[governance] Starting the planning for Prepcom 3

[Ralf Bendrath]

Robert Guerra wrote:

> That raises the question, what (if anything) could be done virtually  
> at the coming prepcom to allow those following the events in Geneva  
> to participate in an effective and meaningful way. In terms of what's  
> possible - given there's WiFi available  throughout the venue,   
> streaming, podcasts, blogs and yes, even regular email updates are  
> possible.

Good point, Robert. This caucus has a special responsibility, as half of 
the PrepCom (at least) will be consumed by IG debates. On the other hand, 
this is also an issue for general CS.

We at worldsummit2005.org will report every day and upload all important 
CS documents that are not available elsewhere. We will also try to link to 
all the blogs.
I guess Rik will again provide meeting notes etc. on the CS section of 
wsis-online.net.

I sincerely hope the volunteer monitoring group coordinated by Jane 
Johnsen will again cover all the official plenary discussions. They might 
use some technical help (and definitely more volunteers!) to make their 
work more efficient. Cory Doctorow has recently talked about the way they 
did it at the WIPO meetings. Very professional. We should try to do 
something along those lines. I have pasted the relevant part below.

Maybe the CS prep event on the 18th should also have a monitoring / online 
participation meeting in the afternoon.

Best, Ralf

http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/003214.html

One of the truly subversive and amazing things the NGOs did is that we set 
up open WiFi networks that weren't connected to the Internet -- because 
there was no Internet access at the meetings when we started -- and then 
we would take exhaustive collaborative notes on what was said. It's very 
hard to take notes at these events. Diplomatic speech is very stylized, so 
you'll have a typical intervention which begins something like, "Mr. 
Chairman, allow me to congratulate you as I take the floor for the first 
time, on your reappointment to the chairmanship. I have every confidence 
that with your steady hand at the tiller, you'll guide us to a swift and 
full consensus on the issues at hand. The delegation from Lower Whatistan 
is pleased to take the floor." Und zo weiter. Eventually you get to the 
point, and after 20 minutes it boils down to, "No." Taking notes on that 
kind of speech is really grueling, because it's very hard to stay 
attentive and catch the one little phrase that has meaning.

So we'd have teams of three or four people using collaborative note-taking 
software, and one would be taking notes, one would be adding commentary 
and another would be following behind and correcting typos and formatting 
and the like. Meanwhile, we're all of us checking each other as we go -- 
filling in the blanks, noting discrepancies and so on -- and then 
publishing it twice a day at lunch and dinner.

Now, the delegations there were accustomed to the old WIPO regime, where 
the notes would be taken by the secretariat, sent out for approval by the 
delegates, sanitized -- all the bodies would be buried -- and then 
published six months later. And what happened once we started working 
together like this is that delegates would get calls on their lunch break 
about things they'd said that morning. Suddenly, they're immediately 
accountable for their words, which completely changed the character of the 
negotiations.
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