[governance] Workshops update, and decisions needed

Fri Jul 2 09:27:26 EDT 2010

Thank you Jeremy for being supportive of this idea. I appreciate your
concern over the workshop that we proposed.

Just to share some of my perspectives on this workshop and how I came
around this subject. Currently, this workshop stands as an approved
feeder workshop in to the main session on IG4D - Internet Governance
For Development. Yes that makes it very critical. It is an open space
and not a limited space otherwise I would have never proposed it
because I am not a proponent of locking down discussion spaces that
are critical to development.

We should note that the workshop idea is its power for being accepted
because none of the workshops in all the schedule provide such an
innovation where everyone can participate and that is why there has
been hardly any objections against it. There are a few important
aspects that I would like to include that this is what many of us from
the developing world have wanted to have an open and free discussion
on IG and this will be the opportunity to create that open space.

I would not be supportive of the suggestion to include panellists
since that would limit the creativity and idea sharing aspects of the
workshop.This I believe is the opportunity in this workshop. The name
revolutionary was dropped because I must agree that it wasn't doing
justice to the topic. It now stands as "Innovative Internet Governance
Ideas and Approaches - An Open Discussion Space" thus clearly
explaining its objective that also creates an innovation opportunity
for future IGF workshops.

This can develop itself to be an important feeding opportunity without
being locked down to the type of stakeholder participation. It is an
opportunity for anyone and everyone to share their ideas or briefly
what changed their countries both developed and developing.

As a matter of rule decided initially, no one gets the mic or floor
for more than 5 mins and at 4.5 mins, the speaker will be notified.

On the participation side, everyone is encouraged to invite as many
people as possible. I am going to undertake significant efforts to get
a good diversity of voices to this workshop. I will try to bring in as
many youth as possible. I will also be requesting various Latin
American, African, South Asian, Asia Pacific, Australian, European and
Canadian youth, legislators and civil society people to join us.

I will also be talking with Rafik and the Child Net project to get the
12 youth coming from their program to be part of our workshop. I will
also try to contact ISOC and include the Next Generation Leader
Program Members and the IGF Ambassadors, the grantees of the
Commonwealth IGF Secretariat Bursaries and the DiploFoundation EU
graduation class to be part of this workshop. I will also request the
youth remote participation team and Ginger to help me in this process.
This will create the opportunity to atleast have confirmed speaking
opportunities during the workshop and record taking.

Secondly, I will try to invite a young EU parliamentarian from the
Swedish Pirate Party, the  22-year-old Pirate politician:
http://www.wired.co.uk/wired-magazine/archive/2010/05/start/amelia-andersdotter-the-22-year-old-pirate-politician?page=all
that had appeared in the IGF Open Consultations this week and if she
has both the time and opportunity to participate, she will be a very
important value addition to this workshop.

So these are my current thoughts as I arrive back home.

On Fri, Jul 2, 2010 at 1:21 PM, Jeremy Malcolm <jeremy at ciroap.org> wrote:
> In the wake of this month's IGF planning meeting, I understand that the
> situation with our workshops is as earlier forecast: two of our three
> workshop proposals were accepted, but we have some decisions to make about
> one of them.
> The workshop on "Revolutionary Internet governance ideas that can help
> change the developing world" was accepted, except that we are to add
> developed countries to the scope of the workshop, and Nitin Desai and Markus
> Kummer also asked us to drop the word "revolutionary".  The result would be
> simply "Internet governance ideas that can help change the world".
> Fouad was asked to discuss that within this group, actually by 29 June 2010.
>  We are a few days late, already.  So we really need to do that now: what do
> we think about dropping the reference to developing countries, and losing
> "revolutionary"?  Or should another title be used altogether such as "Open
> space for new ideas on Internet governance" as proposed by Nitin or
> "Innovative Internet governance ideas and approaches" by Fouad?
> The other thing about this workshop is that there are no panelists for it;
> its content is entirely dependent upon participation from the floor.
>  However, as I have discussed with Fouad, I am loathe that we should open
> the workshop without any idea about who is going to speak.  So, I have taken
> the liberty of starting a wiki page for those who would like to speak to
> list their names and planned topics of discussion.  Please visit the page if
> you are interested in participating, and also please circulate the URL
> widely:
> http://wiki.igf-online.net/wiki/Open_space_for_Internet_governance_ideas
> The other workshop which was accepted was "Transnational (or trans-border)
> enforcement of a new information order – Issues of rights and democracy",
> and planning for that is well in hand.  Thanks to those who spoke up for
> this workshop during the open consultation.
> "Successes and failures of Internet governance, 1995 - 2010, and looking
> forward to WSIS 2015" was not accepted, and no feedback was given as to
> why... a shame.
> I am going to suggest that we recommend that the Secretariat's conclusions
> on approval of workshops be publicly posted online, because at present this
> process is not sufficiently transparent.  Moreover the rapid chopping and
> changing of the schedule during the open consultation session inevitably
> disadvantages those who are remote, despite the availability of Twitter and
> email.  For one thing, those in the room were working off a document that
> the remote participants did not (and still don't) have.  A prior, more open
> process of posting and responding to comments on workshops online would be
> far preferable in my opinion.
>
> --
>
> Jeremy Malcolm
> Project Coordinator
> Consumers International
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-- 
Regards.
--------------------------
Fouad Bajwa
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