Watch President Obama Live at the Clinton Global Initiative

The Clinton Global Initiative kicks off today at 4pm EST with an opening plenary featuring remarks by President Barack Obama. Luckily for all of us who can't be there, they will be broadcasting the speech live via webcast, and even encouraging online participants to interact and ask questions via Twitter. It's a great way to broaden the conversation from a gathering that is admittedly elite.

My best guess as to the tone of the remarks - and the conference in general - is that they are going to be all about shifting a framework from thinking in terms of specific, vertical problems or cause areas, and instead seeing the intersection between issues and the immense opportunity for private-public partnerships.

It seems to me that over the last year or so, there's been a major shift in the way that Clinton (and in turn, his foundation) have been looking at things. I think it's a smart shift, and one that if properly harnessed can make good on the fact that he has about as much power to convene actors in a serious way as anyone on the planet.

One of the most interesting parts of the listserv email that I received from the Clinton Foundation this morning announcing the live webcast was that of the five names they mentioned of people attending, one of them was Rwandan President Paul Kagame. Kagame has done an incredible job of positioning himself on the world stage as not a write-away leader of a write-away country, but a person with serious influence and capacity. As it relates to this social business world, he has done an incredible job forming high level partnerships with major companies like Starbucks and Costco to get Rwandan products to US markets. There is a lot of complication around him - he holds far more power than the West usually likes in their leaders - but it's hard to deny how much he's done and is doing.

I'm also really excited to see if and how people engage with the Twitter conversation. The webcast site allows you to log-in via Twitter and then send a question. It's a cool if limited functionality. What would be really awesome is if the site automatically showed you the questions that everyone else was asking. Then, even if your's wasn't answered, you could still join a conversation. Regardless, it's still a major advancement for these guys.

As for me, I'll be excitedly tuning in with the inaugural class of Global Citizen Year fellows. Next gen power. Check it out at 4pm EST.

(Photo: Icrontic)