Teaching Internet Governance: The experience of the Schools on Internet Governance

IGF 2010
VILNIUS, LITHUANIA
16 SEPTEMBER 10
SESSION 26
1130
TEACHING INTERNET GOVERNANCE:  
THE EXPERIENCE OF THE SCHOOLS
ON INTERNET GOVERNANCE



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Note: The following is the output of the real-time captioning taken during Fifth Meeting of the IGF, in Vilnius. 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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>> SANDRA HOFERICHTER: Hello, hello, hello.  Okay.  Welcome to this Best Practice workshop, Teaching Internet Governance.  We are very delighted to see so many known and unknown faces in this group.  This shows us we are going on with success because no one faces, obviously like to -- the known faces, obviously, like to come back and see each other again.  And unknown faces, we hope they are interested in attending some course somewhere around the world.  
First to set the scene and explain a little bit about where we are starting from, I would like to show you a little movie, and I hope the sound will work here.  If not, then we just stop it.  
Oh, I need Internet.  
(Laughter)
Yes, I need Internet connection.  So hopefully this will work.  Now it's not.  Now it's working.  Okay.  So let me try again.  Nothing happens?  No.  
(Music)
Okay.  So this briefly explains the situation we have today.  Actually, these numbers were from 2009, so we can expect them to be much higher right now.  
Let me now introduce you to the panel we have here.  We have Professor Kleinwaechter, founder of the international School on Internet Governance.  We have on my left Bill Drake, one of the first faculty members from the very first beginning and attending almost every summer school around the globe.  On my left, it's Olga Cavalli, the Regional Director of the south summer school initiative and was also a member from the very first beginning.  And Avri, she is our golden faculty member because she was attending every summer school initiative around the globe, and we hope she will go on with this for the next courses.  And on the other hand, we have George Victor Salama.  First he was a student of the European summer school, and later on he was the organiser of a school last year in Cairo.
I'd like to give the floor now to Professor Kleinwaechter.  He can explain the initiative and how the idea came up.  

>> WOLFGANG KLEINWAECHTER: Yes.  Thank you very much, Sandra.  Okay.  Yeah, welcome, everybody.  I'm very surprised that the room is over packed now, and this shows that nothing is more successful than success.  And when I just, you know, want to give you a very brief background where all this comes from, because like Avri and Bill, that's why they are over here on the podium, I was a member of the United Nations Working Group on Internet Governance, which was established in 2003 by Kofi Annan and the Secretary-General of the United Nations at this time, and then when we were sitting there as academic members of the group, we realised that a number of other members of the group, you know, had only, you know, small knowledge about the very complex issue of the Internet.
And when we started a discussion, you know, we heard again and again where I can get the full knowledge about what is called Internet Governance?  And we discovered there is no academic discipline, Internet Governance.  There is no research organisation, international research association that covers Internet Governance.  And students who want to get the knowledge about Internet Governance, they have no chance to get it.  There is no bachelor or master course, no programme in universities around the world.  
Then we said, okay, if it doesn't exist, then we have to create it.  So the outcome of expert meeting in the year 2006, after the World Summit was over, was that we should create an academic network and, you know, develop a master course on Internet Governance.  And the academic network is now GIGANET, the global Internet Governance net okay, which had the fifth annual symposium meanwhile on Monday, and the outcome was the idea of summer school.  
And we started with the first summer school in the year 2007.  We developed a basic curriculum for on the master level, which has around 40 hours.  And it's an equivalent for about five credit points according to the European standards.  It has three big parts, one theoretical part, one policy part, and one technology part.  
And you know, we offer this programme, and we are very surprised to get the reaction of about 100 applications for the 25 seats we had.  
And since that, you know, the whole thing was growing and growing.  In the last year, we had 40 summer school in Meissen.  We had again 124 applications for the 35 seats.  And meanwhile, we have, then, launched a summer school in the southern hemisphere because the globe has two summers, as we all know.  It's in June, July, August in the north, and it's February, March, April in the south.  And so we move to the south, and Olga Cavalli started to process in the south.  The first was in Buenos Aires.  The second one in Sao Paulo.  The third one will be in Mexico City.  
Then at the eve of the Internet Governance Forum in Egypt, we were approached by the Egyptians, and with the help of George, who was one of the first fellows of the first course in Meissen, we launched the summer school, and we are working now with a professor from Beijing to develop probably the year 2007, summer school, and although I had a discussion yesterday with someone from Kenya for the opportunity of the sixth IGF, which will take place in September in Nairobi, to have probably an African summer School on Internet Governance.  
The whole concept is evolving based on this curriculum, which is well structured, and we will see, you know, how far this will go.  
Meanwhile, we have around 200 Fellows within the four years, which you know, went through the summer schools in the various parts of the world.  And our slogan is teaching the Internet Governance leaders of tomorrow.  And we are really very satisfied with the fact that Fellows from our summer schools are now representatives of their constituencies in various Internet Governance policy bodies.  
If you go to ICANN meeting, the last meeting I counted seven heads which were either faculty members or former Fellows from the summer school.  If you go to the GNSO Council or the CNSO Council, then you will find Fellows from the -- from the summer school because in the summer school you get the knowledge to understand much better and quicker what's going on in these very complex bodies like ICANN, IGF, or other Internet-related policy bodies.  
Our other slogan is learning in a multistakeholder environment.  It means the basic idea of multistakeholderism was introduced with the idea of Internet Governance in the World Summit of the Information Society.  It's also basic principle for our approach, you know, to select Fellows and faculty members.  It means the Fellows are coming not only from universities, it means traditional academic people.  
We are very careful in selecting people also which have already worked in government in the private sector, in the technical community, so that we have a very good mix of Fellows so that Fellows can learn from each other, from their background working in different stakeholder groups, and also the faculty has some classical academic professors but has also as faculty members the policymakers, Bertrand de la Chapelle, for instance, with one of our faculty members, and he came to the faculty as the ambassador of the French Ministry for the Information Society and as the Vice Chair of the Government Advisory Committee.  
And we have also business people there which really tell us how the Internet economy works.  And if you come to technology, then these are the managers, from WIPO, or from LOCNIC, who tell us how the IP technology management is organised.  So that means they get firsthand information and knowledge if you go through the summer school.  
And before I bring this now to an end and let speak the others is that all this is organised bottom up and was enabled only by the support of, let's say, the various Internet constituencies, and in particular, the ccTLD registries, some other companies, who realise investment in education makes sense, and to remember the story was the very first summer school was initiated by support from the German ccTLD registry because it took place in Germany.  I approached them, and they agreed to help.  
You know, with this success, we have now much more supporters.  If you go to the Web sites of the various summer schools, then you'll see that we have managed to get support from a number of ccTLD registries around the globe that we have to support from some TLD registries like affiliates.  We have to support from also from other Internet companies.  Each summer school is independent, has its own budget, and on the other hand, we are exchanging views and trying to harmonize our approach.  This harmonization process will continue, and in the last summer school in July in Meissen, we established an umbrella for all the summer schools, which is called now ISSBIC, the International Summer School Bureau on Internet Governance.  
We try to coordinate so the summer schools continue to keep the high standard of the programme, and we will coordinate with regard to the selection of faculty members and to help each other in the outreach, and if it comes to the selection of students, we can also exchange views.  
The plan is not to have more than four summer schools per year because it makes no sense because it's a lot of efforts.  But we want to have at least four summer schools per year, one in the north, one in the south, one in Asia, and then one in African Arab region, probably moving from the Arab world to the Sub-Saharan English-speaking world and the Sub-Saharan French-speaking world.  This has to be done because of the challenges of the future.  And also then to meet more the original needs because, you know, people want to study Internet Governance in Africa probably have a specific need which could be different from people in Europe, and also, you know, the faculty members would be, then, different.  
It means IP address management in Africa could be done by AfriNIC, while IP management in Europe is done by RIP, or in Asia it's done by APNIC.  So that's the beauty of the IP architecture you have all over the world, very regional institutions, ISPs, regional Internet registries which can give them the first hand information.  
So on the other hand, the theoretical part of the lecture programme guarantees that everybody gets the same theoretical framework, and this theoretical part is delivered if it comes to the general policy issues, it's Bill; the technical issues by Avri; I, myself, have a lecture about history; we have Milton Miller who gives also the policy-oriented approach.  
So the beauty of the system here is that you have global faculty, but then you have local and regional faculty members which explain in particular the regional policies and the management of the resources, critical Internet resources in your region.  
And with this, I stop here, and I am very happy to see so many Fellows and faculty members back in this room.  And let's wait and see how this will further develop.  We have just four summer schools in Europe, two in Latin America, one in the Arab world.  That's not too much.  But more will come.  Thank you.  

>> WILLIAM DRAKE: Good morning, everybody.  Wolfgang gave a good synoptic overview of the background and logic of this.  The one point I would emphasize about what he said was that this has been very much a demand-driven kind of enterprise.  It's actually kind of interesting.  I mean, for those of us who come out of an academic setting, it's always problematic, where does Internet studies or Internet Governance studies fit in the topology of education?  Well, it doesn't fit very well at all.  There are, as he says, no real programmes that are dedicated specifically just to Internet Governance, and the programmes that do, in the graduate context, take up Internet issues, often do so in a kind of broader sociological or other -- or else technical kind of framework.  
So this is really, I think, filling a need, and the fact that we get so many people applying for so few seats each time is quite extraordinary.  And the fact that people keep coming to Wolfgang and saying we want to do one too is also quite extraordinary.  In a way, it's kind of like the way the regional and national IGFs have grown out of the IGF.  It's the same kinds of process, where people see a possibility and sort of ask to replicate it in their own region and so on.  
Let me just say I guess Sandra's going to hand out later a flyer with the URL, but just in case you're interested, it is www.ISSIG.info.  That's internal summer schools Internet Governance.  And you can go -- that's International Summer Schools Internet Governance.  And you can go there and see the links, the courses, what we do.  
Let me give you a little sense of what this is like.  The -- essentially, the programme we do in Germany every year does start out with some kind of overview of the Internet Governance topology with Wolfgang doing the history, and then I do a sort of take on the sort of broad lay of the land of Internet Governance, emphasizing the notion that, you know, historically we tended to think of Internet Governance -- or at least many people did -- as being essentially synonymous with ICANN and the management of names and numbers.  And one of the key developments, of course, conceptually that we had as a breakthrough in the WSIS process was to start to really understand the global Internet Governance is a much broader phenomena that involves a wide variety of rule systems and frameworks pertaining to everything from intellectual property to technical standards, global electronic commerce, privacy policies, consumer protection, and so on, security, the full range of issues.
So I do a sort of overview from a holistic perspective of that, and then we go into a couple of different slices.  The international politics of Internet Governance, sort of economic dimensions, business dimensions, legal dimensions, et cetera, technical dimensions, and then also, as he noted, case studies of particular institutions, especially the ccTLDs, but also ICANN and others.  
So it's a fairly comprehensive overview and a very intensive experience.  It's a week long.  You are in a room together from 9:00 in the morning till 6:00 p.m., and then in the evenings, a couple of the nights, we have students giving presentations on the Internet situation in their countries, which is a good way to get the students engaged as well.  
And also in the evenings, the really key part that Wolfgang didn't mention is all of the amusements, the boat trip, the dinners, the libations.  And on the last night, Wolfgang forces us all to sing songs from our country in the bar.  So -- which is kind of embarrassing if you've got a voice like mine, but you know, what are you going to do?  I give it my best -- sometimes, actually.  Sometimes I just cheat and don't do it.  
You know, sometimes people ask me what's it like teaching such a verse range of people from around the world?  Isn't it hard to find a common denominator that you can isolate and build off of?  
And actually, I have to say, having done this now six times, I don't personally find that geography is the biggest barrier.  Because what's extraordinary to me is that with the globalization of knowledge and engagement around these issues, you find people from every corner of the world who are kind of on the same page in terms of the fundamentals.  I mean, it's quite extraordinary when you have students coming in from Tibet or Moldova, wherever it might be, and they are very much into what's going on in developments, the U.S., national scene, whatever.  There's often a real strong base of common knowledge that everybody shares.  
So I don't find that geography is the biggest difference.  There are differences, of course, that pose challenges related simply to student interests.  Some people are interested in privacy policy, and that's an entire world in and of itself.  You could spend all your time going to meetings and reading journal articles and reports about privacy.  Similarly, ICANN.  Anybody who is involved in ICANN, like some of us are -- well, all of us are, actually -- can tell you that you can spend 50 hours a week just reading the email, and then it takes another 50 to think about replying.  
So these -- each of these domains of activity is a fairly comprehensive and complex realm.  And so, of course, students are going to come in, and some are interested in issue one, and some are interested in issue two, and some are interested in issue three.  And the challenge, then, is to try to encourage everybody to step back from their particular interest and say, well, what is the overarching framework?  What are the things that tie all this together?  And to start to understand that the particular issues and institutions that people may have an interest in are actually part of a larger integrated topology and can better be better understood and addressed either as a future policymaker or as a graduate student or as an activist, whatever it may be, by understanding those linkages to the broader range of issues.
So that's been an interesting challenge to take on, but I find that people negotiate it fairly well and seem to come out of this experience, based on the feedback we get, with a much broader and holistic and integrated understanding.  
We have former students sitting in the front row.  They can probably tell me if I'm wrong.  But that's my perception from what people have told me.  
Another sort of source of difference, I guess, that we sometimes have to overcome, although it's not a huge one but it can be a factor, is that sometimes the interests of students differ depending on whether they're more academic or practitioners.  We've had some people who came from governments and so on who are really looking -- or business -- who are really looking for a very nuts and bolts operational how do I make better decisions about subject X tomorrow kind of knowledge; whereas some students are PhD students from around the world, and they want to talk about theoretical matters and conceptual matters.  So getting those folks to understand the virtues of each other's kind of knowledge and for us to find a way to bridge those is another challenge that we have to take on.  
But in fact, of course, I think that evidence has been pretty clear that Internet Governance is an arena where concepts really do matter.  Even if you are in business, even if you are in government, even if you do work for a technical standards body or a ccTLD or something like that, it's quite clear that negotiations that we've had, the processes that we've had at the global level have all been very kind of knowledge intensive and concept intensive.  
I mean, look at the way the WSIS process involved and the impact of the kinds of outputs, for example, from the Working Group on Internet Governance, whether it was the definition of Internet Governance or the way we map the issues, et cetera.  Those things had a direct impact on the way the negotiations then went and how the Tunis Agenda was ultimately framed.  
So the concepts really do matter, irrespective of what your work experience or particular interest is.  And that's something that we try to kind of emphasize, that the conceptual sphere is not something that's sort of remote, separate, and just an arcane realm of priestly knowledge only of interest to certain people.  It's actually integral to what we're all doing, including in this room.  
For me that's a particularly important issue because one of the things I do emphasize a lot in my contribution is this kind of holistic perspective, and I talk a lot about the nature of governance.  What does governance mean at the global level?  How do institutions work?  How do they vary across issue areas, et cetera?  
So I find ultimately it's been a very useful experience.  Students seem to get quite a bit out of it as far as I can tell, and as Wolfgang has noted, many of our former students end up in policy-making positions, and we see them in the IGF and ICANN and so on, and you can tell from talking with them that they've taken onboard things from the classes and they're applying them in real-world setting, which is very satisfying in a way.  And so we just need to build out -- we can't do too much.  As he said, we can't expand this thing beyond our ability to actually service it.  But as long as there's demand and people are asking us to do more of them, we will, and we will continue to try to strengthen the curriculum, to integrate it more effectively, to mix up different types of formats to make things more lively.
Because after a week, frankly, lectures can get tiring, because we try to get a little bit more active and build in more stuff.  
And looking forward, maybe we'll do some other stuff.  We talked about maybe trying to organise a book that would be like an overview textbook of global Internet Governance because there really isn't anything like that.  That would be useful, I think, to students.  And perhaps we can even start to do some other kind of capacity building and training, you know, capacity building in a box, and maybe take this kind of material around to different settings outside of just the summer school setting.  
So we'll see.  At the end of the day, you know, capacity-building activities I think are really important.  They're an integral part of the whole IG landscape, certainly the IGF landscape, and I think we need to simply think about how we can systematize that more effectively and make it more useful to students, reflecting their various interests and backgrounds.  So I'll stop there.  Thanks.  

>> AVRI DORIA: Hi.  Did I get it on?  Yes, I did.  Okay.  So my name's Avri Doria, and as it showed, I was listed as the one that talks about technology.  
First of all, I was listed as sort of the golden faculty member because I've been at all of them, and that's because I like going to them.  In fact, after the first one, it was sort of a ooh, I hope, I hope I get invited back.  And partly because I go -- yes, I'm on the faculty, and yes, now I'm actually responsible for the technology part of it.  But I like to go mostly because I get to learn stuff.  And I get to learn it not only from the other faculty members but from all of the students that come because they are specialists, many of them, in their own field, fields that certainly when I started going many of them I knew precious little about.  And then also we have the people from government who, you know, I learned a lot from because I was always exceedingly antigovernment, and then I find out that they were really nice people and they said good stuff I could agree with.
So it's -- in a sense, it really does have this aspect of the old-fashioned academy, where people go, where there are some people who happen to be older and happen to be, you know, giving lectures about stuff, and then there are lots of really good discussions where I think we all do learn from each other, and that's probably the most important part of it.  
Now, I always feel like I'm sort of cheating when I say that because I get to go, I get to be a faculty member, and I get to secretly go and be a student and learn stuff.  
In fact, one of the other things that's exciting about doing it is coming to meetings like this, going to ICANN, seeing more and more of the people that pass through it in the guise of students as participants, as people up on the podium who are, you know, giving talks, panelists, or within ICANN, seeing them show up in the GNSO council, seeing them show up in other positions.  
It's a great experience.  You know, one of the things that often happen when people teach something is you teach something, then people go away and maybe you hear from them again, maybe you don't.  In this environment, we're seeing them more and more.  We're seeing them actually become the leaders.  It isn't just a set of words.  You know?  And you know, in fact, in places like here where, in part of the Secretariat of the IGF, they become the people that I have to answer to and try and help and assist.  And that, in some strange way, is really very satisfying.  I know, it's strange.  
So basically, what I do there is in the technology -- and it's actually something that got spoken at at one of the other workshops earlier this week -- this week -- it was only two days ago -- workshop 28 on stability and security and the Internet and what are some of the gaps we've got.  And one of the gaps that I've long been aware of is sort of the gap between the technologists and the policymakers.  
Before getting involved in education again with great gratitude to the bubble bursting that forced me out of industry and back into employment as an itinerant teacher was that I spent 25 years as a technologist, though educated in philosophy.  I worked for 25 years developing code, designing protocols and such.  Then I was fortunate enough to get involved in the WGIG process as a policy person and realised that we were speaking different languages, and I don't mean French and Spanish.  We didn't understand.  
But more than not understanding, we didn't even really have the capability of listening to the other person without either rolling our eyes or having our eyes glaze over.  The technologists would very often start out with almost a feeling of boredom at this policy stuff.  And the policy people would often look at the technologists and go this is policy.  We don't need to understand all these details.  
And so you would find many of the writings of each of the technologists and the policy people as being woefully ignorant in what was going on in the other side.  And you'd see glaring technological misunderstandings in policy books.  And you'd see complete idiocy about policy in some technology books.  And that incredible gap is what really started, you know, in sort of making me nervous, inspiring me, whatever the right word would be, to sort of try and put together a course and then, perhaps, a set of classes on how one bridges that, how one explains, in my part, technology in a way that's accessible and usable by people whose primary interest is coming at it from a policy, from a legal, from any other position.  
And so getting back to the things I learn when I'm there is I find where my explanations work and where they don't.  I find when I'm explaining something -- and I try to explain Internet technology sort of starting from its design principles and try to take sort of a social science approach to what does it mean to be -- to have an Internet architecture.  What kind of decisions, policies does it constrain, does it enable?  
And when I explain it, and if I notice the eyes glazing over or I get really good questions, it sort of says okay, you haven't managed to explain it adequately in this way.  
So one of -- so I guess I recommend the school not only to the people who would want to be students there, but to those who would ever think about, oh, do I want to spend a week in this lovely town in Germany or this other town because you get invited as one of the guest lecturers of is this worth your time?  And I will say most definitely it is because it will put you in conversation and contact with lots of really smart people who look at the world through a different set of lenses than you do in a very relaxing environment, in a way where it's possible for a lot of give and take and a lot of learning.  
So I guess that's all I intended to say.  Thanks.  

>> SANDRA HOFERICHTER: Thank you, Avri.  Thank you, Bill.  One of our slogan is learning in a multistakeholder environment, and the person who will represent this in a very special way and who is always giving a lecture on multistakeholder behavior is Bertrand de la Chapelle, and I would just like to ask him if he could make a short statement.  Bertrand de la Chapelle is the French -- is the envoy of the French Foreign Ministry and was elected to ICANN Director right now, and he was also a member of the faculty from the very first beginning, and he made the slogan, "learning in a multistakeholder environment" actually true because he is the other stakeholder from the governmental perspective.  

>> BERTRAND DE LA CHAPELLE: Thank you, Sandra.  Hello, everybody.  It's a pleasure to praise the virtue of this -- of this programme.  
I want to say the extreme gratitude I have to Wolfgang and to all the people who participate in the SSIG for the opportunity to represent them for what they have initiated.  
This is a unique programme.  It's something that really has a tremendous value to the whole process of establishing multistakeholder governance.  
And I want to make a comment on two aspects, why it is important for both the faculty and the students, but also why it is important for the general system.  
For the faculty and the students it's very simple.  For the faculty, on a personal basis, it is a unique opportunity not only to interact with fellow faculty members, and I would say to step back for a few days and take a higher-level view of the processes that we're involved in.  There are many places where, as Bill said, you are overwhelmed by the traffic, on the mailing list, on the processes, and you're rushing from one workshop and conference call to the next.  
The few days of the summer school is an opportunity to, first of all, think about the presentation you are going to make.  And from one year to the next, you see the evolution and you see that the interaction with people in the summer school and in the processes has helped you refine -- at least that's the case for me -- refine some of the understanding of the processes we're involved.  And sometimes, as you know, in each of your job activities, it is important to take a break and just step back and think about what you are doing and what you are contributing to.  
I think for students, there is a human and self-interest dimension.  The self-interest dimension is absolutely obvious.  As has already been said, in an environment that is growing tremendously, very quickly, where Internet Governance mechanisms are developing, there are positions that have to be filled in governments, in businesses, in associations.  And so the training that the summer school provides is an incredible crash course in terms of the content, but also in terms of the career paths.  That's the self-interest, and self-interest is always good because good things emerge when you align the public interest with the self-interest.  
But I want to also insist on the dimension of the human interaction, and the dimension of the human interaction is particularly important because it brings the students the familiarity with something that they cannot expect or find elsewhere, which is how natural it is to have in the same room people who come from different backgrounds.  
We all are in the IGF, we all are in these processes.  Being in the same room, like here, with no name plates, with just the business, the government, the civil society, the technical community on complete equal footing with students as faculty is the introduction to what the format of multistakeholder governance is.  And for all of those who experience it, it is so natural that you don't even understand why it could work differently in other spaces.  But we all know that in our respective spaces, in our businesses, in our government, in international organisation, this is not the way it works yet.  
And so the faculty and the summer school is an opportunity for more and more people each year to experiment with the natural format of interaction, and this makes a segue to the second part that I quickly want to address, which is how this fits into the general emergence of an Internet Governance network.  
We are here at the IGF, and I want to make everybody view, understand, for those who have not followed those processes since the beginning, that every Bill and Wolfgang, among all the other members of the Working Group on Internet Governance, are the very reason why we are here today in something called the Internet Governance Forum.  Because the Internet Governance Forum, the concept of multistakeholder interaction, the very definition of Internet Governance that we all come back to, they wrote it.  They put it in the documents.  And we governments -- at that time, I was in civil society -- the governments endorsed this approach because the group was multistakeholder and it was shown that it was the right approach.  
So I want to emphasize the fact that the summer school is self-replicating.  It is self-replicating because there's a demand, because there's a format, and because there's a need.  And this self-replication, if you think about it, is exactly the way the Internet was built, the way the Web was built, defining formats, defining standards, defining protocols, and applying them somewhere else.  
And I want to make the parallel here with the Internet Governance Forums at the national and regional levels.  And to highlight one very recent personal experience of the impact that the summer school has had, which is that I was last week in Ukraine for the Ukrainian IGF, and the reason why there is a Ukrainian IGF is because Oxana here was a student one year ago in the summer school.  She wanted to do that.  
Then back home, she started the process of getting people around the table and starting a national IGF.  So the summer school is actually the seed or something that helps seed the replication of national and regional IGFs, which is what is going to make the international Internet Governance system work.  
So I just explain that to tell you how important it is in the landscape, and as a conclusion, I want to say that the faculty and the students are actually part of a growing human network.  We all are part of institutions.  But what we're trying to achieve here is to fine the mechanisms that will help the global community at the world level organise itself in new ways, and I think the summer school is the best place or clearly one of the strongest places where the connections between people are being built because they share the same methodology and the same feeling that it is natural to interact in the multistakeholder manner.  
So I hope this has given you some desire to join this network or to follow the activity, and thank you for the opportunity to testify.  

>> SANDRA HOFERICHTER: Thank you, Bertrand, for your introduction and very interesting thoughts.  You might have the feeling now, okay, I might like to attend a summer school like this.  Therefore, I just want to present you the facts and figures on the example of the European summer School on Internet Governance, but actually, those figures are more or less the same for every course, and I think Olga can confirm that.  
The problem is we receive, indeed, about 120 applications all year from all over the world.  As we have regional initiatives, we also try to look for those students who are applying for a special region.  That means, of course, we want to have a European focus on a European summer school and a South American focus on the South American summer school, but nevertheless, to get the whole view about the global Internet Governance issues, we also like to invite people from abroad.  
So the point is that we have to find out a group of about 35 -- 25 or 30 students, which are good balance in terms of gender, geographical, and professional balance, which is not that easy because some people you know but some people you don't, and as we are going to teach the Internet Governance leaders of tomorrow, we cannot only select those people we already know.  We also have to select and have to go for those people we don't know yet.  
These are the figures from the European summer school today.  You can see there is -- the majority was from the European region, and we always receive a lot of applications from the African and from the Asian region.  The reason is because we also can offer, thanks to our sponsors, fellowships.  They are part of the global fellowship programme.  So we can also give students from developing countries the opportunity to attend this course but don't have to pay or at least have to pay only for the travel costs.  
You see the statistics by application looks quite different from the statistics by participation.  This was just to give you an idea how difficult it is to create a balanced group out of the students and the faculty members.  
As mentioned previously, we have various initiatives going on around the globe.  One of the successful initiatives was also the south European summer school.  They started in 2009 in Buenos Aires and had the secretary training class this year in -- second training class this year in saw pa low, and I would like to hand over now to Olga Cavalli, the Regional Director of the South SSIG initiative to explain or to give us just an idea about what's the difference and what's the similarity between those two initiatives.  

>> OLGA CAVALLI: Thank you very much, Sandra, and I share the -- what Bill, Wolfgang, and Avri said.  The first time I was invited by Wolfgang to go to Meissen, I had the same feeling.  I hope I get invited again.  And being there that year, I had the idea that it could be interesting in organising the same thing in Latin America.  And why?  Because Latin America, if you look at the statistics of participation of regions in those Internet Governance processes, in ICANN, in regional processes related with Internet, Latin America is the least represented area by far.  It's interesting to see the applications, Latin America has only seven among almost a hundred.  
I thought we had something to do about that.  The idea of the format was great.  We had a great group of faculty members and a great group of young people that could be interested.  
And by the way, I would like to thank some faculty members that are here and were so kind to go so far, to go to Buenos Aires or saw pa low.  We live in a region that's very beautiful, but it's far away from almost everywhere.  I would like to thank my friend that supported the school.  Rich Irvine, he  went to Sao Paulo:  My friend, he was invited.  He sent a special list about accessibility.  Who else?  I don't want to forget anybody.  Bertrand, Avri, Wolfgang, they also went to Buenos Aires and Sao Paulo, so we had very distinguished panel members.  And we also add experience of regional experts and local experts from each country.  
Our students, many of them are here.  I'm very happy to see them.  By the way, I would like to stress they are playing important roles.  We have some ISOC ambassadors.  We have a student in Buenos Aires.  We have a student from Sao Paulo, who has been invited to discuss access and diversity.  We have Bertrice, who was invited as a workshop speaker.  And we have the European students who are also playing relevant roles in different workshops.  We also have some students playing relevant roles in regional roles, in ICANN, so the mission of the school, I think it's moving.  It's happening.  
And I would like to thank all of them for their support.  We don't have a major sponsor.  It's really a very big effort of very small sponsorships we get from different companies and institutions.  As you can see, this is the first group of people that helped us.  Some of them just help us with space and connectivity, and some of them with some money for inviting students.  
I want to stress all the students that participated were granted with fellowship, all of them.  25 -- 26 for the school in Buenos Aires and 36 for the school in Sao Paulo.  I would also like to stress I am leading this initiative, but nothing would have happened, nothing, if my partner had not been involved, Adrian, because he has been the leader and has been able to contact the companies, convince them that this is a pioneering project, very good, and nothing would have happened without his help.  
At a moment at the beginning, I was a little bit discouraged because it was very difficult, but he said we will make it.  I will help you.  So this is why we are here now.  
So we have a saying in Spanish.  It says (speaking Spanish) which means an image says more than 1,000 words.  So I brought many pictures, and I would like to share them with you.  
This is the students that we got in the first school were from all these countries.  I won't read them.  You see it's very diverse, mainly focused in the region, and we have 27 faculty members from all over the world and also from Latin America and the Caribbean.  
And also, as -- I think it's a major achievement, we do simultaneous translation into English and Spanish, so faculty members and students can share and understand each other, because Latin America is very much focused in Portuguese and Spanish.  And in Brazil, we have Portuguese, Spanish, and English simultaneous translation.  
And these are some of the pictures from the first school in Buenos Aires.  One of the universities where he teach, they were so kind to give us the space and the facilities for holding the week of -- it was shorter.  It was three days.  It was really an experiment that turned out to be very good.  And some social activities that we held.  You know, Buenos Aires is a very nice city, very nice restaurants and places to go and have a good dinner, so we had that opportunity.  
And that's the gala dinner that was sponsored by Afilias, who is a company that helps us with the school.  And now this is the front page of the Web site of the Sao Paulo school.  We have some more sponsors.  The diversity of the students is similar.  We had more students, 35.  We rotate among countries.  Each year we go into a different country, which makes the initiative much more complex but much more challenging and much more diverse.  So each year we have perhaps more students from that country, but also we have students from other regions as well and also some from Europe.  You see we have people from Austria and Spain.  Spain brought a fellow brought by dot cat, sponsored by dot cat, and one from dot at from Austria.  
So thanks very much to that because it adds diversity to the group.  
And also we were so lucky to have the support from Brazil, that's Everton there.  Thank you for the Brazil I don't know help.  They helped us with the room, with the translation, and with really the venue, which is expensive, you know, and this year we had more people, so these are some of the pictures that we capture from those days.  
The programme was longer this time, five years -- no, five years, that's a mistake.  A desire, maybe.  Five complete days in Buenos Aires there were three, and we are working to organise the next one in Mexico City in the first week of April.  Really, the S of our programme stands for south, not for summer.  In South America, it's very difficult to organise things in summer.  It's very warm, and people just don't get involved in any learning activity.  So we better do it in the fall.  So this is why we call it south.  And Mexico in 2011.  
And we have been approached by different people from Paraguay, from Bolivia, from Columbia, and I am forgetting one.  
(Speaking Spanish)
Yes, so these four countries are interested in hosting the 2011 school of Internet Governance, so we don't know yet.  We are working on the Mexican one, so after that, we will see how we proceed with the next version.  And as you can see, we have more students.  
We also had a similar programme with presentation of students at night.  This is a picture of a very nice gala dinner that also Affilia sponsored and people are drinking and having a nice time.  So I am open for your questions after we finish, and the presentation will be available somewhere?  I don't know.  Okay.  You can ask.  Okay.  So that's our Web page and my email, so thank you for being here with us.  

>> SANDRA HOFERICHTER: I'd like to hand over now to George Victor Salama.  I told you previously he was a student of the first summer school in Meissen in Europe, and he was encouraged to organise Arabic summer school course just before the IGF, the global IGF took place last year in Cairo.  

>> GEORGE VICTOR SALAMA:  So hello, everybody.  My name is George Victor Salama.  I am from Egypt, and I am here today to share with you our experience in organising the first Arab School on Internet Governance.  Mainly, the first Arab summer school was organised by the Ministry of Communications and Telecommunication Authority.  Arab World Internet Institute, and Afilias.  We had, like, 24 students coming from six difference Arabic countries, Egypt, Georgia, Sudan, Tunisia.  We had more than 15 faculty members.  
Actually, when we organised Arab summer school, we tried to make it on a place that more or less closed on the student, so little amusement.  We held it in Sheridan, and the reason of organising such a school mainly to build a capacity building from the Arabic countries to participate in the first Internet Governance Forum that took place in Sharm El Sheikh last year.  
The overall objective, as Wolfgang mentioned, is to teach Internet Governance to leaders of tomorrow.  As Bertrand de la Chapelle mentioned, also to learn in a multistakeholder environment.  
About the curriculum, students were exposed to various topics such as history of Internet Governance and the IGF process, the role of standards, protocols, and codes by Avri Doria, and Internet Governance Forum and ICANN.  Internet Governance challenges of the future, management of a ccTLD.  Internet Governance and national laws.  Multilingual Internet.  And specifically case studies, first track for Arab ITN and ccTLD, policy transition and impact, role of stakeholders in Internet Governance.  How to overcome the digital divide.  Management of ccTLD.  
Mainly the outcomes of the first Arab summer school was to build capacity from the Arab region, as I mentioned, and mainly also to discuss cross-cutting Internet public policy issues, such as Arabic domain name, industry in the Arabic world, Arabic content, and IPv6 implementations.  
Allow me to share with you some photos of the Arab summer school.  This is a classroom where we had the presentations.  And this is certifications after finishing the school.  Having a boat trip on the  Nile river.  
In the second part, allow me to share with you in a few minutes my personal experience as a student, not as an organiser.  
I'm really very proud, an let me use this opportunity to say that I'm really proud to be one of the first alumni of the first European summer School on Internet Governance, which was held in Meissen in 2007.  And for me, the experience of the summer school is considered to be a major milestone in my career path.  The summer school was, for me, the place where my knowledge about Internet Governance was born.  And learning in a multistakeholder, multicultural environment, discussing Internet, cross-cutting policy issues really motivates me to dedicate my master of science thesis on Internet Governance from a multilingual perspective.  And with the support of Professor Wolfgang, I am also continuing this as a PhD research also on Internet Governance.  
So the school was for me as great milestones that motivates me to continue in the academic and the professional life.  
And one final comment concerning the amusement on Meissen is that when I went to Meissen, actually, I was not alone.  I took my wife with me because it was like two weeks after our marriage.  
(Laughter)
Allow me to advise you if you are planning to go to Meissen, don't go alone.  Take your beloved person with you.  You will enjoy your time, and I am sure you will learn something new called Internet Governance.  Thank you.  
(Applause)

>> SANDRA HOFERICHTER: Thank you, Victor.  We also started -- or it started already -- initiative in South America.  I'm sorry -- in the Asia Pacific region.  It was this year with the youth camp in Hong Kong, and we are planning, or Professor Hung Xue is planning a school next year in Beijing.  I would like to ask them very briefly, Bianca Hoo from the net Asia initiative just to explain how this idea came up and then please to hand over to Hung to announce the Asia Pacific summer school, but ask you to be very briefly.  

>> Hello.  Is it working?  Is that okay?  All right.  Hi, everyone.  I'm Bianca from Net Mission.  So we basically had an initiative for having youth Internet Governance Forum Camp in Hong Kong.  So actually, we have quite a lot of participants right here, Haiki, some other might be in other sessions.  But it is quite different from SSIG, and we actually invited Wolfgang to be there with us as a guest speaker at our forum.  
So maybe I'll first talk about the major differences.  First of all, I would think it's age.  It's aiming to give young people a brief understanding and spark their interest in Internet Governance because sometimes it might be very theoretical, as in, you know, like the content that the previous panel has discussed is very theoretical, and they also go in depth with like the history.  And actually, the youth here, you have to make it relevant to them as in, you know, why is it important to their lives in order to spark their interest, and then they will learn more about the history and everything and to be able to participate directly in Internet Governance discussions.  
So actually, our YGF campus is aiming to, first of all, give them a brief exploration of the topics, and we actually used quite a different format too.  
So what we did was actually to -- to use the same spirit of IGF to adopt a multistakeholder approach, and we actually had role playings, that they were assigned to a certain role, for example, government or civil society or private sector.  And then they would participate in discussing the solutions for three major topics that we find more interesting to them, namely digital divide, censorship, and also Internet society.  
They also have internal meeting where groups of stakeholders would meet together to discuss their own point of view, for example, government stands on censorship, and then they would bring that view into an external meeting with everything, so such like the assimilation of events happening here, so you have everyone here on the floor discussing what they feel important, yeah, like what they feel is important.  
So again, it takes a very different approach, but we would like to thank Wolfgang again for coming to share his history and experiences dealing with Internet Governance, but we definitely think this this is a more formal approach, but for youth, our format is pretty good, so if you want to replicate this in your own country or want to know more information, please feel free to talk to us.  

>> SANDRA HOFERICHTER: Thank you.  Before we go on, I just see there are some remote questions, and maybe there are questions in the audience too.  

>> Hello, everyone.  I am remote moderator for this session.  I am glad to inform you that there are several hubs joined us to this session.  Abanyan hub, hub Islamabad.  And I am also tell you that I am the alumni of the first European summer school in Meissen, Germany, and after that, you will see the career path which I had.  I became three-time ICANN fellow, and now I am here as an ISOC ambassador.  I encourage you to apply for those summer schools.  This is a great experience.  
And there was a question from Albanian hub which was covered during your presentations, and there was a comment when Avri was speaking that she is so right.  That was the comment on your speech.  
And there is a question from hub Islamibad.  We here at university for science and technology north Pakistan are organising this remote hub at Islamabad and are planning a local School on Internet Governance.  We request necessary assistance from the panel of experts on the arrangement curriculum and other issue.  Can we please seek some support in this region?  This is for you to answer.  Thank you.  

>> SANDRA HOFERICHTER: Wolfgang, maybe you can answer this question?  

>> WOLFGANG KLEINWAECHTER: Yes.  The answer is certainly we should enter into consultations, and if there are questions, we are happy to answer it and to help develop curricula on the national level.  

>> SANDRA HOFERICHTER: Hung, maybe you would like to announce the upcoming summer school in the Asia Pacific region in Beijing next year?  

>> Thank you, Sandra.  Thank you, Wolfgang.  I should stand up.  Okay.  It's classroom style.  
Well, basic idea is ICANN is going to have the second meeting in Asia Pacific region, but we don't know the venue yet.  But it absolutely will be in Asia Pacific region, so I'm thinking maybe we should link the summer school with ICANN meeting because most of our faculties and potential students will be ICANN attendees, So it is easy for them to go to ICANN meeting and then go to summer school.  
The place for the summer school for the first Asia Pacific summer school will be in Beijing, organised by Beijing University with the support of dot CN, and hopefully by the other local actors.  While our Asian colleagues, welcome to join us.  But we haven't got it firm yet.  We are working on that.  

>> SANDRA HOFERICHTER: Thank you.  As mentioned by the faculty members before, one of the biggest values of the summer school are the students itself, and as we have now represented various initiatives all around the globe, you can imagine that we are now quite a big community of summer school alumni students, and later on we will just invite you for the small reception.  
I just want to announce to all those who already passed the summer school and all those who are maybe interested in attending future summer school to look at ISSG community network.  This is actually the network for the alumni and for the faculty members where you can Facebook-like meet each other, sharing pictures, share your experience, get in touch with each other, find other partners for the project because there are similarities between the summer school regions and between the years, but there are also differences, and it's best to share those experiences.  
Well, I'd like to hand over for a last summary to professor Wolfgang Kleinwaechter, and then I'd like to give the last word to the students.  We have statements from the European summer school students, and then we open the floor for your questions.  

>> WOLFGANG KLEINWAECHTER: Yes, I think everything is already said, and we should open the floor for more discussion.  And I would be really interested to get also from some former Fellows feedback that they share their experiences because this is a good opportunity here.  We will have -- after the end of this, we will have a joint lunch together in the restaurant, and we'll have more time for individual bilateral discussions, but you know, please, I invite all students just to report a little bit what they think today after they have went through the process what is their experience, what they can recommend to future Fellows.  And I think there will be some people here in the room who consider to apply, so to stimulate this exchange would be good.  
So who wants to give us a short report?  Okay.  Please introduce yourself so that people know where you are and where you come from.  

>> My name is John Raul Bengo.  Sorry I came late.  I am a teacher at multimedia university.  
I am just asking if I want to set up a summer school, what is the procedure, assuming we want to run one in east Africa?  

>> WOLFGANG KLEINWAECHTER: If you apply.  

>> To you?  

>> WOLFGANG KLEINWAECHTER: Yeah, I think we have a procedure.  There is a call for application, and then, you know, you have to answer a number of questions, and then we have a small selection committee which goes through the applications, and this committee tries, then, to find the right people and also a certain balance within the group, that we have some people from governmental background, some people with a business background, some people with a more academic background and people with the civil society background so that we have, you know, people from different groups and also geographical balance, we have people from Africa, Asia.  
This is the work of the selection committee, so it means the normal cost for the course, which includes all meals, accommodation, all social events, and all this for a full week, which includes seven nights, is 1,000 euro, but we have also a fellowship programme.  That means we have, thanks to the support of some companies, registries, that we can offer around 10 to 15 fellowships.  So -- which covers, then, the 1,000 euros.  So you can apply directly or you can apply to the fellowship programme.  
The fellowship programme and also the 1,000 euro does not include the travel.  But we have, in exceptional cases, with the help of some of our sponsors, we are able also to cover travel costs if we think this is a good investment into the person.  But the normal process would be either you pay or you apply for the fellowship programme.  So we have -- in Europe, we have a maximum of 36 per year, and we had around 125 applications, so it means very tough.  And I think in Latin America, they have also 30.  And the number of applications was also around 100, something like that.  More than 100.  And we will see what will happen in Asia.  
But because you are from Kenya, if you came late, I mentioned that I talked to the hosts of the next IGF, which takes place in end of September 2011 in Nairobi, and our plan is to have the first African summer school just on the eve of the IGF, so that means the week before the IGF, so this would -- if you are interested, let's stay in contact, and probably we can do something which goes in the right direction.  

>> SANDRA HOFERICHTER: There is another question from remote participants.  It's they are saying that to have west African summer school would be a great idea.  And there's a question how can we collaborate with the panelists when we are ready for dimensional or subregional summer school?  
And there is also another request from hub Islamabad to host your emails, specifically Wolfgang and Olga, to give your email addresses to them.  

>> WOLFGANG KLEINWAECHTER: I think the email addresses are also on the Web site, so that means if you go via the Web site, they will find us.  That will be not a problem.  Although my' mail address is very simple.  It's [email protected].  This is the information for media information sciences, Aharus University in Denmark.  So very simple, easy to remember, easy to find.  And this is what the domain name is, email address.  
So if it comes to details, it makes no sense to discuss this in the programme context, I would be more interested to get some feedback from our Fellows, also some critical remarks, because it's a learning procedure also for the organisers, and it's always helpful to get some critical hints.  From the evaluation of the last summer school, we learned security was important, so we will add next year covering more security issues.  

>> SANDRA HOFERICHTER: A see a question from the floor.  

>> Hi.  My name is Chris Buckridge.  I work for the Regional Internet Registry for Europe and the Middle East.  From a professional perspective, the RIPENCC and the others have been supporters of the summer schools for the last couple years, and we feel that they are very important processes, I guess, in trying to prepare and educate people as they move into interpret governance processes.  
From a personal perspective, I've been to the European summer school now twice, first as an alumni -- as a Fellow, then two years later as a faculty member.  And I think the striking thing about that -- and this echoes a bit of what Avri was saying -- was how similar those two experiences are.  There's really not that much definition between faculty and students.  It's just a large group of people with different areas of expertise all sharing information, and I think that's very valuable.  
I think the other thing, Bertrand mentioned building a human network, and certainly for me that was one of the most valuable things coming out of it is really making these connections.  Coming to an event like the IGF which has so many people and so many things going on can be very daunting.  But I remember the first IGF I attended, coming in and seeing so many people I had already met at the summer school, and that makes it much more accessible, much easier to participate.  So I would really recommend anyone who is interested in attending do so

>> WOLFGANG KLEINWAECHTER: Thank you, and thanks to RIPE, one of the main sponsors.  Also, I see other supporters and helpers from the very first summer school and who was in Meissen will remember this ongoing lecture about new TTLDs in Meissen, which is really a landmark event, and we hope we can continue this, in particular if dot Berlin gets dot Berlin.  

>> Hello.  I am from Belarus, and this summer I participated in European summer school.  I have a great honour and say thank you for organising this event.  
And what I want to say is it's a very amazing experience.  At first it's because on one place, in one time, which concerns Meissen, people come and every time during the lunch, during the coffee breaks, during the after dinner time and in the evening time, people speak about Internet and governance, and they share their personal experience from different stakeholder places.  So it's really amazing thing, and everyone, I guess, who is here should apply for the summer school.  Thank you.  

>> SANDRA HOFERICHTER: Delores, please.  

>> Okay.  My name is Mariel.  I am here, an ISOC ambassador, but I am speaking in my personal capacity.  I want to take this opportunity to share with you my impression.  I am a former student of the second summer school, south school, of the Internet Governance school that was held in Sao Paulo last March.  And really, I want to reinforce the idea that it's a unique experience because it's not only interacting with high qualified group of faculties, but also you have the opportunity to build really good relationships with the other Fellows, which are maybe in the same or better condition with respect to knowledge.  
But also, you get very firsthand information because -- because the point that I was making that we are able to take contact with very, very high qualified people.  
So the important thing is I wanted to -- to encourage all the persons that are really interested in participating, who are remotely participating in this workshop, or maybe who later should read the transcripts, to apply to this event.  It was really my first multistakeholder event.  So I found it really useful.  Thank you.  

>> You've got to have something from this guy.  
(Laughter)

>> He was one of our more amusing students last year.  

>> Hi.  Hello.  I'm academic.  I come from the university that is in Spain.  I am a junior in the summer school because I have been Fellow this year.  
I want to thank you, of course, for that summer school.  It has been really, really, really enriching for us, from my academic perspective, of course, and of course we share many different experiences.  Many -- now I saw you, Katia.  She is coming from a different background.  Many different backgrounds that we also share.  It's been really interesting between the students.  
And also, the national student presentations, because it has been also very enriching.  I didn't know what happened in Belarus, what has happened in Ukraine.  It has been really, really interesting.  So I, of course, if someone is interested in doing the summer school, just make the application, and again, thank you for the faculty.  

>> (Off microphone).  

>> Do you want me to sing?  

>> Oxana.  

>> We'll make you sing, Bill.  

>> I would like to say a lot of thanks, not only for unforgettable in Meissen, but for all your help during our first Ukrainian IGF.  Personally by Sandra and Bertrand.  And I hope in our second IGF all of you will participate personally.  
But I would like to invite all of you in working out of recommendations on the ccTLD management.  It was your influence for need to understand our Ukrainian problems.  
I hope that our guests in Ukraine, such as Bertrand, as Sandra, did understand now our problems, and maybe we can find a way out of our problems and problems of any other countries.  Thank you very much.  

>> SANDRA HOFERICHTER: Katia.  

>> I'm Katia, working for ICC Belgium, but also I have an academic background.  I'm talking in personal capacity.  
I attended summer school, and I wanted to say a few things.  The reasons why you should apply.  First of all, the settings is great.  It allows you to discuss all the time with different people all the time, and you continue to discuss with different people, different backgrounds, and it's a huge experience.  
It allows you to build up enormous important network for the rest of your life.  This is why you should apply.  
And secondly, the selection procedure, we should really thank the organisation committee for doing that because you have people around you with so interesting backgrounds and high-level discussions that you're not just a student.  You are a Fellow discussing with the faculty on almost equal level, and it delivers, like, really interesting discussions.  And when you come out of the course, you have like an overall holistic view and approach of all the issues involved with Internet Governance.  It has been a really good preparation for the IGF meeting.  
I have been participating in the last IGF in Sharm, but having done this summer school has even prepared me much more, much better for taking part in this IGF.  So it really helps you to understand the issues.  You have really good, high-quality Fellows next to you.  You build up enormously important network, and I have made friends for life.  So that's one of the best reasons to apply for the summer school, so you should all do that.  I wish you all success because it's a well wonderful experience.  
I would also like to thank the staff because this is like a high-level university in a short time, so it's really great.  Thank you.  

>> SANDRA HOFERICHTER: Thank you, Katia.  Wolfgang, any closing remarks?  

>> WOLFGANG KLEINWAECHTER: No, I think in a way, Saiti was with us in Meissen.  He produced two short videos.  I think the videos probably show more than we can say in our statements.  And Sandra, probably you can show the two videos which will be soon.  
And then after this, you know, we will move back to the restaurant -- down to the restaurant, which is just -- if you go down to the ground floor, you have to turn left, and it's then on the left side.  And then we have just some sandwiches and some cold drinks so that we can continue to have bilateral educations.  

>> (Off microphone)

>> -- and also the lectures were great.  

>> The most thing that I liked is the network.  

>> Multistakeholder discussion --

>> (Off microphone)

>> There was a very multidisciplinary approach, and there was a focus on technical policy and also theoretical aspects, and I really liked the group.  So everyone was able to contribute his or her own background, and this was great.  And of course, the location was also great, and everything was extremely well organised.  

>> I have to say that this is great organisation.  

>> They had space for discussions, we are continuing outside the classroom, and we made friends from all people from many parts of the world.  

>> Holistic approach, not only technological, political, it's all that.  

>> (Off microphone)

>> I learned a great deal, and that was my original goal, to learn about the politics of different --

>> I am really impressed.  It was a rich programme.  I also had the opportunity to present a project.  

>> I was extremely impressed with the quality of the programme, the dynamics we have, particularly combining the lectures with the --

>> This is my fourth year, like Avri and Wolfgang, I stayed the entire week, so I get to schmooze with everyone else, hear what people are thinking, and I'm getting feedback on how we can make things more interesting, so that's good.  

>> Congratulations to Sandra and Wolfgang for organising this summer school, which was an absolute fabulously organised and very interesting experience.  I really learned a lot.  And I really appreciated the exceptional geographical gender and professional distribution of the group, and I won't forget it, and we'll keep in touch.  

>> WOLFGANG KLEINWAECHTER: Here we have a number of brochures which explains a little bit the background and, you know, gives all the -- you know, the URL and you have the application form here, and so the next one in Meissen will be end of July 2011.  As Hung has said, we'll have the Asian version in June, and now this is the other video which is without words, and you see just a little bit, you know, the flavor and the spirit of this place.  
(Video without words)
(Applause)

>> WOLFGANG KLEINWAECHTER: Thank you, and bon appetit.


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