DAVOS, Switzerland―You may have felt it. The center of gravity for the tech world shifted on Thursday to the Steigenberger Belvedere, a five-star hotel in this snowy alpine village that hosts the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting.

When Richard Branson, the British billionaire behind the Virgin brand, dropped in on the breakfast hosted by Infosys CEO Nandan Nilekani, serial entrepreneur Bill Gross saw his chance (see Tech Pioneer: Bill Gross).

As soon as the breakfast broke up, Mr. Gross handed Mr. Branson a brochure explaining the solar energy technology developed by his latest company, Energy Innovations. Mr. Branson said he wanted to know more and slipped Mr. Gross his email address.

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Minutes later in an adjacent room, Mr. Gross was hobnobbing at a session which mixed technology pioneers with Intel chairman Craig Barrett, Google co-founder Larry Page, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers general partner Vinod Khosla, Sun Microsystems Chief Researcher John Gage, Anne Winblad, co-founder and partner at Hummer Winblad Venture Partners, and Geoffrey Moore, a managing partner at TCG Advisors and author of Crossing the Chasm.

Paul Deniger, vice chairman of Jeffries & Company and Accel Partner’s Joe Schoendorf were rushing around to meetings at the Belvedere. Nasdaq CEO Bob Greifeld threw a party in the hotel, with Mr. Branson as a special guest. Party-goers included Peter Liu, chairman of venture firm WI Harper.

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Around the same time the Nasdaq party was breaking up, Israeli entrepreneur and investor Yossi Vardi and MichaelDell chatted in a hallway. A few Davoses ago, Mr. Dell predicted that Chinese would become the dominant language on the web. So what, he was asked, is his prediction this year?

“Predictions are easy,” he said. “It’s making money that is hard.” That said, Mr. Dell did venture one prediction: $100 personal computers will NOT be the wave of the future. And what is Mr. Dell’s next innovation? Remote customer care, he said. Mr. Vardi reminded him that the technology behind that service comes from Israel.

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The Congress Hall itself was host to its own share of digerati, with Cisco CEO John Chambers, MIT Media Labs chief Nicholas Negroponte and Ann Livermore, HP’s executive vice president of technology solutions, all making presentations.

Niklas Zennström, co-founder and chief executive of Skype, said he had meetings planned with incumbent European telecom operators in between conference sessions.

But tech was just part of the overall agenda, which included presentations by Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf, Brazilian soccer legend Pelé, and U.S. Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice, who agreed to be interviewed live from the United States via satellite, fielding questions from conference attendees Nobel Peace Prize winner Elie Wiesel and Novartis CEO Daniel Vasella.

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It was the celebrities who made the biggest splash, notably Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt, who were mobbed by conference goers. Anatoly Karachinsky, CEO of tech conglomerate IBS Group―who has been called the Bill Gates of Russia―peered over a conference center balcony to see what all the fuss was about.

Upon hearing Ms. Jolie was causing the stir, he said, “This is not so interesting,” and went back to showing us the technology created by one of the companies IBS’ venture capital arm had recently embraced.

Priorities are priorities.