[bestbits] [governance] NOTE - Call for Nomination: Stakeholder Speakers at the General Assembly High-level Meeting on WSIS+10

[Nick Ashton-Hart]

For what it is worth, I was also on the selection committee and it seemed to me people tried to pick good people irrespective of anything else whilst acknowledging that some of those who would speak would be controversial - but that this shouldn’t be a bar to being chosen particularly if they would reflect a view that was a part of the overall WSIS debates already.

There was, I think, an overall interest in hearing from newer voices and the mandate required gender, regional, national, etc balance which is good, but also means that some who would otherwise be great won’t get through because there are many voices from a given region or nationality, but this is not a new or unusual problem.

To me the biggest problem was the extreme time constraints that were a product, in part, of the relatively late appointment of the co-facilitators - this limited the time for the word to get out about nominations and also meant that the choices got made so near the meeting that many could not make their visa etc arrangements in time to attend.

My 0.02

> On 31 Oct 2015, at 13:58, parminder <parminder at itforchange.net> wrote:
> 
>> Going beyond the principle, I'd also be interested to hear from CS who were sitting on the selection committee for the July WSIS event (I think the UN used the same selection mechanism). Did that work at all?
> 
> Two responses Lea
> 
> I was on the selection committee, and I wrote to the group about the problems that I am mentioning now. I think it did not work. The business and tech community reps that get themselves on the selection committee are the ones who know the IG CS scene very well, and know those whose views are not exactly what for instance big business will relish and they tend to vote accordingly, certainly very conservatively is not will actual mal-intent, which pushes away some important sections of the civil society.

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