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Hello Marilia,<br>
<br>
thank you for your kind reply to my rant. I'll address some of the
points your raise inline:<br>
<br>
Le 09/02/2010 14:01, Marilia Maciel a écrit :
<blockquote
cite="mid:f7e605ab1002090501w537f8b0and4e04b726f697035@mail.gmail.com"
type="cite"><span style="" lang="EN-US"><font face="Times New Roman"
size="3"> </font></span>
<p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;" class="MsoNormal"><span style=""
lang="EN-US"><font size="3"><font face="Times New Roman">So far,
everybody seemed to be very comfortable that a bunch of crazy people
volunteered and gave up their time to push remote participation
forward. Not we are starting to recognize the obvious. This is a
huge structure that cannot put in place properly without consistent
community involvement and professional dedication.</font></font></span></p>
</blockquote>
<br>
I am unsure that everyone of comfortable about a "bunch of crazy
people" volunteering... and not for the reasons you might think. I have
been feeling uneasy about the fact that perhaps one of the most
pioneering and strategic processes relating to the long term future of
the planet is making use of so many volunteers who are, in my view,
being exploited shamelessly to produce something out of nothing. I have
recurring visions of "The A-Team" - an 80s TV series where a team of
highly gifted, if not eccentric individuals, managed to get out of the
most dangerous situations by building an aircraft out of two tin cans
and piece of string.<br>
<br>
Agreeing with you, I would like to append the following statement to
your last sentence: "...and cannot function without a substantial
dedicated budget which will need to be allocated by the IGF
secretariat, and unltimately, by the IGF funding bodies. This budget
should serve to:<br>
<br>
1. appoint a full time staff member whose responsibility will be to
source and set-up remote participation tools for every IGF meeting<br>
2. appoint a team of paid experts who will support the full time staff
into achieving this goal in a timely and satisfactory manner<br>
3. fund a permanent historical online repository of all meeting
recordings, whether video, voice, data, etc. This repository should be
intuitive in its navigation and be professionally designed and
implemented, with a permanent contract to keep it up to date<br>
<br>
<br>
<blockquote
cite="mid:f7e605ab1002090501w537f8b0and4e04b726f697035@mail.gmail.com"
type="cite">
<p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;" class="MsoNormal"><span style=""
lang="EN-US"><font face="Times New Roman" size="3"> </font></span></p>
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;" class="MsoNormal"><span style=""
lang="EN-US"><font size="3"><font face="Times New Roman">We should
always bear in mind, nevertheless, that we can look to remote
participation from two different perspectives:</font></font></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;" class="MsoNormal"><span style=""
lang="EN-US"></span> </div>
<p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt 36pt; text-indent: -18pt;"
class="MsoNormal"><font face="Times New Roman"><span style=""
lang="EN-US"><span style=""><font size="3">1-</font><span
style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; font-size: 7pt; line-height: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; -x-system-font: none;">
</span></span></span><span style="" lang="EN-US"><font size="3">Of
what has been accomplished. If you look back, you will remember that we
departed from a single pre-moderated chat for RP, and now we have a
multitude of channels (main platform during IGF meetings, Cover It
Live, Twitter, Facebook, Youtube channels), with the comments and
questions being displayed in the large screen in the meetings, for
everybody to see. This is a considerable enhancement in terms of
transparency, specially if you consider that we are in a UN environment.</font></span></font></p>
</blockquote>
<br>
Yes, I am happy to see that there has been a lot of progress. But since
"we are in a UN environment", let's professionalise this in order to
introduce some accountability to remote participation. <br>
For example, the Webcasts at IGF Sharm el Sheikh and carried on the UN
site were great. Why was this set-up not pursued in the Open
Consultations yesterday?<br>
Rather than having multiple informal but unreliable channels for remote
participation, there should be one reliable, tried and tested, channel
which is an *inherent* part of the organisation of the session rather
than a side process which has been hooked on to the main process.<br>
<br>
<blockquote
cite="mid:f7e605ab1002090501w537f8b0and4e04b726f697035@mail.gmail.com"
type="cite">
<p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt 35.4pt;" class="MsoNormal"><span
style="" lang="EN-US"><font face="Times New Roman" size="3"> </font></span></p>
<p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt 35.4pt;" class="MsoNormal"><span
style="" lang="EN-US"><font size="3"><font face="Times New Roman">In
2008 people reported problems with webcast transmission during the IGF,
which hampered proper participation. In 2009, the quality of the
webcast has improved (according to all remote participants that
provided us feedback). In 2010 we are talking about improving quality
of interaction. This shows that we are not stuck, we are moving
forward. There has been constant improvement from year to year and that
should be acknowledged.</font></font></span></p>
</blockquote>
<br>
Yes, I acknowledge that - but I am also saying that whilst the IGF
remote volunteer team should be congratulated for all of the progress
done so far, the IGF Secretariat should not pat itself on the back that
the current arrangements are satisfactory and that there is therefore
no need to throw some serious money at this, if it can work on a
shoestring budget (read: no budget). IMHO, what's around here today is
*not* satisfactory. It will *not* serve to bring any fresh blood in the
Internet Governance arena. It will *not* help geographical diversity
because it will does not work well at all for some parts of the world. <br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
<blockquote
cite="mid:f7e605ab1002090501w537f8b0and4e04b726f697035@mail.gmail.com"
type="cite">
<p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;" class="MsoNormal"><span style=""
lang="EN-US"><font face="Times New Roman" size="3"> </font></span></p>
<p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt 36pt; text-indent: -18pt;"
class="MsoNormal"><font face="Times New Roman"><span style=""
lang="EN-US"><span style=""><font size="3">2-</font><span
style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; font-size: 7pt; line-height: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; -x-system-font: none;">
</span></span></span><span style="" lang="EN-US"><font size="3">On
what still needs to be accomplished (considering the scarce resources
of the IGF, but considering also the potential of the IG community)</font></span></font></p>
<p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt 18pt;" class="MsoNormal"><span style=""
lang="EN-US"><font face="Times New Roman" size="3"> </font></span></p>
<p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;" class="MsoNormal"><span style=""
lang="EN-US"><font size="3"><font face="Times New Roman">- More
multistakeholder involvement, especially from the technical community
and the MAG</font></font></span></p>
<p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;" class="MsoNormal"><span style=""
lang="EN-US"><font size="3"><font face="Times New Roman">- Earlier
planning, with the involvement of professionals, host, Secretariat and
a group of interested people </font></font></span></p>
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;" class="MsoNormal"><span style=""
lang="EN-US"><font size="3"><font face="Times New Roman">- Trained
remote moderators, </font></font></span><span style="" lang="EN-US"><font
size="3"><font face="Times New Roman">assigned at least one month
before the event. </font></font></span></div>
<p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;" class="MsoNormal"><span style=""
lang="EN-US"><font size="3"><font face="Times New Roman">- Remote
participation has to be taken into account by workshop organizers in
the planning of the dynamics of their workshop. Wks organizers and
moderators are responsible for bringing in the questions from remote
participants, helping to improve the quality of interaction.</font></font></span></p>
</blockquote>
<br>
Yes, yes, yes, and yes! But I don't think it is fair for volunteers to
take on that task and complete it by themselves. I think it has the
dangerous potential to put volunteers into "burn-out" mode because it
is way more challenging a task than it appears initially.<br>
<br>
<blockquote
cite="mid:f7e605ab1002090501w537f8b0and4e04b726f697035@mail.gmail.com"
type="cite">
<p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;" class="MsoNormal"><span style=""
lang="EN-US"><font face="Times New Roman" size="3"> </font></span></p>
<p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;" class="MsoNormal"><span style=""
lang="EN-US"><font size="3"><font face="Times New Roman">If anybody
has suggestions on how to improve remote participation, please get in
touch with the Remote Participation Working Group and the IGF
Secretariat. Speaking for the group, we are more then happy to exchange
ideas and receive suggestions from the experienced members of this
community.</font></font></span></p>
<p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;" class="MsoNormal"><span style=""
lang="EN-US"><font face="Times New Roman" size="3"> </font></span></p>
<p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;" class="MsoNormal"><span style=""
lang="EN-US"><font size="3"><font face="Times New Roman">I am looking
forward to continuing this discussion. This is the first step to make
e-participation a policy theme in the IGF, as we suggested in our
statement to the open consultations.</font></font></span></p>
</blockquote>
<br>
Thomas Narten has written an Internet Draft relating to public
participation at IETF meetings, and this was presented to the IETF
VMEET discussion list. His draft on remote participation raises very
interesting, well thought out and structured questions and points,
which I think that the IGF Remote Participation Working Group would
benefit from. Seeing that the version I have found archived on the Web
is out of date, I've emailed him separately and will revert to you and
to this list if I find out where the latest version of his draft is
stored.<br>
<br>
I hope this helps.<br>
<br>
Warm regards,<br>
<br>
Olivier<br>
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
Olivier MJ Crépin-Leblond, PhD
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.gih.com/ocl.html">http://www.gih.com/ocl.html</a>
</pre>
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