[governance] Update on upcoming IGF consultations

[Jeremy Malcolm]

Adam Peake wrote:
> What language would the chat sessions being in? One reason the dates
> are likely to be when they are is availability of UN translators, Feb
> 13 is apparently one of the few dates early next year when UN services
> can accommodate the meeting.

As well as the phones for SMS messages, there were three email 
addresses, English, French and Spanish, and the English chat forum.  The 
emails were not monitored by the official UN translators, but by CS 
volunteers.  One question or comment was received in Japanese, which was 
also duly translated by a volunteer, but it turned out to be spam. :-)

It may not be ideal, but it's better than nothing: I suggest tell the 
MAG we want to run with it in English at least and see if we can pick up 
volunteers to handle other languages along the way.  The question will 
be, who is going to be present in Geneva, with an Internet connection, 
and clueful enough to feed the comments and questions in.

> And how can we help this online interaction/participation be
> multi-stakeholder? Remote participation is extremely important -- but
> it needs to accommodate multiple languages and all stakeholders.

A bit of promotion of the facilities by the Secretariat to all 
stakeholders wouldn't go astray there IMHO.  There was next to none for 
Athens.  It came down to Kieren handing out fliers and me standing up in 
the opening session.  We didn't even have, except for three days, a link 
to the IGF 2006 Community site from the official site.  Not good enough.

> All comes down to money.  If the IGF process has money it will be able
> to do much more.

I actually think it comes down to will more than money.  The reason the 
IGF's Internet presence has been fragmented and closed to public 
participation has had little to do with money.  Sure, it would be nice 
if someone would say sponsor travel costs for a clueful person to handle 
remote participation issues (like that would happen), but what other 
costs are there?  Everything else has been volunteered.

-- 
Jeremy Malcolm LLB (Hons) B Com
Internet and Open Source lawyer, IT consultant, actor
host -t NAPTR 1.0.8.0.3.1.2.9.8.1.6.e164.org|awk -F! '{print $3}'
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