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Making millionaires queue

• Tim Weber
• 23 Jan 08, 07:28 AM

Can you make millionaires queue?

Of course you can. Long lines formed inside the Davos Congress Centre this morning, because for the first 45 minutes of the day the computer system that allows participants to sign up for sessions had crashed.

And if you can't sign up, you could miss your chance to reserve a space in one of the more eagerly sought-after events. Like Thursday's breakfast with Al Gore and Bono to discuss a "unified earth theory".

As a result everybody had to queue at one of the few sign-up desks and do it face-to-face. But there were no grumbles, only banter and comparing of notes on which sessions might turn out to be the most interesting.

In a few minutes the first sessions begin, and I will attend "Update 2008: Economics".

The past three or four years, the panel of five usually featured four optimists, and for a bit of balance one bear, a certified economic pessimist.

This year, not one but two bears are sitting on the panel, Morgan Stanley's Stephen Roach and Nouriel Roubini.

Are the organisers trying to tell us something about the state of the economy?

Update:
There was a simple reason why the sign-up system fell over: too much demand.
During the first three minutes, there were 1,200 attempts to log on to the mobile sign-up system. That equates to nearly half of all participants trying to get their sessions sorted first thing in the morning (although some people tried to log on several times, of course).

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