Today is the second day of the conference and we continue our adventures in Davos. As an event planner, I am amazed of how much hard work and efficiency is put forth by the team and the entire town here to execute this event in the best possible manner. We are in the Swiss Alps and you hardly see anyone skiing in the beautiful white mountains. The entire town is closed up and dedicated to the World Economic Forum.

While most of the conference sessions are taking place in the main conference center in the town center, there are myriads of breakfast, lunch and dinner meetings taking place simultaneously at Various hotels across town. There are police men and women who will check your badge a few times before you can enter any building; your bags and jackets go through the Xray machines as well as I already mentioned. The coolest part though are these metal detectors situationed in front fo every building and session hall. They are silver blocks with a white and blue lit circle in the middle. You stand in front of them and scan your badge and the blue light turns green allowing you access. When you scan your badge your credentials along with your picture comes up on the screen above the station. It has a futuristic, star treky feel to it that I like.

While there are many politicians, financiers, media personalities and NGO administers from across the world are here, scientists, technologists, artists, celebrities, and health professionals among others are also attending the conference. Everyone I have come across has been approachable and friendly. I have already seen the Prime minister of China and the Prime minister of Israel being interviewed within a few feet from me. Somehow you are accepted as part of the club as long as you are wearing your conference badge. There is such a feeling of trust around here. I see laptops and computer bags left unattended across the halls.

Yesterday, I got a chance to ask an author I admire, Paulo Coelho a question about one of his books and get his perspective. As an English Major, there is no better high. I asked Paulo, why in the book The Alchemist, the female character stays behind in the tent while the male character goes around the world for many adventures to find himself. Why does she have to wait back home for him to return? He responded that she was not waiting for him but taking care of matters at home; she was going about her life, doing what was important to her and she already knew what he had to search all over the world for, that Love makes you free. I had never seen the matter in that light and it was so refreshing to hear him explain this to me. I felt like I was walking on a cloud all day after talking to Paulo. I also met Randi Zuckerburg of the Facebook famous family yesterday. She was so gracious, kind and a breath of fresh air to talk to.

Although my individual meetings have been energizing and fun, the overall mood here is gloomy and down. The economic crisis has hit this group of leaders in a hard way and so far I haven't heard any concrete solutions or visionary ideas from anyone. I hear Bill Clinton will be talking today so perhaps he can put a positive spin on this situation and give us some hope.

Robert and I are here at the beautiful, snowy Davos, Switzerland for the World Economic Forum. Robert attended last year and said I must come this year. It's an opportunity of a life time he said, so I am tagging along this year. Many have asked me to report back on my observations so here are some of my first impressions:

Getting here:

What you need:
You need snow boots, a warm ski jacket, and hats, mittens, and layered clothing to survive here. Most of all you need shoes that have a good grip on their soles, otherwise you will slip and fall. We've been here just for a day and I have already seen so many people slip in front of me walking on the road. If you are like me living in California, you probably never bothered with any super warm clothing, or good snow boots. I recommend Land's End for good, yet not too expensive warm clothing and Big 5 Sporting Goods or Sports Authority for great snow boots. If you have your eyes on a pair of warm and snuggly Uggs, consider buying Bearpaw brand. They are as warm and cute and one third of price.

Flight/Transportation:
It took us about 20 hours to get from SFO to our hotel in Davos. There are no direct flights to Davos or even Zurich from California, so you need to prepare yourself for a long journey. I finished a 200 page book, and I am a slow reader. We had no delays, and we fortunately got exit rows so we had plenty of leg room. United offered round trip tickets for $800 which are much cheaper than Swiss air or other airlines and we had good, uneventful flights. The flights (two of them to Zurich) took about 14 hours and then there was a 2 and 1/2 bus ride from Zurich to Davos. Then we had to take another shuttle from the bus drop to our hotel which took another half hour so. We were pretty tired by the time we got here, but we needed to get to the conference center to register, get our badges and get registered for sessions.

Registration/logistics:
Security is pretty tight here, so you need your badge to get in anywhere. Conference sessions and meetings are scattered at various hotels and meeting centers across town and they check your badge at the door and have you and your materials go through the xray machines like at the airport. I've seen as many police officers here as I saw on New Year's eve at Times Square in 2000, but the conference only has about 2500 participants. Popular sessions go fast too. Registration opened at 2 pm and by 2:10 some of the popular sessions were already booked. Shuttles run about 20 minutes or so from early morning to midnight and efficiently get people everywhere. Of course they offered us Pedometers at the registration and everyone who walks more than 20000 steps will win a prize. They are going for Green Davos theme. Robert and I are trying our best to walk everywhere. Maybe we can justify enjoying the Swiss Chocolates :)

Some challenges:
I've already mentioned the slippery and icy conditions. Wifi and Internet in the hotels are non-existent or expensive and not very fast if they are available at all. The hotel rooms are small. We walked in to our room and were looking for our bed. It was a fold away in the closet. Once we took the bed out, we had to stack our suit cases on top of each other to be able to walk in the room. I called to ask and see if we could possibly get a bigger room and was told we actually had one of their bigger rooms :)

The best parts so far:
Networking: I am sitting here at the conference center by the You Tube station, and Kofi Annan just walked by! Robert is interviewing the famous author Paulo Coelho right now who happened to just come by. Mike Arrington is sitting next to me on the couch. The Editor of Financial Times and Jeff Jarvis were sitting at our breakfast table this morning, and last night we attended a dinner to honor the Tech pioneers from all over the world, from Nigeria to Silicon Valley. We have only been here for one night and I can't wait to see what great personalities we will have the good luck to run into.

Yummy food:
I am not into stinky cheese so much, but everything we have had so far has been just wonderful.

Swiss humor:
The Swiss are surprisingly good-natured and smiling. The immigration officer that checked us in looked at me and pointed to Robert asking with a serious tone, are you with him? I answered yes and he gave me a teasing smile and asked again, are you happy with him? I cracked up and said, I can't complain. He brought me here. Although I will be happier once he gets me some Swiss Chocolate.
At the airport airshuttle to get us to baggage claim, they had sounds of cows and cow bells playing on the intercom and going through a tunnel there was a moving picture of a Swiss girl in a traditional outfit waving at you and blowing kisses from a window. Pretty cool and unexpected.

Eye Candy:
Ok so I have to confess that the Swiss are pretty beautiful people. I've been enjoying watching the young police officers with their navy blue uniforms, and I know Robert has been checking out all the beautiful ladies we see walking around. I know that cuz I've been looking at them too :)

Alright now it's time to go attend some sessions and report back.

Another January is upon us and in the tech-geek world, many are pondering the ultimate question. No, not what this year's resolutions should be, but whether to attend Macworld or CES or both?

Here at the Scoble residence, we are once again heading out to Vegas for the Consumer Electronics Show. Robert left with a group of bloggers on the Lovesac bus on Tuesday already and their adventures were recorded online.

I'll be flying in tomorrow to help Steve Broback and team with two fun events on Friday. First, from 2-4 PM on Friday at the Venetian hotel, Robert and Gary Vaynerchuk from winelibrary.tv team will be up on stage for a Q&A session on successful blogging in troubled times. I am excited to watch this session, as I've heard nothing but good praises about Gary and I must admit I am proud of Robert for teaming up with Gary on this project. I am sure they'll get some hard-hitting questions and I can't wait to see how they can handle all the pressure, and what we can learn from them.

After picking their brains, it's time to go out and party and the best place for bloggers to party in Vegas is at the Atomic Museum on Friday night where we'll be throwing the ultimate Vegas blogger party from 5-8.

If you are a blogger in Vegas for CES, I do hope to see you in at least one of these events if not both.

At the end of this month, Robert and are off to Davos for the World Economic Forum. While I am quite excited to be accompanying Robert on this trip, I am sorry we'll be missing out on the She's Geeky Conference. It's hard to have a geeky January without attending the She's Geeky Conference.

Hope you are having a fun geeky January as well.