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A DAY WITH THE NEW YORKER

The New Yorker Summit on President Obama's "next 100 days", which took place on May 5th, is an event with several functions. First, it's a money-maker, with tickets priced at $350 (far less steep than the $1,200 charged at its two-day Innovation Conference; it is a recession, after all). It is also a way to generate industry buzz for the venerable magazine, and a chance to lure potential advertisers with a bit of glamour and some hobnobbing with staff luminaries. And finally, it is an unapologetic "geekathon", as David Remnick, the magazine's editor, observed onstage; something like summer camp for smart people.

I arrived at NYU's Skirball Centre at 8am to find people in name-tags floating around the lobby, filling tiny plates with sliced fruit and pastries. The big muckymucks wore VIP badges and the rest wore "Press" or "All-Day" passes. Thomas Dunne, Ana Marie Cox and Malcolm Gladwell--his hair muffled by the rain--milled among the guests. At 8:55am the medium-sized crowd--mostly female, almost entirely middle-aged and generally well-dressed--was hustled into the auditorium. A man in front of me wore a Yale baseball cap and carried a printout to read between presentations titled "Science: The knowledge of God and its powerful effect in human experience".

After a brisk keynote speech by Remnick, Gladwell stepped onstage to deliver an introduction. "I'm your amuse-bouche," he announced. "Don't worry. The entree is coming." Then he delivered a hypnotic talk about Bear Stearns that demonstrated the reasons he is able to command such high speaking fees--careful intonation, colourful anecdotes, surprising conclusions and purposeful digressions. As Catherine Rampell wrote over at Economix Blog, Gladwell "argued that the financial crisis was not due to incompetence or regulatory failure, but psychological failure—the fact that bankers were overconfident." There was talk of paradigms, expertise and daunting complexity. “Incompetence is certainty in the absence of expertise,” he said. “Overconfidence is certainty in the presence of expertise.” 

Onward. The programme was divided into three topics: the Economy and Financial Markets; Health, Education, Energy and the Environment; and Defence and Diplomacy. Speakers included Robert Shiller, Nassim N. Taleb, Naomi Klein, Howard Dean, Elizabeth Edwards and Seymour Hersh. Getting things off to a ripe start, the opening panel saw Taleb tell Shiller, an economist, that “removing economists from the planet would improve the planet.”

With hourly breaks for coffee and Nutri-Grain bars, the Summit plunged forth through the afternoon and into the evening. Discussions of the financial crisis proved to be surprising beacons of hope, radiating an unexpected optimism in an atmosphere otherwise dampened by global-warming doom and Pakistan gloom. Perhaps considering the problem in such calm, expert tones gave it the illusion of containability. Or maybe the dour economy just looked hopeful compared to the rest of the woes facing the country.

As the afternoon wore on, the summit began to feel more and more like a college class that went on forever. A good class, no doubt, but I couldn't help thinking that an hour spent with a single New Yorker article might have been more enriching than the whirlwind of bite-sized panels. To be fair, the summit did boast a few big advantages over college classes and solitary reading sessions: mini pretzels, a "networking luncheon", proximity to minor celebrities and the chance to see Gladwell's messianic hairdo up close.

~ MOLLY YOUNG