Bob Geldof & Amitabh Bachchan in KL? 8 speakers to watch out for at YES2009

"Yes we can!" was the motto of a farm-workers' union before it became Barack Obama's headlining slogan - but it was during the 2008 presidential campaign that it really caught our attention: man, remember that victory speech? will.i.am's Youtube video got a whole lot of hits.

Today, with promises yet undelivered and big issues like healthcare hamstringing his administration, Obama's catchphrase now seems a tad more amorphous. Nevertheless, his platitude has been extensively co-opted. (Hell, we've seen Malaysian political parties use it, and it often appears with unintentional irony.)

The Youth Engagement Summit (YES) 2009 is the latest riff off such expressions of affirmation. The YES website - try to ignore the persistent auto-playing theme song - repeats "change", "hope" and "future" several times, but doesn't really elaborate. Change what? How?

Apparently, it is up to netizens to decide. The YES initiative hopes to get 1 million young folk to contribute to something called the "SEA CHANGE Youth Report". This report will be then presented to "motivational global change icons" that will be attending the summit, held from 16 to 17 November 2009 at the Putrajaya International Convention Centre.

Regardless, it'll be quite an achievement to see these guys in KL:

1. Sir Bob Geldof, founder of Live Aid, that big 1985 concert (eventually, after judicious use of the word "focking" and some Ethiopian footage, it was also a charity);

2. Biz Stone, co-founder of Twitter, social networking's current fave flavour;

3. Randi Zuckerberg, director of market development at Facebook, social networking's older fave flavour;

4. Russian political activist and chessmaster Garry Kasparov, best known for losing to Deep Blue and presaging the robot apocalypse;

5. Former World Bank managing director and anti-apartheid activist Dr Mamphele Ramphele;

6. Bollywood leading man Amitabh Bachchan ("I grow a beard and it ends up in the editorial in The Times of India");

7. Nando Parrado, whose survival of a plane crash in the Andes inspired the 1993 film Alive, starring Ethan Hawke;

8. And our own Tony Fernandes, baseball-capped pioneer of the cheap-ticketed AirAsia empire.

Woot!

YES hopes to convene 6,000 youth reps from Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Thailand, the Philippines, Vietnam, Laos, and Brunei (Burma and Cambodia are conspicuously not on the list). In line with his administration's willingness to hint at vaguely cool gestures, expect Prime MInister Najib Razak to open the summit.