2009 has been intense for us here at JANERA. We talked to established world leaders, provocative thinkers, and bold innovators, all of whom are tackling the biggest issues of our time. See below an overview of our 2009 events, and read what’s next on our agenda for 2010.
Global Religion in February with leading Buddhist thinker Sharon Salzburg and five other leading religious figures;
Modern-day Slavery in March with Peter Buffett and Dayton Literary Peace Prize winning author Benjamin Skinner;
Global Capitalism in March with ProfessorJeffrey Sachs and the New York Bureau Chief of The Economist Matthew Bishop;
Green Transportation in May with Robin Chase one of Time Magazine‘s most influential people in 2009 and Vijay Vaitheeswaran award-winning correspondent for The Economist;
Iranian Elections in June with journalist and author Hooman Madj and Nisid Hajari, Newsweek’s Foreign Editor;
Empowering Women & Girls in September with Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist Sheryl WuDunn and Camfed’s Executive Director, Ann Cotton.
Climate Change Debate in November with NRDC’s Ralph Cavanagh, Duke University’s Eric Roston, AEI’s Steven Hawyard, Reason Magazine’s Ronald Bailey, moderated by CNBC’s Dennis Kneale;
We undertook a complete redesign of our Web site and switched from being “the voice of global nomads” to “curating global conversations.” We now integrate video into the site more and think this better reflects our mission of making international affairs accessible and attractive.
And we launched a brand-new membership program with exciting benefits! We not only serve individuals with discounts to our events at our Nomad level, but we can also help causes spread the word at the GameChanger level, or even co-host events with authors, advocates and concerned citizens at the Leaders level. And this is just the beginning. Click on our Membership page and find out which level fits you best, and sign up today!
2010 promises to be amazing. We are taking the conversation to the next level by partnering with fabulous companies and individuals, and are expanding beyond New York. If you’re interested in bringing our events to your city, email us to set it up.
THANK YOU for being with us along this roller-coaster ride and HAPPY NEW YEAR!
In the midst, or perhaps just the beginning, of what is being described by members of congress as an “economic hurricane”, a large group of self-described ‘global nomads’ made their way to the shelter of low lighting and good drinks in New York’s Norwood Club on Tuesday night. The purpose of the gathering, organized jointly by JANERA.com and Tablet Hotels, was not to forget our problems but to stare them straight in the face. Jeffrey Sachs, director of Columbia’s Earth Institute and venerable economist would sit down with Matthew Bishop, the Economist’s New York bureau chief and lead a public discussion about where we are going and what lies ahead.
As guests mingled around the bar, where the economic hurricane had not yet hit drink prices and a large beverage known as Old Pal was going for 28 dollars, the evening’s speakers arrived and immediately began fielding questions. “How long do you think this economic climate will last?” one guest asked Sachs. “What worries you most about what lies ahead?” another leaned in to ask.
“These are all things I hope we’ll get into this evening,” Sachs responded, and then glanced around anxiously. “Where are we?” he suddenly asked. A few patrons looked at each other. Was it possible the great development aid thinker was having a delicate moment? “Uh, New York?” one guest ventured. “Oh, no, I mean this venue,” Sachs continued. “What is this place?”
Relief spread across the faces of his gathered audience. “Oh, this is the Norwood Club,” one guest responded. “It’s a private club in New York.” Sachs nodded his head and glanced toward the bar at the center of the living room in what is a converted townhouse. “I see. Well, this sounded like fun so I thought I’d come try it. I don’t do that many of these engagements.” Then he moved up to the front of the room, a sheaf of documents in his hands, and took his seat alongside Bishop.
Following a quick introduction by Janera Soerel, founder of JANERA.com, the two speakers launched into their opening remarks, seeking to underscore just how large the global economic collapse was and would continue to be. “This is an extraordinarily big moment,” started Bishop. “No one can believe what’s happened. It’s a paradigm shift moment. We’re going to look back on 2008 as the year everything changed.”
Sachs followed Bishop’s head-shaking comments with more specifics. “Huge imbalances in the world economy, coupled with ecological stresses on the planet and our own ongoing effort to not blow ourselves up in all-out war are the largest issues we face on the planet.” Sachs, raising his hands in the air, voiced his support for Obama and his new administration but warned he “could get stuck” and stated his concern that the world’s poor were not sufficiently “on the radar.”
From 2003 to 2008, worldwide stock market values increased by thirty trillion dollars, with a ten trillion dollar increase in the US alone. But this unprecedented market growth has been met in the past six months with unprecedented decline, where thirty trillion dollars have been lost, ten trillion of those in the housing market.
“These facts alone would cause us all to feel a little shitty,” Sachs joked.
While the two speakers differed over the role governments can play in redressing the situation, with Bishop urging a stronger private sector role against Sach’s call for more responsibility and control, at least in the short term, from the government, both seemed to agree that the situation would get a lot worse before it got better.
“Consumption is going to be low and subdued for many years to come,” Bishop surmised, while Sachs pointed out that trillions of dollars in government spending and bailout money could be allocated in poverty alleviation initiatives and programs for social change. “In all the presidential and vice presidential debates, the words ‘poverty’ and ‘poor’ were not used once. The words ‘middle class’ were used,” Sachs said. “This is a shocking sign that our politics has stopped being about real people.” As they sat at the front of the room, beginning to take questions from the audience, both men seemed floored by the scope and scale of what they were discussing.
“I’m not sure I have a deep theory of how things got so awry,” Sachs conceded. Yet, as the night continued, audience members pushed the two for a deeper theory and the focus of discussion bounced from a better way to measure social wellbeing (“we need a more sophisticated measure”) to philanthropy (“Rockefeller was the greatest philanthropist in history, perhaps Bill Gates can match him,”) to what we should do about the automobile industry, (“the move to create hybrid and electric cars is exactly the direction we need to be going in.”)
The consensus that the conditions the world is now facing are “extremely difficult” and will “likely get more, not less, complicated” were not in dispute, but clear and specific steps forward were in short supply.
“I cycled through a range of emotions in listening to this discussion tonight,” commented Michela O’Connor Abrams, publisher of the design and home furnishing magazine Dwell who had come to hear the two speak. “I went from being depressed to angry to hopeful to depressed again.”
As Matthew Bishop chatted with guests eager to compare notes about their own survival strategies, a documentary filmmaker approached the departing Jeffery Sachs. “I’d like to come up to Columbia and meet with you about some ideas and ask you a few more questions,” the filmmaker said. Sachs, still clutching his sheaf of papers, laughed.
“Sure we can talk more,” he said. “I don’t know that I have all the answers, but we can certainly talk about the questions.”
