[governance] Re: Remote Participation Instructions for the MAG

[Olivier MJ Crepin-Leblond]

Hello Marilia,

thank you for your kind reply to my rant. I'll address some of the 
points your raise inline:

Le 09/02/2010 14:01, Marilia Maciel a écrit :
>
> So far, everybody seemed to be very comfortable that a bunch of crazy 
> people volunteered and gave up their time to push remote participation 
> forward. Not we are starting to recognize the obvious. This is a 
> huge structure that cannot put in place properly without consistent 
> community involvement and professional dedication.
>

I am unsure that everyone of comfortable about a "bunch of crazy people" 
volunteering... and not for the reasons you might think. I have been 
feeling uneasy about the fact that perhaps one of the most pioneering 
and strategic processes relating to the long term future of the planet 
is making use of so many volunteers who are, in my view, being exploited 
shamelessly to produce something out of nothing. I have recurring 
visions of "The A-Team" - an 80s TV series where a team of highly 
gifted, if not eccentric individuals, managed to get out of the most 
dangerous situations by building an aircraft out of two tin cans and 
piece of string.

Agreeing with you, I would like to append the following statement to 
your last sentence: "...and cannot function without a substantial 
dedicated budget which will need to be allocated by the IGF secretariat, 
and unltimately, by the IGF funding bodies. This budget should serve to:

1. appoint a full time staff member whose responsibility will be to 
source and set-up remote participation tools for every IGF meeting
2. appoint a team of paid experts who will support the full time staff 
into achieving this goal in a timely and satisfactory manner
3. fund a permanent historical online repository of all meeting 
recordings, whether video, voice, data, etc. This repository should be 
intuitive in its navigation and be professionally designed and 
implemented, with a permanent contract to keep it up to date


> We should always bear in mind, nevertheless, that we can look to 
> remote participation from two different perspectives:
>
> 1- Of what has been accomplished. If you look back, you will remember 
> that we departed from a single pre-moderated chat for RP, and now we 
> have a multitude of channels (main platform during IGF meetings, Cover 
> It Live, Twitter, Facebook, Youtube channels), with the comments and 
> questions being displayed in the large screen in the meetings, for 
> everybody to see. This is a considerable enhancement in terms of 
> transparency, specially if you consider that we are in a UN environment.
>

Yes, I am happy to see that there has been a lot of progress. But since 
"we are in a UN environment", let's professionalise this in order to 
introduce some accountability to remote participation.
For example, the Webcasts at IGF Sharm el Sheikh and carried on the UN 
site were great. Why was this set-up not pursued in the Open 
Consultations yesterday?
Rather than having multiple informal but unreliable channels for remote 
participation, there should be one reliable, tried and tested, channel 
which is an *inherent* part of the organisation of the session rather 
than a side process which has been hooked on to the main process.

> In 2008 people reported problems with webcast transmission during the 
> IGF, which hampered proper participation. In 2009, the quality of the 
> webcast has improved (according to all remote participants that 
> provided us feedback). In 2010 we are talking about improving quality 
> of interaction. This shows that we are not stuck, we are moving 
> forward. There has been constant improvement from year to year and 
> that should be acknowledged.
>

Yes, I acknowledge that - but I am also saying that whilst the IGF 
remote volunteer team should be congratulated for all of the progress 
done so far, the IGF Secretariat should not pat itself on the back that 
the current arrangements are satisfactory and that there is therefore no 
need to throw some serious money at this, if it can work on a shoestring 
budget (read: no budget). IMHO, what's around here today is *not* 
satisfactory. It will *not* serve to bring any fresh blood in the 
Internet Governance arena. It will *not* help geographical diversity 
because it will does not work well at all for some parts of the world.



> 2- On what still needs to be accomplished (considering the scarce 
> resources of the IGF, but considering also the potential of the IG 
> community)
>
> - More multistakeholder involvement, especially from the technical 
> community and the MAG
>
> - Earlier planning, with the involvement of professionals, host, 
> Secretariat and a group of interested people
>
> - Trained remote moderators, assigned at least one month before the 
> event.
>
> - Remote participation has to be taken into account by workshop 
> organizers in the planning of the dynamics of their workshop. Wks 
> organizers and moderators are responsible for bringing in the 
> questions from remote participants, helping to improve the quality of 
> interaction.
>

Yes, yes, yes, and yes! But I don't think it is fair for volunteers to 
take on that task and complete it by themselves. I think it has the 
dangerous potential to put volunteers into "burn-out" mode because it is 
way more challenging a task than it appears initially.

> If anybody has suggestions on how to improve remote participation, 
> please get in touch with the Remote Participation Working Group and 
> the IGF Secretariat. Speaking for the group, we are more then happy to 
> exchange ideas and receive suggestions from the experienced members of 
> this community.
>
> I am looking forward to continuing this discussion. This is the first 
> step to make e-participation a policy theme in the IGF, as we 
> suggested in our statement to the open consultations.
>

Thomas Narten has written an Internet Draft relating to public 
participation at IETF meetings, and this was presented to the IETF VMEET 
discussion list. His draft on remote participation raises very 
interesting, well thought out and structured questions and points, which 
I think that the IGF Remote Participation Working Group would benefit 
from. Seeing that the version I have found archived on the Web is out of 
date, I've emailed him separately and will revert to you and to this 
list if I find out where the latest version of his draft is stored.

I hope this helps.

Warm regards,

Olivier

-- 
Olivier MJ Crépin-Leblond, PhD
http://www.gih.com/ocl.html

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