This is the magic of Davos. Participants find themselves seated beside a tycoon at breakfast, a Nobel Prize winner at lunch and a President, potentate or a future crook at dinner.

Online education is making the same transformation that online dating made over the past few years: It's no longer relegated to the sideline, seen as a niche area for the desperate. Instead it's being recognized as an easier way to solve a big problem: finding the right skills.

Amid the attention given to the entertainment celebrities operating as outsiders, there is a need also to see how a different type of celebrity from the world of business -- Bill Gates -- is acting as an insider in the campaign of change with respect to financial institutions at the hub of global governance.

Microsoft Co-founder and Chairman Bill Gates has a revolutionary new model for foreign aid that, by his own admission, will be an "incredibly effective way to combat hunger and extreme poverty."