[governance] problem with the sessions: number of participants

[Lee McKnight]

Adam,

Observing the 2 data points of what happened in Athenss, and what is
happening now in the runup to Rio, where there will be 1/3 less time per
session: it appears to be difficult to have less than X people per
session.

Keeping X as small as possible is a worthy goal, fighting the trend
altogether seems unlikely to succeed. 

My advice: make lemonade from the lemons; accept the numbers, but turn
everyone into a discussant, in a roundtable style. If 15 people on stage
have things to say they likely will behave appropriately and take turns,
all frustrated that they could not say more (so hopefully they pick
words carefully); likewise the audience is enlightened or frustrated as
the conversation progresses, as only a small fraction of them will be
able to get in even a few words/ask a question of the discussants.

For cs folks fighting the good fight to keep the conversation balanced
and focused, my 2 centavos of advice is keep pushing, mainly to keep the
panels, excuse me, the number of discussants, from getting any larger.

To work the formula further: 15 people/1.5 hrs = ~5 minutes per
discussant, 30 minutes reserved for the intros of whoever is chairing
that particular session, plus comments from the floor and back and forth
between the discussants and audience.

BUT: noone is guaranteed 5 minutes, that should just be their target
for whatever remarks they plan to make.

After all, IGF is a discussion forum, so we're looking for a formula
for a global, multistakeholder conversation, not lectures we can hear
any number of other places...in my opinion.

Lee

Prof. Lee W. McKnight
School of Information Studies
Syracuse University
+1-315-443-6891office
+1-315-278-4392 mobile

>>> ajp at glocom.ac.jp 10/16/2007 11:47 AM >>>
Hi,

Not good news about the selection of speakers for the IGF.

The sessions are now 2 not 3 hours, but at the moment we have not 
found a way to reduce the number of participants, like Athens still 
around 12-16 per session.  Still draft, which I why I am writing for 
advice. There's time to cut the numbers, if only we knew how...

The process so far.  My understanding is the secretariat took all 
names received from different stakeholders (including 
self-nominations). Collated the names by session they had been 
recommended for, tried to find out if people were actually attending, 
and sent a list of all these names to the advisory group for 
comments.  Advisory group members then sent their recommendations 
from that list back to the secretariat, there was some discussion, 
but not much.  Recommendations were sent blind to the secretariat, in 
most cases members didn't know who others were recommending. 
Recommendations included moving people from sessions they had 
originally been suggested for.

Last Thursday the secretariat sent list which they had divided up as 
people who had support from among the advisory group being named as 
panelists and discussants, and people lacking support being dropped. 
Those with most support from among the advisory group were listed as 
panelists, suggested they will be able to make an initial comment of 
about 5 minutes (no powerpoint.)  Next level of support have been 
suggested as discussants.

There's not been much discussion about the distinction between 
panelists and discussants. I think discussants will be brought in 
after a round of questions and comments from the floor.  They'll be a 
kind of second wave, with shorter statements, perhaps give specific 
examples to highlight some topic, or ask questions for the panel, or 
try to move the discussion along if it becomes bogged down on one 
issue or looses track, etc. (only my guess as to what they might do.) 
I am not sure where the idea for "discussants" came from originally.

The numbers from last Thursday's list are:

Critical Internet Resources:  14 participants (8 speakers, 6
discussants)
Access: 15 participants (6 speakers, 9 discussants)
Diversity: 12 participants (8 speakers, 4 discussants)
Openness: 15 participants (9 speakers, 6 discussants)
Security: 16 participants (7 speakers, 9 discussants)
Emerging issues: 9 participants (4 speakers, 5 discussants)

It's not clear if all of these are actually attending, but seems most 
will be (probably all.)

The list of panelists and discussants doesn't look too bad from a 
civil society perspective (some holes, but not too bad.)

Some AG members are still suggesting moving people from the discard 
list (of course there are good people in that group) back as 
panelists or discussants.  So we are tending to see names being added 
rather than cut.

What do we do?

I think there should be no more than 9 on any session, perhaps 5 
panelists and 4 discussants (5 & 3 better of course.)  But that would 
mean dropping a lot of good people.  There is no agreement among any 
stakeholder group on who to select.

Very clear message from Athens that large panels are not acceptable, 
they don't work.

Going for the smaller number means less CS on the sessions.  Some of 
us won't be happy.

So what do we do and how do we do it. (Note the lack of time, less 
than four weeks to the start of the meeting.)

We should not make the list of names public.  We've no right to do
that.

Thanks,

Adam
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