[governance] caucus contribution, consultation and MAG meeting

[parminder]

Apologies for being late into this important discussion.

I will comment separately on the discussions that have taken place upto 
now and the evolving text. However, I think we should first of all seek 
that MAG implements the recommendations of the WG on IGF Improvements, 
especially on the following counts
  (below are all quotes from the WG's report)

"To focus discussions, the preparation process of each IGF should 
formulate a set of policy questions to be considered at the IGF, as part 
of the overall discussion. The results of the debates of these 
questions, with special focus on public policy perspectives and aimed at 
capacity building, should be stated in the outcome documentation."

"The outcome documentation should include messages that map out 
converging and diverging opinions on given questions."

"…...identifying pertinent key policy questions around which main 
sessions for the IGF will be  structured. In order to enhance the 
bottom-up process and to facilitate the identification of key policy 
questions, the Secretariat could also issue the call for workshop 
proposals before the first Open Consultation."

(quotes end)

There has been a sense of impatience and great urgency vis  a vis the 
fact that IGF has really not addressed key global public policy 
questions that it was created to contribute towards resolution of. For 
tooo long it has remained caught in matters of process and form. It is 
time to do what it really needed to do.

parminder



On Friday 01 February 2013 09:12 PM, Norbert Bollow wrote:
> Louis Pouzin <pouzin at well.com> wrote:
>> On Wed, Jan 30, 2013 at 7:13 PM, Norbert Bollow <nb at bollow.ch> wrote:
>>> Louis Pouzin <pouzin at well.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> re Main sessions.
>>>> *Only two *90min main sessions.
>>>> One on the 1st day, the other on the last day.
>>>> Interpretation only in english.
>>>> Reallocate interpreters to most popular workshops
>>> Do you think that severely reducing the weight of the main sessions
>>> like this is preferable to the suggestion of innovation in main
>>> session format (as currently in the draft submission [1])?
>>> [1] http://www.igcaucus.org/digressit/archives/79
>>>
>>> If so, why?
>> Yes Norbert.
>>
>> Main sessions are customarily preempted as show business for local
>> celebrities and IGF nomenklatura. That produces repetitious hackneyed
>> truisms inducing boredom and sleep. A fair number of attendees come
>> because there is interpretation in several languages. Two sessions of
>> that sort are enough for speakers' ego satisfaction.
>>
>> One more main session could be tried as innovation, whatever that
>> means. Result will tell.
>>
>> Workshops are more effective because:
>> - there is much more choice, one can move from a poor one to a good
>> one,
>> - speakers use spontaneous language,
>> - there are more interactions with the attendees,
>> - specific topics fit better with a small room,
>> - it's easier to identify who is there.
>>
>> On the minus side, there is no interpretation, or rarely. Speakers'
>> english is more or less understandable, depending on the room. This
>> could be corrected by "repeaters", that is people trained to decode
>> various english accents, and repeat verbatim in well spoken american
>> (Chicagoan).
> Louis, thanks a lot for explaining. I think that you are definitely
> making a valid point. On the other hand, I don't think that we should
> give up on trying to fix the main sessions. If the IGF evolves into
> just a heap of workshops plus a bit of "show business" at the beginning
> and end, we'll have lost the battle of building the IGF into something
> that is truly taken seriously.
>
> So far it seems to me that significantly more of the contributors to
> the statement agree with the view that we should emphasize the need
> for call of innovation of main sessions rather than to get rid of most
> of them.
>
> So right now it seems to me appropriate not to act on this change
> request.
>
> What do the others think?
>
> Greetings,
> Norbert
>

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