The following text is excerpted from an ongoing discussion on the IGF
Multi-stakeholder Advisory Group mailing list. The only changes made relate to
an effort to anonymize the comments in respect of the Chatham House rule and
separate issues related to logistics and internal procedures. The discussion
took place on 1 - 31 July, 2009.
_______________________________________________
(Markus Kummer) Dear colleagues, I am pleased to inform you that an open
invitation to all stakeholders has been posted on our Web site. The invitation
was issued by UN Under-Secretary-General Sha Zukang.
Also today, a formal invitation to all Governments was issued according to
normal UN procedure to all Permanent Missions to the UN in New York.
We will start the registration process shortly.
_______________________________________________
(Markus Kummer) Dear colleagues,
You may recall that we set 15 July as a deadline for submitting comments with
regard to the IGF Review process. All comments received within that deadline
will be reflected in a synthesis paper that will be translated into all six UN
languages as an official input into the “consultation with Forum participants”
at the Sharm El Sheikh meeting. The call for contributions is posted on our Web
site. We have also sent a letter to all Missions in Geneva, asking for comments.
Comments can be sent by electronic means, but also by fax or by normal mail. I
would also like to encourage all MAG members to send us comments on behalf of
their respective institutions, if they have not already done so, and please
encourage others to submit contributions. The more comments we receive, the more
valuable our paper will be! While we cannot guarantee that the synthesis paper
will reflect comments received after the 15 July deadline, we will do our utmost
to do so. In any case, all papers received after that deadline will be posted on
our Web site.
_______________________________________________
(Markus Kummer)
Dear colleagues, You may be interested in learning about a report the UK
Government has issued last month, entitled "Digital Britain":
pdf In Chapter 7, on Digital Security and Safety, there is also a passage on
Globalization, (paras 7-18). The extract is attached to this email as a word
document. As you will note, several paras are devoted to the IGF, which is
introduced as follows: Quote: One means of achieving this global coordination is
firstly through the Internet Governance Forum (IGF), which provides an
international platform for sharing information and best practice, addressing
issues such as the global digital divide and increasing access to the Internet
worldwide, trust, safety and the impact of future technologies. The IGF has,
since 2005, provided a crucial platform for information sharing and dialogue on
topics critical to global, social and political development, fostering the
sustainability, robustness, security, stability and development of the Internet.
Unquote The report concludes with the UK position on the future of the IGF:
Quote: The UK Government supports the continuation of the IGF for a further five
year term continuing to represent all stakeholders involved. The UK does not
support any move towards the IGF transforming into a new UN Agency or being
subsumed within an existing one. Unquote
_______________________________________________
(Writer A) Dear Markus, Thank
you for the reference.
_______________________________________________
(Markus Kummer) Dear colleagues, You will recall that the number of workshop proposals
we received vastly exceeded the number of available slots. In the past two
months, we have therefore tried to streamline the list by encouraging the
merging of workshops. The Web site now provides an accurate picture of the
situation, as workshop organizers have provided the IGF a concise description of
the workshop and presented a list of speakers. While there has been a genuine
will to cooperate and merge, there is still no way of providing a slot to all
104 proposals and there is therefore a need to make a selection. Like last year,
we aim to make a first pre-selection from the many proposals we have received
and hope that it will be possible to give the go ahead to some 50+ workshops
early next month. We thought it would be useful, like in previous years, to
organize a straw poll based on the application of common criteria, based on our
discussions, such as: -relevance to the agenda of the meeting; -diversity of
views and perspectives; -multi-stakeholder approach; -geographical diversity;
-involvement of developing countries; -relevance with regard to the cross
cutting priorities of development and capacity building.
Please find attached to this email an Excel file containing a listing of all
workshop proposals with columns for grading them in the above criteria. We
suggest applying the following simple scale under each criterion: · 0 =
unclear · 1 = somewhat meets criterion · 2 = meets criterion. We
would be grateful for your feedback by 29 July. As the table is rather long, you
may wish to take a 'positive list' approach and only mark those you think are
most relevant for the Sharm El Sheikh meeting. Your reaction should give us
some guidance with regard to their ranking. In addition, we will also take into
account their willingness to cooperate, to reach out to other workshop
proponents and their responsiveness to cooperation initiatives and whether or
not they organized workshops before and filed reports. Merged workshops will be
given priority. Those who organized workshops before without filing reports come
last in the pecking order. Our objective is to finalize the programme at the
September meeting to discuss operational matters, open to all interested
stakeholders. The meeting will take place on 16-17 September 2009 in Geneva.
_______________________________________________
(Writer B) Dear Markus, Thanks
for the list. I will send my feedback information during next week.
_______________________________________________
(Markus Kummer)
We would be grateful for your feedback by 29 July. As the table is
rather long, you may wish to take a 'positive list' approach and only
mark those you think are most relevant for the Sharm El Sheikh meeting.
Your reaction should give us some guidance with regard to their
ranking. In addition, we will also take into account their
willingness to cooperate, to reach out to other workshop proponents
and their responsiveness to cooperation initiatives and whether or
not they organized workshops before and filed reports. Merged
workshops will be given priority. Those who organized workshops
before without filing reports come last in the pecking order. Our objective
is to finalize the programme at the September meeting to discuss
operational matters, open to all interested stakeholders.
The meeting will take place on 16-17 September 2009 in Geneva.
_______________________________________________
(Markus Kummer) Dear colleagues,
To follow-up on the email I sent you earlier this week, please find attached an
updated list.
The new list aims to enhance transparency and highlight the mergers that took
place. In the attached Excel sheet, merged workshops appear in bold font and
are highlighted. A workshop highlighted in green font indicates two workshops
merged, while a highlighted workshop in sky blue indicates that three or more
workshops merged. To sum up the situation: at the beginning of June, we had a
total of 141 workshops. Since then, 59 workshops have merged into 24 workshops.
Therefore, we now have 87 workshops in total (and not all 104 as I had wrongly
counted in my previous email). Thus, we were able to reduce the number by 54
workshops.
Due to some technical errors, two workshops have ‘re-emerged’: Workshop 237
(Development) - Using ICTs and the Internet to meet environmental challenges
proposed by the OECD and Denmark Workshop 212 (Development) -
Multistakeholderism at the IGF – Assessing impact on participation proposed by
IT for Change Please make sure to include these workshops in your evaluations.
In addition, in the first version, Workhop 160, Securing Cyberspace: Strategy
for the Future, proposed by TechAmerica, was erroneously listed under Critical
Internet resources. It is now listed correctly under the security theme.
Please note that we some other workshops may be moved into another category in
order to be consistent with our classification.
______________________________________________
(Writer C) Dear Markus, I have
reviewed and updated the workshops' consolidated sheet as per attached, and the
following comments are relevant:
1. As you suggested I have only marked those workshops which I believe are most
relevant given we have to reduce the overall number. I must qualify that my
selections are simply gauged from the one-line workshop titles and not knowing
the details of their contents. So quite intuitive and broadly assumptive.
2. I have marked a number of selections with *, which in my thinking could be
combined together (the three selected group with * are Arabic, child safety and
disability).
3. I believe I have made just over 50 selections, which I understand is your
target number.
4. I hope my input would contribute to the overall selection process, taking
into account, as you pointed out, quite a number of parameters.
______________________________________________
(Markus Kummer) Dear colleagues,
This exercise is getting more complex than we anticipated. We had sent out an
email to all workshop proponents on 15 June requesting additional information
with regard to speakers' lists, diversity in terms of geography, stakeholders
and viewpoints. We sent out a reminder on 7 July and if we failed to receive an
answer after that date we removed the proposal from our Web site. As it happens,
we now receive emails of people who say they did not receive our messages and
therefore failed to provide the requested information in time. As we have no way
of asserting what happened, we take a lenient line and follow the Latin dictum:
in dubio pro reo.
One proposal is from the Association for Progressive Communications, Council of
Europe and UNECE'. It is workshop 96, Code of good practice on participation,
access to information and transparency in Internet governance, Version 1.0, was
not listed on the Excel sheet or the Web site. It is listed on the revised
version that is attached to this email in the openness category. More proposals
of this kind may resurface. In addition, due to an internal mishap, UNESCO's
three workshop proposals for Sharm El Sheikh never appeared on the Web site.
UNESCO's workshops are now updated on the Web site and appear as follows:
91. Freedom of Information in the Internet Governance
92. A Legal Survey of Internet Censorship and Filtering
94. Privacy, Literacy and Social Networking All three of the workshops are
classified in the openness category.
This brings our current number of workshops to 91 with the breakdown of workshops
into the categories as follows:
Access: 14
Critical Internet Resources: 13
Diversity: 5
Openness: 17
Security: 14
Capacity Building: 15
Development: 13
Lastly, workshop 287, Adopting IPv6: What You Need To Know, in the Critical Internet Resources
category, is in fact a merged workshop of three organizations. While this was noted on the Web
site, it was not noted on the Excel sheet. It is now highlighted as a merged workshop on both
the Web site and the updated Excel sheet. My apologies for these complications.
For those of you who have already sent back their evaluation there is no need to
repeat the exercise. You can limit yourself to reflecting the changes in the
latest update. Thank you for your efforts.
_______________________________________________
(Markus Kummer) Dear colleagues,
To follow-up on yesterday's email, please find attached yet another updated list
(hopefully the last one!). Another workshop emerged (No. 210: Child Pornography
on Developing Countries: Strategies to Move Forward). The proponents told us
they had uploaded the relevant information which we had been unable to find in
our data base.
______________________________________________
(Writer C)
Markus,
My markings in the two spreadsheets together provide my recommendations on the
latest updated information.
To complete the picture, I attach my earlier observations in this exercise .
1. As you suggested I have only marked those workshops which I believe are most
relevant given we have to reduce the overall number. I must qualify that my
selections are simply gauged from the one-line workshop titles and not knowing
the details of their contents. so quite intuitive and broadly assumptive.
2. I have marked a number of selections with *, which in my thinking could be
combined together (the three selected group with * are Arabic, child safety and
disability).
______________________________________________
(Writer D)
Dear all: Please find attached to this mail my valuation to the workshops. On top of that, I would
like to share some thoughts about this valuation process.
1. IGF has become a good branding, however in strictest census is falling short to address
connectivity, other than Internet, through cell phones. The difference between a
Mobiles Framework bis a bis the Internet Framework vrs. Convergence. For
Internet, we have always implied the use of the IP protocol. In the mobiles
world, most of them do not use it but still provide connectivity and
applications.
2. Through the workshop proposals and proponents, one can infer
the good-standing and the credibility that IGF has gained in the recent years.
3. The semantic scale for the different criteria should allow up to 5 or 7
steps (which is common; (1) Strongly Agree; (2) Agree; (3) Are Uncertain; (4)
Disagree; (5) Strongly disagree), because the 3 current values might not be
enough.
4. I have the gut feeling that a collection of workshop-organizers are
developing in a way that different trends over an issue remain separate.e.g.
security
5. Most of the cases, there is participation of an emerging country,
which is considered also among the 144 developing countries.
6. Geographical diversity is difficult to valuate.
7. As IGF moves from region to region, it
is expected to have a more accentuated country host-region flavor each year.
Therefore, workshops can have a regional focus and should not be penalized
excessively because of it.
8. There are workshops topics, where the expertise
is geographically concentrated, although it might not be the intended decision
of organizers, where I give "1" in geographical diversity and development
country involvement.
9. Additional criteria might be needed to evaluate the
workshop proposals, like: - Merging; - Potential interactiveness; - Background
material; - Likelihood to have an executive summary; - Overall structure of the
proposal.
_______________________________________________
(Writer D)
Dear all:
Please find attached to this mail my valuation to the workshops. On top of that,
I would like to share some thoughts about this valuation process. 1. IGF has
become a good branding, however in strictest census is falling short to address
connectivity, other than Internet, through cell phones. The difference between a
Mobiles Framework bis a bis the Internet Framework vrs. convergence. For
Internet, we have always implied the use of the IP protocol. In the mobiles
world, most of them do not use it but still provide connectivity and
applications. 2. Through the workshop proposals and proponents, one can infer
the good-standing and the credibility that IGF has gained in the recent years.
3. The semantic scale for the different criteria should allow up to 5 or 7
steps (which is common; (1) Strongly Agree; (2) Agree; (3) Are Uncertain; (4)
Disagree; (5) Strongly disagree), because the 3 current values might not be
enough. 4. I have the gut feeling that a collection of workshop-organizers are
developing in a way that different trends over an issue remain separate e.g.
security 5. Most of the cases, there is participation of an emerging country,
which is considered also among the 144 developing countries. 6. Geographical
diversity is difficult to valuate. 7. As IGF moves from region to region, it
is expected to have a more accentuated country host-region flavor each year.
Therefore, workshops can have a regional focus and should not be penalized
excessively because of it. 8. There are workshops topics, where the expertise
is geographically concentrated, although it might not be the intended decision
of organizers, where I give "1" in geographical diversity and development
country involvement. 9. Additional criteria might be needed to evaluate the
workshop proposals, like: - Merging; - Potential interactiveness; - Background
material; - Likelihood to have a executive summary; - Overall structure of the
proposal.
_______________________________________________
(Writer E) Dear Markus, Attached is my filled-in form again with apology for being 2 days late.
I have ranked all the workshops. My rankings are indicative with caveat that I
have based my judgment on the title only. It would have been useful if there had
been a one-paragraph abstract clickable from the spreadsheet in cases such as
"109 Greening the Internet". In cases where the organizers are well known to me
I had one more element to aid my judgment other than the title. There are also
some "niche" workshops that would appeal to specific attendees, e.g. locals,
Arab Speaking, Spanish & Latin attendees. These perhaps would have required
further analysis but as it is I have applied the same rankings on them.
Some workshops could do with better titling. e.g. "Sustainable Capacity Building
for Internet Accessibility Public Policy Development" can be shortened for
better understanding.
As others have indicated, further consolidation (merging) appears possible.
_______________________________________________
(Writer F) Attached is my rating
of the workshops, and I have actually gone through all the proposals at least on
a cursory level. I have put specific comments against a lot of them, and tried
to be fairly demanding in the interests of helping you weed them out. In places
the comments may be seen as orthogonal to the 0-1-2 rating scale used in each
column. That is because even if I thought workshops might score a passing grade
in the box-ticking sense, I thought there were problems in conception or
planning. For example, at least three of them propose elaborate structures
where they have plenaries and break out sessions. I am not sure that can lead
to a successful workshop in the format IGF provides. I don't know what capacity
exists to extend the sessions or provide rooms that could accommodate break-out
sessions, but I think that before accepting anything so logistically demanding,
the organizers should be contacted to see if they can rework them.
Unfortunately, I found several workshop proposals that just look like
placeholders at this stage, and I can't support them at that level of detail,
even though I think the titles are highly relevant and in all likelihood would
meet the criteria. Finally, I took seriously our agreement not to accept
proposals from organizations that have not posted reports on past workshops they
organized, or that failed to supply the links. Those are also noted in the
comments. Good luck making sense of all of this. Let me know if you need any
additional assistance.
_______________________________________________
(Writer G) Dear Markus,
Please find attached my workshop ranking. Very sorry for this delayed delivery
though.
_______________________________________________
(Writer H)
Hi Markus and hi all, Please find attached my assessment of the workshops. While going through
all the proposals, I noticed that many of them could be more specific about
goals or expected outcomes. Perhaps more goal-oriented workshops could be a
practical contribution to the debate on outcomes of the IGF? On another note,
while we certainly make progress in terms of multi-stakeholder composition and
regional diversity, I noticed that many if not most panels of the proposed
workshops will be 100% male. It seems, the gender issue needs to be addressed
more seriously. Like others before me, I'd like to apologize for the delay.
_______________________________________________
(Writer G) Dear Markus,
Please find attached my workshop ranking.
Very sorry for this delayed delivery though.
_______________________________________________
(Writer A) Dear Markus, Writer
I and A worked together on reviewing and grading the workshop. Please find
attach our integrated document.
_______________________________________________
(Writer F)
Markus and all -- I have now done some checking with people who I
thought were incongruously identified as either co-organizer of some workshops
or as speakers, and want to caution you that in some cases they are not aware of
this involvement. I believe this may mean that the principle organizer thought
they might be interested, but have not contacted them to confirm their
availability in the time between the original "notional" workshop proposal and
the proposal that is supposed to be final. That can be corrected relatively
easily but will probably require a fairly strong note insisting that the lists
be completed and specifically confirmed in the next few weeks. Certainly it is
*essential* that we know that by the September meetings if we are hoping to draw
on speakers from the workshops as resources for the main sessions. As those who
have read the workshop proposals will know, it is a lot of work to get through
them all, but it is essential to do so to be able to rate accurately. It would
be helpful for the purposes of checking on speakers and expectations if all of
the proposals could be put together in a single file using some common software
format (plain text or .doc or .xls perhaps) so it can be searched. For example,
I discovered mention of ISOC as a participant in some files where I hadn't been
expecting to -- being able to search would help me to find those and be in touch
with organizers. I don't have any idea how difficult that would be, but if it
is not too demanding it would really be helpful.
_______________________________________________
(Writer J) Dear Markus and Colleagues:
I agree with writer F, I liked some workshops when they wrote confirmed or TBC,
but seem there are some that even the speakers do not know yet.
_______________________________________________
(Writer E) I would like to know if there can be some verification process for
the workshop speakers. Also if colleagues are sure of some workshops where the
speakers are not aware of their confirmed involvement then they should indicate
for the group what workshops
those are.
_______________________________________________
(Writer K) I agree with you Writer F and Markus, we should put some process
in place to take this
verification process forward because this is a big bite on the time for the
workshops and if there are speakers mentioned in the workshops that are not yet
even aware that they have been included, it will lead to mass confusion for both
the participants and the IGF secretariat. It may be a viable approach to send an
email to all workshop organizers of the approved workshops and request them to
send a confirmation message that they will be conducting the workshops and that
all the speakers are confirmed and notified. This should also have been the
criterion for including the workshops in the program in the first place. Though
I am new to the process but I am sure that it is very logical that the speakers
who are not aware of their involvement cannot be included in the main program
without a prior consent. Secondly, only the emails of the organizers are
available in the list, not the speakers. This should now be a requirement from
herein onwards that the list should include all the contact emails of the
speakers participating in the workshop. I would second the notion for contacting
all respective workshop organizers as soon as possible to provide contact emails
of all the speakers and that an email should be sent out to all pointing to the
main workshop program page online on the IGF website for confirmation with a set
deadline of 20 days that should also give the secretariat an ample cushion for
finalizing that all the workshops included in the IGF program have confirmed
speakers. This activity may also lead to some workshops being removed from the
program that were expecting some random or extempore speaker involvements that
do sometimes happen in such kind of even activities. I hope this is very useful
for program management.
_______________________________________________
(Writer L)
Dear all, Thanks for pointing this out Writer F. This is something I as well
have discovered when talking to various people and organisers who are listed as
co-organisers or speakers on some workshops. It seems that some of the workshops
have simply listed them without their knowledge or consultation. As my
evaluation of the workshops was based on the information provided in the
proposals, my rating (especially in terms of "multistakeholderism"), would have
to change if the information in the description isn't correct. My other concern
is with those workshops which have not seemingly changed at all from their
original submissions. There are a few workshop descriptions that have not
answered any of the questions asked by the secretariat, listed speakers or
attempted to merge with other workshops. I have tried to rate those in the
fairest possible way in my submission, despite their very vague, broad
descriptions. However, after some further thinking, I feel that those workshops
simply haven't provided enough information in order to allow themselves to be
evaluated. Also, yes it would be very much appreciated if all the workshop
proposals could be put together in one single file! That would make it a lot
easier to gain and overview and to navigate through the sea of workshops.
_______________________________________________
(Writer M) Dear Markus, As others I too support writer F's suggestions.
On speakers and co-organizers: I
would suggest we ensure that we those mentioned are confirmed. Delays or late
confirmations raised serious concerns last year esp. with respect to the
Openness main session, for instance. We should aim to avoid such issues this
year and I agree September is a good target. On proposal being combined into one
compatible file: I agree and opt for xls.
_______________________________________________
(Writer K) Dear Markus, Kindly
find attached my inputs to the Sharm Workshop Grading Sheet. I used the
28.07.2009 hopefully the last version that was disseminated. I did not do any
shaking or moving but have felt that there are a number of Child Pornography,
Youth Initiative, IPV6 and Internet Capacity Building Workshops that need to be
merged into one. It would be useful to first contact all the speakers of these
workshops, drop the ones that do not respond and merge the smaller number of
speaker workshops to create space for multiple important ones.
_______________________________________________
(Writer K) Just sharing my
heart's anticipation at the most inappropriate time and location. Since I wasn't
sure of participation in the IGF prior to my MAG selection, I wasn't confident
in making my proposal for this workshop before May 2009. But, just a small note,
though I know this is not possible or acceptable but I would have appreciated if
allowed the opportunity and organized a workshop specifically on the subject of
"IGF and the Internet Governance for Development - Sustaining the IGF process by
building a Human development Agenda" This would have benefited us to hear from
all cross sectors and multistakeholders what their perception of a Human
Development Agenda would be in light of IGF and its potential. It would have
also helped us in producing matter on the subject of IG for Development (IG4D)
and bring this issue into mainstream IGF deliberations and interventions. And of
course, I would have been amongst the speakers as well as act as a moderator for
that matter.
_______________________________________________
(Writer K) I just
typed the topic too quickly with errors so fixing some typos: "IGF and Internet
Governance for Development - Sustaining the IGF process by building a Human
Development Agenda" Just sharing my heart's anticipation at the most
inappropriate time and location. Since I wasn't sure of participation in the
IGF prior to my MAG selection, I wasn't confident in making my proposal for this
workshop before May 2009. But, just a small note, though I know this is not
possible or acceptable but I would have appreciated if allowed the opportunity
and organized a workshop specifically on the subject of "IGF and the Internet
Governance for Development - Sustaining the IGF process by building a Human
Development Agenda" This would have benefited us to hear from all cross sectors
and multistakeholders what their perception of a Human Development Agenda would
be in light of IGF and its potential. It would have also helped us in producing
matter on the subject of IG for Development (IG4D) and bring this issue into
mainstream IGF deliberations and interventions and of course, I would have been
amongst the speakers as well as act as a moderator for that matter.
_______________________________________________
(Markus Kummer) Dear colleagues,
Please find below an invitation issued on behalf of the United Nations Group on
the Information Society (UNGIS) to attend Open Consultations on Financial
Mechanisms. The consultations will take place in Geneva on 8-9 October 2009.
_______________________________________________
(Markus Kummer) Dear colleagues,
Many thanks for all your very helpful comments. I will get back to you more in
detail later this week. Right now we are redrafting the workshop list, taking
into account your suggestions and I think we would be able to give the green
light to around 50 workshops. Writer K's email with his proposal for a
development oriented workshop reminded me that we had such a workshop. However,
when going through the list for some reason it was not there anymore. Slightly
baffled, we had to go through our archives and realized that it was deleted by
mistake, as all the others who had not updated their proposals within the given
deadline. Unfortunately, this workshop proposal (No 316 Implementing the WSIS
Principles: A Development Agenda for Internet Governance) was already complete
and was deleted by mistake. We have now uploaded the proposal once again and
apologize for this mishap. The proposal, submitted by X builds on two previous
workshops and includes broad multistakeholder participation and support. MAG
members P and Q are among the panelists. In our opinion, it scores high in all
criteria. Furthermore, it is also closely related to one of the main sessions
and would feed well into the session dealing with WSIS principles. I would
assume that most of you would share this assessment and unless we note strong
dissent, intend to list it in the category of workshops that will be given the
green light. You will note that the proposal outlines several options, including
the option of going for a "super workshop slot" of three hours. I would favor
that option, as we have not done enough to deal with the developmental dimension
of Internet governance and, by doing so, the workshop could give a solid
substantive input into the related main session. As it is supported by a broad
range of actors, this workshop seems particularly well suited for such a role.
Maybe by doing so, it could also incorporate Writer K's ideas.
_______________________________________________
(Writer K) Dear Markus,
Wonderful and thank goodness we found the missing workshop. I will be getting in
touch with Writer P and Q regarding joining the workshop as a speaker or
moderator. Kindly record this at your end as well.
_______________________________________________
(Writer E) Thanks for this
information Markus. The workshop proposal is captivating; it is a logical
progression from Rio and Hyderabad and the panel appears very qualified.
Certainly, I rank it high in all aspects. Writer F has seen it all and we cannot
expect less from him. It would have been a pity to have accidentally lost the
proposal in the trash bin. Hope Writer K will be accommodated. In that
connection I support the 3-hour format feeding into a main session.
_______________________________________________
(Writer F) Thanks Markus, As you
may recall from some months ago, I wondered on this list how we are going to
deal with this issue. It has not adequately been discussed and there is
obviously a true appetite for getting to the question of the development aspects
of Internet governance. Therefore I am glad to see that you have re-surfaced
this proposal. I'm also pleased to see that my memory that we had one was not
wrong -- I'd begun to wonder when I went searching for it after Writer K's
useful email yesterday. I also think that giving it a longer period is a good
idea, precisely for the reasons you say, plus the obvious need to give the topic
a good airing, and hopefully to get to a common understanding of what is meant
by "the development aspects of Internet governance." That said, I don't think
that the agenda is sufficiently focused yet, or that the list of speakers and
participants is completely appropriate for one of the featured or "super"
workshops. In particular, I have a problem with the Internet Society of China
being the sole representative of the Internet technical community. You may not
be aware, but ISC is *not* affiliated with the Internet Society (although the
two organizations do collaborate from time to time), nor would it be widely
accepted by other individuals or organizations in the Internet technical
community as being in the main stream Internet Society community. Certainly
there are many experts in the impacts of governance on development who could
also bring useful experience and views to this important discussion. I'd like to
support the notion of going ahead with this highly topical workshop, but with
the caveat that the organizers work with others from the MAG and others
interested to ensure that it is appropriately balanced and brings together the
necessary range of participants to create a productive session. As I think
about it, I would recommend the same for all of the super workshop sessions,
which could take on an importance nearly as great as the main sessions.
_______________________________________________
(Writer N) Markus,
Grading sheet attached with apologies for the lateness.
I want to echo Writer’s comments below regarding the confirmation of panelists.
_______________________________________________
(Writer N) Markus,
I agree with Writer F. The concept of a ‘super workshop’ is good but if it is to
be then much work needs to be done on the panelists and should be organised in
close co-operation with the MAG.
_______________________________________________
(Writer K) My response to Writer F's question that why should I be included in
the Workshop on the Development Agenda for Internet Governance. I didn't know I
would have to prove a point to join. So I see apprehension to exist in Civil
Society itself or is this just my misunderstanding?