Welcome to the Annual Meeting 2006! It starts in a few weeks on 25 January and like last year we are encouraging the participants to blog and would welcome your comments.

Below are the guidelines, including the on/off the record policy. Any questions or comments? Feel free to post them here. Otherwise write to [email protected]

Guidelines for Blogging on Forumblog.org

These guidelines apply to all authors of the World Economic Forum weblog. We want a weblog that adds value and transparency to the discussions on global issues that affect us all. This policy attempts to simplify the rules for bloggers while allowing those not attending the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting in Davos to read about the ongoing debates.

Publishing posts

Bloggers’ posts need to be manually published by one of our editors. Opinions will not be censored, however posts that do not abide by these guidelines will not be published, particularly those that do not conform to the on/off the record policy.

Protect yourself

While the weblog medium allows authors to be uninhibited, your name will appear under everything you write and you will be responsible for your own words. What you write becomes part of a public, permanent record. It might well be there for eternity. Vulgarity, profanity and discriminatory remarks are not allowed and we will delete offending posts. Self-promotion is discouraged.

Protect others

Please be mindful that you may be privilege to private information and opinions at the Annual Meeting in Davos. If a session is off the record, please respect that. And please do not quote people without their permission – particularly if they are under the impression that their remarks are private or off the record.

Rules of the road and general etiquette

Write under your own name. Be honest. Be fair. Minimize potential harm done to others in your remarks. Be accountable for what you write. There are legal and reputational implications for disinformation, rumour mongering and defamation. Do not delete posts. Someone else can easily republish them on his/her own weblog. You may amend or remove a post after it has been published, but do indicate what you have done. Example: many authors begin a new paragraph under a post with the header “Update”.

On- and off-the-record policy for the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2006

All sessions in the Congress Hall, and in addition Sanada 1 & 2 of the Congress Centre, are on the record and you may attribute panellists’ remarks to their owners. All other sessions in the Congress Centre are off the record. You can report on the tenor of the debate, but you must not quote participants directly. If, however, you receive their subsequent permission you may quote them. All of the private sessions are “off-the-record meetings” and are not to be blogged.