Two-question survey on agenda and outputs for Best Bits

[William Drake]

Hi Jeremy

Thanks for this.  Personally, I remain of the view that if we are going to produce a serious statement on WCIT that is worth asking the ITU secretariat to distribute to every government's delegation, and if we are going to produce a a serious statement on principles that is worth trying to inject into the IGF somehow (perhaps as an input to the principles part of the Taking Stock main session), then we need to maximize the time available for each.  Hence, my message of 9 Sept. proposed two focused days.  However, I understand that a number of folks also want to discuss broader questions about growing and linking activist IGF networks, so you've included the bookend sessions

Day 1  09:00 - 10:45 - Internet governance history and review, and 
Day 2 15:15 - 17:00 - Next steps

This goes a way toward squaring the circle between these baseline concerns.  But I have two further questions:

*There's an asymmetry in the time devoted to the two statements.  Day 2 has two 1:45 hr and one 1 hr. sessions on principles, whereas Day has only two 1:45 hr sessions on WCIT.  I don't think the WCIT one will be easier and take less time, especially as we'll be making an intervention in a treaty negotiation where our views are really not all that welcome or valued.  So I think it ought to get the same amount of time as the principles effort.  This could be achieved by eliminating or shortening the session on enhanced cooperation, which again is the subject of a full day meeting the day after BB. I'm sure we'll all attend that anyway, so why repeat?  And if we get to the back end of the WCIT drafting piece and aren't completely done, which is entirely possible, what would we do—send whomever off to another room to keep at it, while the other chunk of people switch gears to talk about EC?  And then we'd have to find some time to reconvene in plenary to get the buy in of the EC attendees?

So I'd propose keeping your bookend sessions for people who want the general discussion but otherwise making the rest of the days symmetric.  Starting online threads for pre-meeting discussion of the statements is great idea and maybe we'll push the balls downfield before we meet, but we all have enough experience with statements to know these exercises can be time consuming when we get F2F.

*Again, I wonder about the need for panelists in the book ends.  We're going to be doing plenty of listening to panelists in Baku for five days already.  Canned presentations from/to people who've been talking to each other about all this stuff for years doesn't seem as value-adding to me as open group dialogue with a facilitator per session.  

By the way, one other request: would it be possible to know who all we are?  This could facilitate conversation and a group sensibility.  I tried logging into http://lists.igcaucus.org/info/bestbits with my caucus list ID but can't and so can't see who the 51 subscribers are…

Best

Bill



On Oct 2, 2012, at 11:59 AM, Jeremy Malcolm wrote:

> On 25/09/12 13:14, Jeremy Malcolm wrote:
>> For the agenda, there is also a majority in favour of retaining the planned format shown at http://igf-online.net/bestbits, but about two-thirds as many people would rather have discussion and drafting on each of the two days - in which case it would make sense to do ITU on the first day, since that day is the deadline for comments to the ITU's online comment system.[0]  There is not such strong support for any other changes being made.  Whilst that means that most people are content with the existing agenda, amongst those who are content with it, is there anyone who would strongly object to the change that the minority are suggesting?
> 
> Nobody has spoken up to say that they *would* oppose changing the agenda to move the ITU drafting and discussion together onto the same day, so I have revised the proposed agenda accordingly.  Please check out and comment on the proposed amended version, which is now live  (the good thing about an Etherpad is the we can easily roll     back to the old version if you don't like  it):
> 
> http://igf-online.net/bestbits
> 
> It means that there is less time for each drafting session, because they are no longer being held simultaneously.  It also means that Day 1 is heavier than Day 2 now.  What do you think?  Looking forward to your further comments, if any.
> 
> -- 
> Dr Jeremy Malcolm
> Senior Policy Officer
> Consumers International | the global campaigning voice for consumers
> Office for Asia-Pacific and the Middle East
> Lot 5-1 Wisma WIM, 7 Jalan Abang Haji Openg, TTDI, 60000 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
> Tel: +60 3 7726 1599
> 
> Your rights, our mission – download CI's Strategy 2015: http://consint.info/RightsMission
> 
> @Consumers_Int | www.consumersinternational.org | www.facebook.com/consumersinternational
> 
> Read our email confidentiality notice. Don't print this email unless necessary.
> 

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.igcaucus.org/pipermail/bestbits/attachments/20121002/2b083dc6/attachment.htm>