[governance] WSIS+10 in Paris: Brief report from day 1

[Suresh Ramasubramanian]

pachauri is an academic who sits on lot of government and intergovernmental committees

currenly at yale, and before that, director general of TERI, a civil society but politically wired indian think tank

--srs (iPad)

On 26-Feb-2013, at 9:45, Norbert Bollow <nb at bollow.ch> wrote:

> Dear all
> 
> Here is a brief report from day 1 of the WSIS+10 review conference
> in Paris.
> 
> As usual, one of the highlights of such events is the
> opportunity to interact in-person with people with whom you
> otherwise will only communicate electronically. Those
> conversations were again the highlights of the day for me.
> 
> Unsurprisingly, many of the speeches from political dignitaries
> (ministers etc.) were not particularly interesting to me.
> 
> The three interventions from civil society reprentatives (Grace
> Githaiga in the opening session; Michael Gurstein followed by
> Anriette Esterhuysen in the "High level" session) were however
> good and interesting and made important points.
> 
> Of course other speakers also made good points. One theme that
> came up in many different variations is that practices and
> philosophy of the Free Software and Open Source movements are
> not only applicable to computer software, but also in many other
> ways, for example in regard to needed changes in education to
> "break the walls of the classroom".
> 
> Personally I found the remarks of Rajendra Pachauri (the chair
> of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) very inspiring
> and energizing: He spoke on applying knowledge to address
> important global problems, among which he emphasized not only
> climate change but also poverty. Nothing about what he pointed
> out is really new or surprising to anyone who is minimally well
> informed, but I still found his intervention highly significant.
> Perhaps the reason which makes me assign significance to his
> words is not so much the content of what he said, but the fact
> that (at least from my perspective) he did not come across as
> some speaking with the voice of a politician, but as someone with
> a mindset grounded in engineering. Also significant is the
> prominence that the WSIS+10 organizers assigned to his brief
> speech by putting it first in the "high level panel" before all
> the ministers.
> 
> In summary, perhaps the main point of the day is that the
> concept of knowledge societies really needs to be about the
> sharing and application of knowledge in practical ways.
> 
> Greetings,
> Norbert
> 
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