Sixth Annual Meeting of the Internet Governance Forum
27 -30 September 2011
United Nations Office in Nairobi, Nairobi, Kenya
September 29, 2011 - 09:00 AM
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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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>> RAQUEL GROTTO: Hello, everybody, good morning. Thank you for being here this morning, early morning.
Sorry for our late start. We were waiting for one more speaker and so this session about E-Participation principles, I'm sure you already know about the remote participation. It is a successful experience, the main pillar for E-Participation and I would like to start with by saying that E-Participation is not only remote but real online and we use ISTs and online participation to interact with people, to involve people, and I think this is a key idea to keep in mind during this workshop.
We are going to have a different approach so I have Tim Davies on my side and he is going to talk about a little bit about this idea of having online documents on site on time that we are going to work with.
So every speaker will be invited to talk about principles to give us an idea of which principles we could bring on regarding E-Participation.
Before we start calling the speakers, I would like first to thank Ginger, who organized everything, yeah --
(Applause)
And the moderator by invitation, this was teamwork.
We have also Sheba, Tim as I said who is going to work on this document, right here right now. We are trying to finish the session with this result and Fatima who will help with presentations and Spanish speakers and the remote moderators, of course, in the room.
So thank you, all. This is a great team and thank you to the speakers for being here, of course.
My job here as a moderator is pretty easy. I give two minutes to the speakers and then, "Shut up!"
(Laughter)
No, I will be polite but anyway we will keep you to the two minutes because we have a really short time and we expect to have the Round Table. We have almost a full room, which is great, we are competing with the proposal workshop so thank you all for participating.
Without more delays, we will give the podium to Tim to explain the path and then we start with the speakers.
>> TIM DAVIES: So, yes, on the screen there you can see a web address, diplo.ietherpad.com/19. The remote participants are welcome to that also. There we have a document that once you have connected you'll be able to edit that and what we are going to try to do is whenever a speaker suggests a principle, we'll put that up at the top of that document as a principle or guideline.
So I'll be trying to put in things the speakers say but you are welcome to edit and contribute to that as well. At the bottom of that document we really encourage people to share any notes, thoughts, reflections, links to useful resources so hopefully we can go away with a record but also a document we can work over so feel free to edit and develop.
If you make big edits to principles you probably also want to speak up in the room on remote participation to explain why you think principles should be changed so hopefully this will work because we tried it once last year at a youth coalition workshop and it's the second time we're trying this at IGF.
>> RAQUEL GROTTO: Thank you, Tim. We are starting with Mr. Markus Kummer. I'm sure you all know him from previous years, he was the IGF Secretariat and now he is the public policy director at -- and vice-president, right. So let's welcome him and hear about his thoughts on E-Participation.
>> MARKUS KUMMER: Yes, thank you. Pleasure for me to be here.
I have not prepared much so I don't know whether I'll be able to be short but I'll try.
The Internet is about openness and inclusiveness and so is the IGF. When we started, we clearly wanted to be as open and inclusive as possible. There were early calls for -- hang on -- people that would not be able to travel and would like to be part of it, so we looked at remote participation.
The beginning was rather hesitant, I would say, but we found volunteers who helped us to push this concept and as you know Raquel and the whole Diplo family was a big part of it. We have improved over the years and the breakthrough was back at the Hyderabad meeting when we brainstormed what would be the best way to bring people in and one of the proposals was what about creating remote hubs.
It's not that we invented it but it was used in other contexts. I think the UN 8 conferences used that and it was the year in Europe there was a football championship, Euro 2008 which took place also in Switzerland, and there was this big public viewing places where people go, gather and watch football together and clearly they enjoy that, to have the community feeling. We thought that it's better than just sitting alone behind a screen, create a group that can get together.
We had eight hubs all continents.
It continued in 2009 in Sharm El Sheikh, we had nine hubs and then the big jump came last year in Vilnius where we had 31 hubs and this year we have even 46 hubs.
Sorry? 10 seconds!
Well, let me say also another thing that we discovered. We had transcription right from the beginning, realtime transcription which we found is very useful. It helps people who don't have English as a mother to know to read what's happening. In addition, it is a useful record and we did not think that it is also a great assistance to people with disabilities who are hard of hearing, but the disability community came to us and said, you have to make transcription available from all the meetings and this is where we are now. We have transcription, real live transcription from all workshops and it's available online as we go on and people who are not in the meeting can follow it.
This is also, if you have lower bandwidth, is much easier to follow the realtime transcription than the video screening.
So now I have overstepped my welcome.
(Laughter)
I would say thank you very much for all your efforts to make this possible.
>> RAQUEL GROTTO: No, thank you. We thank you, Markus, because you were a key actor to get everything done and really great supporter to remote participation. It wouldn't are happened without you. So thank you!
(Applause)
Thank you for all your work.
(Applause)
Just to stick to the idea of this workshop, what principle came to your mind, just one regarding E-Participation, that you could raise on just to start with?
>> MARKUS KUMMER: Well, I think the most important principle is openness and inclusiveness.
>> RAQUEL GROTTO: Perfect. Thank you.
I would bring back to Tim the mic so he can share his notes about youth participation and E-Participation.
>> TIM DAVIES: I will put my E-Participation hat on. I wanted to start by exploring a emerging form of E-Participation with social media use around the IGF.
At Sharm El Sheikh I noticed that the conversations were not just happening on the remote participation channels and WebEx rooms, they weren't just happening around the tables. There was a very active back channel of people using Twitter and other tools to talk about what was happening. There were many people blogging about sessions, taking video clips, sometimes just reporting what was being said but sometimes offering different views and different ideas that were not necessarily coming up in the face to face or remote participation discussions.
So I think this Twitter back channel is a powerful form of E-Participation, both for remote participation but also engagement here. As I watch the Twitter back channel I sigh people in one workshop room discovering something happening in another, making connections between those sessions.
We realize this can become a cacophony quickly of hundreds and thousands of nine parallel sessions and it's hard to find your way what is going on. So last year and this year we've tried facilitation, encouraging people to not only tag their messages as IGF but also tag them against the workshop in session, aggregate the pools together that information that IGF 2009.diplomacy.edu and that builds these into a record of sessions and also lets us explore connections between sessions with the tags and words people are using.
This informal form of E-Participation is very powerful and has its challenges. People stumbling across the event from outside having comments and we need to engage with those people in new what's. I have ten seconds left. My principle, then, is we need to focus both on the formal channels of E-Participation through WebEx but also bringing some of these more informal forms of engagement right into the discussions to get new people involved in IG and to allow all people to have a way of speaking up to the mediums and platforms they are comfortable with.
>> RAQUEL GROTTO: Thank you, Tim. Thank you for sticking to your time.
It's an example. We are going to have this kind of talking all along. Now I would like to invite Mr. Jorge Plano. Thank you for being here. Fatima? Fatima?
Okay. We are going to bring his presentation. Mr. Plano is from Argentina and (Speaking off-mic) on accessibility and disability and as Markus brought up, for example, the captioning, really helps not only for remote participation and in the room but also for people with disabilities to follow the meetings.
So please, Mr. Jorge, if you could have your two minutes.
>> JORGE PLANO: Thank you. Accessibility starts with the rights of persons with disabilities. Those rights were put in the field of human rights by the convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities that was issued in 2006 and signed by most of the countries in the world. 100 of them have ratified yet -- already ratified this convention.
What is this? Accessibility in the field of Internet is a standard that must be followed but -- standards that must be follow by the developers of a website. It is only this, this is not more difficult -- it is nothing more difficult than this.
But accessibility, what is dominated -- electronic effect. (Speaking off-mic) on the it is, the accessibility is a tool to improve the participation of people with different -- in different situations.
For example, at present, in the Internet, we have very different challenges. One of them is that the range of 100:1 in screen sizes, big monitors to small Blackberries, processor speed and bandwidth. Another diversity that exists, a diversity -- tremendous diversity of software. Different platforms, different operating systems, different browsers, different players added to the browsers add a second challenge that accessibility help to solve.
The same situations, for example, people that is moving but example crossing an avenue and using the phone and chatting with the phone. Injuries that temporary disable a person or noisy situations or working in the sun light or another diversity is the diversity of users into aspects mainly the excuse of the users for using the tools like computers or terminals of different kinds or different levels of knowledge in the specific field.
Well, just know we are enjoying this electronic effect because we are in this room. People that are speaking with different accents, with different levels of English, and hearing, with different -- used -- whoops, ten seconds! -- remote accessibility and the inclusion of e-govern and e-commerce and the web applications and there are legislation that mandate this and the aging of the population. In remote participation fortunately we have got the first -- I remember the situation in -- increased the accessibility which some was better than others. We had no captioning in the remote sites. Finally! The disability, and the objectives are to include in the agenda of governance, the accessibility issue, because the accessibility the main problem with accessibility is that it tends to be invisible, not to be included in the agenda and the second objective is to promote the accessibility of the IGF itself.
It was formed in 2008 and we appreciate very much the work done by Mr. Markus Kummer with the -- was when he was in the Secretariat and we were bothering him and we were --
(Laughter)
-- he really -- my first IGF was in Rio and really the accessibility of IGF -- very much. Thank you.
>> RAQUEL GROTTO: Thank you, Mr. Jorge. Sorry for rushing you. Your experience is amazing. I am sure we could hear you more but sorry, just need to stick to the time.
It's a silly question but the office must be sad sometimes, accessibility is a principle for E-Participation? I'm asking.
>> JORGE PLANO: Yes. I think yes, because in first place the principle of disabilities and second place the tremendous difference the environment of the users, accessibility helps --
>> RAQUEL GROTTO: To be a principle. Thank you very much.
Next speaker I am inviting to share with us is Jovan Kurbalija, responsible for many of the -- many people here, certainly work for the -- program and please, and also the remote participation Working Group that it was born with Diplo so thank you very much and please share with us your ideas.
>>JOVAN KURBALIJA: Thank you, Raquel.
I have to be careful after all these warnings about two minutes and I won't start my intervention with "I will be short" which means it will last a bit. I will be quite telegraphic trying to bring building blocks for the concluding documents. We may have a direct outcome from this session drafted by the whole group.
First of all as we already heard there are five key elements that could go in some sort of preamble of the report. It is low-cost. It is environmentally friendly, remote participation is also effective interaction and there for brings new interaction which you may not find in corridor diplomacy but sometimes more effective.
It keeps the written report which Markus highlighted and shouldn't be underestimated. It also what we just heard, provide assistance for people with disabilities. Now, if I have to put a few principles, I will go as usually French go for three but because of the time I will cut to only two.
First one: Make sure that possibilities become reality. In the field of technology we have a problem of blue sky, everything is possible, but when we have to realize this possibility, we realize also the reality is completely different. All efforts had been made, especially what you already did with the Working Group to train people, to give them a chance to explain, sometimes make real steps in order to make sure they participate.
This is a huge challenge, not that visible because you can't say okay you have a microphone, you have rid I don't camera, you have technology, computers. Why you don't participate? We don't take into consideration other social, cultural and other problems. First principle. Make sure possibilities are transferred into reality.
Second principle is be ready for scaling up. What we experience with Working Group in Diplo is once people start experiencing remote participation they come with new ideas. They want to integrate new features and that is essential to keep it open for the new features and new development. Those are two principles for the final document. Thank you.
>> RAQUEL GROTTO: Perfect. Thank you. Thank you for sticking to your time. It was great.
So next speaker that I would like is the video on? We have Jeremy Malcolm, also a enthusiastic supporter for remote participation.
He's unfortunately in another workshop right now so he left a video I would like to -- is it ready? So he can also bring us. I won't be able to ask him for the E-Participation principle but I hope he mentioned that.
(Video playing:)
>> "Thanks for inviting me to give you brief virtual comments on how to strength online interaction with members of the IGF community. My first involvement with online participation was in 2006 for the first meeting. I and a couple other people were discussing what we thought the IGF this do to enable online users to participate. We put forward a lot of suggestions and in the end the Secretariat said we won't do any of that but why don't you? So we did. We created the first community -- which evolved into IGF/online.net. Another suggestion we made was to create a mailing list for IGF participants since there's a fundamental way (Speaking off-mic) operate. Unfortunately what has not been done officially is to put anything into (Speaking off-mic) so while there is a mailing list the participants are added to it or even informed and (Speaking off-mic) to the IGF community side on the mailing list so nobody uses it.
The first suggestion I would make is take online participation ors I like to say collaboration more serious by promoting it even more than the annual face-to-face meeting and if you are going to outsource certain things to the community they should be supported.
My second point is online participants should not be made to feel like second class citizens. They should be able to register like everyone else and anyone online or offline should be able to use chat and e-mail to communicate through official channels. It does not need to be complex like WebEx. The IGF and (Speaking off-mic) have been using e-mail lists for decades. (Speaking off-mic) foundation for the development of the (Speaking off-mic) IGF community can work on joint text, shared data and now others. In that way the annual meeting had been treated more as a time to report back on the work done by the IGF through its online participants working groups throughout the year rather than being the IGF (Speaking off-mic). This is my time and there's a lot more I'd like to say but I hope this provides some feedback."
(End video)
>> RAQUEL GROTTO: Let's thank Jeremy remotely and next speaker I would like to call is Sebastien Bachollet from the ICANN board and ICANN public participation committee, also responsible for the remote participation features in ICANN and he's really a supporter also and you this convince him to bring remote hubs models to ICANN also --
(Laughter)
-- But, okay, I would like to -- let's hear his ideas for the next few minutes, please. Go ahead.
>> SEBASTIEN BACHOLLET: I see you are doing your advertising already, but I was hoping to have two minutes in English, two minutes in French and two minutes in Spanish
(Laughter)
To make my speech.
>> RAQUEL GROTTO: What about Portugese?
>> SEBASTIEN BACHOLLET: I will use badly those two minutes. But it's come to me to my first principle. It's that multilingualism is really mandatory and we try and I don't come here saying that I can solve all the problems and I have the best idea. But we try to do that and specifically in the area now of the at-large participation and at-large organization we have interpretation in a lot of even conference calls and you have switch channel one in French, one in Spanish and one in English. My concern about that is that I would -- I dream to have one day the same thing done but not with English as the pivotal language because it's the other step, it's why we can't take another language and English has to be the main one but today obviously is the participation, even I participate -- in the English channel because it is always you lose something if you are in the other but if you are not about to speak English, it's better to be in the other.
It's an improvement but still progress must be done.
My second point is that we need to have proposal in low bandwidth and higher bandwidth. Not because we are in a place where we have high bandwidth, we need to be sure at the other end that people can join and to join they need to have different type of resources. It could be just -- sorry -- the scribe or some tools that are low bandwidth. It's not to say once again it's the best but it's better to have that than nothing. If you are referring to people with high bandwidth and they can't afford to join, you don't make any progress.
My last point for now is that I love this discussion because I think we need to share experiences and what I hope in the future is that we can build among organizations virtual and real some tools because today for example we have to learn different tools if you participate through IGF you need to learn WebEx. If you participate through ICANN you have to learn about Adobe Connect. I'm sure there are other tools and I'm hoping that one day we will be able to build together the best tool for this type of interaction.
Thank you very much for the invitation and thank you, Ginger.
>> RAQUEL GROTTO: Thank you, Sebastien and for sticking to your time. Sorry for provoking but it's the way we raise up things. Okay.
So our next speaker is an African and also an open source supporter so I would like to call Nnenna Nwakanma. Sorry if I'm not getting your name correctly. You can share with us and please say -- she's from FOFSA. Please share with us the next two minutes.
>> NNENNA NWAKANMA: Thank you. I have participated remotely from my bedroom, from my kitchen, from my sitting room from a conference center in (Speaking off-mic) from an ITIS center in Ghana, from a rural area in Nigeria. So I have participated remotely in the IGF across Africa.
I want to speak to three things and I would like you to remember them.
Three Cs. The first C is capacity. The second C is continuity and the third C is customization.
Capacity means that for many countries we would need to look for at least one or two centers that have bandwidth capacity to host a hub, especially for African, developing countries so have a center with the capacity to host a hub.
Continuity. Continuity means that we don't just end E-Participation at an IGF session. We are beginning IGF discussions in schools, with blogger communities, at camps so that the discussions keep going. So by the time the IGF rolls around we have issues to bring to the table.
That is continuity. The final one is customization. Because I live in the French-speaking country, we have customized by looking at the text transcripts and translating them directly into French when people speak because the transcript that come from the remote participation hub, they're in IGF is in English. And sometimes we can do local language facilitation in the hub in country.
Last time in the Cote d'Ivoire I had children and after the sessions we now begin to explain to the people what we actually said Vilnius. Let's make room for flexibility and customization. Thank you.
>> RAQUEL GROTTO: Thank you, and thank you for sticking to your time.
In short words, how would you put the principles? Multilingualism as a principle by your -- okay.
>> NNENNA NWAKANMA: I said the three Cs. Capacity for the hubs.
>> RAQUEL GROTTO: Okay.
>> NNENNA NWAKANMA: Customization as a principle. Hubs must be able to modify things that fit them like in Cote d'Ivoire, we listen, we pull it and then we discuss and we get back. Then the last one is continuity. Keep it rolling. Keep it rolling so that by the next -- you find out this year we have more participants from the Cote d'Ivoire here because of what we did last year and what we have done between IGF in Vilnius and IGF in Nairobi. We kept it rolling.
>> RAQUEL GROTTO: Sure, thank you very much. Our next speaker could not log in. It would be a remote panelist, I'm sure he might be -- have in troubles. He's in Paraguay and we are six hours behind there so if he logs in, we call for his two minutes.
But now I would like to invite you to look at the screen here on my left where you can see all the points raised on your talkings we had earlier and the principles that were raised by multiple and I would like to invite the audience that followed us to also contribute and to -- are we reading? Is that it?
You want to?
>> TIM DAVIES: There were two points I think that went directly no there. One on Internet access and one on using multiple media tools we might want to hear from the people who suggested those.
>> RAQUEL GROTTO: Sorry?
>> TIM DAVIES: Two principles with the "TH" next to them which people put they want directly from the speakers.
>> RAQUEL GROTTO: The remote.
>> TIM DAVIES: We suggested those principles.
>> RAQUEL GROTTO: Okay. Perfect. It's perfect. So -- sorry? Is allowed here. So I would like to invite, I'm not sure it's from here? You included that? So please, take the mic. As the speakers I'm going to keep you to two minutes. Okay.
>> When I speak about social media tools, usually you talk about the use of Facebook and Twitter and what not but there are other tools available locally where people could also communicate about what's going on in their local languages so I think it's important to not just look at Facebook and Twitter and the global tools but also look at what is indigenous in different countries and allow that -- that should also allow for E-Participation.
>> RAQUEL GROTTO: Perfect. Thank you. Anybody else? Please. I would ask you introduce yourself, your name.
>> Okay. My name is (Speaking off-mic) workshop 21, remote participation didn't work in that one so my point is that we need better procedures to address that kind of situation to make sure whatever went wrong there is identified, documented and solved so that it doesn't happen again, that applies also to the -- whatever happened when I tried to participate remotely myself at the so-called open consultations where I could not get in with the tool and e-mail address that was provided by the secretary, it was unattended.
>> RAQUEL GROTTO: Good points. I think Ginger wants to take that to reply. Please, Ginger.
>> VIRGINIA PAQUE: It's actually quite appropriate because I was his remote moderator and I was dealing with the problems that did come up. I would point out that, yes, first of all, every single session fills out a report. Our two young people over there are taking note of all the remote participants, where they're from, what hubs are joining us and what problems arise. This information is being compiled and will be used to improve each time and that's partly why each IDF has been better.
I also would like to point out that the participants and the remote panelists have to show the same kind of fortitude and willingness that the once in Norbert's workshop did show and they collaborated with us, for instance, Thomas Lopenhalft who spoke from New York, we were unable to get the audio. He e-mailed his presentation to one of the members of the audience and that person read it for him.
His participation was made remotely but a little more remotely. Our second remote panelist from Africa, we were also unable to connect, it was the very first session of the morning, that's the hardest one for the tech team to take care of. He was also able to intervene by Skype. We do not stick to necessarily the tool we have used as our main tool but we adapt, implement, overcome. It's a changing world and we do it all the time. We have found the Secretariat has always supported this, does do the followup and, yes, we are still making mistakes with links and with the website but if you refer to the Web site I think you will see there has been enormous improvement and I like two people, I think Nnenna and Norbert both mentioned a pet point of mine. The IGF does not take place for four days a year.
It takes place 365 days a year and I can tell you the Secretariat reads the e-mails they get. I can tell you this because as co-coordinator of the Internet government caucus, are my two minutes up?
I'll talk real fast!
As Internet Governance co-coordinator, caucus co-coordinator I tried to get consensus. It's very difficult as you all know. Secretariat prepares a document during open consultations where a diversity of opinions which does not require consensus is posted so when we did not reach an agreement by remote participation on the mailing list, I made my own statement as a person, as just Ginger Paque, as nobody, and my comments were included in the executive summary that an individual -- I couldn't get the group together or the results I wanted. I went in as a individual, and my results were taken into account and included in the executive summary.
I would say to you: Use the remote participation. It's not just providing remote participation. It's using it oh we all are to do our part as remote participants. Sorry, I'm sure I'm over time.
>> RAQUEL GROTTO: That's okay. Ginger, thank you, and I have sad news. You are not nobody.
(Laughter)
You cannot say that. So I will give --
>> Key words are --
(Speaking a language other than English)
I think we should apply it to remote participation and it is what has been happening. If the main system doesn't work, we go for Skype or somebody send e-mail. Doesn't mean we have to plan. We have to organize and have proper procedures but what is our experience is that there are so many people who find different ways to use remote participation and while we organize it properly we should be open for solutions and you can see with our Kenyan friends, what does it exactly mean?
>> RAQUEL GROTTO: I was going to ask it. Nnenna, you can start to explain what is
(Speaking a language other than English)
Sorry, back to you.
>> This basically means "hot sun" in Swahili.
>> How do you write it?
>> "Jua kali." Metaphorically it is a thing that you are (Speaking off-mic) more or less like those guys who like to do stuff under the sun. There is no shade. So those guys, they are like --
>> Hustlers.
>> Hustlers.
>> we have -- (unintelligible) --
(Laughter)
>> I was tweeting that. I want to talk about repping your people. It's a long word. Yeah. Like I belong to the blogger community, online activist many community in the Cote d'Ivoire and since I wasn't going to be in the hub this year, I said, guys, I will be in Nairobi and they are like, oh, yeah, so we are sending you to Nairobi!
So remote participation is not about technology; it is about people. So I'm here and I am tweeting in French because I'm report to go a group of people who are sitting, listening to me, not to you, so I must summarize --
(Laughter)
-- I must summarize in Abijan terms for the group that is there. And I must call them on Skype in the evening to talk about the weather, about the food, about how old Markus Kummer has grown since the last time I saw him
(Laughter)
About Ginger and stuff.
That is relational participation that must be taken into consideration. Of course I have had it with photos, uploaded 156 photos on Facebook for my friends so that is represent natural electronic participation and that is very important for those of us in Africa.
>> RAQUEL GROTTO: Yes, this is a good point because the -- one of the ideas is it's not only streaming or shared but you need to take the picture, you need to take the environment. This is very, very important so is it because I have Bachollet?
>> SEBASTIEN BACHOLLET: My name is Sebastien. Forget the rest, please. But does Abijan need to be our friend? Can we --
>> NNENNA NWAKANMA: You need to be to understand the way I tweet.
>> SEBASTIEN BACHOLLET: I think --
>> NNENNA NWAKANMA: Then rep your people, represent the people you are coming for.
>> SEBASTIEN BACHOLLET: I wanted to take one discussion Jeremy brought up about outsourcing to the community and to say that my feeling is that it is the reverse; we need to outsource to the Secretariat and not the Secretariat to outsource to us. We are the community, we are the participants and the Secretariat tries to help us. If we have to outsource something, it is the Secretariat, not the other way around. Thank you.
>> RAQUEL GROTTO: Who is the Secretariat? We don't have Markus. we do have these changing and turning points. I think right now we depend on ourselves on volunteering, on getting things done and despite of course the support is needed.
We got Bernard from the Working Group as Secretariat working full-time on remote participation. You can see him jumping room to room to solve the technical problems, to solve everything, to work with the training for the remote moderators, so we have a guideline they received I'm not sure Ginger mentioned that but we do have guidelines they received and are trained for. We got -- (unintelligible) -- here!
(Laughter)
(Applause)
You are having some kind of symphony or telepathy. Okay. I'm going to take you for -- could you share with us about the remote participation this year and other years you've been doing since you appeared. You got two minutes. I'm going to cut the mic.
>> Hi, everyone. Sorry, I cannot be -- I cannot -- I'm Bernard Sadaka I work for the IGF Secretariat technical coordinator and remote participation during the last three years. I thank you for coming to this great workshop and thank you for the organizations as well, thank you, Markus, as well. Of course I have to thank Diplo. Who else is organizing?
So this year I'm very happy because we have gone further more every year advancing everywhere, getting one step ahead. We have several enhancements. I'm pretty sure you can check the website and everything that is happening. Unfortunately we had this morning some trouble with the Webcast but hopefully it's been solved.
Other than that, we hope that next year is going to be better. This year we have so many remote panelists, we have almost 27 remote panelists registered but they are like five more that registered last time -- at the last minute but didn't -- they went online directly.
We even have three people call in from their phones, not from WebEx. And that is how the status is now and hopefully everybody could join our sessions and we have also set the hook line number on the website. Check it if you have problems only with remote participation. Only remote participation. Thank you very much.
>> RAQUEL GROTTO: Thank you. Thank you for your hard work, Be has been working the last three years, right with remote participation and each year we learn something, we get something better and try to fix it. Norbert was bringing some problems he had and it's good, please, it is the kind of input we need to get better and try to fix it.
>> One last thing. If you have any proposals or things you think that would enhance the e-mail is there, please -- beautiful, beautiful. Thank you very much.
>> RAQUEL GROTTO: Please.
>> Maybe we can interact since you are in the room. I would request the opportunity for remote participation in the problem-handling process for remote participation so maybe you could put up somehow the list of issues that you have addressed and how they are resolved so that, for example, I could quickly check whether the problems that I have encountered if they have already been dealt with or not.
>> (Speaking off-mic)
>> We will make sure. This year we are lacking on resources a little bit. We will make sure to have a hotline and platform for trouble-shooting and everything. Very good idea, thank you.
>> Thank you for all your hard work.
>> Ben Norris here. We have been working together for many years and he's been a great driver on that. But he made the point, it's not resource-neutral and here we rely very much on voluntary cooperation. We have learned quite a bit in this process learning by doing but whenever there's human activity, errors do happen, mistakes, but that's basically not the point. The point is can we learn from these errors, build on them and improve?
When you look at the whole disposal for remote participation now compare it more or less the same as in Vilnius but certainly much better than previous meetings in Sharm El Sheikh or Hyderabad, we have learned together, also the remote moderations, that was one of your ideas and an excellent one because when you are in the room, you are sucked up by the room. Moderators look at the people here and you need somebody to bring in the remote people and we have created space. I fully agree with those who said more could be done. I had always hoped you would have in the main session maybe also live video with the remote hubs but that never happened. The hubs were either too shy. Last year we had somebody from the Bangladesh hub, you read out the message, they were extremely enthusiastic at having this opportunity to react, to participate remotely to a meeting but we really must make an effort to bring them in more, these remote hubs where people sit together, great to hear a little bit from -- I know there people -- ex-Diplo fellow sitting in (Speaking off-mic) it would be great hearing from these guys, what they are feeling and thinking.
These are my two cents so we are not the perfect, never were a perfect organization, it's really very much learning by doing, and don't forget resources come into it.
I can make also lots of efforts in improving remote participation and have improved it tremendously over the past years but if you compare the resources of ICANN with the IGF Secretariat, it is day and night.
>> One more thing. I simply need to thank the volunteers that dedicated their time to come here and we also have a local team of volunteers that are also helping and one last thing. Thanks for the hub because their input is the most important for us. Thank you.
>> RAQUEL GROTTO: Sure. And one thing I want to announce from Markus's speech, we had videos, unfortunately we could not upload on time on the session but they are on IGF channel, YouTube channel, or the Working Group website, IGFremote.info and I'm sure there are hubs already asking to have a two-minute video and let's try. Maybe tomorrow we could have something but that's a really good idea.
So Tim has news about --
>> TIM DAVIES: Partly -- we've got a good list of principles building up. I'll do an admin point. Please feel free to continue developing those, don't delete other people's content but do add. I wanted to just pick up on some of the comments and amplify a few things that were important. One was the question of resourcing what we do and the idea we had been collaborating with others, particularly when it to making sure these are inclusive and not just build around Twitter or the English language.
I think there's a real potential to find other partners who want to collaborate and we should explore that more. I also think we should ask the question how we do this on limited resources and who should we be encouraging to sponsor this work. Who is gaining very much from this participation, saving on not buying the air flight tickets and maybe willing even to contribute quite directly to E-Participation.
So we both have the hubs and also individual diplomats, civil servants, company officials, participating in particular sessions from home. Can we encourage that even more so as well?
And lastly, just picking up on the point of being representatives at the IGF last year we tried some social reporting, what with the Diplo fellows where we tried to pair up fellows here with people in remote hubs so they could ask to follow up a session or conversation in the corridors and I think that was a really interesting experiment and one we should look at more of how do we have a dating service between hubs and people who are here to link them up more directly so each hub can get a representative here if they have not been able to send someone themselves.
>> RAQUEL GROTTO: Ginger?
>> VIRGINIA PAQUE: I would like to follow up on points that have been made here and also on Jeremy's excellent, excellent commentary.
What has grown up out of that initiative and Jeremy forgot to mention is the remote participation Working Group which is the group of volunteers that Markus has talked about joined by even more people who are not directly but are related to the Secretariat or Bernard has brought them in. The group of excellent volunteers. There is quite a wide base of people that need to be appreciated here but the remote participation Working Group does give a formal framework that -- it's not as disorganized as perhaps you might think and there is a Web page that is active which is the www.IGFremote/info. And we welcome there your input as well.
And if you would like to join that mailing list, there is a mailing list that deals with remote participation so speak to either Raquel or myself because there is a formal network that does go on all year round in preparation and works with the Secretariat.
Then just, Raquel, if you will all forgive me, there are several innovations worldwide that are specific to the idea IGF, although ICANN is excellent and has set a great precedent and we refer to the ICANN guidelines on the document but they are more guidelines than principles. We do work from their example but the IGF has really used remote hubs which Markus mentioned and that innovation I don't know of any other group at all that has brought in, for instance, we have over 40 remote groups watching together and discussing in parallel.
As Raquel mentioned and Nnenna mentioned we have groups on the ground and some have account for speakers from here to join and interact with their hubs and then we also have Jeremy interacting from another room, we have numerous layers between iether pads, Twitter, 2.on that Tim mentioned and the video, for instance, I attended the main session of in Egypt as a speaker on video as Markus has proposed so these levels are being attended to examine we are looking for you to bring in new innovations for next year. Thank you.
>> RAQUEL GROTTO: Okay. So --
>> Quick comment. What Ginger mentioned, many international organizations, spaces are looking to the experience of the IGF. I attended recently meeting with the IQ and few organizations from the UN system. For what we are doing here bottom-up, without resources with enormous creativity of a few people, is in a way a breakthrough in multilateral diplomacy. This is another aspect to keep in mind. Besides our internal aspect of making it functional. It will be probably copied and used in the other policy contexts, too.
>> RAQUEL GROTTO: I didn't know about I 2, you mentioned it.
>> (Speaking off-mic).
>> RAQUEL GROTTO: I had an experience in ICANN that I can say to Sebastien during the public participation comment you were not there, don't are worried but I was in the meeting and someone raced exactly this: Why don't you bring the IGF experience? I was there and they said, oh, hello, I'm here. So here is our data, here is what we have done and what you can do and for the next -- I attended like four meetings, ICANN meetings so far and three of them I was in the public participation committee meeting, saying about our experience, saying you need to bring it on, and I just was not in the fourth because there were no meetings from the PPCs. But I would be there, pushing the idea because it's not because we want to like take over the world but it's a good idea. We need to push for it in other fora, to bring on more people, and not only as we -- I think Nnenna and Ginger raced up, it's not only having the video streaming but the real environment, real interaction the hub model can offer.
Sebastien, can I bring back to -- so Sebastien and then you can comment.
>> SEBASTIEN BACHOLLET: I want to tell you two things. First is that not just wait for the top to do something. It's a bottom-up process still needs to work and that could be -- if you are able to set up hubs, we can accommodate that. Don't wait for everybody, me or somebody else or the staff to say yes. Do it! I can and will be obliged to go there and that's what I call the real bottom-up process. Same thing for the IGF.
My second point if you want to raise that again, raise it at the public forum in the ICANN, during the next ICANN. It will be heard by a lot more people than just at the public participation committee meeting. That's my advice. Not to say I will not help to push this idea but there are different ways to go to finalize and obtain what we want.
>> RAQUEL GROTTO: Good idea since I will be in the car we will do it remotely. Vlada, sorry, and then Nnenna.
>> Yes, thank you, I wanted to expand a little bit because the title is E-Participation. We had basically in the first couple years as Markus said was remote participation. Now we really have E-Participation. I'm really thankful to the team for setting this up and setting up the hashtags and everything and the aggregator page which should be linked to the IGF site as well. What we are doing now is effectively participating and working on a document at the same time with some people over there. We are implementing E-Participation, not only people that are not here.
Now, one of the things I got nervous about and was the worst thing for the conference in a couple years ago was having the wireless Internet in the rooms because no one was listening to what's happening over there. Now it is starting to be changed. Because looking around this room, people are like doing this, they are using wireless to be in the discussion, with remote participants among us, that's the real case and I think this is the way to build up what you established effectively with remote hubs, to build up with these kind of tools and as Ginger mentioned to work throughout the year.
We had a very good experience with EuroDIG that we started with opening up questions on what are the topics to be in EuroDIG through the online poll and then analyzed and opened a discussion. There was an online discussion so several iterations, we didn't manage to start drafting the documents but that's also an on hon we can do in the future.
Once again praising all the efforts and just noting it's not remote participation anymore, it's really big, big thing of E-Participation.
>> NNENNA NWAKANMA: I'm saying yes, yes, yes, because that is my life.
I want to talk about connections. Connections and networks. Last year I think we followed this E-Participation panel from Abidjan and somebody was mentioning about coming to hold some schools so I think one of the sessions and the children in an Abidjan, the children were interested. The person gives us e-mail and then we contact the person after. And this year we held the first e summer school there. That is private business but I'm talking about when we come to face-to-face meetings, we must seek to mainstream networking in E-Participation so that my hub can connect to the hub in Colombia away from whatever is happening in Nairobi and take it forward.
That is the time E-Participation will make sense to people so the networking, interconnection and cross connection should be a principle.
Thanks.
>> RAQUEL GROTTO: Thanks.
I see on the -- sorry. Please. Please, go ahead.
>> JORGE PLANO: Mine is a proposal around accessibility issues. I would propose in the core team organized in the remote participation, we consider that it is necessary that one person be the -- assume the responsibility on accessibility and this is essential to give accessibility to that issue.
Furthermore, it would be interesting if there is an e-mail between -- I saw there is different e-mails that will be an e-mail related to complaints and suggestions around accessibility.
>> RAQUEL GROTTO: Good point.
>> JORGE PLANO: That is a concrete proposal.
>> RAQUEL GROTTO: Yes, I'm taking notes. Thank you, George. We got the document out.
>> JORGE PLANO: And (Speaking off-mic) offer our advice around those issues.
>> RAQUEL GROTTO: Thank you!
>> JORGE PLANO: Thank you. Sorry.
>> RAQUEL GROTTO: No, it's okay. We will talk later and get a volunteer. Get a remote.
>> VIRGINIA PAQUE: We do have several remote comments from street Lucia in the Caribbean. We have a comment that remote participation -- this goes along with some things said by Nnenna and others. Participants need to perceive themselves as "us" rather than "other" and that the perception of the responsibility for remote participation needs to begin to shift to the participants themselves. That goes with that.
>> RAQUEL GROTTO: We do got another one, please.
>> Yes, I do have one from Pakistan and he advocates for the inclusion of localization in the remote hubs so he says it's important to invite more participants who are familiar with local languages, not just the English language.
>> RAQUEL GROTTO: Perfect. You can have -- that's pretty much what Sebastien was saying and Nnenna.
>> NNENNA NWAKANMA: I've actually had to send a tweet about the principles coming out from E-Participation being the very same principles in open source solutions so maybe we want to look at the WebEx thing which is not open source and look at, because if WebEx we are open source I tell you guys would have developed many applications. So we can (Speaking off-mic) so let's look at this. The use of open source in E-Participation technology. It is very important.
>> RAQUEL GROTTO: Note taken. Good point.
>> SHEBA MOHAMMID: (Speaking off-mic) one comment. Our first attempt was with open source application from Hyderabad, but unfortunately stability of the system for whatever reasons it wasn't as robust as it should be. It was the first attempt and then completely, completely behind this idea to find another system which will be robust enough. Thank you.
>> WebEx was (Speaking off-mic) to the Secretariat at that time. It proved to be basically the most stable solution. Also used Ameritech which proved more complicated. That is an open source system but I agree the point is well-taken.
>> RAQUEL GROTTO: We tried (Speaking off-mic) which was not open source but it was -- they have shared -- sorry -- yeah, sorry. I'm lucky I'm a lawyer, not a tech, I can do these mistakes, so we try to use for both it has two pillars, so one of them being now open source, I was going to say they also made a personalization to us and being from Hyderabad it's a platform born and created there, so we make sure to use it but just after we had WebEx, I think I can use WebEx also, right? Adobe Connect. And so this is -- we fight a lot on that issue. Thank you. Sheba? You want to say?
>> SHEBA MOHAMMID: I was saying I think we have an opportunity now, we have had a live case study of using this for IGF and I'd like to see it apply to other contexts, principles we're using. There's an opportunity to leverage it in the wider policy making process when we go to our own countries and try to fill with these principles in democracy processes and within Gov 2.0 and I think we can kind of mainstream that into other areas and use these principles beyond looking at ourselves and in other ways to make policy making more meaningful for individuals.
>> RAQUEL GROTTO: That's great. Ginger? New Guinea. Okay. We have a hub connected, Papua, New Guinea. Hello. Nice to have you here. Ginger also remind me we were talking about difference of languages and we do have a Spanish remote moderator which is Fatima. We are also trying this new approach to have several languages not only and I hope they can get some kind of understanding with our transmission and can interact.
Just a second. We will bring -- and then Nnenna.
>> NNENNA NWAKANMA: I have a question for the hub in New Guinea. It's very dry for me, very high in Nairobi here. I'm from we have the Africa, suffering from altitude, but I want to know what the weather is right now over there in New Guinea.
>> RAQUEL GROTTO: I think we can get the reply over there. We are mainstreaming the shad. Okay. This is Bill (Speaking off-mic) hub. I think he's not online. Do you have a reply? Okay. So I would just suggest that we have ten minutes and we should end up here. I would like to go back to eitherpad and Tim can be done. He was trying to wrap up our comments here but before I go, sorry, Tim, I would like to know if any of the participants would like to raise another issue. Norbert and then we go.
>> This is a very quick request to remote hubs to please let us know what your experience is. How do you feel being part of a remote hub? What can we as workshop organizers and local people do perhaps to give you a better experience? Thank you.
>> RAQUEL GROTTO: Norbert, we might not have that right now a reply but we are working on a report. We did that in India and Egypt. We didn't do that last year but we have those experiences. This is -- we are building on not only here the remote participation here but also the hubs. They teach us what is working, what is not working. This idea with the videos is one of the bottom-up ideas that came up. The idea of having interaction between the hubs. I know that last year the Brazilian and Argentina hub tried to connect and interact so this is a building process and ongoing. We are trying to work on the report.
Good point. Vlad, last comment before we go back to.
>> I wanted to remind what Tim said, great idea to have kind of avatars of -- they have like 1500 people and every hub can have an avatar.
I'm doing that for Belgrade because we are having the hub in Belgrade to connect to a session and I'll connect before the discussion via Skype so I mean that's kind of avatar might be really helpful for future.
>> RAQUEL GROTTO: Good point. You remembered.
Go ahead.
>> TIM DAVIES: In my dual role as a participant one comment on the open source, and a good point was made yesterday about open data from the IGF website. Every year I've spent quite some time turning the Excel spreadsheet into something that lets us make the social media aggregator and we have a rich resource in the transcript and other materials that enable us to do year round participation. Again, IGF has done amazing things with its web presence but that will be a key area to look at, opening up that content and real standard clear ways better.
On the pad, if we could bring that back. I really want your input in these last few minutes I've tried at the top to take all principles and summarize them where there there was ones that were overlapping. Take a look and if you think I've missed things or misphrased, I've tried to take most word-for-word.
>> RAQUEL GROTTO: Tim, would you like to read it because the remote are not -- may not be online.
>> TIM DAVIES: Okay. Principles are divided into inclusiveness, E-Participation should be about openness and inclusiveness, platforms, support customization for local language and context and all languages had been accommodated, not only English, including attention to right-to-left scripts which is a comment that came directly on to the pad.
High and low bandwidth options for engagement and bandwidth should not be a barrier. E-Participation this include formal and informal channels. Quality of participation. Remote is not about technology but the people, relational participation that gives social context being important, remote representation matters.
Online participants should be able to register like anyone else and not be made to feel like second-class citizen. We're all participants in IGF. We should be able to work across multiple social media tools, including different countries, cultures.
And E-Participation should include networking and connections hub to hub as well as hub to IGF in its main face-to-face meeting.
Points on scale and stability, we should be ready to scale up. We should remain open to new ideas and improvements. There should be clear ways of problem-solving and commitment to troubleshooting. We had been flexible and able to adapt as we run this.
I had one point on the capacity building but I'm sure there's many more that could go there on training to participate. That was the only one that got in the document so far and then putting E-Participation at the heart of IGF and collaborating with others, building platforms.
>> RAQUEL GROTTO: I was going to say I think you did not have time to read but there is a comment endorsing here basic education on computer technology. Various changes in technological line is important for those in rural and maybe having access to computer for education so it's endorsing the principle.
We have -- Tim finished, he has two more or talk about education? Please go ahead.
>> Capacity being -- it's not just about having capacity of people to technically implement that. It's very important remote moderators here and there have understanding have the issues so at the same time the moderator can find a convenient moment to jump in, understand the information. Not just technical. It's overall capacity building of understanding IG and remote participation.
>> RAQUEL GROTTO: Perfect.
>> NNENNA NWAKANMA: That's a very important valid point because last year we had the children's Parliament come to the hub and at a point after hearing about the pornography we stopped and the president of the children's Parliament spoke as a panelist so we now have -- found that I talked about customization. All of a sudden they said leave the children in Vilnius. We want to discuss this right now. They nominated an IGF ambassador within the children's Parliament who was to go around schools and talk to the children about the dangers of the Internet. Other side of the Internet, privacy and security, in very clean words that children understand.
I think that my ability to get across to children of all ages within my hub give me the greatest satisfaction for IGF last year. That's why I was willing to come here.
>> RAQUEL GROTTO: Thank you. We took out a remote comment and then go back to the document.
>> I have another remote comment from -- he's suggesting we may use social networking like Facebook to introduce groups and also pages for remote. So they have the possibility to give the hub coordinator, upload things and invite other hubs to share information and give comments.
>> RAQUEL GROTTO: We have a page, IGF remote participation group. It's for you we just created for those kind of comments but we can raise up as specific hubs space also so Tim can we go back to the document. I just interrupted you.
>> TIM DAVIES: Etherpads disappeared. The last two we are putting E-Participation at the heart of the IGF. Having E-Participation is important as the main meeting or even more so, recognizing E-Participation channels had been promoted through publicity. You're right. I think we lost one. I'll find that and get that back into the document. Key thing is this document will remain live, we can save a snapshot as we end this meeting and then it can remain live to add comments and the conversation cab continue on the Diplo Internet Governance.com or.org at online network.
>> NNENNA NWAKANMA: Maybe we could put down to have remote hubs, technical moderator and a resource person. That would balance out so while you are sorting out the video and all that, someone is there to answer questions. I have done that in cities across Africa. Couple remote moderation with resource and capacity building expertise in the hubs.
>> RAQUEL GROTTO: And onsite also or -- at each hub, okay.
>> Quick point, already stressed that coverage of remote hub should be linked to the local policy problems initiatives. We are linking what's going on on the global level to the local needs. As you indicated in the child safety.
>> RAQUEL GROTTO: Hub agenda and -- perfect. We should be closing now. Please, if you want to.
>> In terms of the documents as Ginger said IGF does not have to be limited, to three days so in terms of their E-Participation doesn't have to be temporarily limited as well. We can get real outcomes and create the documents, do mine maps, create some kind of policies, pull them out and people then go online and kind of share their issues to build on it. We have documentation going forward.
>> RAQUEL GROTTO: Perfect. Thank you, Sheba. I'm going to close now because we are really past time. I know we start late so I let it go a little further.
I would like to thank the speakers. Not sure if you read all the -- agree with the output. Does anybody want to make a last -- sorry?
>> We can disagree.
>> RAQUEL GROTTO: No. I will make you sign it.
I'm joking!
(Laughter)
Thank you for all for being here and for your input. We really have a great document to start with and many, many ideas to implement for next year, as Markus said. This is a building process, bottom-up, and we will recycle.
Thank you. See you in the next sessions. Bye.
(Applause)
(Session concluded)