The following are the outputs of the real-time captioning taken during the Tenth Annual Meeting of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) in João Pessoa, Brazil, from 10 to 13 November 2015. Although it is largely accurate, in some cases it may be incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. It is posted as an aid to understanding the proceedings at the event, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.
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>> MODERATOR: Okay. Should we start? Dear many participants of the session thank you for joining us. It the quality matters not the quantity as always. So thank you for joining us. Some sessions are still on. So we do expect more people during the course of the session. I think this has become already kind of a tradition on the session since 2011. We have been trying to put up the guidelines or recommendations on or principles for e participation. So how should it actually work.
My personal opinion if I can express it is that we manage to come up to a very good document throughout the next couple of years. The session today will have three parts. First all three parts all of us will take part. The first part will be a brief intro in to what are the main principles. And Ginger will present briefly and we can discuss what you think about the prin pels if they can be improved and the second part we want to do a debate between the two teams. There will be a motion about and against e participation and your role as the participants in the session will be to actually protect them with good questions. And at the end vote who you think that was better with the arguments. And that should hopefully lead us to get some more or sharper evidence, sharper comments and thoughts about goods and bads of e participation and the last part we are going to open up and discuss how do we implement it further and where do we get funding and what the IGF should do and so on and so forth. Ginger I leave it to you to briefly present the principle and the whole process.
>> GINGER PAQUE: Thank you, Vlad and thank those of you who have come and can I ask someone to bring a copy of the principles to the gentleman who just joined us in the back? We gave you a copy because it is important to share the work that has been done by participants like yourselves since 2011 in Nairobi, Kenya when we started a series of workshops on the principles for remote participation which had been brought to that that point by the remote participation Working Group for the IGF and my colleague, Raquel, Maria Massil, small group of hard workers and firm believers in the remote participation agitated until we could get some work. We in particular appreciate the work of the captioners, if you are listening to me, you know that we are among your greatest admirers because the transcripts make it much easier for remote participants to join in to read under slow conditions when they have bad audio, when they don't have video. We always have the backup of the captioners. So that ability and that service is greatly appreciated.
You have in front of you the principles separated in to several sections. You'll see inclusiveness which is, of course, one of the basic principles underlying remote participation allowing
>> MODERATOR: Quickly interrupt you because I got a note from the remote participants there are couple of them whether there is an online copy of the document at the moment we will share it later with them as well.
>> GINGER PAQUE: The link to the online, Dee can you find it in e mail and post it for the remote participants. It is a Google document. We did share it in the announcement.
>> MODERATOR: Okay.
>> GINGER PAQUE: But I am not seeing it here.
>> MODERATOR: During the course of the session we can simply send them the link.
>> GINGER PAQUE: Yes, it is online. It is a living document. You can open it join it and comment on it. We do count on one of the outputs of this workshop again is to keep growing, keep working on it and see how we can bring them to reality. Because it is precisely that inclusiveness, that we are looking for. It may be that we would have a session that has more online participants like the Diplo webinars. At the end of the month we give an I.D. barometer and updates on the events of the month. There are more online participants than in the venue in Geneva. I am not going to go through the document and read that because now the remote participants have at link and each you here have a copy. I do hope that you will access it online as well and make your comments.
After inclusiveness which brings more people in to the process, that's not quite enough. Because we don't want remote observation. We want remote participation and we want equality of participation. When the floor is opened by the Moderator of a panel, for comments and questions, we expect that the Moderator will respect the right of the remote participations, participants to participate on an equal footing. Now that doesn't mean we need preference. That doesn't mean remote participants be intervene whenever they want during the session but means they be given their proper place in the queue, but the Moderator of the of the session realizes there are remote participants and should be included in the call for comments and questions. These questions should be taken in to consideration and answered as well. There are other points that are perhaps a bit idealistic for equality of participation because it is very difficult to bring our remote participants in to the coffee breaks and to serve them our coffee and our excellent chocolate muffins that we are having here.
But we do work on it and we are trying we hope that we will all work at giving these same opportunities to the remote participants when possible. Another area of principles is scale and scaleability and stability. There have to be funding mechanisms to allow for this because without funding, of course, it is only an ideal that we are shooting for that we are working for. How are we going to do problem solving and new implementations if there isn't funding. We need to make sure that remote participation an is institutionalized and both the budget and the strategies take in to account the needs.
Our next section deals with capacity building which, of course, will help in all the other areas as everyone realizes and we raise the awareness of remote participation and the need to be able to include not everyone can make it here to Joao Pessoa. It is very far and it is a bit expensive for some of us to be here. Not everyone can find funding. Raising awareness within fund can mechanisms organizers and with participants or would be participants themselves, is very important.
The principles then extend to providing platforms and improving platforms so that all participants can join and that includes Persons with Disabilities who may have hearing audio, visibility vision, other difficulties to join us online as well. It is difficult perhaps to be here in person and then what about online. Still our websites and our tools are not completely compatible for those who are participating at a distance or those who have disabilities that affect their participation.
Our last area is integrating e participation. And that is the ideal when we begin to integrate remote participation in to the methods and provices of workshop planning. The panel Moderator takes in to account the people in the room and the people who are outside the room and who are engaged. Our tech team who do such a wonderful job for us. Already we have our captioners working with us and we have our tech team for remote participation and I must say that I just came out of a main session where we had an excellent example of remote participation including a remote presentation with his slides audio and video as well as presentations from remote participants. So we it doesn't really make sense to go more in to these. You have them in front of you. You, can work with them and read them and go online. Y what I would like to say you have heard more or less what is in there. What do you think isn't in there that should be in there? We know what we already did. What's the future and what's the innovation we are missing. What can you bring in? If you came to the room you must have had some kind of concern about remote or online or e participation. Is there something that we are not addressing that you would like to see in is it? We already know what we did. What should we do?
Any comments? Any reasoning behind it or questions or responses?
>> MODERATOR: We should try to find a microphone. There is a microphone. So you will just have to stretch your legs and okay. Thanks. And introduces is your selves for the sake of the transcripts.
>> This is Arsen. I am an ISOC Ambassador to the IGF and I am from the Democratic Republic of Congo. I am glad to be part of this session as it is one of my session I mean one of my interests. I took the DiploFoundation online courses like three years ago and this was one of my the courses I took. So I encourage and really like how we are able to provide remote participation for participants because for the past three years I haven't been able to be physically in to any IGF meetings but I was following, I was following remotely. But the challenge that we have and which is an issue everywhere is access to Internet. And it is I would say it is impossible for some people to be able to participate remotely where they can't have access to the Internet. But there is the other way of using mobile phones. I don't know whether that's I don't know how you call it. I don't know whether you have mentioned it in one of those when we are are talking about the platforms. I don't know whether you have included that as an alternative for people who are not able to access Internet but who can still participate remotely using their mobile phones. Thank you.
>> GINGER PAQUE: That's an excellent point. Thank you. If you don't have access to the Internet you are even further marginalized. Unfortunately that's beyond the scope of what we can deal with here. I have to admit I am not even sure we are using WebEx for the IGF meetings. I'm not sure whether it is accessible on mobile. Does anyone here know?
>> MODERATOR: I tried it. It works quite well.
>> GINGER PAQUE: That's a good answer. The Diplo web bin anywheres and classrooms are completely accessible on mobile. So the countries that have leapfrogged directly to mobile access for better or for worse are being incorporated in to this system. So that's one way of access or perhaps we can work on more. But it is true and I don't think we dealt anywhere in our principles about the problem of the need for access to the internet in order to participate online and I have made a note but I hope you will also make that comment. Right now can I ask our remote Moderator if we have any comments pending and if at any time you do have any comments, please invite them to join us and let us know if you have any comments from the online participants. If not yet, at any time that they don't what to, this is a very informal platform except during the debate you are welcome to jump in any time.
>> Thank you, Chair. We have just some participants there, they are interacting in the chat room and they just had access to the link with the file and after they read the file they said they are going to have some more comments.
>> GINGER PAQUE: Thank you very much and thank you for your help. So that's one excellent point and if nothing else, it is worth having this workshop to have one good solid improvement to the principles. So thank you arson. That's very valuable.
>> MODERATOR: If I can add one comment when I was reading again, I thought it is an interesting angle is what are actually the advantages of being an online participant comparing to those in the room? And I'm not talking about being able to walk around your own room in panties rather than being in a suit. I'm talking about exactly what she said now. So we have a kind of a parallel discussion. And I think Marial mentioned it recently. She sent an e mail. It was an example, IGF or somewhere what it actually used the webinar platform for in situ participants to raise their hand because it was more convenient to follow the flow of who raised their hand when and so on.
>> GINGER PAQUE: But at that point don't you think that is a use of an ICT to carry out a more orderly use that using a tool.
>> MODERATOR: Yes.
>> GINGER PAQUE: I like the comment and I think it is important but what I would see is the advantage to putting the online and the in situ participants in equal footing in raising their hand ands that a strong value in equalling and levelling the field. I wonder if it would be better to wait for the advantages and disadvantages until after the debate.
>> MODERATOR: We can mingle here in the corridors and they can't, but on the other hand, they can mingle during the session and we can't.
>> GINGER PAQUE: As our remote Moderator pointed out. The remote participants are mingling and chatting between them sechls as you would be murmuring between each other in your seats and that is considered impolite but the remote participants are chatting among themselves and it is perfectly polite and it helps the discussion move along sometimes. Do you have a comment?
>> They are chatting among themselves.
>> GINGER PAQUE: Thank you.
>> MODERATOR: You can also follow the panel and not just chat, on line participants.
>> I'm not taking over from the remote Moderator but I believe that Shawna wants to speak.
>> GINGER PAQUE: Do we have a participant or is is this a private conversation with dee?
>> No, I believe she wants to make a comment but on audio maybe?
>> GINGER PAQUE: You can unmute her
>> Because if the participants wants to they have the option to send a video or audio if they prefer. They can.
>> MODERATOR: It is fine if they can.
>> They can.
>> MODERATOR: Put the participant on. Hello. Can we hear you?
>> Can you hear me?
>> GINGER PAQUE: Yes, we can. Please go ahead.
>> Perfect. Okay. Thanks. I had to leave the room and come back in order for to be able to here. My name is Shawna Finnegan and I have been participating remotely for the past two IGFs and I participated in the IGF in Bali and Aku in person. I have experience in both being there in person and remotely. Can you hear me?
>> GINGER PAQUE: Yes, we hear you perfectly.
>> Great. So I wanted to connected to the conversation you were having around we as remote participants can have chats, while the session is going on, while in participants onsite cannot. In a way it connects to something that Ruth has been asking for since last year this is one of the remote participants who is quite active. And she said there should be kind of a Tweet floor (cutting out) where the participants can (cutting out). And I still be really good to have places where you can connect the onsite participants to the offsite participants while the session is going on, whether it is a chat room because people on site I can see have laptops in front of them. So it might be but plenty of people I am sure having conversations on their laptops while the panel is going on. So why not open the stage where we can all chat together around the panel. And perhaps that would be an input to the panel if the panel is going too long or going off topic or there is a burning question to change the direction of the conversation and there is kind of a way to bring that together without interrupting the flow of the conversation.
>> GINGER PAQUE: Thank you very much Shawna. That's a very interesting concept. Very often while we are in the room we join the Web ex platform so we can take part in the chats. We have a Skype group chat open, for instance, in meetings when there are multi stakeholder groups. Civil Society may have a Skype window open to organize their strategy and their interventions. I'm sure business does it as well and I don't know, you know, about all of the stakeholder groups but several groups do join in a Skype to coordinate their interventions and other kinds of chat. Now and sometimes those include on and off in situ and online participants. So a Skype group often does that in parallel, for instance, with the Web ex we are using today. That's a very interesting point. Yeah.
>> So Shawna just while you are speaking about it what I clearly came to mind is Twitter feed, right? So when you have a Twitter feed for the session or for the event, you can clearly also follow the discussions that are and even those as you were saying on the format, content on different trends. So I would also say to aggregate some events do show also the Twitter feed on the screens. So that's an interesting point. Thank you.
>> MODERATOR: Play devil's advocate. Does all of that actually takes aour attention from the session. Because how many parallel channels can we actually follow? Anyone?
>> Honestly, can I okay.
>> MODERATOR: Yeah, Raquel you can say.
>> I can say I am in the workshop for me when I am following a workshop and the Twitter trend sometimes it is like talking to a person next to you that you don't even know. You miss a point or you didn't see a dimension. Or I'm I mean it helps at least for my directions.
>> MODERATOR: The older generation Diedre.
>> The older generation is talking to them on WebEx at the moment while I am listening to you. I am not doing such a good job of reporting perhaps but certainly it is possible to do both at once.
>> MODERATOR: Arsen.
>> Arsen speaking. I would say it is probably for me I'm more or less using my Twitter. I am on my Twitter feeds. For instance, in this session when there is a specific hashtag for that prioritization I am always following the trends on for that particular hashtag because I want to hear people in the room what do they think about the things that have said by the panel or anyone else who is making any comments. So whenever sometimes I didn't get something clearly from the panelists someone may have made comments on Twitter and that helps me to understand to make my own points my own opinion about something that has been said by the panel.
>> If I may, it keeps me engaged because it is just so long you can look up front and listen. When you get other comments from other people it keeps you engaged and gives you sometimes another perspective and it raises questions that you that you are mesmerized by what is happening in front and then somebody who is not there and not under that kind of spell comes with a deafrn question, a different perspective and it just opens up your views even broader than they already are.
>> MODERATOR: So raise that question, is because now I just came from the session moderating the Net Neutrality session and we had two queues of people. We had the online participation and we had Twitter. It is hard for Moderators to follow. We have to sync it kind of synchronizes different parts of moderation to be able to make sure we include everyone and it makes sense somehow.
>> GINGER PAQUE: Do we have a remote participant?
>> Thanks. We have actually a few comments from Ruth. The first comment she said was that one problem is that their comments on the chat, on the panel are seen as talking amongst themselves and are not fed in. Later she made another comment. That said that she finds Twitter wall in the room less distracting and more unifying than everyone being on different channels.
>> GINGER PAQUE: If I might address that. One problem as a remote Moderator we keep chatting during the presentation which are very good for the points that Arsen and others have brought up but we can only open the comments to the floor when the Moderator opens the noor for comments and then very often that chat that's been going on it is not clear what should be read in and when. So when we are working remotely we need to make it very clear I would like this comment to be read when the floor is opened and clarify what is the chat and what isn't. That point one way to bring that chat in to for Ruth's point in to the room and to let others share what they are say something to project not an Twitter wall but the chat itself. We are projecting the remote comments and the comments of the people in the room. Is this going to distract from the speaker? What do you think?
>> MODERATOR: Introduce yourself.
>> My name an Alex Kuro from court IP trust in Kenya. Yeah, in a sense it is going to distract but like we also saying we want to, to be injected in to what we are doing. But I want to introduce yet another dimension. When you are chatting it would be a chat meant for the person next to you or the other. Now when you put it on the big screen on beam to the whole world are we also going to raise in to issues of something being out of context. Not privacy but out of context because it is a comment you are making to a friend then it has now been made and announced to the whole world and you say that you don't think that Vlad is peeking loud enough and the next minute it is a complaint. You know what I am saying? Yeah.
>> GINGER PAQUE: What do you suggest then? We need to be very clear what is a public comment and what is a private chat and what if we are going project it they need to know very clearly that we are projecting it.
>> Maybe I would go a step further if there is a possibility of flagging something through the technologist to say this is a comment intended. Whenever it comes through but it had been flagged it meant to be input or read, whether it is coming when the presentation is going on at the end they can be looked at in that regard. That sort of mitigate against that regardless of the platform. So it saves putting everything up but it is what is intended for that. It is not missed out.
>> MODERATOR: I'm thinking whether we should maybe cut this discussion in order to continue it later just for the sake of provoking diverse views in the form of debate. Because I think and I know that I have been preparing well for this and I hope you will be able to better reflect on the issues. So for the next some 20 or something minutes we do the following thing. We are going in to a modified Oxford debate where we is have two teams, two ladies on my left and team mixed team on my right. They will reflect on the following motion, and the motion says as a general rule excluding closed meetings or special circumstances online participants should have equal footing with in situ participants with open conferences and meetings. On my right we have Raquel Gato from ISOC and we have age le from Serg Government. The two of them will try to fight in favor of this motion. On my right I are Ginger Paque and (inaudible) who will try combat against it. I am sure it is going to be an interesting debate. We will three minutes of each team with a setting inputs. And then we are going to have two minutes by each team rebuff and then we are going to ask participant over there and online to give them questions and then we will have after that we want you to vote you think won the debate based explicitly on the arguments they raised. So that's the point. Not the people if you look them or not. I will read once again the motion and then I think we can start. So the motion is as a general rule excluding closed meetings or special circumstances online participants should have equal footing with in situ participants in open conferences and meetings. Ladies, the floor is yours.
>> Thank you Vlad. First we are really glad we have the woel principles on our side. So we are in the favored team. While looking to this what we first stated was what is the potential differences between being an online participants and being an in situ participants. We gather a couple of them. For example, the visibility. We can see each other. We can have this face to face interaction. And also we can easily raise or hands and make comments. So think taking those two in to accounts, what do we look for to defend in favor is for a few interactions it needs to break some barriers and you need to be more inclusive and you do need to consider change of culture while you are leading a sessions, while you are preparing the event itself and in a defense. So you want to raise something
>> Okay. Yes, I think what we are saying actually as we are standing at the gate every morning in the sun waiting to enter there are people in sitting the virtual gate waiting for us to start. Knowing the challenges we face as a community globe Ali and in our countries we need everyone at the table and when we say that we have to mean it and when we mean it that means that their voice their participation needs to have the same quality the same possibilities that we have who are here. That means if that they have to be available, they have to be able to speak to be heard to talk to react. To anything we say here. The only thing they will miss is the chocolate cookie but we miss the fact that they can get um up and get anything they wish. If we mean it we wanting developing to come here, the ones who are in the situation where they have to fight for access and once they have access they need to be make good use of it. If we mean that then we have to give them the same place the same rights the same possibilities as those of us who are fortunate enough to be here.
(Laughter).
>> And so okay. So I'm losing my half minute. If there is a will there is a way. So don't come with technology issues, with being with costs. All of this we can tackle, we can follow, we can find technology we follow and we will increase, we do have now the video, the Twitter and now the chats that we are talking about. So just consider why we are talking about equal footing if we mean it, we can do it.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you. Sharp on time. Okay. The floor
(Laughter).
>> MODERATOR: The floor to the other side. Your three minutes starts now.
>> GINGER PAQUE: Thank you very vuch. When you think online, what's the second word that comes in to your mind? Think of a 16, 15 year old and the majority of the people who are online the next word is going to be gaming. So online gaming is the quintessential, that is what we are thinking of when we online gaming is online. It is what pushed and moved and unfortunately I don't think you can see this, but when they just had the online gaming championships n Berlin last week for league of legends they did it in person. They had online gaming championships in a stadium with 70,000 view yours in person. They put up their screens. They had the players in the middle of the room. And they had everyone there cheering them on. A massive stadium watching the online gaming. Now if that's not a clear and positive indication that we are not virtual people, we are real in person people we want to be virtual people. Online education, you need to be an in classroom. Webinars are designed for that. We are talking about changing a structure of a meeting. I went two days in an airplane. I had to find people to take my place at home. I made big sacrifices here. And I should have priority to cover my expenses. I worked hard. I'm I'm dealing with people who are breaking the system. Before we had these online transcripts we could negotiate openly. We could talk. We could say what we thought. This is what I think we could brainstorm and now we have these transcripts that are searchable. So things can be taken out of context and thrown in my face. It has totally changed the concept of negotiation and my ability to express my opinion freely in a meeting. So
>> MODERATOR: 30 seconds.
>> GINGER PAQUE: Your turn.
>> MODERATOR: 30 seconds.
>> Okay. So I have to make a very short disclaimer, now I am an MAG member and Ginger is also and have participated over the course of this year in putting together the programme of this wonderful event. But I also like to get my hands dirty. So I have a for the past three days I have been supporting remote participation in the main session hall right across this room and I have also been dealing with remote participation in many other events. So my observations are based on real experiences. Now it is obvious that being against remote participation is not my natural position but I have to do it. Vlad made me do it. So please take the following with a grain of salt. So okay, so Vlad you can start the counter, so point No. 1, session organizers take remote participation only as an afterthought. They don't work it out including the remote participation in to the debate. So and also the Chair for gets to check if someone is actually on the remote participation queue. Even worse designated remote Moderators sometimes don't even show up. So when the Chair recognizes the their is there is a remote participation queued discussion is often moved on. Making the interventions significantly less relevant and also event organizers take remote participation as a afterthought. In closing remote participation if it is not integrated properly it just doesn't make sense. So let us not fool anyone that we are including anyone on an equal footing.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you. Okay. We go for two minutes rounds for each team to rebuff and then you folks get ready for some nice questions. Okay. Your two minutes starts.
>> Okay. Thank you. So I must disagree with the with Ginger first because it is not the case which is very interesting. It is not about the physical presence but being a person and being fully wanting to be fully integrated in to the activity and in to the society. And we must remember like we are building this here for people centered Information Society. And that's all about having online or offline. It is about the interaction and the power and the action for a Democratic and just unfair debate and about the (cutting out). (Standing by. Skype went offline).
>> If you go have a try to participate remotely here. We have to do the same form and we do receive an e mail that we will allow us to join. So we do have also the security check. We have the remote Moderators which are kind of the security guys around as if we were here, so on the security issues, the online participation has its own way but it is there. The concept is there. And it is pretty much the same the guidelines are the same. So on the meet and greet, just just to defend my team, did you meet someone here that you never saw? How are you going to follow up with them? Are you meeting them every day? You are following them online. So here you go. So the interaction is works both way. On the meaningful participation for the team you said it all. You were in favor. So I don't need to defend it.
>> Yes, if it comes to the meaningful, that's why we say that everyone needs to participate even the ones that are not here that they have to have the same opportunities because they may just walk around with that one I.D. that will solve the biggest probable lem we have been carrying for so some long and if you don't allow them to deliberate with us then how are you going to get that solution from them and I totally agree with you. The more we allow them to do that the more they will participate and the broader pool of resources and solutions will be.
>> MODERATOR: Okay. Two more minutes for your team.
>> Just wanted to take this question regarding the participation and deliberations. I mean, you know, in order to have a meaningful debate we, of course, must have informed participants. And there are two sides to this issue. My point of view the first one is transparency. This is why my meetings are open Webcast and transcribed but this matter of behavior is exception. For instance, only a few Governments offer such kind of transparency funny and the second part is careful issue analysis and argument building and assessment and education and that is also a thing which is rarely seen in practice. So if we don't have these things, it is only, you know, a matter of opinion battle. It is not an argumentative debate. It is not an enough to say we should have more inclusion in deliberations. We need to ensure it that it is meaningful.
>> GINGER PAQUE: I will quickly answer your question. Thank you Raquel for your points. I think they are very valuable but unfortunately wrong. Because I wish it were true but when you walk in the door and you go through security, they are looking at you, they know who you are and they check who you are indeed you said you were and they check your identification. Online we have no idea who they are. We don't know what they are going to do. We have absolutely no way of verifying what and who they are. Perhaps that's good. We should have online anonymity but I'm sorry if you think about it you will realize that it is simply not true.
>> MODERATOR: Okay. Thanks. So should we try to vote somehow? It is up to we do have back our remote participants. Unfortunately their online participants you missed the very interesting part because the whole yeah.
(Laughter).
>> MODERATOR: Okay. Let me just try to see how this how I turn this off. This is complicated I guess more than I thought. Let me just see. Stop it. So there was a problem with Internet in the whole venue that is the issue on it happened in the middle the debate which helped the debate grow. Maybe before since we have participants back, is there any comment or question from the online participants?
>> Thank you, Chair. Yes, we have one comment. We have one comment from Ruth and she says that we we have to fill out a form with quite a lot of information about accessing webex.
>> That's what I said.
>> MODERATOR: Okay. Before we go in to that discussion, so on one hand we had to my left we had the team that was in favor of a motion saying as a general rule excluding closed meetings and special circumstances online participants should have equal footing with in situ participants in open conferences and meeting and to the right we had a team that was against this motion. Now I want to see including the online participants if you feel like voting if you think you have heard enough, I don't know because of the interruptions, how many of those think that the team in favor was better this time with the arguments? Raise your hand. Is there any comment from the online participants? Anyone voting?
>> Before Ruth said that they have to fill out a lot of information about themselves, and then Jorg says they only need to fill out last name and first name and e mail address and all the other information can be left blank.
>> MODERATOR: But no one voting. The question was who votes for the team who was in favor of the motion. The arguments, yeah, yeah the arguments. One. Yeah well, in the room, yeah. In the room, yeah, yeah. In the room. In the room. So for this team, for the arguments of this team, two. Who votes for the arguments of the team that was against. Two, two. Abstained.
(Laughter).
>> MODERATOR: Okay. So we have so we have a
(Laughter).
>> MODERATOR: He was waiting to see how it will go. Okay. That shows that we still have to work a lot on that. But I think we can actually open up the we have another maybe ten minutes of discussion. Based on this, of course, I encourage you to come up with the comments on any kind of reflection on the debate itself and the arguments. But also how do we go ahead. If we have this set of principles which I find it quite good it can be improved, of course, always how do we put in power? Should we ask this distinguished colleagues from MAG to somehow push it or should we distribute it further or how do we effectively put it in power and also how do we security funding for better e participation remote participation for the IGF. That means training capacity building, facilities, what you mentioned at the beginning going beyond. Any reflections. I will start with you and then go back to the panelists and debaters. Since the transcribers are back.
>> Diedre Williams. I have done this online and you left out a question of the how do you make sure it doesn't break down because if you are online, and it suddenly disappears it is absolutely dreadful.
>> MODERATOR: Thanks. Any one of you? Any reflections on the arguments also? It is a good time now. No, no I mean the debate and the arguments of the debate.
>> Yes, I think it is a follow up to what see she is it saying and away of supporting the team that I was accusing here. One of the things that could be done is that sometimes it is better to have it a bit even even if it is a bit late than never to have it at all. A flicker of connectivity on the side of the recipient or on the side of where it is happening or in transit of the server means that you have lost that session, and nothing is going to repeat that. The session should have a parallel recording. We need to have sort of a backup, a camera just rolling and in the event that somebody needs to play back that recording then that can be used an as a backup and that mitigate the accusations that I was framing. It has something that someone can access a bit later.
>> MODERATOR: Practical question, the servers that are hosing webex are here in the venue. If they are here that means that even the room would be closed, the online room would be closed. And they couldn't continue chatting among themselves.
>> No, it is cloud service. It is a cloud service. So
>> MODERATOR: The room remained open.
>> Yeah, the room remained open and they could chat between themselves.
>> MODERATOR: They had their own parallel session and we had our own parallel session. Any one of you want to reflect on the debate or how we go ahead?
>> Well, you know the Internet and the computing is not a reliable thing. I mean it is electronic. They need breaks and that's why we have redundant connections. That's why we have storages. That's why we have all other means of, you know, having data backed up and redundant and, you know, readily available in case of in case of disasters. And we do it because this is important to us. This data is important to us. That's why we do it. So I guess the same thing goes with remote participation. I mean we have to ensure that it is built in to our processes grounds up. And, you know, when one thing failed the other is going to take over. If we really want it, you know, and I think that we should have this kind of support to remote participation because these days it is really less and less important where do you live physically. You can work for a living, you know, in such a distant place from the civilization using the Internet. So I mean why not use the same technology for remote participation if the President of the United States can stay in touch with his generals, using remote participation for which they paid an enormous amount of money but it works and it is fail safe. Then I think that we can do it as well. And we should.
>> MODERATOR: So where is the gap? Why don't we have it? Funding obviously but is that the only problem or how o do we get to more funding and more seriously taking this.
>> The willingness and understanding this is our fundamental need. It is a fundamental need for the Army general to be in direction connection with his supreme commander. So, you know, it is obvious and it seems natural when you look at it from that Point of View. So
>> MODERATOR: Raquel you have been one person who was basically together with Ginger from the beginning of this remote participation Working Group. And there was if I recall correctly 2007 or something like that. So at least 7 years ago. Did we I mean still okay it is not about the room here. That's not full. I would hope not because of us but I would hope that a room should be more crowded when we talk about e participation but my feeling also when I was back in MAG is that it was there was not enough seriously taking this issue as was some of them said, not enough willingness. Everyone is like yes, we need to do it but then when we need to do it ends up on a couple of hands full of people around helping to do their best to do something but that can't work. Any idea how can we move forward? How do we
>> Raquel: Yes. So I think as you said we might tend to agree on having on the principles, right? On the importance of having remote participation. But the operational side how to do it is usually the lack of follow up. So just being very, very briefly on my answer I think we need to showcase more the potential of the remote participation. This changing culture that I was saying for real in my in our debate is important. And showcasing the examples we have here showcasings all the other examples that we can have and making sure that we have the more distributed participation as possible is also important. So as we follow up it is a progressive work. It is not a one time deal and so we've learned also since the beginning we were learning each IGF we learn a piece, right? We learn the importance of the remote Moderator and e learn the importance of the transcript and so on. So this is the this is the building case and showcasing that is an evolution and it is bringing results also is important.
>> MODERATOR: Adding to that what you said, kind of not wasting the crises when we have these glitches like what happened today we should probably use it and say look how this looks like when there is no e participation. That doesn't mean we should put down the system for that.
>> Raquel: We miss someone. It is like we miss someone in the room.
>> If I may interrupt because it is related to MAG and the IGF, I mean it is really in most cases not the case that, you know, they don't want their they are not interested. But more the case of, you know, they have a 3 million other things which are more pressing to have this event happen at all. On their minds but if the IGF was better funded and better supported I'm sure that, you know, remote participation would be better as well.
>> MODERATOR: Diedre.
>> Diedre Williams. It seems to me when you are not here you have a disability. Your disability is not being here. When you are here your disability disappears and for many people they forget about it because this is a very very busy four days. I think perhaps it is only if you are intimately aware of the periods at which you have this disability that you want to push not to have it on an another occasion. And if I may make the parallel, the attendance of people with physical disability at this meeting is inclined to fall in to the same sort of space if you if you are not a wheelchair, you for get that you maybe you need a special accommodation in the bathroom or something because you are not in a wheelchair. So if you are at IGF you don't need remote participation.
>> MODERATOR: Yep.
>> So oh.
>> MODERATOR: Should we go first for the online participant.
>> Yes, we is Shawna she wants to make a comment through audio.
>> MODERATOR: Sure.
>> Shawna: Can you hear me?
>> MODERATOR: Yes.
>> Okay. So I wanted to agree with what Diedre just said when you are in the person when you are onsite it is not obvious to you necessarily that there are remote participants or how many there are. That does go back to the point that Ruth had about the IGF having a tweet wall. It should be obvious to you right away oh, we are disconnected from the Internet. The remote participants can't connect and as was said earlier I mean we are still connected to the Webex when we disconnect but we can have that conversation but that conversation was on Twitter on a Tweet wall db I mean if you have connectivity maybe you you can see that in the room. Just to have sense of that someone is missing. As Diedre said it is a disability in we don't have a corporal presence in the room. You can't see us put up our hand. We have to wait until somebody who is in the room notices and then they put up that your hand for us. You can't see if we are getting bored or if we would really like to talk about something more. We are really limited in that way. I do think having us in the same space as much as possible by having something projected up on the wall is where you get close to having equally footing. You get anywhere close to sort of making it feel like we are actually part of a conversation and I think connected to that is also the looking at different workshop formats that aren't so much a panel at the front of the room. If there are discussion questions for the workshop, which there often are they are be discussed among the participants while the workshop is going. If we disconnect we can input to the conversation. Maybe we discuss them on Twitter and then we input them again, too. So I think there are ways to include us better.
>> MODERATOR: Thanks a lot. Very valuable. Okay. We are coming close to the end. So one final comment and then brief reflections.
>> My name is Jaal from the youth programme. I like to comment about a situation we have in Brazil about participation in general. For example, in my city we have a very famous participatory budgeting. We have a digital participatory budgeting since 2006. And we had a mazing start with 172,000 people voting and participating online. That's almost 10% of the whole voters of my city. And from 2006 to 2013 we had the following numbers, 124,000, and then 25,000 in last year in 2013 we had 4,000. So more than 98%. So in this year it happens every two years. So it was supposed to be in December. And we have no news about if it is going to happen or not. So we have a lot of problems with that because the younger generation always so the younger generation and Brazil have a situation, that before 20 years ago or so we didn't have these spaces. These spaces were created but now we have the spaces but they are not very attractive to the youth. They are not very fast. There are a lot of progress and most of the times it takes a long time to deliberative process especially online becomes an action. So we have a lot of challenges not only my city, of course, everywhere to make this more appealing and make it more effective.
>> MODERATOR: Thanks. We are about to finish. Before that maybe last reflection from your side and then Ginger conclude.
>> Okay. Yes. Let me say it was, of course, a pleasure to do this and it was fun to be on the side that I am actually on. It is obvious easier but I have to say, you know, in order to get this to really work as it was already said you need really a mind shift. You need on both sides organizers who need to be realized that this is a valuable contribution that these people mak and on the side of the participant can participate I can share in my country many young people they don't know how to participate online. Because I did some sessions and I asked them to participate online and some of them had a problem to connect. At the didn't know how to connect. And that gives them a certain fear because it is unknown. They feel like they are not in control. They don't know what's going to happen. So even though they have access and tools you still are at very, very bottom of getting them used and accustomed and comfortable with doing it and I think we I am totally for this but we need to start at the bottom and make sure that people feel comfortable doing it so that they start ke demanding also to participate in that way so they realize they can make a contribution even if they are not present here. It saves money for Governments you don't need to travel all the time. You can do it online. Our Governments they are not in favor of doing things online. They say they have to be there in person. You know, even though you know they can do it. I mean negotiations you have to be there. I still belief for negotiations sit across from each other because everything speaks. But like conference like this it is not a negotiation. You can do things online. But they have different reasons why they prefer flying. But
(Laughter).
>> Raquel: But when it comes to us the people who need these experiences to grow and solve our problems to develop, we need to build the capacity in our young people in our older people in everyone. So the organizations will make the change in the mind shift in order to provide this.
>> MODERATOR: Thanks Raquel.
>> I want to thank the other team Ginger and Slovan and it was really funny. You did a great job. So this is the measure. And so and just to give a final message that we should also ambitious thoughts as we are talking here on remote participation and beyond IGF and beyond events itself for more Democratic channels of e participation we also should think that it is not only physical events that we need to bring online participants but also on the we could shift the center to an online event or online participation and then include the physical one. So we need to be ambitious and also think both ways and shift centers.
>> MODERATOR: Thanks. Ginger. How do we go ahead?
>> GINGER PAQUE: Well, I think that Slovan she had a wonderful example of putting words in to action and I know he is going to solve and take back to the MAG with me to move this forward and the things that we have learned from you are excellent. We will take them all in to account. So we don't need to elaborate on that but we'll do it online and I just want to quickly agree with several of you that it is not about the technology anymore. It is about the willingness and planning. It is not sabotage as you proposed. It is about apathy and not caring enough and you not doing it. You brought up the cost, one of the points that I would have brought up it is simply not cost effective because to what kind of infrastructure we will require to have to have a few online participants. Cost effective per person although the cost per person to be here is not cheap. It is cost effective in concept and inclusion. So we just need to do our planning. And I last live would like to con great the real winning team which I think is these two guys who their great provacative questions to us. So thank you.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you. Diedre you did the report do you want to use a minute just to maybe extract a couple of key words and key messages? I think the report will go online but do you feel comfortable doing that now or
>> Not very. I will try.
>> MODERATOR: Okay. So should we leave it then nor the online report. I have tell you that there is also another step that we are doing which is the Geneva engaged conference about the e participation in December in Geneva but it is helping Geneva institutions to open up for e participation to everyone in Geneva be participate on in that.
>> Diedre: There was a problem for remote participants. One of them would like to talk further with somebody in the room and we solved the problem.
>> Someone asked to talk to me and we solved the problem. They handed me the laptop and it was correct. So cheers Ruth.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you for coming. I enjoyed immensely that's probably one of the greatest workshop that I was on this IGF. Thank you all for coming and also the online participants and see you around. Thank you guys.
(Applause.)
(Session concluded at 5:41 p.m.)