Sixth Annual Meeting of the Internet Governance Forum
27 -30 September 2011
United Nations Office in Nairobi, Nairobi, Kenya
September 28, 2011 - 14:30PM
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The following is the output of the real-time captioning taken during the Sixth Meeting of the IGF, in Nairobi, Kenya. 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 session, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.
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>> GEORGE SADOWSKY: We will start in about two minutes.
So good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to workshop number 162 titled the I* organizations and their contribution to development. If that's what you're here for, you're in the right room. Otherwise, you may want to seek alternate lodging.
My name is George Sadowsky and I'm representing ICANN and the Web Foundation here. I'd like to start by giving and introduction to the topic. We have five discussants all eminently qualified to discuss the topic. In addition, unknown to some of you in cognito in the room we have people with very good knowledge of this and I hope they will contribute also.
The ground rules will be that each of the five discussants will provide their sense of the topic, the dimensions that they want to respond to. I'm going to count on them to provide -- to make their remarks of an appropriate length. And then we will open it up to comments from the floor, questions, whoever we want to deem with it. It's a large topic and it's possible we will easily exhaust the time that we have.
So first, the I* organizations. If you don't know what they are, let's talk about them a little bit. I* is an abbreviation for the organisations that are essentially historical and primarily technical with respect to the Internet. And this includes -- it's called I* because many of the acronyms for the organisations begin with an I but not all. Included are the IETF, Internet Engineering Task Force. ISOC, ICANN, Internet Corporation for assigned names and numbers, without spelling things out, the IEB, the IRTF, NRO, IASG, W3C, RIRs and IANA, and that's a lot of alphabet soup and I hope the discussants will pick up on the particular organisations. You can find them easily by Googleing them.
It's interesting that none of them -- only one of them I would say is moderately old. We live in an Internet time and the progress of this industry, this technology, this service, has been very rapid and we don't realise that most of us in this room are older than all of those organisations.
In the 1970s, and I might need help here on the date, the IANA functions started with John Postello. I'm not sure it was called IANA. Only in 1986 was the IETF formed. ISOC dates from 1992. W3C, the Web consortium, from 1994. ICANN from 1998. The NRO from I believe 2003, something like that. And the RIR is the Regional Internet Registries preceded the NRO, but I'm not sure how. Probably five or six years, I don't know the exact date.
All of these organisations have a well-defined focus. And it's the combination -- it's either solely technical, or it's administrative, or it's some combination, technical/administration. And all of them have bylaws and governance structure, with the exception of the IETF family, which is currently housed administratively and organizationally under the Internet Society.
And they all cooperate quite well in fulfilling their appropriate roles in what we are now calling the Internet ecosystem. And of the organisations, only ISOC has a hint of a developmental agenda. The others I don't believe do. If so, it's very secondary to their primary function.
And these also have evolved over time in both the technical and administrative sphere. So that now they are more complex organisations and larger organisations than they were before. This evolution has caused a change in the focus of how they think about their mandate and how they believe what the -- what they believe their place in the world should be.
And as we have -- as this set of organisations has grown and we have gone from four nodes on the previous incarnation of the Internet in 1969, to millions and millions now, the expectations with respect to these organisations has changed, both internally and externally. And that is I think what we're here to discuss today.
What is the proper role of these members, the various members of the I* organizations? With respect to the development agenda that we see at the IGF here, and what is the proper measure of resources that are being directed to the development of -- by the I* community?
Furthermore, all of these roles have evolved over time and with some coordination, but what can we say about the current pattern of assistance? Is it the most appropriate? Is it the most effective in terms of supporting sustainable development? Or should there be different goals or different distribution of resources being considered or adapted for the future? What types of assistance are these organisations most effective in providing? And does that reflect what they're doing now, what the current allocation of resources is? If not, how should things change?
And then, finally, what funding and business models would be useful to support the provision of a desired level and mix of assistance by varied members of the community?
I think that the expectations, the answers to most of these questions differ widely, based upon where one is sitting in the development and the ICT for the space. And certainly it's not up to us here to tell the I* organizations together what their role should be. But I think their roles will expand and we will touch more on economic and social development over time. The question is: How? What is most effective? What works? What doesn't work? What should they be doing and what should they not be doing?
There is an element of political correctness here that I think we want to avoid, the idea that just because they are members of our team that they should buy into goals that perhaps are not within their mission. We need to make sure that as we talk about what they might be doing and what they might not be doing, we need to respect the mandate and the population, the sub population of the Internet ecosystem that they represent.
Those are my initial remarks. I have a speaking order here of first Sylvia Cadena. I'm sorry that is wrong. First Karen Rose. My fault. Who comes -- sorry about that -- who comes from the Internet Society.
What I'd like to do, rather than me trying to summarize their background and probably getting it wrong, I'd like for them to start with maybe 20 seconds of who they are, why they are here, why they think they are here and what they are going to be talking about.
So, Karen?
>> KAREN ROSE: Well, thanks, George, and thanks everyone.
My name is Karen Rose and I'm the Director of Development Strategy at the Internet Society. I've been with ISOC for five years and involved in various aspects of regional development work. And prior to that, I was with an Internet start-up. I was doing some consulting. And even prior to that, I was in government policy for about six years. So that's my background.
And you know, just in opening, and talking about the I* community and our role in development, I think as the Internet community more broadly, we really have much to be proud of, of the things that we have advanced and achieved. For over 20 years, ISOC in particular and other members of the community, whether they are individuals or the new organisations that have developed along the way, have been really crucial in providing critical capacity building on Internet development policy and technology in every region of the world. As the summary of this panel indicated, back in the 1990s ISOC had a global iNet series, in which over 1500 individual from developing countries and elsewhere had an opportunity to build capacity and share experience on Internet networking development.
And many of these attendees to these sessions and ISOC members individually were responsible for really implementing some of the first Internet connections in many countries around the world.
And across the I* community, I know we had a definition. But one thing I think we need to be sure not to leave out are the network operators groups and other regional organisations in the broader I* community which carry out critical capacity building activities. And a number of these actually emerged from ISOC's global iNets in the 1990s, to deepen more regionally the capacity building work. So I'm talking about really crucial organisations and forums like AFNOG, SANOQ, RENOG, recent CCT communities that developed, other organisations such as NSRC and Packet Clearinghouse and our colleagues that work in industry and other organisations that contribute not only their company time but their personal time to Internet development.
And you know as a community, we provide assistance to thousands of engineers, policymakers, network managers, among others, every year. And just to give you a scope, because even within the I* community, I think sometimes we don't sort of recognize amongst ourselves the scope and the breadth of our work. I just jotted down a number of examples of some things that we do as a community. Network training and capacity building. Everything from basic operations to higher level issues like DNSSEC and IPv6, women's engineering training and partners with organisations like AFCHIKS. Online training for youth, next generation leaders, IXP development, assistance and support.
As a community, we have reached out and provided wireless links to schools and rural villages and a host of other access projects through grants.
I'm sure Sylvia is going to talk about ISIF Asia, another key project, which a number of Internet community members participate in, LACNOG has one as well.
The Internet community responded to the crisis in Haiti and helping to build communications networks there. University networking, helping universities in developing countries increase their networking capacity. It's crucial. And also starting up new forums where members of the community can share experience and grow their experience locally.
So in general we do have a lot to be proud of, providing vital training and information and community collaboration. And it's really helped keep the Internet growing and evolving in many parts of the world for the last 20 years.
But with that, I think we always must ask as a community how can we do more? And how can we do better?
And you know at ISOC, many of you know our motto is "the Internet is for everyone." And our vision is to see a ubiquitous, reliable and sustainable Internet across all regions of the world, including developing regions. There should be no second class countries on the Internet.
And so with that, you know, in terms of the Internet Society, you know, our -- so where do we stop with development from our perspective? We don't stop until we reach our motto, which is the Internet is for everyone.
So while we have done a lot, there is a long way to go. So the questions I have to leave with and ask for the discussion are the following: So as the Internet community, how do we scale? How do we scale the work that we do, the people that we reach and the impacts that we make? While we train thousands of users, there is always high demand. The Many activities and workshops that we do always has many more applicants than there are spaces. How do we go from training thousands a year to tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands and broadening our impact?
How can we reach deeper into core issues? So, for example, we do a lot of network training. But one of the core issues is, you know, one of the reasons why that training is so important is that in many universities or technical schools around the world, basic skills aren't getting taught in some of these core places. How do we reach into the core issues, rather than just doing training on the background? How do we as the Internet community help reach further down the chain in terms of capacity building?
And, thirdly, the question how do we engage more effectively with development organisations and regional organisations? And this is from a number of perspectives. You know, firstly, as the Internet community, we have a lot of experience and we have a lot to offer. Development organisations have priorities. They have a lot of work going on. And I think there is a lot of expertise we can offer with respect to those projects.
And also, you know, how do we engage on, you know, developing with development organisations and regional bodies their ICT strategies going forward? Given that we have had a lot of experience in this area, how do we collaborate and help those organisations design strategies that are going to further the development dollar, regardless of what organisation it comes from?
So with that, I'll leave it to that and look forward to the discussion.
>> GEORGE SADOWSKY: Thank you, Karen. And thank you for rounding out the members of the I* family that I neglected. You are right to include them all.
What I got out of your presentation is that we don't have an I*D or I*T form of organisation. We don't segregate our development activities and technical activities, but we intermingle them because it's important to achieve those goals. And when you pick up all of the little pieces and some of the not so little pieces that could be identified as development oriented, it's a significant list.
Okay. Thank you.
Now I'm going to break the rule for introductions that I established earlier. I'll introduce the next speaker, because I am so glad to have him here. And this is Tarek Kamil, formerMinister of Communications and Information technology, Egypt. He was our host for the IGF in Sharm El Sheikh two years ago. It's a pleasure to have you back here.
>> TAREK KAMEL: I'm glad to participate in this workshop with my beloved community. And I start from here, because I'm really sincere when I say "beloved community," because this is a truly global community. And John called them I*. Karen talked about the details.
But when I think back 20 years ago, the first time I met George Sadowsky and then Cerf and Larry and Scott and all the leaders somewhere in California, and at that time also various people from the academic sector, at that time we had a dream. A dream together for bringing this Internet that they were talking about, that it should be better off than on. But better off than other private networks for bringing to the rest of the world and over all the developing countries.
It seemed that it was a far fetched dream how to bring this connectivity that existed only in some countries in Europe and Japan and US and Canada to the developing world. And with the support and the bottom-up approach of this community that we are talking about, we were able to do it, step by step, to identify players all over the world, in the various countries, to connect to them and to invite them and to find out the right resources to do fundraising to bring them on board. And I was one of those people who were identified by those leaders, global leaders, the names I mentioned, they invited me from Egypt together with a colleague called Nashwa at that time from the Universities Network to join the first developing countries workshop networks. I missed the first one in Kobi in Japan, but I attended the second one in Paolo Alto.
There were many players who taught us the basics of the Internet and basics of the connectivity. They have injected in us a wonderful spirit, and with this spirit I'm living until today, a spirit of development, a spirit of build up, a spirit of global cooperation and coordination. A spirit of belonging to a community, although nothing formal.
We work in various organisations, academic, government, business. I used to work for the government for 26 years, now not anymore, but I felt that I'm belonging to this global community that is evolving, that is really growing, and that has a snowball effect. And I'm part of this snowball effect and I try to contribute also to this cause of the snowball effect to bring them to Egypt and to bring them to Africa and to bring them to other parts of the world.
What was the motto? Motivation, connectivity. To south and west and West Africa and to Latin America and to AP and the rest of the world. And every time we had a country online, George Sadowsky sent an e-mail, this country is online. I can ping them. They are there. These are true memories and genuine memories. And everybody was so happy and sending them quickly an e-mail via our 2.4 came modems connectivity that we had, congrating this or that guy, the leader in this country, that they are online.
What brought us together? Capacity building. Development. Training. This was an annual event. We were there in order to be educated, in order to learn more, to learn each other, and to transfer experiences as well.
This bottom-up approach went so positively that when I attended the first time back in 1993, in 1994, the second year, I was invited to be a lecturer in the Prague event. And this was courageous from the team to invite a student of last year, just last year, to come and be a teacher the year after.
And all the experiences that I had, it was only 12 months, but they did it. And they introduced us to the international community and we did our share and we contributed and we gave -- we had failures as well, but we gave our contributions as such.
This is a build up of global communities that happened and it was with the support of ISOC and IETF and the leading figures that are mostly coming from technical backgrounds, but with this belonging we are able to build up.
I see ourselves now as a global community that are here in Nairobi and last year in Vilnius, and the year before I was privileged to host you in Sharm El Sheikh. We have a new responsibility in front of the global community of the Internet.
Again, the same team has asked to have a new responsibility in terms of the Internet, in terms of development, in terms of Internet Governance for development. And, unfortunately, I need to say it, I haven't over the 20 years seen another team, another community, that has this belonging to each other that is so consistent, that is so close to each other, and that kept the relations very healthy and very successful over the last 20 years.
So I see us with a new mandate now. The mandate is not basic connectivity, but Internet for development. Internert governance for development. I see again ourselves that we have to have a new phase of outreach to developmental agencies, as George has mentioned and Karen as mentioned, to new players that are outside the technical, our beloved technical communities, development and social agency, policymaking agencies, legal agencies, that work. And work with them hand in hand. They need us. They don't have this conglomerate of people from all over the world that meets annually and is every day on the line 24 by 7 as we are. This does not exist.
I have worked in politics. I have worked on a governmental level. I have worked in various international fora and I haven't seen this. So again, we need to have this outreach. We need to be working together and have this outreach because we have the -- a responsibility.
At this time, the mandate is access to knowledge. At this time the mandate, when we talk about training, complex policymaking issues about Internet Governance, this Internet that we have together, created together, has become a complex issue from a legal point of view, from a social point of view, from a developmental point of view, from a local content point of view, from language point of view. And we need to show that we are able as a community leader to be up to the responsibility and to face again and lead again once more in the next ten or fifteen or twenty years the world with a new generation that comes on and put their input in there.
We should work with law enforcement agencies. ICT in my own country in Egypt, they had need a background about Internet issues. And they have a team of ISOC and the ministry to refer to. Tarek is there or not there. If he is not there, there is me, Christine and Bernard and many other players. So again, they ask us, although we are all coming from a technical and academic background, the legal issues, they want us to connect them with the rest of the world, with the respective agencies that can be of help to them elsewhere outside. So, that's definitely an issue that we have.
Also we have a mandate and a responsibility to avoid a generational gap. The young people are not worried about that, because they have that analytical and digital skills. But there are other segments of the society in the developing world that we should be looking at, otherwise they will be marginalized more and more. And today the tools, luckily enough, allow us to do this outreach in training and capacity building with the I* on content issues. But in local content issues, everyone in his own respective language with the content that is relevant to him, that is relevant to building the communities, and those communities are not only geographically localized but they are communities that exist worldwide. And this is the beauty about the Internet.
The Arab population, Arab speaking population is 350 million. Only 70 percent live in the Arab world and 30 percent outside. But they want to link back to their roots and community and the local content, and Internet is able to do that. We want training and capacity building on entrepreneurial skills. This is wonderful. Young people in the Arab world that did the Arab spring and the revolution, they want to do it for political and economic and social reform. And we have a responsibility as a community to help them in that. To help them to find jobs and help empower them to create new jobs. And I see here our gathering in IGF, a wonderful opportunity in order to think together about that, everyone in his respective role and every organisation again using its respective role, but in this now time, with a new vision.
We are, believe it or not, becoming some grass-roots organisation. ISOC was a chapter, it's worldwide. The ICANN was an at large membership and inclusion. The IGF was its rotation. So we can do that by having really now our responsibilities and we're having our presence worldwide. So we need to work definitely on those issues.
And I will conclude by saying that there are orders, for example, in our part of the world about child online safety. This is becoming a very, very sensitive issue in the developing world and the developing countries. And again, this is something where we can contribute in our human resources in development and capacity building with the respective agencies that can help. This workshop brought me back to wonderful memories. It gave me hope for hopefully together with you as a community for another five or ten years or whatever, a time we might have together. And thank you, George, for this invitation. And I hope by those remarks I have shared the light on some issues of importance.
Thank you.
>> GEORGE SADOWSKY: Thank you very much. I think you captured the spirit of those early days extraordinarily well. The one thing I realized was that you characterize it as a bottom-up development, which it was. I never thought of it as a bottom-up development. I never -- it didn't occur to me. We were just a team working together.
>> TAREK: There was some of that.
>> GEORGE SADOWSKY: Fine. We are going back to self introductions now. And I'd like to ask Sylvia Cadena to contribute to the discussion.
>> SYLVIA CADENA: Thank you, George. Thank you everybody to be here. Just before when you were having lunch, we had an award ceremony in this very room. And we shared the results of the ICF programme for the last years and the gold boxes of chocolates. The ones that arrived late ,let me know and I'll share them with you. We want to share the sweet fruits.
As mentioned, I agree with you about the spirit of all the work that has been done in the past and how the possibility of reflecting on the questions that George put together for this workshop brought us to the past. I wanted to take the opportunity to acknowledge that I'm officially of the support provided by the I* group also. 15 years ago, that first opportunity changed the plans I had made for my future and allowed me to be here with you today. The support I received from ISOC and APC in 1996 in Montreal allowed me to go back to my country in Columbia, to support the Civil Society organisation, to establish that first Internet presence, and how to use it in a more strategic way in a country that was under threat, basically, and a very violent and difficult context.
The support to imagine what to do next came from many training events and contents. And I crossed paths many times with the people I met there. And many of them are here, still committed and actively engaged on the Internet development issues. I truly believe that we have to be back and provide the same opportunities and even better opportunities for others.
The programme that I'm coordinating now for, you know, the things in life. I'm from Columbia and I ended up living in Australia, for the Asia Pacific. I work with the information fund. And we are supported generously by APNIC, ISOC, dot Asia and IDRC. And it's an interesting partnership between eight agencies, organisations, from the I* group and the private sector.
And we are trying to stimulate creative solutions in the Asia Pacific region and doing it through small grants and awards. APNIC is a small organisation that is in the AP region, with specific colonies from Afghanistan to Tahiti. You already know. And we invest in ISIP to support ICT research and development. This is an important way that we are committed to help growth in the AP region and to facilitate networking and exchange through the Internet community. We have allocated 670,000 Australia dollars to the initiatives in the AP for grants and awards over the last three years. And the projects selected showcased technical knowledge and others.
And us, trying to reflect in a way that spirit that was mentioned -- that Tarek was mentioning and how this collaboration is important to keep rolling. And the snowball effect that you mentioned. The technical reports they produced were released using a creative comment license. All the software and applications that they develop has to be relied for public use. They are obligated to comment all their processes and make self evaluation exercises and share those results with the community.
Because we truly believe that that is also an important way of giving back to provide the technical things required. We conducted a review last year, listening to the messages coming from the pool of applicants who participated in the survey and helped us through the evaluation process of the selection of the grants programme.
We learned facts that I would like to share with you today and how do we read them? We have proof from the grant recipients and the pool of applicants that there is a lack of local access to funding sources or initiatives. Requirements are so specific in making it so difficult for organisations to find the support that they need. Quality of the proposals get sacrificed as the investment the organisation needs to put into developing a full proposal might not compensate if the proposal is not funded.
Most of the funding requested is intended to support organizational development, improvement of infrastructure, the infrastructure that they have, to update their equipment and in most cases it's the only way to retain critical technical staff. Organisations are concerned about the sustainability of the initiatives and they are getting more and more creative about the business models behind them. International travel that used to be a big component of ICT for the projects, as technicians were not available at the local level, has been so significantly reduced that it's only 2 percent of the budget that we allocate. A small -- I mean, 2 percent of the whole pool of applicants that have requested money from us.
The small grants for small organisations seems like a logical fit, in terms of the scope and capacity of both the organisation and the fund provided. However, it was very interesting to see that bigger organisations with modern -- with more than 100 staff sees small grants as the way to go to support the IT Departments without risking their own Departments and budgets. The support received was remarkable. 96 percent of the people submitting proposals had a master or Ph.D. And more than ten years of experience in the AP. Which when considered against the need to pay for their salaries and fees is a bit frightening, as the loss could be monumental if they don't get the support that they need to retain key staff and keep supporting women participation.
It seems to us like the focus of the innovations go more to the rural areas, where the incumbents have less economic interests and the challenges are greater. The current climate might not seem like the most appropriate to argue the case for the grant funding of any kind, small or large, as we are still experiencing the stability of the financial markets. Many traditional donors retreated from ICT funding, and commercial providers are not extending coverage in some cases without the participation from community organisations that worked towards universal access years before. So we are seeing a bit of step back in many ways.
The volume and efficacy of funding for ICTs for development has been shaped by several factors in the last couple decades, moving from the early evolutionary potential then across the society. The establishment of social responsibility programmes to support initiatives aligned with the objectives and the economies of their choice is a smart move.
Of course, you can join us if you want. That would be even better. But partners and sponsors of different grants programmes are making success stories that are actually really there, that are working the careers of this venue. Incentives such as tax exceptions are available for those supporting a specific development area or local economies. Benefit from marketing can also help you.
But it's important not to lose sight of the real objective, which is not paying less taxes or getting media coverage, but serving the communities. Partnerships with the private sector organisations deeply routed in ICT work can guide the funding allocations and become more relevant. And administration of grants funds should be more efficient, taking only a few pennies and not dollar per dollar. Most of the organisations funding gets allocated into capacity leading through technical initiatives, like workshops and materials. To be able to fight for the sustainability of the programmes, we need much needed tools so leaders learn about business development to spur on innovation. And we have to help project teams to stop reinventing the wheel. We have to support through different initiatives, different stages that grant recipients might be in.
So in my opinion, although it's interesting to innovate on how we provide funding and support, it's important to recognize how important it is to keep supporting things that we have been supporting before. But targeting new areas, new players, bringing the Internet and providing ways to use it strategically. So keep providing that first opportunity to make ideas a reality. Keep bringing the things that were seen 20 years ago to the next training. Grow and develop. Provide organizational development to retain staff. Link innovators and business round tables to enhance opportunities to continue growing. Organizational development, to create stability, to retain that staff, and retain that knowledge where it's needed in the local communities.
So, that's it. Thank you.
>> GEORGE SADOWSKY: Thank you very much. It hadn't occurred to me how much we developed until you started talking about localization of training. In 1993, and for the next 7 or 8 years, we brought people to training workshops from halfway around the world. It was very expensive, although it had its educational benefits. And now, when you talk about training, the travel budget being 2 percent of the entire operation, that is evidence that the training has worked, the knowledge has diffused, and it's one answer to the scaling issue that Karen brought up earlier.
The next speaker will be Katim Touray and I'd like to preface his introduction by saying that he is my co-director on the ICANN board. It is as a result of one of his initiatives in the board that we have this session. The question was raised how can ICANN help development? And Katim is a staunch supporter of developing countries and the attempt to improve their situation with regard to Internet and all that surrounds it. And so we had a long talk and decided that it was a subject worth bringing up to the regular community.
So, Katim.
>> KATIM TOURAY: Thank you very much, George, and good afternoon everyone.
I'd like to start by saying that I think I can preface my statement by saying that, because often at ICANN meetings you have to declare where your conflicts of interest are. And I think in here I wouldn't talk about a a conflict of interest, but a convergence of interests, that's my interests and interests of developing countries, at least how I see them, being from the developing world, from Gambia specifically.
I had a few responses to the questions that George circulated that we should attempt to respond to in our presentations. And I'll just go over them very, very briefly. But, before that, let me say that I am really glad to be here. I think this is a very important issue. Because when we talk about the I organisations, the I* or I* organisations, we are talking about the organisations that are very important in the Internet ecosystem. And I think in my mind at least providing us new opportunities and new paradigms in international development cooperation, now we should go about the business of providing help and assistance and support to the developing world, to get them to have the Internet infrastructure and the needed base that they need.
I think the reasons for -- I can say I can list about three reasons, and that list is certainly by no means exhaustive why the I* organisations is important.
First off, of course, is the fact that they are involved in areas of activity that are tremendously important. And ,in fact, are becoming more and more important. You know, the business of Internet and information, communications technologies in general is a very profoundly important area. And so any organisation that is involved in doing this, especially doing it to help developing countries get to where they need to be is a very important organisation, in my book.
Secondly, that they have structures and processes that really lend themselves to the work that they do in terms of development, partnership, and cooperation. Generally, they are more open and a bit more flexible in their structures and in their processes. I think certainly when we talk about pounding tables and talking about our rights in a multi-stakeholder environment, we only have to look around at the international development community and see that we do not actually get accorded those same privileges, I say, or those facilities, more than other charter organisations. And this is where the I* organisations are particularly exciting for the simple reason that they offer other alternatives to development cooperation and partnership.
And also, this is at the end of the day what brings the bacon home, technical competence. I've been on the ICANN board almost three years, and I'm awed, maybe it's because where I'm coming from, but by the quality of people. We are lucky to have incredibly good willed organisations helping developing countries to develop the Internet facilities and services that they have in those countries. So there is no question in my mind just on those three reasons why this organisation is important.
As important as they are, as has been said by Karen and Tarek and Sylvia, we also have to acknowledge that there are serious challenges that we have to address, at least take note of as we move forward.
First, of course, is the fact that these organisations are set nowhere near data envelopes that the larger corporations have or the multinational organisations have. So we have to deal with the smaller base that they have both collectively and individually.
And I think -- and I say this with a little bit of trepidation, I have to say, but it is the reality that we're dealing with a community that at least in my mind is so technically oriented that there are challenges in building a development cooperation culture in the community.
Now the way I like to see it is that everybody has to have a vice. So maybe you are so technically competent there has to be something that is missing, and that's that component that I'm talking about, the need to develop a cooperation development framework. I shout about this all the time. But we are getting there. But we have to bear this in mind and see what we can do. Just as we go about providing assistance and are development conscious, how can we make the work of the I* organizations easier by inculcating in them, the culture, sensibilities and understandings that is going to make them more effective in the work that they do? And also that we have a more effective partnership that is going to work for all of us.
Now, with regards to the question about the -- what proper role they can have with respect to the economic and social development in developing countries, I can name three roles here. And I'm glad that various panelists that went before me presented -- touched on this, so this made me feel very good that at least I'm standing on solid ground when I say some of the points.
First, of course, is capacity building. As Tarek and also was said, we have been doing that for a long time and we are doing it effectively. And that's one area that we should continue to get involved in.
There is also the very good role that they provide in the policy dialogs space. And again, this is very important not only by virtue of the output of the various development processes, but I think even more importantly in fact by virtue of the culture of dialog that is inculcated in various partners that participate in these processes. When we talk about the multi-stakeholder process, I always tell people for me it's especially exciting, because translated to the governance at the national level, I think it can lead to significant improvements and accountability. Significant improvements in the resources used, for the simple reason that if you ask people what they are going to do for them, seek their consent and get information from them, the resources that they will put to use are going to be put to much more effective use than if you sit in a corner office and remind them in your infinite wisdom that this is what is best for the people in the Kibera regions of Nairobi. So this is a very important role that they can play in socially developing countries.
Finally, they can also play the critical roles in helping to build their critical Internet infrastructure. A very good example for instance is in the rollout of, say, servers to really help -- of course, one of the challenges that we face in the developing countries is the cost. This would be reduced by building servers. We can reduce the traffic across the global Internet if we build them. So this is one thing we can mention. The African one has an anticast deployment project and ICANN is working with other organisations to help a number of African of countries deploy anticost servers.
So those are three areas in which they can get involved in. I don't want to get too far and get too carried away before I make a total fool of myself. So I'll stop there and give people an opportunity to chime in.
Thank you very much.
>> GEORGE SADOWSKY: Thank you, Katim. Most of you don't know this, but Katim used to be a radio talk show host and he is capable of filling a void.
(Chuckles)
So, thanks very much. I mean, I'm hearing some themes that are being repeated by various speakers, but others that are new to the discussion.
So, finally, we have Olga Cavalli, no stranger to this community. And, Olga, you may or may not declare your vice according to how you feel about it.
>> OLGA CAVALLI: Thank you very much. I'm really honoured to be invited to this panel with Sylvia, Karen, Mr. Tarek and others. Many things have already been said so I won't go through them. I agree with most of the things that you have already said.
And I would like to bring you my perspective, why I'm here. For several reasons, I'm advisor to the Government of Argentina to the Ministry of Foreign affairs, I was in WSIS, I'm an ISOC member, I'm a secretary of our chapter in Argentina. What else? I follow several, several lists in IETF. I have it here. I'm the GAG representative for Argentina. I was for four years the GNSO councilmember. I was the vice Chair and we with Bill shared several initiatives there. Also thinking about development and outreach in the GNSO. And I was selected there at the time, leaded by John. So I'm quite involved in several of the spaces.
Always with a dream, something similar to what Sylvia said. When I first went to WSIS and I went to my first ICANN meeting, I had a dream to have more participation of Latin America in all those spaces. Why? Because if you look at numbers of participation of different regions, my region is always the least represented. For several reasons. Our region is, you know, it's special. It's very, very unequal. We have beautiful cities, like you would be in my city Buenos Aires, you feel there is room. And ten blocks from there you have very, very poor people living together. It happens in Brazil and Columbia, all over. So we have very, very unequal societies, infrastructures and unequal education and equal access to information, to critical Internet resources, to everyone.
So my dream when I started to go into this space was to have more equality. It's a very big dream. But it's -- to have more equality in Latin America and more people have access to information. Because you don't know, but the region with more poor people is Latin America. It's not other regions. And it doesn't look like it. But we are kind of in the middle of richness and poorness. So this is extremely difficult when you try to do things, because some people are very, very well educated and have access to many things and some others do not. So this is the perspective that I'd like to share with you after my experience in ICANN and ISOC and IGF of course, and in other spaces.
I feel like the role of the I* organisations is extremely important. We work a lot with ISOC doing outreach, doing many events in the region. Also in ICANN.
Some barriers that I find very important. One is not being so regional oriented. Language, for example, it's -- it's an issue, language. Even though I speak English, I can tell you GNSO was challenging. I mean, if you learn Spanish and I talk to you like what I talk with my friends in Buenos Aires in a cafe, you won't follow me. Because you -- you won't follow me. Because it's my day language. But if you talk in English, like that, and in a teleconference, I have problems in following.
Then that -- it's not only the language, it's the way you approach the language and the way you include people coming from other communities. Even though we accept it, we accepted that English was the language of GNSO. And that was challenging for me. Of course my English is much better now than before. But it's good for me. But it's something that my colleagues and I repeated many times.
Another thing that I would suggest to these organisations, and they are doing it slowly but surely, but I would say it should be more focused on, is to have more representation in the region. ICANN has Rodrigo. He is a nice guy, a very good friend of mine. He is only one person for Latin America. It's a huge region with a lot of people. He travels all the time. He lives in an airport and a plane and it's challenging for him to handle such a big region. So I guess perhaps a small office. ISOC is starting to do that. And I think it's doing very well.
We have also a friend of mine with an office, he was from Argentina and he moved, I don't know why, but he is a good friend of us. It's a joke. Augusta. And I think that these organisations should go towards that.
Special mention, IETF. No meeting in the southern part of the world. That is something. That is something we have to at least change. I have said this many times, also, to (indecipherable) and others, I said guys, one time, we are kind people. We are nice. We don't bite you. We don't hit you. We will take good care of you. We have good wine, good food. That should happen. I don't know what happens. I've been told that they are not interested in outreach. I don't know if this is true or not. No, it's true. Maybe there is a reason for that. There is always a reason for that.
So I think that they should look at following those lists. It's complicated also because of the language. And what else? In this region of focus, I tried to initiate some activities after having a nice experience in Germany. We started a school of Internet Governance in Latin America. It was a crazy idea with no money, no funding, with only this idea and dream like Sylvia had with my colleague and husband. And we started this idea. We started the first one in Buenos Aires. Of course it was easier for me. We lived there. And we trained, in a one week intensive training of Internet Governance, 26 fellows. We paid them everything and also the ticket. We brought people from all over the region. It was so good, so nice that we could repeat it again in San Paolo and we did it this year in Mexico and next year we will be in Columbia in 2012.
And our host there will be the Ministry of ICT.
So bringing the regional activities brings a lot of value to the people. What we do is -- why we move in the region, because we want to allow people from different countries to participate. It's extremely expensive and complicated to move around Latin America. If you live in Europe, you take a train and you go anywhere. It's easy, it's clean. But that doesn't happen in Latin America. It's much more expensive. So you go country to country. It's much more work, but it's much more nice.
How do you measure? Of course this is very small. I would never want to compare this with any of these institutions. I participated in a conference call and someone told me how can you dare compare what your small school does with what ICANN does? I don't want to compare. But it's an experience. I won't tell the name.
(Chuckles)
It's an experience that -- it's going well. What we do, we track the activities of our students. And several of them have now relevant activities in RIRs, in the regional ccTLD association, which is like TLD, and there are universities, they are invited to several things.
I'll stop here and my general comment would be fantastic organisations. Should be more focused and more developed regionally oriented, perhaps with some offices there and some more activities.
Thank you very much. Did I talk too much?
>> GEORGE SADOWSKY: Not yet. You're okay. Thank you.
And I thank for bringing up the sensitivity to language. It's really important and we often forget that when we discuss things in groups like this, we're talking to people for whom English is a second or a third language, especially in Africa, and it's important to remember that. So I hope also in part the fact that you and Sylvia were on the panel helps to make up for the inequity with regard to Latin America in general that you mentioned.
Now we will have interventions from the floor. Here are rules. If you want to introduce a topic, you raise your hand. If you want to intervene for less than five seconds, perhaps just to correct a factual error, quickly, one finger. If you want to make a substantive -- this is -- never mind. A substantive comment on the existing topic, 30 seconds or less, two fingers. If you don't want to do any of those things, don't raise your hand. So I'll try to keep a queue. Queue management is tough for me, but let me try.
Who --
(Showing of hands)
Oh, my God. All right. One, two, three, four.
>> Brian Cute, CEO of public series. We were thinking about the question on how to improve the development front for the I*. Two questions formed in my mind recently. Some of you may not know -- you know that we are going to apply for dot NGO TLD and I had direct interaction with NGOs, and a trip to a village where ICT has been implemented in a meaningful way. The question that forms in my mind that I think I* organizations should ask themselves is: What is the nature of the contact with your community that you are trying to serve? Those in the developing world who need your assistance? Is it direct or indirect? Direct contact is the best.
Secondly, are you partnering with anybody? We had the opportunity to partner with Digital Empowerment Foundation in India and they bring a set of interactions that really multiply the ability for us to make a difference.
So those two questions, what is the nature of interaction, direct or indirect? Are you partnering with somebody?
>> GEORGE SADOWSKY: State your name, please.
>> I'm Peter Polk, Chairman of the world summit. We were started in 2003 to put the issue of best practice in eContent onto the agenda of the WSIS. And we have used the mechanism of the best practice context in order to do basically three things.
First of all, put the focus on that aspect of the entire ecology of the Internet, where we do not see mega industrial concentration.
And I think when I listened to many interventions this afternoon, there is a submerged side like the iceberg that is below the ocean. And below the ocean is that we have on the network and hardware and software, what operating system is concerned, a high level of concentration. Where the diversity is is on the side of content Ware. That side where applications are, that is decided where we interact, where actually the spirit is. Where Tarek was saying so much that the communities, people are actually engaging in the value add for that kind of Internet developments which you wish for development. And so what the World Summit Award does is bring that out and try to globally network the people around us.
Secondly, we are all somewhat heroes, because we are part of the international traveling expert community. We are a virtual and real expert organisation with open fringes in access. Many of the people who produce content sit in the proverbial basement or in the garage, don't see many people, and do not get recognition and do not get invited in. And so what the World Summit tries to do is tries to create this kind of open mechanism to bring people in.
And the third thing is there is a lot of good talk, and I like this very much when we talk about, for instance, what is happening in South America, what is happening in Africa. The real best practice cases are south to south cooperation that need to be established. And the World Summit award has shown that people from Guatemala can instruct and engage with people from Singapore and people from Malasia and do interesting things. So when they do something with different countries, it's not north south, but it's south south. It's on an equal opportunity of exchange and richness and diversity. And I think that is something very, very important which we need to see. We need to see that we are sitting on top of a highly concentrated industry. We need to see that we need to get people out and be open and transparent for the content people and involve them. And we have to see that the benefits of south to south cooperation are essential.
>> GEORGE SADOWSKY: Thank you. The role of content is important and I'm glad to stress it.
We have Bill, Fred and then we will take care of the row here and ask for a second round of interventions.
>> BILL DRAKE: I am Bill Drake from the University of Zurich. I really enjoyed this and I couldn't help thinking of a book that Carl Melmeck wrote 20 years ago, called "Exploring the Internet." But he went around the world talking to people who were involved in getting the Net started in different countries and looking at their experiences. And when I think about that and the work you did, George, and I listened to Olga and Sylvia and Tarek and their experiences, I think it's really wonderful how the contributions have been made. However, I think you guys are always lousy storytellers, by which I mean the following:
All these contributions that have been made by the technical community I think are not fully understood and appreciated in the larger political environment in which we operate here.
And, in fact, you know, anybody who spent time throughout the WSIS process, throughout the IGF process, and in other environments around Internet Governance will know there are plenty of people -- and I think I should direct this to you in particular -- there are plenty of people in governments around the world who don't fully understand or appreciate the contributions that have been made. There are plenty of people in civil Society who regard, as many of the governments do, regard the technical community and its activities with some skepticism or wonder who are these people, what are they really about, and view the technical community as sort of this status quo orient network of people, not recognizing how much has been done. And I can't help thinking how did this gulf in perceptions get allowed to develop? Does it matter? Do we want to try to do something about it?
And, in particular, I can't help wondering why you guys don't do like a little booklet that, for example, traces all of this stuff. Because it's lost history for most people. It could be in the bag at the next IGF. Explaining how many of these countries got on the Net, where the folks got trained, how the policy processes started, all of that. Because it's kind of like law -- it's known to the folks who are inside the community, that have been involved in doing this stuff. Outside the community it's not recognized or appreciated enough. And that feeds into them the larger geopolitical stuff going on at this meeting and beyond. So it's worth thinking about.
>> GEORGE SADOWSKY: Thanks for that intervention. It's true. We don't toot our own horn very much. We don't feel it's necessary.
Five seconds from Brian and then I'll pick up some interventions here.
>> BRIAN: Just a quick counter thought. I think to your point, their reward is in heaven. And as Tarek said, the next challenge is that governments are really paying attention now, and you have to step up yet again.
>> GEORGE SADOWSKY: Fred?
>> FRED BAKER: My name is Fred Baker. I work for a company called Cisco Systems. You may have heard of us.
And from 1996 to 2001, I was the IETF Chair. At the moment I Chair the IPv6 operations working group, and I serve on the committee that chooses where the next meeting is going to happen.
Let me tell you how to get a meeting into Buenos Aires.
You interested? Okay.
When the Japanese asked me in 1998, when the trainees asked me in 1997 to position meetings in Japan and in China, I asked them who they had working in the IETF. The IETF meets in places where its participants come from. Okay? That's where it meets.
And the purpose is to get the work of the IETF done. Okay? Now a lot of our work is done on mailing lists. It's done on the Web. It's done in e-mail. It's done in La Da Da Da. There is no reason you have to go to a meeting to participant. In point of fact, there is a lot of work as you know that can be done directly on the list.
So what they did was they started participating in working groups. They started posting Internet drafts. They got RFCs written. They became members of the IESG and IAB and they Chaired working works. And in 2002 we meet in Yokahama, and then Korea, and then in 2010 in Beijing. This is how you get a meeting positioned where you are. Get active.
Right now the only person from Argentina that I know that is working in the IETF is Fernando Gaunt. Get your people involved. The meeting will come to you.
>> OLGA CAVALLI: Thank you, Fred. You're totally right. I know that story and I know Fernando. He is a good friend of mine. He is from the University of La Plata. I'm on the lists. I don't have time. Although I'm an engineer, at this moment I'm more politically, policy oriented, than technical. So I must confess for me it's too technical. And I don't participate. But I follow. And he does participate.
One barrier, the language. It's extremely complicated to follow that list unless you are a very ,very good English speaker and a very ,very good technical oriented person. And we are working on that. We are working on that with the school and with ISOC in trying to introduce the idea. But in my modest opinion, it's kind of a chicken and egg issue. Perhaps you could have a few people and have the meeting, it could be Buenos Aires, it would be lovely. Or elsewhere. But given the first step. ,That would be a message.
And perhaps it's Fernando and two or three more. We are working on that. We hope to promote participation in the list. It is not easy.
One thing that I would like to say, it's also the relationship that this I* organisations should promote with universities. I teach in universities. Technical issues. I teach networking,. people who work with me at the University have no idea that ICANN exists.
They know that IETF made the rules, but they have no idea how. And they know that ISOC has a role and new GTMVs, what is that, ?so I did lectures at the University to let them know that things are changing. I consider a university a leading place for teaching at a university level, which is Buenos Aires. Many people come from Columbia to Buenos Aires to learn.
I talked to Fernando the other day. And with the University networking, because the teachers are not aware of what we all do here. So that is another problem.
So I'll stop here.
>> In my day job at Cisco, the work that I do relates to University research. So perhaps we should talk further.
>> GEORGE SADOWSKY: Both Karen and Sylvia raised one finger. Let's do that. And then we will go over here and take a couple of interventions. Finally, we will come back to you, Tim, if you are willing to wait to the end of that particular sub queue.
>> OLGA CAVALLI: I'll just make two short comments. On the IETF, one of the things, as you mentioned, that ISOC is doing is working to help ramp up that cycle, that chicken and egg cycle, and the ISOC fellowship to the IETF is key, which Fernando has actually been a rock star in, and working with the University. One of our plan programmes on IETF outreach in Latin America is specifically to work with universities. Because there is -- it's a really good channel, we think, especially for Latin America in particular.
Personally, on the IETF meeting issue, I think Fred I'm voting for Cancun sort of North America, sort of Latin America, maybe make people happy in the interim.
Quickly, on Bil's comment, I think Bill is -- I think Bill is right. In terms of -- for many years in the community, you know, we have done the work because we know it's done well and we're satisfied in the fact that we see the benefits sort of firsthand. But we do need to do more to tell our story. And I think not just to toot our horn, but I think that we have a very unique approach to development within the Internet community. And I think you saw that reflected around here.
Bottom-up. We treat people as colleagues, not trainees.
We tend to come from a view that Internet development is 80 percent social engineering and 20 percent technical engineering, so to speak. A lot of it is about bringing people together. And one reason that that is important is, from what I have seen in some development agencies, those are not the things that they value necessarily when they are thinking about developing programmes or what to reward. And I think we need to talk about that, because we do have a model that has been working and has worked for a while.
With that, I want to pick that up. Because ISOC next year is having an anniversary year celebration next year in April, and I think this is key. You know, we're reflecting on the things that have -- that we have done as an organisation over the last 20 plus years, including those of you that are here, our earliest iNet fellows.
We want to know where our iNet or iNet global participants have gone and what has been done with that experience.
So, Bill, thank you for raising that. I think it's key and I think we need to do more in that area.
>> SYLVIA CADENA: I just wanted to respond to some of the questions. First, most of the proposals that we find, as Karen mentioned, we don't treat the grantees as recipients. They are our colleagues, so they are all of our partners in the 23 economies where we have been working. And that's why some of them are here. And that's why we try to do it. And they work with direct efficiency. And if they are developing software, for example, part of the requirements is that they show participation and engagements supposedly based on you few users that they think they have.
About south to south cooperation -- sorry. I forgot your name -- that you mentioned, I'm very happy to share some good news that are not official yet that we are -- just as soon as the IGF finishes, we have a very interesting meeting going on with the freedom programme that BLACKNIC is running. And we want to start an alliance with small grants to support the IDRC. And the idea is that we will keep our regional programmes or we will try to collaborate south to south and things that make sense.
About booklets, you have one. Please take one. I believe that we need to tell the story and there are many stories to tell about the language barrier.
The first Web site that I learned to do with G. Small as a teacher was the Web Latino. Guess who was my colleague on the next Chair? It was R. Artuello. He had a mustach at the time. We were sitting there doing Web site and we were starting to put together content in Spanish. And it's just amazing to come here so many years after, to find the same thing over and over again. And even -- I mean, Spanish is very well represented on the Internet now.
Don't start with the other languages. One of our winners is from Nua, and he wants to bring Nua language to the Internet. So it's a very important thing that we need to do. And we did it in Latin America. We still are still struggling. The guys that we are supporting in the AP are doing it. But because we did it already doesn't mean that they don't have to change. So we need to provide that first opportunity that we were so honoured to have before, to others.
And the dead language thing, my last comment. Going back to Fred and Cisco and others, I've been working in a former life on lots of initiatives to bring ICT to the rural communities. And we know that the configuration of all of the routers and access points and you name it was all in English. So we did what is called a book Sprint. It's a wireless for networking in the development world book. It's a green striped work that is going on. And the team that worked on that book is meeting right now in Copenhagen and they are doing the third edition of the book. It's "All you need to know about how to set up a network somewhere in the world." And then when they get ready, we manage to find translators from everywhere. We have it translated in 13 languages with less than 50,000.
It's just a question, we need these. We need to get it done. We are going to do it. And it starts with that determination and the passion that we need to invest in a lot of the things that we do. It's just because that if you have a product like this book that you know is good, you have to do it. There is no option to go another way.
>> GEORGE SADOWSKY: Thank you. We have six minutes left, that is until the end -- the formal end of the session. I have Ideli in. Tim. I have Tim. So be respective of the time and Tarek. Okay. We might run late, but not too late.
>> IDELI: Thank you, George.
Ideli. Before starting I would maybe give a suggestion, then if I don't have time to finish at least I suggest and say I think from what we have been talking about, I think it's time for the I* community to think about the kind of consortium group to focus on development and raise the profile of the different initiatives that we have, and something that can come out from this workshop.
Coming back to the effect of what the I* organizations are doing in terms of organisation are not well-known. There are two reasons for that. Because we don't communicate much about what we are doing in terms of development, because it's not a codified activity. And if you look at our budgets, they are limited budgets and we want to focus more on what we are there for. We are a member driven organisation. And now members tell us what we should be doing with the money. So we are more focused on operational things.
The second thing is that governments have different mechanisms of evaluating and measuring impacts of contributions to the development, which is different from what we are doing. If I take the case of Afrinique, that is on the side, that contributes to improve the Internet environment. We are in Kenya, but if you look at the base of the success of the Kenya infrastructure, it's based on a small step. Having a root server, having a community that is built around that. And those come from where? From the technical community.
So, the way that it is measured, its impact -- the development measure is maybe what we need to do. We have the Afrinique server, which is there, we are offering that to ccTLD now in Africa. We want to offer the DNS infrastructure, which is an important part of the development. We have a root server for two years, and we are looking for countries to host the root server and it's difficult to get them. So there are a lot of things which have been done, very, very operational. We should communicate more about that. But at the same time we should help governments who understand how it's in fact development as we talk about it.
>> GEORGE SADOWSKY: Thank you. And I should mention, you didn't introduce yourself.
>> Sorry. Ideli of Afrinique.
>> Thank you, George. I'm Tim. The current co-chair of the Afrinique group. I lived in Africa for the last seven years.
I'm appalled there is no one that teaches this in the University level as an academic subject. We have a network that Bill Drake is a part of and some other folks are part of, and you just don't teach Internet Governance. And I'm just mystified. You teach about -- you talk about Internet Governance, but no one talks about how the Internet really works, its policy fora. There is just no academic institutions that do that, as an institutional -- as a degree, for example. And I think that would be very useful, that Giganet would take that up.
And another thing, I deal and the other I* organizations. The last five to seven years I've been watching these organisations. They invest a lot of time and money in this Internet Governance fora and development topics.
And I think that you're pretty stretched. I don't know how much more time you can give. So I think you're right. We probably do need some -- something to grow out of, to focus on development from the I* community.
>> GEORGE SADOWSKY: We have somebody here associated with the University who has a strong interest in Internet Governance. Maybe he will take up the charge. Katim and then Tarek.
>> KATIM TOURAY: Thanks, George.
I just wanted to make one very brief point. I heard a number of people talk about how do we first, of course, I think the very important point that we should try to keep a better track of what has been done.
Secondly, the issue of how do we measure what we have done? In other words, how do you know we have gotten there when we get there? I think here I'll pull out my development evaluation hat and just point out that we have to bear in mind two issues. The issue of impact versus outputs. At the end of the day what really matters is the impact, that is the effect of what you are doing on development outcomes and development objectives.
And also, of course, is the issue of the -- the fact that sometimes while -- what activities you have done, they actually take time. In other words, while we do some of those things, we have to bear in mind that some of the impact that we are looking for will take some time to realise. I think we have to just bear this in mind. Thanks.
>> GEORGE SADOWSKY: Tarek.
>> TAREK KAMEL: I just wanted to pinpoint two things. The recommendation that you have issued about whether governments are aware of what we are doing. I would say that governments are aware, but we need to approach them more and more aggressively. You are right.
But, they are looking for help. They are seeking help. And they are seeking direction again, because the issue is very complex of Internet Governance. And it's becoming very diversified. And it's not anymore a technical issue.
Unfortunately or fortunately, call it whatever you want, they don't have someone else except this community to refer back to and to look back at and in order to lead. And therefore we see -- I repeat what I have said at the beginning. We have a responsibility again to lead and to lead the way.
And this brings me to my second point of regionalization of IGF. IGF is not an event only or a conference. It's a process and we shouldn't forget that as a community. And it needs regionalization in order to really have an impact and effect. We need to work on the regionalization similar to the approach that we have done many years ago, regionalization and maybe localization. And this will happen only by capacity building. So we need to train people aggressively about what Internet Governance is worldwide on a regional level, and have the trainees from the region, because they know the problems -- the trainer, sorry, the trainers from the region, because they know what the impacts and challenges are in the region. Because there were global Internet issues but there are regional issues that are very distinct. And if we overlook them, then I think we are committing a big mistake.
>> GEORGE SADOWSKY: Excellent point.
Karen, five seconds. Adele.
>> KAREN ROSE: Just responding to Adele, and we are talking about outcomes from meetings, the Internet community, we have a collaboration list that is mostly on policy issues. What I'd like to do is volunteer ISOC for the Internet community to start a development collaboration e-mail list as a start. We can develop a charter, and we have got a policy collaboration. Let's have a development collaboration list. So we will volunteer to do that and move forward with the charter.
>> GEORGE SADOWSKY: Thank you very much. I hope maybe you can say a few more words on that in an e-mail or in a posting somewhere, so that we can get a full flavor what have you're proposing.
Last comment.
>> ADELE: Thank you, my name is Adele. I work with the International Development Resource Centre in Canada.
I think you can imagine how glad, how happy I am to see here that we are talking about development and the need for ICT 4G. I would like to bring to your attention the fact that today, even in Kenya, there are specialists doing Ph.D. On ICT4D. There was a contribution to several projects or programmes, and the last five years we were concentrating our efforts on developing the research on ICT4D. So, we don't need I think today to ask ourselves if we want to work south south or north south or if we partner with the -- with the community, where the development should take place. It's obvious. And a lot of communities are taking care of themselves today.
But also, I mean, even around the world, there are Ph.D. And Master's and IG4Ds in Canada and United States and UK and France, so the world changed a lot.
And really I think any work on development should work or should include the researchers, and to understand the future and how this future is built.
Today IDRC is no longer working on IG4D. We are working on the Information Society. Because tools are developed, methodologies are developed, disciplines are there. And the new discipline is how the whole society now, which is networked already, is behaving and is changing in the developed world and the developing world.
Finally, I would just take again the example of the language. Because if you want, like Sylvia said, do not repeat what we were saying 15 years ago. I think we need to see the language issue exactly like the infrastructure issues. We don't need today to translate software. We would need tools. We need databases. We need terminology. We need language resources.
Thank you.
>> GEORGE SADOWSKY: Thank you, Adele. I'm not going to attempt to summarize this. There are too many threads and a lot of them are worth picking up. And of course there will be the transcript that will be available. I feel a little bit like -- I have a dog who is -- whose very frisky and loves to go on walks. For her, the journey is the destination. And that's exactly what we have done here. We have had an interesting journey through a lot of ideas. They're not going to go away. Neither are we. Thank you.
(Applause)
(End of session)
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