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

[Jeremy Malcolm]

On 30/05/2008, at 5:31 PM, Ken Lohento wrote:

> Anyway, it's sure that remote participation should be improved and  
> also provided with a multilingual environment. But, another issue is  
> that remote participants hardy contribute (at least through  
> facilities provided by the Secretariat). For example very few  
> contributions are received through the email addresses that MAG  
> members monitor during IGF summits, though some of us promoted as  
> needed the existence of that easy-to-use facility. Most of the time  
> you have about 2/3 short comments/questions in French and a bit more  
> in English (and I'm not sure in other languages more messages/ 
> questions are received - I think this does not help requesting more/ 
> alternative UN supported remote participation facilities.


And yet, as I pointed out in Rio, there were 325 messages on Slashdot  
about the IGF in the space of a day.  So it's not that people aren't  
interested in contributing, it's that:

(a) the forms in which their input is taken are too limited (eg. new  
main topics cannot be created in the IGF's Discussion Space, and  
emails usually disappear into a black hole);

(b) they do not feel that their input is valued (eg. I was told, "We  
did not put your submission up initially because we thought the speed  
dialogue issue was already extensively covered in the paper you  
submitted for the second IGF. Moreover, it has been addressed during  
the open consultation in May"); and most importantly of all

(c) there has been no attempt to cultivate a virtual community of IGF  
stakeholders, rather than treating them as isolated hangers-on to the  
meetings in person where the "real action" is.  In my book, I wrote:

> it is a quixotic endeavour to seek to constitute the IGF’s annual
> plenary meetings as the principal mode of engagement amongst its  
> stake-
> holders for every purpose, when there are some purposes for which that
> meeting and the e-democratic processes set up to support it are not,  
> and can
> never be adequately suited on their own. Rather, independent processes
> of Internet democracy are required to supplement (not merely to  
> support)
> the IGF’s face-to-face deliberations in order that the IGF’s mandate  
> may be
> fully and adequately addressed.


(I go on to propose three measures to do just that, but rather than  
spam the list with it, see http://books.google.com/books?id=G8ETBPD6jHIC.)

-- 
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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