1.	At other conferences, meals are either totally themeless random affairs, or even worse, closed to newbies who may not know anyone to have lunch or dinner with. Not so at Davos.
2.	With a couple of exceptions, lunches and dinners at Davos are very structured. The meals happen outside the conference center, at the town hotels. Each meal is hosted by one to three people, who serve as discussion leaders. You must reserve a space at each meal, the reservation system is totally democratic, first-come-first-serve, and is computerized. You go to a kiosk, a touch-screen interface that's quite easy to use, once you get the big picture.
3.	The emphasis is on fairness. You can only reserve space at a lunch or dinner one day in advance. This allows latecomers to have a great Davos experience too. It can be pretty random. I had no idea who would be at my first meal, a dinner, where the discussion was whether business inevitably had to be like war. Coming into the meeting I was sure that business did not have to be like war, and I left even more sure, but inbetween I had some doubts. This is the best kind of experience, my mind and emotions were engaged, and we had a family-style debate, not unlike jury duty. After we left, I had renewed old acquaintances with Tom and Mary Evslin who I knew from the early days of the Macintosh, and had gotten to know some other people perhaps more than I wanted to, but everyone survived, so that's cool.
4.	Reading the conference notes that I got in the mail a month before Davos was probably more confusing than it was worth. I even had Lance's writing on the Davos Newbies site to help guide me. But it didn't sink in! The key to a great Davos experience is to learn how to use the kiosk system as soon as possible. But being a newbie means that it takes at least a couple of days to get it. This afternoon while I was working on my kiosk, a helper from Andersen who had been working with me before, came over to ask if I needed some help. I gave her a thumbs up, no need for help, I Get It Now.