[governance] Should the IGF be reformed?

[Arsène Tungali (via governance Mailing List)]

2018-03-22 21:20 GMT+02:00 Jeremy Malcolm <jmalcolm at eff.org>:

> 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.
>
>
> 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.
>

That's a good point, things need to move i believe and it will take people
with innovative ideas to push them forward and create allies to support the
idea. If people lack innovative ideas, then we will have the same issues.
And i think that's the point of renewing the MAG every year, to bring in
new people with new ideas to improve the MAG. If new people cannot
challenge existing practices, then there is no point.


>
> 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%.
>

It is good that we have you there as another CS representative and i will
really urge other CS reps to join you in this so that we can have some
concrete action plan on how to improve this area of the IGF: the session
formats which i agree with you is one of those things that need to be
reviewed. I am curious to hear what you have in mind though to cover the
70% of the IGF.

>
>
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