APOLOGY Re: [bestbits] Shortlists for Brazil for further consideration

Thu Jan 9 02:42:31 EST 2014

Carolina,

please accept my personal apologies for this as the wording was entirely inappropriate. I was trying to provoke a discussion on ensuring that we were encompassing all viewpoints and including strong advocacy, but in the process made suggestions as to your personal involvement in issues which were inaccurate.

I can only tell you, if it helps, that my inaccuracies (of which there were several on re-reading, and other apologies are due as well including Joana and Marilia) were bound to be picked up by others in the group and challenged, and nothing in my personal comments should be taken as representative of any organisation or group involved. I own my own words. 

Any suggestion by me, which can be inferred by my poorly chosen words, that only one or two of the candidates under consideration are capable of presenting third world issues and advocating on their behalf, is entirely inappropriate and for this I apologise.

Ian Peter

From: Carolina Rossini 
Sent: Thursday, January 09, 2014 10:31 AM
To: Burcu Kilic 
Cc: Ian Peter ; mailto:bestbits at lists.bestbits.net 
Subject: Re: [bestbits] Shortlists for Brazil for further consideration

(Apart of the personal side, and as I mentioned to Parminder, I do not take things personal - so that was an exception Ian, because it was personal :-) ) 

What disturbs me the most is that this email shows that there are groups withing groups. And this groups do not seem to be working groups, but groups that are ok with "ruptures at any point" (and I prefer to keep to myself what this may mean). And this worries me incredibly. It creates lots of trouble regarding the process we all agreed to in a certain moment and it also exposes all of us as CS. 

I am part of many other movements (open government, open data for science, free culture, open education, open access for publications, etc) and the cooperation and trust is much more present, which makes all the work, our strategies and positions move better. Plus, we are probably happier and more positive. 

I feel that if we do not have a true commitment with the group and also if we are not willing to open spaces for new comers, our movement may have a very dark end. I have been witnessing over the list - which actually make me sad, and I am sure overburdens lots of people here - the personal attacks, and the difficult we seem to have in "letting go" or "in trusting". I worked with cooperation theory, and I think if we were all part of a prisoners' dilemma game, we would all be dead by now due to our long long prison sentences. ;-)

I preferred to be quiet when the attacks start, but again, I think it is just sad and a distraction from the real work. I have actually been thinking of ways to deal with that...such as having a working wiki where the real content driven work can happen and we list the content and strategy topics being discussed (which is also a better way to document work and find consensus)  while folks keep debating interesting things on the list (or other issues...).

The only other similar community I have known (and also participated in) is the Wikipedia. You have to have a real rough skin over there...hehehe. But they do get things done by using a knowledge management platform - a wiki. 

Anyway....I will take care of other work now, of my beautiful 3 year-old and have a glass of wine (which I humbly recommend to all), hoping we all find ways of trusting ourselves as a group and our processes better. 

Hugs to all, (yes, I am Brazilian and thus a big hugger) :-)

Carol

On Wed, Jan 8, 2014 at 5:47 PM, Burcu Kilic <bkilic at citizen.org> wrote:

  I second that. Carol is a strong advocate for developing countries, particularly Latin America.  

  She is a proud Brazilian when it comes to work. 

  From: bestbits-request at lists.bestbits.net [mailto:bestbits-request at lists.bestbits.net] On Behalf Of Carolina
  Sent: Wednesday, January 08, 2014 5:28 PM
  To: Ian Peter
  Cc: Ian Peter; <bestbits at lists.bestbits.net>
  Subject: Re: [bestbits] Shortlists for Brazil for further consideration

  Btw... I am Brazilian and even leaving in US, I have TONS of work in developing world, my day by day work is focused on developing work, and just moved to the US because my husband is american. I do TONS of pro bono work on A2K, education, and ICTs in Brazil and other Latin American and South Asia countries. So it is NOT true I would not represent a developing country view.

  I am very honored by the votes and the trust.

  Sent from my iPhone

  On Jan 8, 2014, at 4:02 PM, "Ian Peter" <ian.peter at ianpeter.com> wrote:

    OMG... clearly not meant for this list and my sincere apologies to everyone. 

    this was an awful mistake on my part... 

    From: Ian Peter 

    Sent: Thursday, January 09, 2014 7:43 AM

    To: bestbits at lists.bestbits.net 

    Subject: [bestbits] Shortlists for Brazil for further consideration

    Thanks everyone for prompt replies – below is a summary of your responses and the candidates still under consideration (although there is nothing to stop us bringing forward other names later on if we want to)

    HLC

    Carolina Rossini – 3.5 votes

    Jovan K – 3 votes

    Mark Rotenberg – 3 votes

    Joana Varon 2.5 votes

    Milton Mueller 2 votes

    Parminder Singh 2 votes

    Stephanie Perrin 1 vote

    Louis Pouzin 1 vote

    Marilia Maciel 1 vote

    SOME COMMENTS AND ISSUES

    The brief here is “This committee will set the high level political tone and objectives of the

    conference.  Committee members will engage on a global level with stakeholders to

    encourage participation in the conference and maximize its chances of success” 

    Bear in mind also that (my paraphrasing) the aim of the meeting seems to be to develop a set of high level principles for Internet Governance. 

    We dont know yet whether we need 3 or 4 candidates, and probably wont know till Saturday. I think our aim between now and then should be to try and narrow down our field a bit and eliminate some names if possible. But in doing so:

    Carolina Rossini, Jovan K and Marc Rotenberg got the most support initially – not that we need to be bound by this. They are all impressive candidates.

    If Marc was in, we probably couldn’t include Milton – 2 US males would not be a good decision politically. Milton also probably fits as an academic – but as he is likely to be running the process to select academic candidates, he may not be able to include himself. Maybe we should seek clarification here?

    If Carolina was in, we probably wouldn’t include Joana or Marilia

    None of our first 3 would be considered to be a strong advocate for third world issues. If we thought it was important to include someone with this perspective, the choices would be Louis Pouzin or Parminder Singh. Parminder has indicated he would step down in favour of Louis Pouzin, and we may need to consider that Parminder is a member of the CI (Community Informatics) Nomcom also considering candidates for these very same positions (but with about 6 candidates and very little chance of their nominees being accepted) . That may be perceived as a conflict of interest, or we could ignore it. But some people have already suggested to me informally that Parminder has a conflict of interest here. 

    Also to just note re Stephanie Perrin – if Marc Rotenberg was in we might consider we have privacy issues well covered; but if in our final slate we wanted to include Milton and leave Marc out to not have too many male US citizens Stephanie is an option to cover privacy.  

    So lots of issues.Let’s discuss and see if we can narrow down a little while we await info as to whether we need 3 or 4 names.

    EC

    Marilia Maciel 3.5 votes

    Adam Peake 3 votes

    Joana Varon 2 votes

    Nadira Alaraj 1.5 votes

    Carolina Rossini 1.5 votes

    Stephanie Perrin 1 vote

    Norbert Bollow 1 vote

    Birgitta Jonsdottr .5

    Parminder Singh .5

    SOME COMMENTS AND ISSUES

    The brief here is “This committee owns the full responsibility of organizing the event, including: defining conference purpose/agenda, managing invitations, organizing input received into a coherent set of proposals for the conferees to address, managing conference proceedings and process, and directing all communications activities pre/during/post conference.  This committee will include 2 civil society representatives”.

    I think we need to determine HLC before finalising here. However Marilia and Adam have the strongest support at this stage. We again face the issue here of having a strong advocate for third world issues as a factor in deciding our final 2. 

    Over to you all for comments, suggestions, and attempts to narrow this down further!

    Ian Peter

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-- 

Carolina Rossini 
Project Director, Latin America Resource Center
Open Technology Institute
New America Foundation
//
http://carolinarossini.net/
+ 1 6176979389
*carolina.rossini at gmail.com*
skype: carolrossini
@carolinarossini
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