Forum seeks to build a new home in the metaverse

Davos has hosted the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting since 1971, but a foray into the metaverse will open up options for how its members convene.

The forum is working with Accenture and Microsoft to build a metaverse meeting place for the public-private co-operation that is at the core of its mission and for solutions-building on an international scale, it said yesterday.

The concept is being shown at the annual meeting currently being held in Switzerland.

The new platform is “an extension” of the international organisation and it will be “a more open, more sustained and more comprehensive process for coming together”, said World Economic Forum founder and executive chairman Klaus Schwab.

He predicted that the advent of the metaverse would influence how companies and governments “think, work, interact and communicate”.

The metaverse is being hailed as the next evolution of the internet, blending social networks using real-time 3D software with virtual and augmented realities.

Proponents say it presents new opportunities and ways to bring people together.

Roblox, for example, one of the most popular online games in the metaverse, attracts about 43 million users a day.

Interest in metaverse technology grew significantly during the coronavirus pandemic amid growing demand for more immersive ways of interacting online.

Bloomberg Intelligence reported that online game makers, social networks and other big technology players were jumping in to capture a share of the market, which is worth about $800 billion.

The forum’s annual meeting is taking place against the most complex geopolitical and economic backdrop in decades, its president Borge Brende said last week.

He said the stakes had been raised by the war in Ukraine, the climate emergency, a weakening outlook for global economic growth, a food crisis, rising inflation and an uncertain recovery from the pandemic.

Meanwhile, a new group of protesters has gathered outside the meeting in Davos, made up of millionaires demanding that world leaders attending the conference “tax us now” to address a widening gap between the world’s richest and the rest.

Such a scenario may be played out in the forum’s metaverse, called the Global Collaboration Village, which its designers say will simulate alternative futures and provide immersive experiences to build a better understanding of global challenges.

Organisers announced a new initiative to define and build the metaverse.

The plan involves bringing together 60 companies from the technology sector and other industries, alongside experts from governments, academia and civil society, to accelerate the development of policy frameworks for the metaverse and strengthen economic opportunities.

Interest in metaverse technology grew during the pandemic amid demand for immersive ways to interact online