[governance] Should the IGF be reformed?

[Jeremy Malcolm]

On 21/3/18 10:12 pm, Joly MacFie wrote:
> Just to play devil's advocate bit.
>
> As you may know, I am a champion of remote participation. However, the
> reasons that ICANN actually gave up on remote hubs, and at ICANN61
> readily reduced RP to audio stream and email  at the drop of an Adobe
> Connect flaw, should be contemplated.  If not handled well, remote
> participation can be disruptive, and unsatisfactory to both local and
> remote participants. And handling it well can be a big drain on
> resources. Some times simpler solutions work, if not better, as well.
>
> I have particular sympathy for those in Q&A queues who, having perhaps
> traveled half way around the planet to attend, are pre-empted by
> somebody at home, maybe still in their pajamas.

Years ago when I coordinated the Online Collaboration Dynamic Coalition
(it ended because of politics) we drew a distinction between synchronous
and asynchronous participation. The IGF's biggest problem with remote
participation is not the flaky streaming software (which I can attest
to), or the lack of consideration given to timezones (which I can also
attest to; this week's MAG meetings were from 2am - 10am my local time),
but the fact that asynchronous participation (ie. participation that
doesn't require you to be online at the same time as everyone else) is
given such a low priority.

Imagine the IGF as (a more civil, moderated, and outcome-oriented
version of) Reddit. Millions of Redditors around the world participate
in discussions and are able to collaborate together to actually create
useful things, which are an analogue of the recommendations that the IGF
could create, if it wanted to. For example, this collaborative artwork
was produced over a 72 hours period by thousands of Redditors, who came
online at different points during that 72 hour period. The result is
kind of chaotic, definitely ridiculous, but it's a legitimate work of art:

http://sudoscript.com/reddit-place/

I'm not even a big Reddit fan or user, but imagine if the IGF could do
something similar, like a policy hackathon, that could produce useful,
tangible outputs in a relatively short period of time. Unfortunately,
this kind of participation is completely off the IGF's agenda. During
the entire MAG meeting that just ended, there was zero time allotted to
discussing possible new innovative outcome-oriented processes, most time
being devoted to existing, conventional sessions such as workshops.

I have been working on some ideas for a such processes that would allow
asynchronous online participation on an equal footing to participation
in person or via synchronous attendance at an IGF meeting. There is
still a prospect that something like this could be piloted for 2018, but
many MAG members, with their focus on workshop selection and main topic
themes, don't seem to be able to see the forest for the trees. Workshops
and (conventional) main sessions should be 30% of what the IGF does, not
90%.

-- 
Jeremy Malcolm
Senior Global Policy Analyst
Electronic Frontier Foundation
https://eff.org
jmalcolm at eff.org

Tel: 415.436.9333 ext 161

:: Defending Your Rights in the Digital World ::

Public key: https://www.eff.org/files/2016/11/27/key_jmalcolm.txt
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