Conference synthesis and vision for the future.

Eric Hofer once remarked, "When everything has already been said, be brief, repeat, exaggerate." I can't exaggerate about how good, how useful, how stimulating this meeting has been. Peter Drucker has said that everything must degenerate into work if anything is to happen. The amount of work done here in the last 52 hours predicts that much will happen in the future. Last night, I gave a talk at Emory University entitled, "Protect the future, you may be living there." The two points that I hoped to make were, first, the immortality of all of our actions, and second, perspective. For perspective I started with a story: Abd-er-Rahman III (912-961 AD), a powerful ruler of a dynasty in Spain 1000 years ago, left behind a note at his death: "I have now reigned above 50 years in victory or peace ... Riches and honors, powers and pleasures, have waited on my call; nor does any earthly blessing appear to have been wanting to my felicity. In this situation I have diligently numbered the days of pure and genuine happiness which have fallen to my lot. They amount to fourteen." What a sad commentary. For immortality, I spent some time making the case that we are not just tied to the past, but we are tied to every detail of the past. Likewise, it is not just the general actions, but every detail of today that has implications for the future. That is where Rafe Henderson started on Monday morning. If we are to do good, it will be in the details. Many people will spend today, as they spent yesterday, and everyday, with all of their talent and energies devoted to making money -- trading stocks, trying to figure out how to sell more cigarettes, scheming to separate money from other people. Those actions are immortal with many ripples into the future ... but they aren't necessarily important. Richard Hamming has said, "If you want to do important work, you have to work on important problems." What you have done in the past 3 days, which is possible because of what you have done over the years, is important work. To this end, I offer the following observations. Observation 1. A PROCESS HAS BEEN BORN. This process builds on Dahlem and many things preceding, but it now has a secure life of its own. * You have pushed for some order, some priority, some balance in deciding the specific eradication targets that make sense. * You have developed a road map for organizing people and resources in the future. * But most important, you have catalysed a process for refining, making corrections and promoting these ideas in the future. This process is very similar to the 1990 objectives: they started in 1978 with a meeting in Atlanta; some 220 objectives were selected for 1990, many so bad that they could not even be measured in 1990. But by setting targets the critics were able to have specific things to attack which gave us a chance to improve the targets and the definitions. What we learned from the 1990 objectives is the power of the process. We don't have to have all of the answers. We don't even have to have all of the definitions right. What we have is a process that, just like science itself, is self correcting and keeps improving on the answers. Healthy people 2000 will be better than the 1990 objectives and the 2010 objectives will be even better. We have only 50 years of experience in global organizations, and only 30 years of experience with successful eradication programmes. It is no wonder that we are still struggling to find the best way to organize, to implement, to cooperate. But struggle we must, because we cannot afford to waste resources, or time, or effort when the problems require the best we have to offer collectively. Rafe is right: the organizers need to edit the results, provide their own conclusions and plan the next steps. Observation 2. A FRESH LOOK. You have tried to take a fresh look at disease eradication and control. …