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Farah Nanji 0:04
Hey Mark, how you doing today?
Mark Turrell 0:06
I'm doing wonderfully well. Thanks to you all good.
Farah Nanji 0:09
Yeah, well, good or good, as we were saying just about recharged from Davos.
Mark Turrell 0:15
Pretty much. Yes.
Farah Nanji 0:16
Yeah, yeah. So you know, you're running on Davos, it's I think it's almost close to 2000. Members. Now, it's, you know, definitely one of the most prolific communities out there, in Davos, tell us a little bit more about the community and like, why you started it.
Mark Turrell 0:32
So that's the sort of in total, we'll be around more like four or 5000. There's about 2000 Direct members in telegram. But then quite a few of the people, they sort of one person is in underboss, but then they might have five or six people in their team. And so not everybody is in it. And the the underboss world is around four or 5000 people. Superficially, it's about how do you find a place to stay? How do you work out something to do so superficially? There's not a lot to it, there's a telegram group, and there's a Google Doc that explains how things are planned. But there is obviously much, much more to it. And it's a way of pretty much how do you help people do DevOps, which is this very special week, during the day, when you have so many decision makers from all different walks of life from different countries? But how do you take advantage of this concentrated period of time where, let's say in quotes, everybody is there to get things done. And so by making it easier for people to go at scale, that's sort of pretty much let's say, sort of the core of what underboss has been about. But then there's, as I said, there's more to it than that.
Farah Nanji 1:38
Yeah, I hear you've got some 10 year master plans maybe even longer than 10 years?
Mark Turrell 1:44
Well, yes, I have a 25 year plan to change the whole world for better, I've then just finished the first within there, there was what the first 10 year plan for the sort of first iteration of the sort of changing world of Davos, and now we're just moving into the next 10 year plan.
Farah Nanji 1:58
What what what for you is the reason for like starting this community, because I know you've been getting since 2008. And obviously, things have changed a lot since then. So what was the primary motive for you to kind of set this up?
Mark Turrell 2:10
So in 2008, I mean, I had a very good DevOps experience myself, but then I was a West member, I mean, it would have cost 30 or 40,000, for me to be there as a technology pioneer. And that was sort of the cheap tickets time. So but for me, I found that Davos was extremely useful from a business perspective, because at least from the left side, the right people as prospective clients with so it's very transactional networking was fantastic. But I had a chance encounter with a guy from Zimbabwe, he and I then ended up inventing crowd sourced election monitoring. And that method of having 1000s of people take pictures of election results in Zimbabwe changed the outcome of an entire country's election, to stop a dictator stealing an election. Well, that was such a nice experience. And that helped the country of 13 million people. And that method was then used subsequently, in many different countries, including Senegal, and Nigeria afterwards. I then thought, well, this sort of serendipitous moments of magic, they should happen more often. So I was left in 2000 lines. And they began to switch from being more sort of transactional towards relationship building. And then I missed 2010 2011 was the first time that they came back with a hotel badge. And I'd figured out how sort of the system worked. And then I began to tell more people and more people and more people. And so right now, yeah, so the Community directory is 2000. And then overall, it's more like around four or 5000. So that they can all have this sort of magical opportunity to make these connections.
Farah Nanji 3:42
And so through this period of growth, like what do you think has been the biggest impact of the community being at Davos? Is it the change that that, you know, a lot of us are obviously driven to achieve? What Yeah, what would you say has been some of the measurements of the impact?
Mark Turrell 3:58
Well, so that was before used to be full of old white men. So now, Davos is a lot less white, it's a lot less male, and it's a lot less old. So fundamentally, that's because if it makes it very, very expensive to go, the only people in whatever the old fashioned society that can go are old white men. Yeah. However, what undavos did, as with the sort of the sort of superficial telegram groups is that it made it easier for people to come, that normally would need to have been invited. It allows people that have come once to go back again, even if the web wouldn't invite them back a second time. And then it just means that the the sort of Davos is dramatically more relevant over the years. Davos is the town and this week of time than the weapons because the weapon is still full of old white men. Yeah, sure. That would be the biggest change.
Farah Nanji 4:52
Yeah, I mean, we can you can definitely see that change over the over the last few years. So you know, undoubtedly, and making it more accessible I think is is one of the key things that um, Davos really provides even, you know, just from the get go, as you say from, from joining, all the way to actually coming out there and the community and I think, thing I read something like you guys are saying that just even that on Davos beds group contributes to like more than a million in revenue for the, for the accommodation suppliers out in the community in the village.
Mark Turrell 5:22
It's more like around I mean, it's probably at least six or 7 million this year. Okay. So and the majority of that money goes to local people. Yeah. And if there wasn't this type of apartment sharing, very few people would be able to get a Davos
Farah Nanji 5:37
100%. Because we know that Airbnbs cancel all the time raising as they get a better offer.
Mark Turrell 5:44
So there's a very interesting sort of life lessons from Davos. So probably worth a book at some point that if you like, let's say, you rent an apartment in Davos, and that's a cost 15,000 For the week, which is quite expensive, but still, it's Switzerland. So it's Switzerland, there's always going to be double normal prices anyway. And it's during the tiny little town. So the town of Davos, during in summer has 10,000 inhabitants. In winter, it's 17,000 inhabitants. But during that last week, there's about 30,000 people that come into this place. So it's a tiny little place, and there's no availability whatsoever. That means that the, unless you're able to get an apartment and share it, you really can't stay about us. But relatively few people have enough money for themselves to get an apartment. And even if they could, it's quite lonely. So it's actually better for people to then say, well, wouldn't it be great if I have an apartment, I need three or four people to share the rent, otherwise, I can't afford the rent myself. So this, whatever, connecting people together to sort of make apartments allows people to staying. But what it's also doing without people really realising it is that it begins to get across some rules that in order to do Davos, you need to share things, and you need to help other people. And those are rules that didn't exist before him. So Westworld is pretty much own things and help yourself. Yeah, so in fact, what analysis is doing, it's changing the rules set of the world.
Farah Nanji 7:17
Phenomenal, phenomenal. And so let's talk about 2023. What were some of the highlights in key takeaways for you this year.
Mark Turrell 7:25
So it can, so we've just come up, let's say three years of COVID. And we had the May 22, who got slotted in which it was a little bit strange. It was sort of in spring, the weather was fantastic. But there was a lot of uncertainty, people didn't quite know what was going on. In 23, there was a lot more certainties, sort of we've done this before we now have this works. That was 23 was about 20%, bigger than 2020, maybe even bigger than that. So we begin to go back onto the normal track. I think other things then is that we see sort of more and more venues being taken up with events. Because what happened before if you'd like this, there's really a sort of schism between Old West, and new wherefore old Davos and new Davos. To give you an example. When you walk down the promenade. You have shops. Now if you walk down the promenade sort of out of season, many of the shops are closed, because it's a ski town. If you walk down the promenade, a week before Davos, and the wet week takes place, you've got a hat shop, or you have a children's bookshop. But then if you walk down the week of Davos of the West, you have Accenture, you have Salesforce, you have India pavilion, you have Malaysia. And then what's interesting is that in the past, and let's say 5456 years ago, these places were largely dedicated towards lounges for private meetings. So you'd have your it's the pet shop, it gets turned into private wealth management, private meeting space. And this will be for private meetings, very much an old style of world the sort of the backroom type of deals. What I think happened in 2020, you could see it beginning to happen. 22 was very strongly there. If you look at the buzz and the energy, there's no energy whatsoever with private meeting spaces. And yet, you'd walk past the blockchain hub or some of the other places and you'd have people spilling out on the street because they want to get into an event, a panel session. So gradually, what has happened is that more of the places that had private meeting spaces, have now decided to turn those physical areas into event spaces. And that means then, that instead of having whatever eight chairs and a couple of couches, for 10 people to have a meeting, you then end up with 30 chairs, 40 chairs, five people at a panel videographer filming stuff, and that allows you to share content But what happens with content is the content brings community. So I was, for example, at the essential lounge, and they did a session on digital wallets. And it was packed with people that were interested in digital wallets. So even then, for the sort of this, again, there's this sort of schism, this break between private meetings, one on one things, and to these very large scale groups of people gathering together. It's pretty much a game changer, but it also pulls more and more people into Davos, who also need a place to stay and something to do. So just said spiralling out, it just gets bigger and bigger. It can't be stopped either.
Farah Nanji 10:35
Yeah, it's amazing to see the the promenade come to life in those in those weeks before and it literally is like it takes about like less than a week before. Everything's all it's all kitted out. And the street completely transforms and, and I mean, I was you know, I was there for a few weeks before Davos and you know, it was pretty lonely. I mean, it's pretty lonely. There's, I mean, obviously, I was with friends, but you know, just the promenade itself on like a Saturday night, it was like, totally empty until until this group kind of comes comes through in full force.
Mark Turrell 11:06
And this is what we're doing now. But going back, so back in 2008, there was no promenade. Yeah. So back in 2008. What happened then, is that you had Aberdeen asset management had a little shop next to developer, the Zurich Insurance had the library next to the Congress system, you had events taking place at the Belvedere. And it was only a few people who decided to whatever take over the piano bar at Hotel Europe as an alternative to the boring web strategic partner parties like the McKenzie party. So what happened is that the cool people would then leave the party full of consultants and accountants and lawyers go over to hotel Europe, but there was nothing in between. And in fact, back in 2008, the whole town was dead, dead, dead dead. Because when the World Economic Forum takes over Davos during WEF week, they contribute very little to the local economy. No WEF attendees are going to buy baby clothing. So what happens is that most of the shop owners would leave but also the inhabitants would leave. So it was actually very strange in 2008, nine, even sort of up to bounce 1415, the whole town was empty. Yeah. Now, what's now happened, though, is more poor people rent their apartments, more people then begin to stay to do work at events. So right now, if we look at 23 and beyond, is much more tied to the local community than ever was there before. But you've gone from this completely empty, lonely place in 2008, to being this buzzing, vibrant hub of serendipity. That's fantastic. It's phenomenal. So it was exactly part of my master plan.
Farah Nanji 12:47
And what were some of the parties that stood out for you this year? And are you guys hosted your own one? On the Friday? I think it was, or was it a Thursday, I think it was a Thursday, Thursday,
Mark Turrell 12:56
we did the masquerade party. So the the, so I used to do more parties in previous years, because then you get to meet very interesting people and have conversations till 234 o'clock in the morning. Over time, I liked doing the parties less particularly this year and work to do. So I was I I adopted at least the minimum rule of every second drink should be water very sensible. Because otherwise, and to give people an idea, you start doing cocktail receptions at six, you switch over to doing a dinner thing from 713, you switch from a dinner thing to a night camp thing around nine, then you switch to a party thing around 10 3011 Then you switch to an after party hanging out at berries or piano bar until three or four o'clock. That's a lot of awake time and a lot of whatever carousing and networking time now, you still end up with serious business conversations at three o'clock in the morning. So with serious people, it just means that you get to see them in a different context. And so therefore you meet them in a much more human level. And you have much more sort of direct conversations, as opposed to when you're sort of formal sitting in a suit exchanging business cards. parties that I went to, I did get dressed up and I have my tuxedo for Arabian Nights. I didn't go there too long, because I don't personally like crowns that much. And then we handle the underboss masquerade ball party clubbing thing that was on Thursday. So I have bought since I thought that people didn't wear masks and normally like we're proud of wearing this mask so it's fine to wear this masks. So I bought about 300 masks, Kathy is and other staff and I just donated them to the party. And that was a nice event. That was really good because land space at least like the space of the wrap to centre which had been called Lance Bass. has a really good sound system.
Farah Nanji 14:51
Yeah, the boys did a really good job with that void sound system this year is very, very nice system. So let's talk about some tips. So you've mentioned I A great tip there about every secondary rainwater because as you've as you've touched upon six o'clock, you know, the gears shift a little bit to that evening mode, but also, you've obviously got the whole day as well, right? Where, you know, brains, flat out on, on, on on focus. And then you need to keep that kind of, you know, focus, you know, 3am if if or if the conversation arises, or you'd want it obviously capture the best of that value. Right? So talking about tips, what would be some I know, this could probably be a whole podcast episode in itself, but what would be your kind of high level tips on really maximising the experience for our audience listening who are who are coming to Davos and and also maybe people who might be coming for the first time.
Mark Turrell 15:41
So a few things, then is that the, there is a huge amount of value, particularly if you're coming in from let's say, far overseas, about coming in on Friday or Saturday, rather than coming in on Monday. Yeah, because if you've just come off for whatever, 16 hour flight and jump straight into DevOps, you're not going to be really functioning for a day and a half. And it's too expensive to be at low performance. So that is sort of something really to to think about them is coming in early on, you chill you acclimatised and then leave on Friday or Saturday is typically the best way to do
Farah Nanji 16:16
it. And maybe you ski
Mark Turrell 16:19
away. I mean, you can do I mean, I wouldn't ski afterwards, mostly because you sort of get physically wrecked when you do this Davos thing. Yeah. And I wouldn't want to put myself at risk because my legs aren't particularly stable afterwards. But people do do skiing in the skiing. It's fantastic. Because like you'll be able to,
Farah Nanji 16:35
of course, yeah, no, no, I mean, I like my tip would be go go ski before get come a few days earlier scheme for when it's all you know, when it's less hectic, I agree. But if I had to ski after this whole thing, it would be it'd be too intense.
Mark Turrell 16:48
And so I mean other things as well as the eat whenever you can. So it's very easy. In previous years, you sort of if you arrive slightly, for example, is one of the great defences the Swedish lunch, fantastic event, beautiful sunshine, it's the the Fortune smiles on the screens, because they've got a great location. And it's always something. The thing though, is that I know that if you have too many conversations, they run out of food. So what you need to do is you need to pretty much not look at anybody go straight to the food, get your food, because otherwise you're gonna run out of food, because they're very, very generous and inviting so many people. But that means at a certain point, they've run out and poop. So yeah, so the other rule of Davos is that eat whenever you can. I mean, I'm quite it's quite normal point. So we have Toblerone chocolates at the place that I was at. So for me having chocolate for breakfast is quite normal for demos, I wouldn't do it outside of Davos. But it's quite normal to do that eating. Next thing is the you do really need to be connected into the telegram group for underboss. And you need to be on the dabba squeak app to know what's going on. Otherwise, you'll be walking down the streets, and then you'll hear the buzz and you'll see the people but you won't have a clue what's going on. So I genuinely feel very sorry for the WEF delegates, because the World Economic Forum doesn't want the World Economic Forum delegates to know that there's anything other than the World Economic Forum. So these people are completely lonely. They don't know about sort of breakfast events with the CEO of Microsoft, they didn't know about whatever lunches they didn't know about dinners. They didn't know about the Swedish lunch unless they just happen to speak to somebody, sometimes on the train on the way in, like, oh, well, I was going to do a very boring lunch, you want to come to the Swedish lunch. What's that? So and this is the West hasn't yet figured out how to work with the site community. However, clearly the site community will get bigger and bigger and bigger. If the web decides to move, dab off the site community will move to whichever city they decide to go to. So the Old West has to just accept that this new world is there and they either can keep fighting it and lose. Or they can work with it and make it beneficial for everybody. So but yeah, so then it's the you need to know what's going on to get the most value. What other good tips that I would have? Be cool. Assume that the every action that you have will have consequences. So if you go around being an asshole, there will be consequences.
Farah Nanji 19:20
100% The community is small, you know, people find out things for sure. And you do come across quite a few people who are who are there to kind of, you know, to try and maybe make like they might be bad actors trying to cut trying to make the most out of the situation and you you stumble upon them every year so and the community.
Mark Turrell 19:42
I mean, it's the kind of thing where somebody was aware of somebody saying I've wired you some money, but then it was found out about why it was fake. So somebody has gone through the effort to create a fake wire transfer. Now why do they do that really stupid because it's still there. Well, that information then got handed over to Interpol, turns out there was an active investigation into the person. And so that person, that whole group basically was then speedily removed, because we have no interest in being connected to bad actors. So as soon as we were to kick everything out, but you just have to expect that if there's a community of 2000 people, there's a lot of interesting connections that people have. And there's also quite a strong level of commitment to making sure the community is good and continues to be good. And that either means that they're bringing good people in, but it also means taking some action over people who are at least perceived to be bad actors. And if they are found to actually be bad actors to then basically expel them.
Farah Nanji 20:41
Exactly, exactly. And I'm sure you, you know, must get asked as I do, for so many speakers looking for opportunities. So like, what advice would you give those people who are like looking to join panels and stuff.
Mark Turrell 20:55
So, Davos is an incredible platform, whether it's just the people physically in the room with you, or the beyond that boss, which is sort of before, during, and after that boss, but outside of the sort of little ski town. So what you need to do is that, I mean, so there's just so maybe another secret is that Davos is all about money, but not in terms of money, conspiracy theories, and all of this bullshit nonsense. It's that even if you are to have so the minimum price, pretty much to stay in Davos, in a bed, which you might be sharing with another human, who you may never have met before, around 3000 Swiss francs. What it means that I mean, that's because you take the price of the rent, and you divide it by four matches, but it works out. So it means that Davos is not someplace to go to, if you're sort of cheap. If you can't afford it, if your NGO can't raise money, then you aren't, then you just can't be there just it is what it is. But then it means that once you go there, and just being aware that there are business models that definitely venues have as to get speakers. The other thing is that when you look at the streets of Davos, every single person almost has been in a magazine. So no matter how cool you are, I can guarantee you that the person sitting behind you in the financials will be as good as you or better. So I think this is a struggle for a lot of people coming in as first timers because they might perceive themselves to be just the best thing the world has ever seen. And so let's say you have some special expertise in space, that's cool. But the guy over there builds supersonic aircraft that is like. So yes, you might know something about. But I do think that there are there are plenty of them. Because there are more and more venues, it doesn't mean that there's more options to speak. But then you have to be aware that sometimes there is a pay to speak model for some of the venues. And every promenade shop that you look at will end up spending between 707 100,000 A million Swiss Francs per week. So every single one of those venues drops about 200,000 per day of cost. The cost has to be paid by somebody. Yeah. So therefore you will have certain bits certain places will a Peter speak business models, but I mean, that's not crazy and other conferences either. And if it's not worth it for you then don't pay these. But also though, there's a capacity problem, because it only lasts for five days, but really not much happens on Friday. Less happens on Monday, but I think gradually more things will happen on Monday and Sunday as well. But there are relatively few speaking songs. Now what I did do with the Serbian Dallas community, we put together a Landau Summit. So we had 30 panel sessions on topics such as oceans conservation, next generation, well, each one of those things had five speakers. So that at least gay just that single big question format alone gave a platform for 150 people to speak. And then you just have to know that we were looking for speakers as and when we put the call out. Because if we were too late, that's unfortunate. But that's not our fault. That's your fault for not knowing about it. Exactly. Yeah. So one of these opportunities.
Farah Nanji 24:15
Yeah, if you didn't check those telegram groups you would have there's no chance you'd have you would have been a while maybe some people do scroll up to 700 messages. But yeah, you need to keep an eye out on those things because they do get shared on the groups like you mentioned.
Mark Turrell 24:29
And there is also some level of personal responsibility. Like people aren't children, okay. Some of them are behave like children, but, and some children are really, really smart. But right now, I mean, I have people saying, Mark, can you please inform me about this is like no, because there's 2000 Other people waiting. That's what I make a special effort for you, given that there's other people. Exactly. So it just the people have to sort of take the initiative themselves. And if you aren't able to take the initiative and that was probably isn't the right place for you.
Farah Nanji 25:00
Yeah, I agree. And I think I think also adopting the mindset of it's a marathon, not a sprint, you know, I, you know, if you can afford to be there, and, you know, invest that time into actually kind of creating relationships, right. And the good things will come organically from that. Rather than kind of like being ego driven about like, I need to be speaking at the best panels and have that visibility everywhere for my network.
Mark Turrell 25:24
Yes, so Davos is very much about relationships. I mean, people do business with people that they like, and people that they've developed trustful. So I think the poor quality networking at Davos is to say, Hi, here's me pitch, pitch, pitch, pitch pitch, you don't ask the other person that question, that networking might work well at TechCrunch. Or it might work well at some other conference, but it just doesn't work in that boss. Where if it works, it works with people that are not the right quality that you're hoping for. So what works better is that you connect with people on a human level, find out what they do, you might then end up meeting them two or three times, which is really good. And then based on that, you can then have more serious conversations afterwards to do the follow up to do some contracts and do some sort of serious business afterwards. And it's about relationship building. I think the other thing about DevOps, it's worthwhile mentioning, is that you should play Davos over years, not over
Farah Nanji 26:15
one time. Exactly. Marathon, not sprint, because you
Mark Turrell 26:19
get access to it's a marathon bundle, and not a sprint, but it and it's American over years, because what happens is that the first year, you're there, you're overwhelmed, you don't know how things work, it'll still be brilliant. Second year, you go back, you're still overwhelmed for different reasons, it'll still be broken. The third year, people begin to know who you are, and you get access to better things. Now, some people are able to get access to the good things immediately, because they're sneaky, or they just can't figure stuff out. But the thing is, though, that even if they're able to sneak into the JP Morgan dinner, they don't belong at the JP Morgan dinner. So therefore, they don't have the right conversations that could be had if you did it in the right way. But it's the game played over yours. And anybody that doesn't play the game over us, typically doesn't come back.
Farah Nanji 27:04
Yeah. So true. What would you like to see more of next year.
Mark Turrell 27:11
So I think that there's, I'd like to see more depth into certain topics. Because I think that the the nature about how these venue spaces work, it means that you're going to have that saying an hour and a half on aerospace, which is by Elon space, massively important industry. But you don't have eight hours. So what I see happening in 24 is going to be more spaces for industries, where the companies will collaborate together to organise whatever industry specific content at very high level, across maybe tennis, sort of maybe 10 different industries, so that I'd like to get deeper into narrow topics. Next thing is I'm looking at beyond Davos. So the, what it means then, is that I mean, there are millions of people that could be engaged in the conversation. There are millions of people that they believe that their boss is this conspiracy theory of whatever of some crazy German guy who's controlling the world as a pop up, by the way, very, very stupid conspiracy theory. But that's because they don't feel as though they have any connection. So I think that a lot of the venues and including my underboss Summit, we need to do a lot, there's an opportunity for us to go beyond the walls of that boss during the event and after, to then just get the content out there, which will help those people that speaking but it also helped us increase the knowledge of what's going on in the world, that beyond our boss. And I think the next one is how to sort of systemize more people that are either day tripping into that boss, or they're staying, let's say, an hour out, but you make it more convenient for them to get in and out in a sustainable and sort of environmentally sensible one. Because that then makes because already, I mean, one of the big things that I see that's changed in Davos now is that back in 2008, there used to be three taxi cabs. But actually, maybe this this is a sort of a nice focus to understanding how the world has changed that much. In 2008. Imagine you're at the x bar, it's three o'clock in the morning, and you need to get back to clauses. There were only three taxi cabs in Davos in that time. What happened is that there were four people waiting for the taxis. The first person jumps in the taxi cab, they pay 150 Swiss to go to sort of two clauses second person 150 Swiss to go in the same direction, third person, same direction, same amount of money. The fourth person me, I have to wait for an hour because the taxis have to come back again. So what happened is then that old world it was extremely inefficient. It was extremely expensive, and it was very unfriendly and very lonely. Well, now what's happened is that now people do connect together and say Hi, I'm leaving at two o'clock who wants to share a cab, and I'm on expenses I'll pay, you have this type of conversation. But what is also I think a game changer in DevOps in 22, and now in 23, is that there are tonnes not just taxi cabs, but there are tonnes and tonnes of Ubers. And what it was make it even if it's whatever 29 Swiss francs to go five minutes is that before to go, let's say a 20 minute walk in Davos begins to get hard work, particularly for people that are somewhat infirm, or people that are worried about ice quite often, they couldn't go too far off the promenade, just because it was physically two bars ago and to bar to get back. Well, now because of Ubers. And because of telegram and people sharing stuff, it means that there's a lot of places in the town of Davos, both in pets and dogs that are now accessible, because it's easier to get transport.
Farah Nanji 30:54
Yeah, and it opens up the space for for more places to operate.
Mark Turrell 30:58
Exactly.
Farah Nanji 31:00
What last couple of questions, talking about, you know, the conspiracy theory there that you mentioned, what do you think, is the biggest misconception around Davos? And as you as you mentioned, a lot of people, you know, have a perception because they're not on the ground, they don't see the actual reality of what what is happening. But what do you think is some of the biggest misconceptions around around this particular,
Mark Turrell 31:21
the biggest misconception is that people think that their bosses World Economic Forum, and the World Economic Forum is Davos, that's the biggest mistake that people make. in Davos, I mean, I was the you were there. Did you hear anybody saying, Wow, the World Economic Forum said this, nobody gives a shit. They really don't even the people that go to the Congress Centre don't care. So I think the biggest misconception that people have, and it's because they're just lazy, because and because they have their own sort of received wisdom as to how they think the world works. They just sort of imagined some Spectre like super criminal, running this World Economic Forum organisation. But it's not. The one Economic Forum runs a conference. They have 2700 delegates, they have 1100, affiliate badge people, and they have a space in the middle of the forum, and programme that starts at seven in the morning and finishes at 6pm at night. And that's all they have. Yeah, they don't do events and parties. So I think then, what happens is that back in 2008 95%, of Davos was World Economic Forum. So back in 2008, it would be completely fair to say where was their boss, their boss was where now in 2023, the wealth of most is 40%. And next year, it'll go down to 30%, or 35%. Because there's so much extra programming that takes place, which means that the sort of controlled narrative of the World Economic Forum basically gets disappeared, because there are other people talking. So yeah, so I think that's the biggest misconception is that people think that the web has dabbled styluses. And those people are just wrong, completely wrong. Completely. I'm sure that they're very happy that they're wrong. Well, actually, they probably think they're right, but they just have been being rough with this. Rob,
Farah Nanji 33:14
will be interesting to see as obviously, there's a lot of talk this year about the succession planning and the unhappiness of certain people inside the organisation and how it's all happening. So I think, yeah, we'll see how things unfold. Mark, thank you so much.
Mark Turrell 33:29
Just the idea on that, one is that there's old work from anywhere. And the new work is much more aligned with unbox and allowing people freedom to do the stuff that they want, allowing more interaction, allowing less stage managed stuff. And then there's old web, which is run by an old man who's got his own particular way of doing things and they want to basically control everything. The thing is that old web is dying new weapons, the future. And I think fundamentally, the future belongs to those people that will live in the future. It doesn't belong to the people that control the present who will be dead. Yeah. And I think those people that let's say, own the future need to take some responsibility of making that future happen. And we can make it happen faster. We just have to be somewhat clever about how we do this. But so certainly the direction of travel for for DevOps itself is to be more open, more diverse, more inclusive, more topics, more depth, and less stage managed friction, that is sort of the old world spouse's,
Farah Nanji 34:35
exactly not not much comes from there from that, you know, image focus to whereas it's the depth is what obviously is crazy the impact that we're all hopefully looking for. Mark, thank you so much. Yeah, it's been great speaking with you and congrats on everything that you do with underboss as well as it's really, really great to have something like you guys on the ground and you know, making that change. So, yeah, congratulations.
Mark Turrell 34:58
Well, thank you for being part During the I like to tell people that like without you and the people in underboss it would be very lonely for me because it would just be me
Farah Nanji 35:07
obviously I look forward to speaking with you soon in London take up
Mark Turrell 35:10
regularly in the channel