As 2011 draws to a close, we checked in with Paul Dillon, a Baird’s CMC associate, to get his thoughts on the highlights of this past year and what he’s looking forward to.
What was the professional highlight of the year for you?
Paul: The professional highlight of the year for me was undoubtedly having the opportunity to contribute to an African country’s bid to host a multi-million dollar technology project – the largest global science project in the world today with projected construction and development costs of over $1 billion. This extraordinary science project has the potential to exponentially develop Africa as a key knowledge economy and to accelerate its human capital development programme. It is not often that such a project comes along and it has been a great pleasure working with and learning from the Baird’s CMC team.
In your opinion, what was a game-changing development in 2011?
Paul: The Euro crisis, country bailouts, bursting bubbles and national indebtedness in Europe and other world economies has had (and will continue to have) a deep impact on the political, social and economic stability of world markets for the foreseeable future – it has been the game-changing development of the past year.
Putting this in the context of development aid and the MDGs, it has been estimated that as a result of the current crisis, 53 million more people will remaining in extreme poverty than otherwise would have. This is a shocking figure.
Professionally, what are you excited about in the coming year?
Paul: Business Insider ran an interesting story in March this year in which they took a look at the ten fastest growing and ten slowest economies, saying, “If you want to get in on the best of the $300 trillion rise in world GDP between now and 2050, you’ve got to invest in the next set of emerging markets.” India is predicted to be the largest economy in the world – GDP by 2050 $86 trillion. Western Europe and Japan are predicated to have growth of less than 2% and America is predicted to experience 2.5% over the same period. It is my view that Baird’s CMC with its global reach and highly specialised communications expertise is well positioned to meet the communications challenges inherent to each of these economic dynamics.