[governance] Workshop judgments

Wed May 16 16:07:19 EDT 2012

Milton, Marilia,

here are some bits of atmosphere from today's MAG on these issues:

Today at MAG meeting there was quite a discussion and diversity of views on
reselection and number of workshops. While some supported your views,
others provided counter arguments like that all the proposals that meet the
basic criteria (and are of course relevant) should be approved, with
eventually inviting the organisers to strengthen the missing aspects (like
geographical or stakeholder diversity etc).
There were views that we should drop the least possible, since space is not
an issue in Baku (commonly main argument for dropping some proposals)  that
judging on the quality and output of the ws only based on the proposal
(having in mind all the possibly needed further improvements of the
application process) is not a thankful job, and we might bring more costs
than benefits of keeping them in (practice shows that some not-perfect
proposals ended up as good sessions and even more so vice versa).
Finally, some think that selection can also serve as an excuse for possible
"misuse" by some stakeholders to filter out "problematic" workshops
(though, of course, other stakeholders involved in the selection could
object, but with such a number of proposals and limited time for final
selection some may slip).
Obviously, a right balance is needed, which is quite a challenge. Good
thing is that, even though MAG is finally in charge of decisions, thematic
break out sessions were opened for non-MAG observers, to allow "more eyes"
and experiences.

Regarding the merger, it was decided that MAG will not impose merging
sessions, but only recommend. The organisers may then decide. The least,
the organisers should contact with the organisers of similar sessions to
make sure they cover different angles and perspectives and not overlap.
Some might even find it useful to get a suggestion of whom they can
possible merge with (I have heard of some), while those that decide to go
on their own will be allowed to.

Hope this helps.

Best!

   Vlada

On Wed, May 16, 2012 at 7:42 PM, Marilia Maciel <mariliamaciel at gmail.com>wrote:

> I completely agree with Milton. Slots in the IGF are a public resource of
> the community and should be managed accordingly, with the aim of fostering
> productive discussions. No obviously bad or inconsistent proposal should be
> given a slot just because the proponent took the time to submit some
> paragraphs. Unfortunately, it happened in past years that one or two
> proposals got rejected, but the group that evaluated them was asked to
> reconsider its decision. If it becomes recurrent, the exercise of selecting
> the workshops would be somewhat unproductive.
>
> Marília
>
> On Wed, May 16, 2012 at 12:24 PM, Milton L Mueller <mueller at syr.edu>wrote:
>
>> Thanks for these helpful notes, Izumi!
>> I see that the number and quality of workshops was discussed quite a bit.
>> How many can be eliminated and which should be merged?
>> This has been a longstanding issue with the IGF.
>>
>> Because it is so easy to submit a workshop - but not easy at all to
>> organize and run a good one - I believe that the MAG and the Secretariat
>> have an important obligation to eliminate obviously bad proposals. They
>> should reject those that are not relevant to global internet governance but
>> are about ICT generally, or don't have an actual governance angle. They
>> should also insist that organizations or individuals who submitted more
>> than three workshop proposals withdraw all but the two or three best ones.
>>
>> They should also be very careful with mergers. A merger can literally
>> ruin multiple workshops by diluting their focus, involving too many
>> panelists or organizers, or throwing together incompatible approaches.
>>
>> As an example, IGP proposed one workshop, which has a lot of support
>> among people interested in addressing. The proposal is actually for a
>> workshop - it is not a series of "speakers" but brings together people to
>> actually work on something according to a defined framework. It would not
>> be possible to "merge" this workshop with another one that is based on the
>> idea of a series of speakers. Those two approaches are simply not
>> compatible.
>>
>> Let me add that I was happy to see these comments from MAG members:
>>
>> > -----Original Message-----
>> >
>> > Paul Wilson
>> > level of commitment of many workshops wasn't good enough, to give
>> > confidence - not serious approach taken,
>> > relevance is important - some content is not relevant to IGF
>> >   not about Internet Governance, but ICT only - not accept those
>> > we should trim down, to make sure we have high quality
>> > appeared to be repeated, not convincing
>> >
>> > Bill Drake
>> > Support what Paul said
>> > One individual submitted 8 proposals
>>
>>
>>
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>
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