I had the good fortune to be invited to attend the Microsoft CEO Summit in Seattle last week. This is a yearly gathering of 100 or so of the world's most prominent CEOs (covering 30 countries and 11 million employees this year) to talk together, with Bill Gates, and with the Microsoft brain trust, about key themes in the world and how they are all engaging with those themes.
Part of the attraction of the summit, which has run for 16 years, is that no press, no social media, almost no information comes out from the meeting - it's a very relaxed, informal set of informed panels and engaged discussions between the CEOs and a few visiting experts. The topics, and the presenters, are a pretty wide-ranging group, from Daniel Kahneman and Tom Friedman talking about the structure of minds and implications for our future, to workshops on branding, social media, Brazil, growth, and (of course) technology, to wide-ranging discussions with Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Warren Buffet and Jamie Dimon about business decision-making, strategies, innovation, and more.
This year they released the video of one session in education, where Walter Isaacson interviews Bill Gates, Salman Khan, and myself for about 45 minutes on how education is beginning to innovate, especially now with a variety of players using technology to offer more and more learning opportunities that are starting out free to users.
We talk about learning, employment, cognitive science, evidence-based instructional desigh, technology, the role of for-profit in a world of free materials, and more. See what you think!
