[governance] Program for IGC at IGF

[Jeanette Hofmann]

Hi Vittorio,
> 
> 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.

The structural problem is that at a forum with more than 1000 
participants most people will act as the audience. I really don't see 
how this could be organized in a different way.

The MAG's job is to discuss the agenda of the main sessions and to try 
to ensure a balanced set of speakers. As Adam has said before, the real 
issue is to find enough speakers for all sessions from developing 
countries.

Things are much more flexible with regard to the workshops. One of the 
really good outcomes is that all workshop proposals got accepted. All 
workshops can take place. Many of them are organized by civil society 
people. This is the area where you won't be mere "audience".

jeanette

> 
> 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.
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