chamber of Commerce of Como, in occasion of the IDC 2009 conference, has promoted a special competition calling for proposals on a “technology-enhanced” pre-school environment: the Como 4 Children (C4C) competition. C4C is an initiative to promote a strong innovation of the approach to education for young children (3-10 years of age). The competition’s goal is to “imagine a pre-school of the (near or remote) future, where the physical space is enhanced with (existing or future) technologies and children can naturally intermix, at individual or social level, ‘traditional’ playing and learning activities with interaction based on modern technologies of all kinds”. The competition has two tracks: Vision of the interactive pre-school of the future and Interaction at pre-school. 35 creative, visionary and compelling proposal were submitted from all over the world, by designers, interaction designers, computer scientists and architects. The conference chairs together with a panel of experts from the Chamber of Commerce of Como, after a careful analysis have selected the best 3 proposals for each track. The top 3 winners for Track 1 are from Stanford University, USA, a collaborative proposal between Georgia Institute of Technology, USA and Eindhoven University of Technology, The Netherlands, and another proposal from ASP-Politecnico Milano, Turkey. Petimo was named as a winner in Track 2. Besides Petimo, the other 2 selected top 3 winners are proposals from MIT Media Lab, USA and University of Iowa, USA. We gave a presentation about Petimo in a special session during the IDC 2009 conference. After the presentation, we receive many positive feedback about the project. One of the Italian speaking panelist gave his thumbs-up immediately upon the completion of our presentation. The distinguished panelists were very impressed at the high quality of the project, its vision and implementation within a short time frame.