[governance] Re: Letter to IGF Secretariat re website

[Nyangkwe Agien Aaron]

"that this isn't just a whim, that people are serious" Nice tune from
a go-getter.
Kieren, your said it all in you mail and I do not see any possible
action that could stymie the move.
Strategically, I will advise more people to sign the letter while the
issue of resources for input be a matter of later debate (like that
raised by Nenna). This is because, the more they are signatures, the
more louder the bell will ring and the possibility for the message
being quickly understood is higher too. You can guess the outcome.
Time waits for no one, said the Poet, so let us sign the letter.
Nyangkwe

On 11/16/06, Kieren McCarthy <kierenmccarthy at gmail.com> wrote:
> I think it may be worth reiterating the basic history and idea behind this
> letter.
>
> Jeremy Malcolm and myself (Kieren McCarthy) collaborated in the weeks
> leading up to the IGF on a website that would allow some degree of online
> participation into the process for the simple reason that a website didn't
> exist and we felt this was a very large hole in what was supposed to be an
> Internet Governance Forum.
>
> The resulting website at http://igf2006.info proved to be far more
> successful that even we had hoped to the extent that we had to move it onto
> the IGF's servers (thanks to a very helpful IGF secretariat) on the day
> before the conference opened, and then on the Wednesday demand was such that
> it overwhelmed even this service and the UN's hosting company had to shift
> it onto a bigger, faster server.
>
> This confirmed what we had suspected (especially considering word of our IGF
> site only emerged literally the day before the conference), which was that
> there was great value and demand for an online collaborative site.
>
> During the course of this process - which, let's be honest, was an
> experiment - a large number of people from across all stakeholders,
> government, business, civil society and so on expressed their gratitude to
> us for setting up the site and asked if they could become involved in
> something more structured for next year's IGF. Also, despite initial
> uncertainty, the IGF Secretariat grew to understand and appreciate the role
> that such a site could have for helping people collaborate with one another
> and with them. Nitin Desai specifically mentioned improving online
> collaboration next year in his chairman's summary.
>
> However it was clear even during the conference that people were having a
> hard time figuring out which of the three websites they should go to - the
> IGF official site, the Greek hosts website or our unofficial site. In many
> cases, information was repeated, in other cases you could only find vital
> information on one of the three.
>
> In brief discussions at the conference and subsequently, it struck a number
> of us that if we followed the example led by the new-found "dynamic
> coalitions" and pooled all our resources, that by the time of the Rio
> meeting we could all be working together on a single website to everyone's
> benefit.
>
> Now, we don't know what are going to be the practical concerns from the IGF
> Secretariat, from the host government, and from the other stakeholders that
> took only a small role in our unofficial site. We do know that there is real
> concern about the ability for people to control certain sections of a
> website, for obvious reasons. But we really do think that if we open up
> discussions we can work through whatever issues are thrown up, particularly
> since the technology for this sort of thing (all of it, we should note, open
> source) is now so flexible that it is just a matter of designing a structure
> around people's wishes.
>
> This letter therefore is intended to act as an invitiation to the IGF
> Secretariat, who are the lynchpin in this scenario, to consider our
> proposal. The hope is to make a good enough case that the IGF opens
> discussions over how to achieve it. We shall see where it goes from there.
>
> There is a balance to be struck here between speed and structure. To get
> this letter in as soon as possible means that we have longer to make such a
> coalition work. Equally, I understand that Markus Kummer will have some
> early initial discussions with the Brazilian organisers next month when he
> attends the ICANN meeting in Sao Paulo. So in that sense, it makes sense to
> get this letter to the IGF Secretariat so at least the thought is in their
> minds early on.
>
> The downside to this is that, as yet, we have a very loose coalition of
> people and no real structure for deciding how to proceed. The letter will
> hold the signatures of interested individuals that share the same vision. It
> is perhaps fortunate that these individuals are also highly capable and
> knowledgeable about these sorts of issues, but our hope is really to show
> the IGF Secretariat that this isn't just a whim, that people are serious
> about making this work and so hopefully it will carry more weight.
>
> As such I would encourage anyone that believes that all stakeholders should
> work together on the online side of the IGF (to my mind this is obvious) to
> put their name to the letter. If the UN/IGF Secretariat then thinks this is
> worthwhile pursuing, we will sort out the issues of structure later.
>
>
>
> Kieren
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Kieren McCarthy
> --------------------------
> Homepages: http://www.kierenmccarthy.me.uk
> Blog: http://www.kierenmccarthy.co.uk/
>
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-- 
Aaron Agien Nyangkwe
Journalist/Outcome Mapper
Special Assistant To The President
ASAFE
Tel. 237 337 50 22
Fax. 237 342 29 70
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