'Can Meetings Save the World?' Yes.

A terrific cover story by Barbara Palmer in our January issue asked a simple question: "Can Meetings Save the World?" Barbara presented many examples suggesting that the answer is yes -- from PopTech and the Women's Conference to the Creativity World Forum and the Clinton Global Initiative. Here are two more:

High-Level Ministerial Conference on Nuclear Safety: In response to the nuclear disaster resulting from last month's earthquake and tsunami in Japan, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is convening a meeting of foreign ministers and nuclear-agency officials in Vienna on June 20-24 -- according to IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano, "to learn the right lessons from what happened on 11 March and afterwards."

Fighting Childhood Obesity: Slate magazine's crowdsourcing project -- called The Hive -- uses the collective wisdom of its readers to generate solutions to some of the world's most vexing problems. Capping off an ongoing discussion about childhood obesity, next week Slate and the Cleveland Clinic are hosting an "all-star conversation" with "the top thinkers, scientists, doctors, political leaders, and policymakers in the field" at the Bank of America Conference Center in Cleveland. It seems that vigorous online debate is one thing, but to get really serious about something, you need to talk it over face-to-face.

Thinking About Japan

Coming to the end of a long, terrible week for Japan, there's not much to do but try to help keep the focus on what seems sure to be an ongoing crisis. You can make a donation to the Red Cross via PCMA's homepage. And you can read the latest update from the Japan National Tourism Organization here; it begins on a simple, heartfelt note that makes you want to cry: "We are grateful for the warm support and thoughts from many people after the historic earthquake in Japan on March 11."

Let's do what we can to keep the warm support and thoughts coming in the weeks and months to come.

#sxswcares about Japan

As the images of the massive devastation in Japan continue to flow in, there comes the time when you just have to do something.

And that's what happened at SXSW Interactive, in Austin, where Rob Wu of the digital fund-raising platform CauseVox, and bloggers Leigh Durst from LivePath and Deb Ng launched a social media campaign to raise funds to aid in the disaster just hours after it occurred, using the hashtag #sxswcares and a quickly assembled website, sxsw4japan.org.

The campaign, which partnered with the Red Cross,  began with a goal of $10,000 -- which it quickly reached. It is halfway to its new goal of  $50,000.

There will be lots of talk about the influence of social media at SXSW this week. As Deb Ng wrote on her blog, "If we can't do some good, then all our talk about influence is just that: talk."