World Economic Forum - Davos, Switzerland
February, 2006
Eric DeRitis, AMD Corporate PR manager

When Afghanistan's Foreign Minister Dr. Abdullah Abdullah arrived at a private 50x15 dinner held by AMD during the World Economic Forum's 2006 Annual Meeting in Davos, Switzerland last week, his presence undeniably demonstrated that AMD is now a leader on the world stage and we are here to stay.

Beyond technology. Beyond the world of PCs. When AMD speaks, it is simply a fact that people around the world come to listen. Such was our experience at the recently concluded WEF meeting in Davos, which AMD attended from Jan. 24 to 28.

Indeed, the reception AMD received at the WEF this year represents the achievement of a significant goal—transforming ourselves from a respected second-source provider to an innovative and influential leader in our own right. To this end, AMD Chairman and CEO Hector Ruiz dined with Secretary General of the United Nations Kofi Annan and newly elected German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Executive Vice President and Chief Administrative Officer, Tom McCoy, and AMD's government relations team, led by Sue Snyder, vice president, international policy and relations, met with diplomats and senior government officials from around the world, including former Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres, Prime Minister of Turkey Recep Tayyip Erdogen, European Union Commissioner Jacques Barrot, Brazil's minister of Industry and Trade Development Luiz Furlan in addition to Minister Abdullah and other dignitaries.

AMD Chairman and CEO Hector Ruiz welcomes guests to AMD's 50x15 dinner event during the World Economic Forum annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland.	Snow covered mountains form the perfect backdrop for the cityscape of Davos.

A 50x15 Celebration

The highlight of AMD's presence at WEF this year was the 50x15 dinner, which took place on the evening of Jan. 27, and set a new benchmark for our participation in the WEF Annual Meeting.

The dinner was conducted partly to celebrate the progress AMD has made over the past two years on its 50x15 initiative, which aims to connect half the world's population to the Internet by the year 2015. More importantly, it sought to bring together some of the technology industry's most influential leaders to talk about how they can work together to conquer the global digital divide—once and for all. We succeeded.

AMD's approach to the dinner event this year was to invite select executives from various companies to act as table hosts. Not a single invitation was declined. Indeed, the people who hosted our tables represent some of the heavyweights of digital inclusion, and included: Craig Mundie, senior vice president and chief technical officer, Advanced Strategies and Policy at Microsoft; Gerri Elliott, corporate vice president, Worldwide Public Sector at Microsoft; John Gage, chief researcher and vice president of The Science Office at Sun Microsystems; John Kish, president and CEO of Wyse Technology; Nicholas Negroponte, chairman of the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) non-profit organization, professor of Media Technology at MIT and founding chairman of the school's Media Laboratory; and Deepak Advani, senior vice president and chief marketing officer of Lenovo.

Scheduled to end at 10:30 p.m., nearly everyone stayed for at least an hour longer, clearly enjoying themselves and still passionately debating how best to connect people around the world to the Internet. Even Google's massive event across town—the place to be seen that evening—had no discernable effect on the attendance of AMD's event.

John Gage, chief researcher and vice president of The Science Office at Sun Microsystems, Nicholas Negroponte, founder of the One Laptop Per Child organization and an AMD partner, Jens Drews, director of Government Relations for EMEA, Afghan Foreign Minister Dr. Abdullah Abdullah and AMD's 50x15 Program Director Dan Shine.	Billy Edwards (center), senior vice president and chief innovation officer, discusses AMD's 50x15 initiative with Microsoft's Craig Mundie, senior vice president and chief technical officer, Advanced Strategies and Policy, and Geri Elliot, corporate vice president, Worldwide Public Sector.

Bridging The Digital Divide

The morning following the 50x15 dinner, AMD executives headed into one of our final events of the week, the Digital Divide Breakfast. In addition to everyone who joined AMD for the 50x15 event the previous night, in attendance were many other business, government and non-profit leaders from around the world. The session was moderated by David Kirkpatrick, senior editor of Internet and technology at Fortune magazine, and one of the technology industry's most influential reporters.

AMD again took center stage when Hector was invited to address the guests. He spoke about his own childhood, the doorways education opened for him, and the challenges businesses face today in connecting people around the world. Taking a lesson from AMD's experiences on the ground around the world, Hector encouraged attendees to begin thinking more about building ecosystems of industry, government and non-profit partners who can work together to ensure that people around the world get the technology they need and the infrastructure to make it endure.

For the next hour and a half, attendees discussed and debated everything from the benefits of offering the world a $100 laptop and the notion that the best hope for digital inclusion is the cell phone, to the benefits of open source versus proprietary software, and much more.

David summed the event up best afterwards, saying, "This was the best breakfast of its kind here in Davos, by far. In fact, this has been one of the best WEF Annual Meetings I've ever attended."

It certainly was for AMD.

Eric DeRitis
AMD Corporate PR manager