[governance] Program for IGC at IGF

[Vittorio Bertola]

Jeremy Malcolm ha scritto:
> Yet nobody else seems to be concerned, or am I wrong?

Jeremy, I am as concerned as you about a number of possible shortcomings 
of the Forum. The forum was conceived by some of us (I remember the 
discussions in the WGIG, and the effort I put to frame certain sentences 
of its mandate that now are being ignored) to be a place where every 
person, no matter how "small" (even individuals), could have a venue in 
which any issue of importance could be raised, and he/she could get 
answers on where and how to get it addressed, or even try to spawn a 
multistakeholder working group on it.

Apparently (and I might be utterly wrong), what is going to happen in 
Athens is that we are going to fly there to sit for four days as an 
"audience" to watch some journalists interviewing random experts on the 
matter. I could watch that on TV, there's no need for the UN to organize 
yet another talk shop! And I'll try to talk about this in Athens, 
assuming that I ever get a chance to speak in the appropriate session.

However, the last thing I'd do is to blame other civil society people, 
or to use this as an argument in the everlasting "engineers versus the 
United Nations" feud. There clearly is a problem of expectations, a 
problem of funding and resources, and also a problem of size: perhaps it 
is conceptually wrong to call everyone in the same place to address all 
conceivable problems with the Internet, if the result is that many 
people are not going to have an opportunity to speak, because of sheer 
numbers.

This is the first edition, perhaps it's going astray from what it was 
intended to be, or perhaps it is me who had such a different concept in 
mind; in any case, the final judgement will only happen after it ends. 
But I think that the right thing to do is to discuss and put forward 
constructive proposals on how to make it better for civil society next 
time, and how to make good use of the positive opportunities that are 
already there this time.
-- 
vb.             [Vittorio Bertola - v.bertola [a] bertola.eu.org]<-----
http://bertola.eu.org/  <- Prima o poi...
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