1.	If you're from North America, Asia or Australia, expect heavy jetlag. I think most people figure that out in advance, it's kind of obvious. As a result a lot of attendees are a little cranky the first couple of days (maybe more, the jury is not in on this one yet). But there are other surprises.
2.	Davos is a high altitude place. This means that your dreams will be vivid.
3.	It's also cold, but it's a dry cold. You need gloves and a scarf, and as Lance was very wise to point out, shoes that are suited to walking in snow. I brought beautiful Italian shoes, but I haven't bothered bringing them with me to the meeting center. I did an informal survey on the first day, and believe that fully half the men do it this way. This is one place where people forgive you for wearing funky shoes with a nice business suit. Another wise person pointed out that people usually don't care how other people look, they just care about how *they* look.
4.	One thing I have trouble getting used to is machine guns. There are a couple of soldiers at each entrance with machine guns. I guess I'm glad they're there, but every time I pass one, as the gun is pointed at my body, I wonder if the soldier really knows how to use it. The guns are daunting and fear-provoking. That's what their purpose is, but net-net, I don't like them.
5.	Another surprise was the hotel room. European hotel rooms are smaller than those we're accustomed to in North America, yet the price I'm paying would buy a really nice suite in most US cities. And the walls are really thin. You can hear everything your neighbors do, including but not limited to tooth brushing. It's like having room mates you can't see. And forget about watching TV unless you like watching reruns of Kojak dubbed in German. One thing I found interesting is that "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?" has been adapted to German, I did watch that, with interest. The German Regis Philbin isn't as corny as the real one, and I don't know if he says smart things like "It's not as easy as it looks" because I don't understand German, although I am trying.
6.	Davos people are very very nice! It's kind of like Wisconsin. I ask my cab drivers if Davos attendees are good tippers, but they won't answer. There seems to be a language barrier there. And speaking of language, words like fahrt and schmuck are all over the place. This makes me giggle. But the cutest thing is that in Switzerland bubbles in water are called "gas" so when a waiter wants to fill you up, he or she asks if you want some gas, and this makes me break out in guffaws of loud American laughter. I'm laughing out loud as I write this and I wonder if my roommates are pissed that their next door American neighbor is laughing so loudly at 1AM (4PM back in California).
7.	Anyway, if you're reading this just before Davos 2001, feel free to send me an email, I'll see if I can help. I'm absolutely sure that I'll want to reminisce about this experience, because not only are the dreams vivid in Davos, the whole thing has a bright color to it, an optimism, a can-do attitude that I thought was just an American thing. Davos is about the world, not about any one country, so from my point of view, they're taking the best of US values and translating them to the world we actually live in in the 21st century, and I dig it.
8.	At dinner last night I told the story of my company and likened the last year to jumping out of a plane with no parachute. One of my dinner friends said that's crazy. So I said OK, you have a parachute. Later I thought about it and realized that there is no parachute. Not only do you have to create the parachute while you're in free-fall, you also have to invent the damned thing!
9.	Like it or not, the economy we participate in penalizes companies that live by the old rules, and only rewards the inventive ones that take advantage of the electronic one-ness of the world. I realized that "globalization", the term that's caught on, is just another word for the Web. The free-fall is disturbing until you realize that everyone is doing the same thing. So the theme of Davos is the theme of DaveNet. Let's have fun, namaste y'all, dig we must and we're all newbies on this bus.