It’s that time of year again – 2000+ of the worlds top movers and shakers are beginning to descend on the Swiss ski town of Davos for this year’s Annual World Economic Forum meeting.  Political heavyweights like Clinton, Annan, Sarkozy and Cameron will be intermingling with the likes of Gates, Bono,  deNiro, Carreras and a plethora of CEO’s and others as they evaluate the state of the world, and plan for the future.

And amidst them will be a whole bunch of people who don’t live on such an ethereal plane – people like me.

This year’s meeting is on the theme “Shared Norms for the New Reality” – reflecting, according to WEF, the foremost concern of many leaders that we are living in a world that is becoming increasingly complex and interconnected and, at the same time, experiencing an erosion of common values that undermines public trust in leadership as well as future economic growth and political stability.

To address this theme, the meeting is built around four “pillars”:

• Responding to the New Reality
• The Economic Outlook and Defining Policies for Inclusive Growth
• Supporting the G20 Agenda
• Building a Risk Response Network

I’ll be speaking in a couple of sessions on risk, science and innovation in the 21st century, and will be blogging and tweeting from the meeting – when I get the chance.

The big session for me will be on Wednesday afternoon, when I undertake the role of “challenge” to a panel addressing the science agenda in 2011.

I think I’m supposed to be the one asking the awkward questions – the ones everyone’s dying to ask, but is to scared to.  A tough call given a lineup that includes Francis Collins (NIH Director), Rolf Heuer (Director-General of CERN), Christopher Viehbacher (CEO of Sanovi-Aventis) and Ray Johnson (senior VP and CTO of Lockheed-Martin).

I’ll let you know how it goes.

Through the rest of the meeting I’ll be catching people outside sessions and in the corridors to talk about the recent white paper Tim Harper and I published on technology innovation, and about new approaches to addressing health risks in a complex and interconnected world (aligning myself neatly with this year’s theme).

I’ll also be keeping an eye on the myriad other groups, events and sideshows going on here, including the “Davos Teens”.  These are a select group of five Global Changemakers – young social entrepreneurs – chosen to attend and participate in the meeting.  As well as being a brilliant idea (I wrote a little about the previous group last year), there’s every evidence that this will be a vibrant and challenging group of teens who will be making every effort to shake up the middle-age pomposity that sometimes threatens to overwhelm Davos.

Then there are the parties.  Actually, I’m not making much headway into the party scene yet – my attempts to press leading figures for tips on getting an invite to the infamous Google party went no-where.  Even Boris Johnson didn’t return my email, although I did get a reply from Alison Levine – who sadly was as much in the dark as me).  But the week is young…

In the meantime, time to catch the plane from a snowy Michigan to a Snowy Switzerland, and work out exactly what I’m going to be challenging Francis, Rolf et al. on…

Further information on the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos can be found here.  There will also be regular and relatively informal updates on the WEF blog (I might be writing a guest blog later in the week).  And participants tweeting from the meeting can be followed here.