[bestbits] Report, presentations and photos from João Pessoa Best Bits meeting

[Jeremy Malcolm]

The meeting website for the Best Bits João Pessoa meeting has just been
updated with a short report of the meeting (which is also copied below),
and all of the presentations that I received from participants.  For
those presenters who didn't give me their slides, please send them to me
and I'll add them. You can access these from the Documents tab of the
meeting website which is here:http://bestbits.net/events/best-bits-2015/.

The photos from the meeting have also been uploaded to our Flickr
account which you can access at
https://www.flickr.com/photos/105891848@N03/. The photos are not tagged
with names, and I have checked that nobody is featured in photos who
asked not to be uploaded online, but if you find yourself in a photo and
want to be removed, please let me know.

Additionally since we didn't have time to rate the ideas that were
generated on the Idea Rating Sheets in the penultimate session, I have
uploaded them to an online poll which is linked from the Outcomes tab of
the website.  I will send a separate message with more information about
this shortly.

I will also shortly send a separate message about taking forward the
work on multi-stakeholder criteria, as discussed in the morning of our
meeting.

The brief report of the meeting follows:

 1. *Policy slam and introductions*
    Participants introduced themselves and briefly explained the issues
    that they are working on, to enable informal connections and
    collaborations to be made.

 2. *Criteria of meaningful stakeholder inclusion in Internet governance*
    Two papers on the topic of the delicate balance between
    multi-stakeholder processes and democratic legitimacy was presented,
    and there was a general agreement that interested Best Bits members
    could form a working group to promote a series of proposed criteria
    to differentiate between multi-stakeholder processes that are
    inclusive and democratic, from those that are not.

 3. *WSIS+10 update*
    This session explained the importance of the WSIS+10 process, as the
    highest level process in which Interent governance principles are
    being expressed.  There was some discussion about the level of
    ambition in the output document, and the means by which civil
    society can still participate. Interested participants were invited
    to a longer session that was to be held on the following day as an
    IGF pre-event.

 4. *Overview of active global venues discussing Internet public policy
    issues*
    Following an introductory overview with a mapping of Internet
    governance institutions, a series of informative presentations were
    given that zoomed in on a number of these key institutions.  These
    included Internet native institutions such as ICANN, IETF and ISOC,
    UN bodies such as the General Assembly, CSTD, Human Rights Council
    and ITU, other intergovernmental bodies such as the Freedom Online
    Coalition and London Process, and specialised bodies such as WIPO,
    the WTO and trade negotiations such as TTP, TTIP and TISA.

 5. *Catalyzing reform of trade negotiation processes*
    The next session which followed on from these presentations,
    although cut short for lack of time, was to have been an exercise
    that would utilize our shared knowledge about various institutions
    in the Internet governance regime to identify possible strategies
    for reclaiming Internet-related policy issues from the closed,
    secretive trade agreements in which those issues have recently been
    being decided. This exercise will be continued online.

 6. *Best Bits way forward*
    The results of a survey of Best Bits participants was presented and
    discussed.  There was a clear consensus that Best Bits did continue
    to have value, although it was identified that having a large
    steering committee had not been helpful and was not presently
    sustainable.  There was agreement to have a smaller group of
    volunteer coordinators that could be more action-oriented.  One of
    its main responsibilities would be to organise the annual meeting
    based on 2-3 targets per meeting, perhaps decided by vote of
    participants. The existing steering committee was asked to take
    responsibility for proposing a suitable group of volunteer
    coordinators going forward.


-- 
Jeremy Malcolm
Senior Global Policy Analyst
Electronic Frontier Foundation
https://eff.org
jmalcolm at eff.org

Tel: 415.436.9333 ext 161

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