...that is my whimsical response to people asking, "How was Davos?" And with all the celebrities in attendance, it's not beyond the realm of belief. However, more on that later. 

I had a rare opportunity to be a part of Salesforce's 2015 Davos contingent. The directive came from Marc Benioff himself, after showing him a demo of the Project 8 application in the Analytics Cloud Playground. "We should be demoing this at Davos" was Marc's response, and in the spirit of Davos and the ethos of the World Economic Forum, it seemed fitting to showcase Project 8. More so, as a Product Manager in the Analytics Cloud team, it was chance to highlight the power of Wave, and how its technology together with the Salesforce platform, can play a role in social good. 

Project 8 is a United Nations project that is a global collaboration between leading experts and organizations that will work together to build a “digital demand commons” to better prepare for the explosion of population which is anticipated to 8 billion by 2025.                                    

Although I wasn't able to attend any of the WEF sessions, there was enough foot traffic in the Salesforce lounge to keep me occupied. Even in the morning of Day One, Kevin Rudd (former Prime Minister of Australia) came by for a meeting with one of our execs, and I had a few minutes to show him the Project 8 dashboards. It felt surreal, and I was delighted that Kevin seemed to react positively to the concept. 

It's always great to show the Analytics Cloud to someone who's never seen it before. I remember the first time I saw the slice-and-dice exploration that's possible, and was just in awe at how quickly (and elegantly!) the UI handles ad hoc queries. With Project 8, this ability to explore your data, mash it up with other datasets, and share the visualizations with the broader community will be key. For the prototype, we started with world population and nourishment outlook datasets; but very soon, we want to expand to more food datasets as well as other basic human needs such as water, energy, and education. By inviting researchers and public and private organizations to use data and analytics to enrich forecasts, the thesis is we will be in a much better position to prepare for a world of 8+ billion people. 

The main event for Project 8 was the Thursday night cocktail reception that the UN Foundation, Nielsen, Accenture, and Salesforce sponsored. There were easily over 200 participants who came to learn more about the initiative, and it was a wonderful (albeit tiring!) opportunity to present our ideas and hear feedback from academics, NGO representatives, and private sector individuals.

I love that I could do the demo from an iBook, with the ability to showcase Analytics dashboards directly from an iPad. I was having an engaging conversation with a Scottish-sounding man, and afterwards, he gave me his card; I was a little taken aback when I saw, "Hugh Grant, Chairman and CEO [of Monsanto]." However, I am encouraged by this experience as Project 8 requires both public and private organizations to be successful. We had a number of other executives in attendance that evening, and I hope having such high visibility will only add to the momentum of making the Project 8 digital commons a reality.

There are lots of other highlights that are worth a blog of their own. For example, the Friday night Salesforce party (read about it here) or Marc's panel lunch where I got to hear what Marissa Mayer, Satya Nadella, and others foresee in 2020 and 2025. That said, I wanted to keep the theme of this blog to Project 8, and how it was featured at Davos. 

I've now had the chance to demo Project 8 in San Francisco, New York, and Davos. I hope there are even more opportunities in the future, to gain further awareness and truly spark a data revolution. Although the Analytics Cloud can scale to billions of rows; for me, it's even more compelling that we can use it to care for a world of 8 billion people (and beyond).    

To find out more about Project 8, visit the UN Foundation website or reach out directly to Nic Covey, Executive Director of Project 8 and Nielsen, at nic.covey@nielsen.com.

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