[governance] CSTD IX. Conclusions and recommendations

[Roland Perry]

In message <4D408FC9.70204 at apc.org>, at 23:19:05 on Wed, 26 Jan 2011, 
Anriette Esterhuysen <anriette at apc.org> writes
>I agree here too. Jeanette, I think that Graciela's proposal to have
>workshop days, followed by plenary days, is different from what happened
>at Vilnius. In Vilnius there was an attempt to have some workshops feed
>into main sessions..

In Sharm, the scheduling attempted to have workshops before the 
respective main session, and that was a major element of the scheduling 
for Vilnius. Of course, if the main session is the second day, you can't 
have all the feeder workshops the first day because they start clashing.

>but this in parallel to other workshops taking
>place so the incentive for people to take this seriously was limited.

Brave attempts to have fewer parallel workshop streams failed to have 
the desired effect.

>Creating a more fundamental separation between the workshop phase of the
>IGF, and the main session phase, will, I think help people to think and
>report more strategically.

I wonder if that would result in some people (particularly new and 
high-ranking) people only attending for the main sessions and therefore 
miss the opportunity to dip into workshops. We are veterans and 
understand how the dynamics of the week plays out - others aren't.

>And we definitely need more commitment from workshop organisers to not
>crowd them with speakers, with no substantial discussion, learning, or
>ideas/messages.
>
>And the MAG's merging policy needs a good rethink as well :) As Marilia
>points out.. it really just did not work in many if not most cases.

This is a classic case of a process that simply doesn't work by "remote 
participation" (whether that's video conference or bilateral email).

To merge workshops the two (or more!) organisers need to spend some time 
across a table from each other, that's the only way to hammer out 
reducing the number of panellists and sub-topics to fit the slot. And 
more fundamentally to agree that a working relationship is possible at 
all.

Then you need to negotiate with other organisers so that workshops with 
a similar audience don't clash in the timetable (the secretariat does a 
good first-pass allocating slots, but experience shows that's just the 
beginning).

This is what that the planning sessions are for, and you simply have to 
be there. (Perhaps if we had six months rather than six weeks for the 
final stages, it could be done another way; but it's always a rush).
-- 
Roland Perry
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