Remote participation plans Re: [OCDC] Re: [governance] Do we

[Jeremy Malcolm]

On 30/05/2008, at 12:28 AM, Ken Lohento wrote:

> My two cents : I have to agree with Avri. To my knowledge the MAG  
> didn't not take any decision to stop the OCDC (I can't remember  
> neither any formal discussion about stopping a working group or DC).  
> It's however true that some MAG members, who were members of this  
> group, announced that they were leaving it (I understood they said  
> it was not working properly).But there was no MAG decision about it.

That's all I meant, not that there was any "order from the top".  But  
this "announcement that they would be leaving" was internal to the  
MAG; it was not explained to the OCDC, and was accompanied by a  
vitriolic and false conspiracy theory from George, and the silent  
removal of a link to http://igf-online.net/ from the official IGF Web  
site (which had only been added about a day earlier).  So you can see  
how two and two adds up.

As for the Secretariat/MAG stepping in (or up) as Adam claims, this is  
in the context of the OCDC having asked Markus (and I quote) "Is any  
assistance needed from members of the OCDC in monitoring the channels  
of communication that have been set up to facilitate remote  
participation?  Have specific protocols yet been settled upon for how  
the remote participants' input is to be delivered to session  
moderators? ... these matters fall squarely within the coalition's  
volunteer mandate and we would like to be involved where possible" -  
and no reply being received as usual.  (Though actually, the chat  
system for which you take credit was developed by an OCDC member.)

Anyway, that's water under the bridge now but it's a symptom of the  
larger problem that suggestions to the Secretariat/MAG about remote  
participation are uniformly ignored, on the basis that "the Web site  
and webcasting are our business; you can do whatever else you like,  
but don't expect us to help you out by providing any information or  
linking to the end product" (that's not a quote, obviously).

Back before the OCDC was even formed, a letter was circulated which  
suggested (in my original draft) rather than the three disconnected  
Web sites we had in Athens, "a new platform ... which allows  
administration and editing functions to be distributed between the  
Secretariat and volunteers from the stakeholder groups, who may be  
delegated responsibility for maintaining particular functions or  
resources ... [so that] the attention of IGF stakeholders will not be  
fragmented across numerous sites, that the site will be able to be  
updated in a timely and efficient manner, and not least of all, that  
such a division of labour will be more consistent with the  
collaborative, multi-stakeholder principles of the IGF."  It came back  
from on high that this was unacceptable to the Secretariat, and the  
OCDC's formation was the resulting compromise.

Lately I've been discussing off-list what might be regarded as the  
"next generation" of the original 2006 proposal; that new technologies  
of the social Web such as the OpenSocial API launched last year by  
Google (with Yahoo, MySpace and others tagging along) could be used to  
draw upon a social graph of all IGF participants provided by the  
Secretariat to facilitate the formation of dynamic coalitions,  
communities of interest, mailing lists, groups for straw polls, and so  
on on a distributed basis, thus extending the IGF from an annual  
meeting into a year-round virtual community.  But since the  
Secretariat's lack of cooperation in such an initiative is inevitable,  
it would require a considerable push from CS in order to fly.

With Ginger's remote participation working group handling the remote  
participation side of things (good luck with that), this social Web  
idea could be a remaining initiative for the OCDC (in parallel with  
igf-online.net and the proposed UNESCO WSIS follow-up site), so if  
anyone is interested in advocating for such a platform, feel free to  
join the dormant OCDC list at http://igf-online.net/wws/info/igf-ocdc  
and we can draw up a proposal for presentation at the next open  
consultation meeting.

-- 
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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