[governance] RE: On the process of proposing workshop themes

[Milton L Mueller]

Thanks, Bertrand,

This is a very good explanation. I go through it below with some responses but on the whole it does not sound as bad as I feared. If we can avoid some obvious pitfalls that could emerge from such a process, it should be worth a try. Read on....


 *   preserving the capacity of participants to propose and organize workshops on their topics of interest in a relatively unconstrained manner is a critical element of the IGF : this bottom-up Agenda-setting is probably one of the most precious features of this innovative experiment (it is in my view anyway)

And mine....

 *   at the same time, there is broad consensus on the desire to have fewer events running in parallel, because people are torn and forced to make difficult choices among things that interest them given the short duration of the meeting

Ah well, some people need to overcome their Agora-phobia.

 *   finally, some issues have probably reached a point of "ripeness" where it is useful to avoid having several workshops on the same theme,

Here, despite my half-serious, half-flippant response on the previous point, I am in violent agreement. In general, I _liked_ the proposal to separate themes in terms of their "ripeness/maturity." This could be quite a step forward for the IGF.

It will, however, be quite interesting to see how designations of ripeness or maturity are made.

Perhaps we can learn from the Motion Picture Association, and we can create a special category of "non-threatening, feelgood, immature" content (like "green computing"), give it a "G" rating, and let the kids go....while the adults go to R-rated critical internet resources sessions.

 *   organized by different actors pushing only their own agenda, and to try and encourage more direct interaction to move the issue forward; isn't it Hamadoun Touré who likes to say : "from friction comes light" and I think I remember you are often the one advocating "real debate" to sort out positions :-)

Indeed. This could be excellent, or it could break.

It will be excellent if the MAG members and others involved are not afraid of controversy and not afraid to let real representatives of actual conflicting positions be represented. (Unfortunately that has not always been my experience of MAG and IGF programming.)
It will fail if certain people insist, as they have repeatedly, on downplaying controversies, pretending they don't exist, attempting to stifle those who air them, etc. So the success or failure of this method will hinge on how this is handled.

That is the starting point. Hence the proposal to call for expressions of interest on themes rather than full-fledged workshop proposals at that stage (they will naturally come later). It has the benefit of sensing the level of interest on various themes but also allows people who do not intend to organize a workshop themselves to indicate that they think a specific topic should be addressed. This is what I did last year by putting an early placeholder in favor of a workshop on "dimensions of cybersecurity" while indicating that I did not intend to organize it myself.

One thing to bear in mind: you have significantly lowered the costs of proposing a theme. In other words, people in my network could easily propose a dozen viable and interesting themes, even though we only have the capacity to produce/participate in 3 or 4. So, if you follow this route, be prepared to be inundated with "theme" proposals, and be prepared for the risk that serious proposers with serious ideas might be drowned out by the noise of hundreds of casual proposers with superficial or half-baked ideas.

How will you sort them? Or will this be handled bottom up, via self organization? I hope the latter!

Furthermore, it allows a preliminary debate on the formulation of workshop titles. The discussion on this list on the theme "role of governments in IG" is a perfect example. Instead of having two workshops in parallel, one organized by governments to explain whay they should have more say and the other one by the IGC to explain why CS should have more say, wouldn't it be better to have a single one on the "role of the different stakeholders" ?

Maybe. Certainly any WS on any topic should include all stakeholder groups. But what if one group wants to have a general discussion of stakeholder roles, and the other wants to focus on the more narrow context of how governments fit into ICANN? If I were in the position of proposing a WS on that topic, I would strongly prefer to place it in a more concrete context (i.e., ICANN/JPA, GAC) because then we actually know what we are talking about, and what reforms might come from it, rather than having a general and philosophical discussion. However, I would not be opposed to letting other people talk in more general terms.

The IGF is a unique space for dialogue (and/or debate) among people with different viewpoints. It should not result in small groups of like-minded people agreeing among themselves in parallel rooms.  The "silo" effect is as bad in IGF as it is in ICANN. Rather than forcing people into "MAG-defined groups", it is just an attempt at facilitating early interaction among people with common issues of interest or concern. And yes, they may have "conflicting views or interests"; but isn't this what the IGF should be about too ?

Here we are in complete agreement! The trick is to preserve the diverse viewpoints when you merge themes into one. The danger is that we will homogenize rather than bring the divergent viewpoints into the same room for strategic interactions. It will not be easy, but I completely agree it needs to be done.

When I referred to "conflicting agendas" in my original message, I was not referring to different policy views. I was referring to people with incompatible notions of what a Workshop should cover. e.g., if one person wants to link talk about censorship threats to discussions of child protection and another wants to pretend that child protection measures should never be burdened with concerns about censorship, you have a problem, unless both parties understand clearly that the whole point of the WS is to bring those two together.

The MAG needs to make it clear that this method is motivated by an ethic of encouraging dialogue among disagreeing viewpoints, and that efforts to exclude viewpoints that are not liked by one group, or to appoint biased moderators or unbalanced panels (e.g., putting 5 representatives of ICANN, RIRs, etc on a panel with one token "critic") will not be tolerated.

However, this should obviously not limit the possibility for a group of like-minded people who believe a certain angle on a given issue should be given more visibility to gather at the IGF and present their viewpoint to the community. Flexibility and diversity is key here and the guiding principle in chosing formats and composition of workshops should be what kind of outcomes can be expected.

Great. this is reassuring. An escape valve in cases where the new model does not work.

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