[governance] About the IGF call for workshop proposals

[Bertrand de La Chapelle]

Dear all,

A word of explanation on the call for workshops proposals issued by the IGF
secretariat, as it is a slightly different procedure that in the previous
years.

During the February consultations and the MAG meeting, it appeared clearly
that the traditional method of asking people to propose fully developed
workshop proposals (complete with co-sponsors and potential panelists) had
two unexpected but damaging consequences :
- several proposals on similar subjects were prepared separately with great
efforts and great commitment from proponents,
- it became therefore particularly difficult to encourage them to merge
afterwards, as they became naturally strongly committed to their specific
approach

The general result was in the first three years the abundance of workshops
that everybody recognizes as difficult to handle for the participants.

The process proposed this year is therefore a bit different, taking
advantage of the fact that we are starting a little bit earlier. The
objective is to encourage people to first submit themes rather than
full-fledged proposals, with arguments and reasons why the theme should be
addressed. This represents for all IGF participants an opportunity to have
an increased influence on the Agenda of the meeting itself (as issues can be
proposed by people who do not have the capacity to organize a workshop
themselves). It is also a way to facilitate grouping different proposals
together and encourage proponents to join forces to co-organize one session
instead of several in parallel.

In Hyderabad, the community underscored that different issues have different
levels of "maturity" or "ripeness", and the MAG has basically identified
three categories that could correspond to different workshop formats (what
is below is my own formulation of the three categories) :
- issues where people do not agree yet on the nature of the problem and
where a more complete picture needs to be drawn before trying to identify
solutions : such issues would benefit from expert panels, laying out the
different dimensions,
- issues where people are clearly aware of the different aspects at stake
but disagree on the appropriate approach or objectives; these would benefit
from very interactive workshops with a lot of participation from the room
- issues where a basic agreement has emerged on what needs to be done and
where the challenge is to synergize concerted action among the different
concerned stakeholders; this category could benefit from "roundtable
formats" gathering the key actors involved in order to help them distribute
responsibilities and coordinate action.

As the discussion in the IGC progresses, I felt it was important to describe
this new context. Several interesting issues have been raised on the list so
far and the IGC can play a very important role in discussing a relatively
extensive list of themes, and then seeing how they could be grouped in
clusters. This will help the work of the Secretariat and the MAG immensely.
.

I hope these background elements will be useful.

Best

Bertrand

-- 
____________________
Bertrand de La Chapelle
Délégué Spécial pour la Société de l'Information / Special Envoy for the
Information Society
Ministère des Affaires Etrangères et Européennes/ French Ministry of Foreign
and European Affairs
Tel : +33 (0)6 11 88 33 32

"Le plus beau métier des hommes, c'est d'unir les hommes" Antoine de Saint
Exupéry
("there is no greater mission for humans than uniting humans")
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