Anastasia Tsvetkova, director for development and international cooperation at Baikal Communications Group gave a plenary talk at the annual conference of the Russian Association for Public Relations (RASO).

This year, the central theme of the RASO PR Days conference was “Communities: Modern Social and Communications Reality”. Anastasia Tsvetkova spoke about her experience of cooperation with the World Economic Forum (WEF) at Global Shapers Community over the past three years.

Anastasia noted in her speech that the Forum has always been consistently working to build a multistakeholders platform bringing together business, politics, and civil society for a constructive dialogue both online and offline. The WEF has been committed to using advanced information and communication technologies since the first meeting in Davos: back in 1971, the US Space Agency provided a solution for cable TV and broadcasting of the forum sessions. A messaging service for WEF participants has eventually become a distinguishing feature of the Forum, and it is still mostly used by leaders rather than by their assistants. In 1989, the service was used by participants 11 000 times, and 20 years later 6000 messages were sent via the system.

Besides opening broad opportunities for virtual interaction, the WEF headed by its founder and chairman Klaus Shwab set in motion the idea of holding regional and national events as well as creating communities for a more profound discussion of global challenges. Today, the WEF structure encompasses 11 communities bringing together young leaders, social and technological entrepreneurs, art and culture figures. The communities comprise an anti-corruption partnership and global councils with interdisciplinary participation that are developing management approaches in the era of the 4th industrial revolution. Moreover, the WEF has established the Global Leadership Fellows program, its own selective 3-year-long training for successful professionals (6000 applications are filed annually, and 25 candidates are accepted).

Anastasia noted that the Forum pays special attention to the motivation of the members of the communities all of who share the common value of informal cooperation and membership exclusivity. The Forum has been constantly working to include new groups into institutional interaction, which has for several decades contributed to growing the relevance of the annual meetings’ agenda as well as to the increased quality of the WEF communities’ results throughout the year.

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