Former President Bill Clinton convened the first Clinton Global Initiative conference in New York in September 2005 and the 2nd annual conference in 2006. In each, 1000 leaders from around the world met, shared strategies, and commited to action against some of the world's toughest problems.

CoVision provided our Council accelerated feedback methodology in the four concurrent workshop tracks on Energy and Climate, Global Health, Poverty Alleviation, and Mitigating Religious and Ethnic Conflict.

At the first annual CGI, President Clinton introduced distinguished guests in the opening plenary session – Jordan’s King Abdullah II, UK Prime Minister Tony Blair, and US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

World leaders were joined by senior government officials, public and private infrastructure experts, movie stars, business leaders, billionaires, philanthropists and other notables – all sitting at round tables discussing the most important problems facing the world community. It was a marketplace of ideas and solutions.

An Ambitious Agenda

Originally conceived of as a “World Economic Forum but with an action plan,” the Conference design process included many stakeholders, countless different approaches, and many agenda drafts. The critical design challenges were How to vitally engage so many renowned participants in complex issues for two days in workshops and How to achieve maximum interaction between all of the participants and with the panelists. To address these challenges, the CGI team chose an AmericaSpeaks engagement process that was powered by the fast feedback capability of CoVision’s Council system.

The Process

Over the two day conference, CoVision supported four concurrent workshop tracks:

• Climate Change
• Governance
• Poverty
• Religious Conflict

Each workshop track included six sub-sessions of 90 minutes – each with a different panel and discussion leader. Each sub-session began with short presentations by the panelists. Then participants spent one-third of the session time discussing reactions and new ideas in their table groups ...

What did they hear that had greatest impact in their geographies or areas of expertise? What solutions came to mind? What questions needed asking? Each track and sub-session had slightly different questions for the table groups to tackle. Table facilitators kept the discussion moving and encouraged full participation. Another trained person took notes into the Council laptop. Both roles had been trained well, in advance, by our AmericaSpeaks partners.

As is the hallmark of our Council fast feedback system, the Theme Team swung into action as soon as the first table comments arrived through the Council system. Intense theming activity lead to a short list of themes/questions for the panelists in the final 15 minutes of the session. These “interactive panels” allowed panelists to “hear” the collective voice of the 200 participants in each room and to respond to their questions and ideas immediately.

It was an innovative approach to a difficult problem – engaging such high-level participants in a way that respected and utilized their knowledge and incorporated it into a thinking session with 200 others of the same caliber. Initial hesitation was overcome quickly when participants realized their voices were being heard not just at their own table but by the panelists and throughout the whole room.

In the words of one participant, a former White House personnel director, "Congratulations on absolutely outstanding orchestration of the inaugural Clinton Global Development Initiative. If anyone had described the system to me in advance – facilitators live-streaming table comments to the panel for incorporation immediately into the session, and unscripted plenary panels – I would not have believed it could work! This approach created a vibrant, interactive dialogue. So, to you and all your team, bravo!”

Outcomes

The final step in the process was to inform all 800 participants about what had taken place in each of the four different tracks. In the final plenary session, each track leader gave a detailed synopsis of the work that had taken place and the President lead the whole group in hearing and understanding the findings and recommendations.

During the conference, $1.2B in commitments were given – publically announced. That number has risen to near $2B by early 2006. Significant new commitments are announced via the CGI website (see below). And as President Clinton announced, he plans to host these conferences annually for 10 years.

For CoVision, it was another excellent partnership effort with AmericaSpeaks. The design challenges were great; the egos and expertise were as great as we've seen. Yet CoVision and AmericaSpeaks approached it with our usual grit based in the shared value of “getting the most voices into the room, and all heard.” It is a seasoned team, with deep experience. We were quite proud to support this significant inaugural event.

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