Early Hours

There are always celebrity sightings at high profile meetings like this, but I was probably the only person who felt a mild palpitation at seeing Peter Stoyanov, the president of Bulgaria from 1997-2002, walking unaccompanied. Perhaps I should not have had that fourth cup of coffee.

It was nice to see far more bloggers than were here last year - there are a few dozen, including my friend Steve Clemons, creator of The Washington Note. His co-blogger Sameer Lalwani, offers thoughts on today's opening panel.

52 current and former heads of state are here. To hear their names read and to see them all enter in ceremonial garb, was aurally and visually dazzling. The meeting was called to order at 10am by the one person on Earth who could have created order out of this situation, and who was in fact the entire reason for its existence. Former President Bill Clinton strode onto the stage to a standing ovation and wasted little time explaining the goals of this year's CGI.

He quickly went through the achievements of previous years and the impact they are still having (850,000 children under 5 given access to life-saving medicine, and 300 million microentrepreneurs given access to capital). He also announced the first batch of commitments, ranging from conflict resolution in East Timor to better air freight for Darfur to affordable eyeglasses for the huge numbers of the world's poor people who can barely read. The governor of Florida, Charlie Crist, gave a good short speech about climate change, and also made a bold commitment to develop alternative approaches to energy, with local utilities (his excellent tan strengthened his point that climate change is a more serious problem in Florida than anywhere else in the US). With this literal warm-up concluded, the 2007 meeting of the Clinton Global Initiative officially kicked off. Stay tuned for updates throughout the day.