The Asia 21 Young Leaders Summit kicked off to a great start! Asia Society President Vishakha Desai mentioned the 3Cs in her welcoming address: Convene, Connect, Catalyze. It might be right to put them in a different order; even before the conference officially convened this evening at 7pm at the JW Marriott KL, many of us had already connected — informally over breakfast, walking in the park, taking in the beauty of the artifacts at the Islamic Arts Museum. Thank you for enabling these connections, Asia 21!
H.E. Prime Minister YAB Dato’Sri Najib Tun Razak in his keynote address made the salient point that in today’s world we may not find once-and-for-all solutions to crises. Change is inevitable and part of the role of leadership is to prepare everyone for change. The theme of the conference emerged in Jamie Metzl’s talk as well; we need to speak across sectors and reach across the aisle to other ways of thinking.
What I’m taking away as today’s message in one word or less is C2: cross-connecting. Going beyond dialog to engage in a rich network of connections as the world becomes multi-polar. What makes the human brain function so seamlessly is that it connects our various sense organs and that the direction of information flow within each of these organs runs both upstream and downstream. So you have up-down, down-up, and side-to-side sharing and feedback of information. If the first day of the summit has been any indication, then we will have a lot of all three over the weekend.
(Posted on behalf of Abha Dawesar)
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