- Good afternoon.
Good afternoon and welcome.
Welcome to entrepreneurs, and artists,
and activists, and
investors, and scholars,
and innovators, and resistors,
and new friends, and old.
Welcome to Oxford.
Welcome to the 2018 Skoll World Forum,
and welcome to Proximity.
I am very happy to be with you at this,
my favorite happening of the year.
We're hear because it's
April, because it's Oxford,
and to celebrate your
hard and important work.
You make so much that is warm,
and humane, and inspiring.
Thank you.
(clapping)
It's a truism to say
that a lot has happened
since we last met.
But it's true.
A lot has happened.
A lot of what's happened has been,
as we academics like
to call it, a bit shit.
(audience laughs)
This week...
(audience claps)
This week matters because it's a bulwark
against all of that.
You are a barrier against disinformation,
duplicity, destruction,
and you matter a great deal.
This year, especially, I relish
a week in which we focus on
what to do, not simply on what's wrong.
When those of you who act positively
crowd out those who damage and divide.
When ambition is harnessed
for collective purpose.
That's a very good
reason to be here in this
remarkable place for this remarkable week.
Welcome.
We should be ridiculously proud
that this is the biggest
Skoll World Forum, ever.
12 hundred of you are
testing Oxford's catering
(audience laughs)
and it's umbrella allocation,
as you work on storytelling, news, data,
democracy, social media,
impact, measurement,
and so many other things
that underpin your hard work.
With the work comes serendipity,
new friendships, new partnerships,
new ideas, new energy.
Our theme this year is
the power of proximity,
the mysterious workings of empathy,
the multiplier effect of difference,
the capacity to be close
to those we're apart from,
the nearness imperative,
the absolute necessity of
getting close to people
and of doing so through head and heart.
Don't worry.
I'm not going to make you hug.
That comes later.
You are problem solvers,
and you know (coughs)
that problems are not solved in isolation.
Nor from above, nor from outside.
You need to be close to the
problem and close to each other.
You know that human distance
isn't only physical distance.
It's also distance in power and hierarchy,
in equality, in politics,
in information, in access.
You know that proximity isn't
always about connectedness.
Closeness is imaginative sympathy.
Closeness is speaking with, not for.
Closeness is partnership.
There are, of course, many many of you
who make partnership possible for us
in real and practical ways.
The MasterCard Foundation helps bring
the next generation of
social entrepreneurs.
Bobbin Iwilei of City has been
the most loyal of supporters
over the years, and I can
even see him right there.
(audience claps)
Somewhere in the room there
are 50 Skoll World Forum
fellows supported by Johnson and Johnson.
I can't see them, but if
they can see me, hello.
(audience claps)
So I wish you a wonderful
productive week of proximity.
New partnerships, new friendships,
all the that things that the forum
does that are astonishing.
