[governance] Themes for the coming IGFs

[JFC Morfin]

Dear Meryem, Jeannette,
the main question is not so much what to debate, but what the goal. 
As long as there is no intent for the debate to result into something 
concrete. As long as there is no intent to conduct it to obtain a 
concrete result, I am afraid this is just organizing the next Top 
Hotel yearly virtual sitting in Cairo, after Athens, Rio, Hyderabad. 
Another Net-Set event to make us waste the money and time we could 
have used more "dangerously" for the "Intermonet" stability. With the 
budget of the CS Hyderabad attendees we could have designed a new 
FLOSS Internet technology many of us (the real users of the digital 
ecosystem) could have benefited from.

If the IGF is not a place for lobbies (dynamic coalitions) to forge 
(or meet with) governing operatives (enhanced cooperations) it will 
stay a yearly school for politician ignorami and a fashionable 
activist melting place. I am sorry but only Cairo Net-BBQ 
participants are concerned by this thread. Where in all this are the 
users, the consumers, the people.

Now, what is of interest are the areas of responsibility to be 
covered by the enhanced cooperations (if any) that will be formed in 
Cairo; their concrete targets, their organization, their budget, 
their constitutive document to be signed by their regalian, private, 
civil, international and technical working and authoritative 
partners; the level of mutual involvement permitted to these participants.

Why to debate points most of us have not the slightest capacity to 
influence? The true question is what experience, expertise, 
authority, or representativeness can some of us put on the table that 
might be of real use to others when organizing concrete 
actions/lobbying/cooperations.

IGF is not a place for collective decisions to be voted, but for 
collective decisions to be imagined, activated, and embodied.

I must say I am dismayed that we discuss of "themes", without having 
organised among ourselves, in three years, any professional 
Observatory and Think-Tank on these themes, so we could report and 
propose concrete projects we could lobby for, or act upon. I can only 
fear (infer?) that the Civil Society has been trapped at the IGF in 
much the same way as @larges have been by ALAC?

jfc

At 14:44 11/12/2008, Meryem Marzouki wrote:
>Le 11 déc. 08 à 14:05, Jeanette Hofmann a écrit :
>>I fully agree. While professional broadcasters are good at keeping
>>the crowd entertained, the usually lack the sense for the political
>>assues at hand. Moreover, they don't want to achieve anything.
>
>It's the IGF itself that is refusing any tangible outcome.
>
>>The discussion on security seemed to me a debate for the sake of
>>debating.
>
>Is there any other purpose a "conversation" could have? A debate,
>even non conclusive, is not necessarily a waste of time, this is not
>my point, but one has to acknowledge that the IGF, in its current
>form, can't lead to anything else than a debate.
>Meryem


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