[governance] location

[McTim]

Hullo Mon General,

On 2/14/06, William Drake <drake at hei.unige.ch> wrote:
> Hi McTim,
>
> > neither do I, I am more concerned about another Geneva body growing
> > fat and moribund.
>
> I'm having trouble following.  Which are the organizations that are fat and
> moribund because they are in Geneva?

I didn't imply cause and effect.  You are better placed to answer your
own (rhetorical) query than I, but the ITU, ILO, WIPO, IMF, UNIDO,
UNITAR etc, come to mind.


> Conversely, if the IGF secretariat was in Nairobi, does this mean
> by definition that it would be lean and mean?
>

Nope, wasn't implied.  However there is a large community of ppl in
NBo that are deeply concerned with IG issues, have the capacity to
deal with them and would be cheaper to hire than Europeans.  So in
that sense, yes.

> The secretariat will be small wherever it's located.
> It will probably be funded by Northern European governments.
> It will have to interact
> extensively with UN agencies involved in Internet and ICT issues.
>It will have to be accessible to mission staff with responsibility
for those issues,
> who interact with the agencies responsible for those issues.  It will have
> to have good and reasonably priced travel connections;

None of the above are arguments for GVA or against NBO.

> Nairobi would be
> tough, especially for people from the developing world (including, I
> suspect, intra-regionally).

I suspect a little inconvenience is a trade off that many Africans
would be wiling to face to have the IGFs first home in Africa. At
least, that's how it sounded from the mailing list discussion I
mentioned earlier.

> Plus good infrastructure more generally to
> sustain the whole process.  And so on.

Roads are well paved, electricity works, Loads of ISPs.

>
> Anyway, as Lee says, this won't be decided by us.  In fact, it's probably
> one of the issues on which we'd have the least influence.

Does that mean we shouldn't take a stand on principle? ;-)

--
Cheers,

McTim
$ whois -h whois.afrinic.net mctim

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