President's Conference

I spent yesterday afternoon/early evening in the Jerusalem Conference Centre, where I was attending the opening plenum session of the President's Conference. The conference, which runs over three days, is by invitation only, but judging by the 4,000 strong crowd, it's not clear what the criteria for invitation were (especially as I had wangled an invitation).

The opening session was entitled "My recipe for a better tomorrow", and the opening speaker was Prof. Dan Ariely who is a behavioural psychologist and the main reason for me attending. His fifteen minute talk was mainly taken from his book "The upside of irrationality" which I had bought (and read) about a month ago, so he didn't really provide me with any new information. His talk centred around how we tend to chose options which gratify us now instead of choosing harder or more painful options which will benefit us in the future. As he puts it, "How many people ate more than they should have this week? How many people exercised less than they should have?". Ariely told about an episode in his life when he was diagnosed with Hepatitis C and was told to inject himself with interferon; this treatment caused sickness, vomiting and general malaise. He managed to minimise the negative psychological affects of the treatment by combining them with an activity which he found extremely pleasant, namely watching movies. What does this have to do with his recipe for a better tomorrow? Better to do the unpleasant things today so that we might have a better tomorrow than do the pleasant things today (which might well lead to a worse tomorrow).

Second up was Sir Martin Sorrell; his talk was a slightly hit and miss affair. First he would mention an interesting subject, talk about it for a few minutes and then say that he wasn't here to talk about this subject. Eventually he did get onto the subject which he was to talk about: city administration. Apparently, in fifty years time there will be about 350 cities with a population greater than one million, and the task of administering these cities will be immense. He believes than government and local authorities must find a way of working together and improving the face of society (my words).

Next was Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia. Whilst this talk was very interesting, it had little to do with a recipe for a better tomorrow (or maybe it was because I was nodding off at this stage).

Then came the speaker who was added at the last minute but seemed to be the most popular of all: Shakira. I had expected an air-head, but she turned out to be more than sensible. Her recipe for a better tomorrow was education, education, education. She talked about her visit that morning to a joint Israeli/Palestinian school (footage of this was shown on the evening news) and the work that her foundation has done in Columbia: every child who enrolls in school stands a much better chance of not becoming a terrorist or a drug smuggler.

Closing the show was American comic Sara Silverman. I have to admit that this name caused me to raise an eyebrow when I saw it listed in the programme, and true to form, this part of the evening was the lowest. It was totally irrelevant (and slightly hard to understand) but a short clip made the evening news. Obviously there is more publicity attached to being a comic actress than a successful behavioural economist, a successful businessman or the founder of Wikipedia.

After the session ended, there was an hour or so of 'mingling', during which I hoped to meet Dan Ariely and have him sign my copies of his books. Unfortunately, the halls were so crowded with people that I never saw him (he might have already left the building). I did come face to face with the current Israeli Justice Minister Ya'akov Ne'eman (I couldn't think of his name; all I could remember was Yuval Ne'eman, who was a successful particle physicist and science minister before dying) and the one time Minister for Pensioners, Rafi Eitan, but no Dan Ariely.

Professor Ariely is scheduled to take part in another plenary session today at 11:30am, entitled "Who will triumph in the marketing battle of tomorrow" and again on Thursday afternoon in a session entitled "how well does the science of economics understand economics". My MBA training has prepared me well for both subjects, but unless I get extremely bored at work by 10am, I think that I will skip today and go again tomorrow. Of course, there is no guarantee that I will get to meet Ariely, but logically the more times that I go, the higher are my chances. Also, yesterday probably had the highest attendance due to the presence of President Peres, Tony Blair and of course Shakira.

Here is someone else's take on Ms Silverman. It just goes to show how two people can be at the same event and interpret in completely differently.