IGF 2018 Second Open Consultations and MAG Meeting Day 3

 >>CHENGETAI MASANGO:  All right.  Good morning, ladies and gentlemen.  Let's start the meeting.  This is the third day of the open consultations and MAG meeting, second day of the MAG meeting.  Just a reminder, please, when you speak, please say your name and the organization you come from slowly so that the scribes may catch that because we all are used to saying our names and where we come from very quickly and sometimes the scribes cannot catch that.
 We will try and do something about the knocking.  But, anyway, yeah, thank you very much.  And I will hand it over to our chair, Lynn, to start the meeting.  Thank you, Lynn.
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Thank you.  Good morning, everyone.  I hope everyone enjoyed the little celebration party last night and that we're also supercharged to get on with the rest of the work we have to do today. 
 But we're very honored this morning to actually have the co-executive director of the HLPDC secretariat, which as you all are aware is the U.N. Secretary-General's High Level Panel on Digital Cooperation.  We have Ambassador Amandeep Gill here.  We are frankly quite honored the day after the announcement this is one of his first stops.  I think it's pretty clear that the IGF being convened by the Secretary-General within the United Nations to discuss matters of global or international public policy would be a natural close cooperator with this particular effort. 
 So without further ado, because I know everybody's quite -- quite interested to hear from Ambassador Gill.  He has indicated he will take some questions afterwards, so I think we should take the time we think we need and no more, of course.  So with that, I'll introduce and welcome Ambassador Gill.
 >>AMB. AMANDEEP SINGH GILL:  Thank you, Lynn.  And thank you, Chair.  Thank you, Chengetai.  It's a pleasure to be with you this morning.  I guess we have about 20 minutes for me to introduce the panel and then we can have questions, answers, comments, suggestions, advice.  They're all welcome.  The Secretary-General announced the High-Level Panel on Digital Cooperation yesterday in New York.  He described the context in which this announcement is made.  I will amplify on that context.  I will also talk about what is the mandate, what are the terms of reference of the panel.  Then I'll speak briefly about the process of engagement and consultations, how do we proceed to our outcome, which is a report by the panel.  And then I will also mention some of the substantive points that the panel is expected to take up and with which you may be familiar but there are some aspects of value-add that may not have been discussed within this community.  So I want to highlight those at the end.
 Let's start with the context first.  The Secretary-General's priority for his tenure has been what he says prevention, prevention, prevention.  Now, there is a competitive -- geopolitically, geoeconomically competitive spirit that is pervading many parts of the multilateral system.  You see that in discussions on global trade.  You see that on discussions on high technology and elsewhere.
 The digital domain is not immune from that challenge.  But I think it is unique from -- unique compared with other domains.  It is uniquely cross-border.  It is uniquely cross-disciplinary.  So if we are to preserve the benefits of this unique domain, we need to make sure that competitive spirit, that (indiscernible) the neighbor spirit does not intrude too much into this domain.  There will be aspects of competition, and we have to be realistic.  But we have to make sure that we preserve, by and large, the cooperative spirit of the digital domain.  That's why this panel is called a panel on digital cooperation.
 "Cooperation" implies cooperation across borders.  "Cooperation" implies cooperation across domains.  And I'll reflect a little bit more on this cross-domain cooperation further into my remarks.
 Now, who constitutes the panel?  I don't know if you have seen the list of panel members.  There are 20 members who will serve in their independent capacity.  The co-chairmanship is Melinda Gates and Jack Ma, so a well-known philanthropist and a well-known industry leader.  We have other representatives from the government domain, the Norwegian minister for development, for example, Nikolai Astrup.  The Botswana minister for the economy and finance, the UAE minister, Mr. Al Gergawi who's familiar to those who work the tech domain. 
 We also have industry leaders, other industry leaders, a young entrepreneur, AI entrepreneur from South Korea; a young entrepreneur of Russian entrepreneur.  We have Vinton Cerf whom you are all familiar with. 
 We also have academia and the tech community well-represented.  Cathy Mulligan, Edson Prestes from Brazil. 
 And then we have civil society.  You might be familiar with Dhany Sriskandarajah, CIVICUS.  We have two young activists from Africa who are passionate about digital rights, about equity and inclusion, especially inclusion of women.
 The panel is well-balanced in terms of not just these different domains but also gender.  Also, there is a strong under-35 representation.  The intergenerational impact of these two technologies is well-known.  So we want to make sure that all generations, this SG effort to grandfathers being in touch with grandchildren.  So from grandfathers to grandchildren we want to cover the various generations.
 The secretariat of the panel is a startup type of secretariat.  You see two members here.  Chengetai will be joining us shortly.  My co-lead is Professor Jovan Kurbalija of the Geneva Internet Platform.  You are familiar with his work on Internet governance issues. 
 Our deputy executive director is Claire Messina who is at the U.N. staff college in Turin.  She has loads of experience in the humanitarian domain and other aspects to the U.N. functioning.  She's the one link we have to the U.N. system.  Otherwise, we are not reporting to any department. 
 So this initiative is coming out of the executive office of the Secretary-General.  And now that we are launched, we are an independent secretariat.  Our loyalty, our mission is to serve the panel and to deliver on the terms of reference.
 I had a national hat so I was India's ambassador to the conference in disarmament, but I'm taking leave of absence.  So I'm no longer necessitated by government.  So we will serve this panel in our independent capacity.  We have a presence both in New York and in Geneva.  We have one strong industry liaison person in New York.  That is something that the industry representatives in this group might wish to notice.  Dr. AJung Moon who is Canadian-Korean origin.  She has an Ph.D. in robotics.  She knows the startup scene on the West Coast also in Canada quite well. 
 Our communications specialist who engages on the communication strategy, she will also be based in New York.  And both Jovan and I will be based here.  But we will be present in New York about ten days a month.  So you Might see us there quite frequently.
 Now, how do we plan to go about delivering on the terms of reference?  Perhaps you may not have yet familiarized yourself with what's the mandate of the panel, but let me just spend a minute on that.
 The panel is supposed to map what are the emerging technology deployment trends, what are the emerging trends in business models related to those digital technologies, and what are the gaps in research, information, and policies. 
 When you do this gap analysis, naturally the question comes, how do you address those gaps.  So the panel is tasked to come up with recommendations, concrete recommendations, for enhancing digital cooperation by looking at principles for digital cooperation, by looking at the modalities and functionalities of how digital cooperation is done.
 So in a sense, the focus is very much on the "how" of cooperation, the flowing pieces of cooperation.  And it is not that much on the particular form and the particular outcome that may take.
 So that means that what is working well at this point in time, the multistakeholder model, for example, with regard to the Internet, that is something that the panel is not going to question or raise issues with so we take what is already working well.  But we look for areas of value-add to reinforce digital cooperation.
 And I think this is where your suggestions would be welcome.  Each of the digital policy islands, if you will, faces certain challenges.  There are certain problems.  And, you know, in that paradigm, those problems continue to fester, whether it is cybersecurity, whether it is discussions related to Internet governance, the new discussions on intelligent autonomous systems.
 We need to look for ways to connect the different policy islands and extract what are possible common references, common vocabulary for assessing the risks, the unintended consequences, and then addressing them.  So that is one strategic aspect of what the panel is supposed to be do.
 Coming to the "how," we will organize hopefully an exciting and engaging consultation process.  A part of that process would be regional consultations, one in Africa, another one in Asia, possibly in ASEAN in a sense many ways.  I'm familiar with some of the ASEAN-centered forums, the ERF, the special summit.  So ASEAN is in many ways the neutral center of Asia, so it would be a natural home for this discussion.
 We would also do tailored outreach to different stakeholder communities.  Events and side events.  One example that comes to mind is the IGF in November in Paris.  So we will maximize the existing calendar, to listen, to learn from what's going on to share our evolving thinking and generally try and make it a process of co-construction of knowledge, to work with what is already working, what is already being deliberated upon to learn from that.
 There will be two physical meetings of the panel, one in late September, September 24th and 25th in New York during the high-level segment.  We will prepare for that physical meeting by doing a virtual meeting where the members get to introduce themselves, indicate their areas of interest, engage with an issues map, engage with the terms of reference to see how best to land it in terms of the success criteria that the SG has given to us.  And I'll conclude my remarks with a reference to those success criteria.
 This would lead us into the engagement phase, an intense phase of consultation.  And then when we meet for the second time in Switzerland, in late January 2019, we will try and present the results of those consultations to the panel, sum it up for the panel.  One thought there is that we should bring in stories from the ground and try and knit them into a global narrative.  So be local and global at the same time.  Pull in the local into the global discussion.
 One idea there, which Chengetai is working on, is a kind of set of hot spots, if you will, like Wi-Fi hot spots where you uptake stuff or global cooperation hubs. That's another name that we might use.  So we pull in these local stories through these spots into the global conversation.
 The other prominent agenda item at the late January meeting would of course be looking at these models of cooperation, these systems, these modalities of enhancing digital cooperation.
 And then in the February/March phase we would road test some of the recommendations.  We would engage in a more focused manner some of the stakeholder communities, and that would lead us into the finalization phase in mid-April.  So this is the arc of our work for nine months starting yesterday till mid-April.
 Let me conclude by mentioning these success metrics that the SG has given us.  Number one, he wants us to deliver a high-quality report, a report that becomes a reference document for future digital policy discussions and that is read by policymakers from around the world.
 Number two, he wants us to work hard on an exciting and engaging consultation process, that breaks silos, that connects different distinct communities together.  And I can tell you my personal experience of leading the discussions on AI here in Geneva is that when you break silos, when you bring different communities together, whether it is young AI entrepreneurs or people working on industry standards in IEEE and others, it makes the diplomats and the lawyers and the security specialists in the room think differently.
 So we would follow that approach, and we would try and -- even within the panel's work, we would try to create interdisciplinary small groups around different issues.  Future of work, for example, or the future of the web, Web 3 or 3.0 as you may wish to call it.
 And finally the SG wants us to stimulate through the process, through the product capacity enhancement on digital issues around the world.  And this capacity enhancement works along two axis, the thinking axis, the ability to be aware, to be literate about digital issues, to think about policy options, and, two, the implementation access, because you can have wonderful policies but if you can't land them, then they are of no use.  So how to implement digital policies better.
 And he wants this capacity enhancement to be stimulated not just among member states, because there is a problem.  Even the most advanced countries find it difficult to wrap their minds around the entire set of challenges with the digital landscape, and you can imagine more than 150 countries who are not so advanced in this domain, they find it even more difficult to do that.  So member states, but also within the U.N. system, different agencies.  There are some good examples.  What the WFP has done, what UNICEF has done, the global pulse experiment.  So there are good examples but then this needs to spread.  The best practices need to spread.  Some of the worst practices need to also be made known to others.  This naivete about data, for example, we need to make sure that we get that right.
 Then the capacity enhancement also needs to occur within the tech community, within industry.  Industry thinks it knows technology.  Yes, perhaps.  You know, I'm an engineer so I know the engineering hubris.  You know, when you make fantastic stuff, you know, you don't care about the rest that much.  At least that's how we were in the early 1980s.  But now I think industry is realizing that there is an ethics aspect and there is an aspect of ethically aligned design.  There are long-term consequences.  You know, who would have thought what smartphones would do to our children in 2007, 2008.
 So I think industry needs to invest in that kind of capacity, that kind of analog capacity to think about digital issues in a more interdisciplinary manner.
 So thank you, Lynn, again.  Thank you to all of you for listening patiently, and I look forward to your questions and comments.
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:   Thank you, ambassador.  That was very, very interesting.  And again, I feel very honored to have you here on the first, I guess, official morning post the announcement.
 We will take questions from the floor.  I'd just like to quickly introduce the other people on the dais here.  Of course you all know Chengetai.  If I go to my left we have Mr. Wai-Min Kwok who is a representative of UNDESA, Department of Economic and Social Affairs.  As you all know, of course, the IGF is administered through DESA's kind facilities and good staff.
 And to my left we have Frederic Paruta, who is a counseiller with a mission for the French government here in Geneva, and he is here sitting in the host country co-chair role today for our IGF later this year.
 Maybe just a word briefly, as Chengetai and I met with Ambassador Gill earlier this week and, you know, and talked about a number of ways that we thought the IGF could perhaps interface with the work, clearly looking through all our intersessional activities as well as looking at our national regional IGF initiatives and particularly, perhaps, with some of the interesting stories on the ground.  So we'll have opportunities to advance that a little bit more, not least, of course, with Chengetai in that role and his solid knowledge of everything in the IGF ecosystem.  So I think we'll work over the coming weeks to understand what other sort of points of engagement there might be as well.  But those conversations are still in the quite early days.
 With that, I will turn to the queue.  We are using the speaking queue, again because it levels the playing field between those that are here in the room and could quickly raise their cards and those that are participating online.  We already have four or five members up there, so we'll let it go for a little bit longer and see where we go from there.
 When you take the mic, if you could just say where you're from and perhaps which stakeholder grope as well.  So Helani, Helani Galpaya, you have the floor.
 >>HELANI GALPAYA:   Thank you, Lynn.  For the record, this is Helani Galpaya from LIRNEasia. It's a public interest research think tank.  And I am from the civil society state group and a member of the MAG.
 Thank you, Ambassador Gill, and congratulations on your appointment.  I'm very heartened to hear that you intend to work with the IGF community and engage with us, and that multistakeholderism is -- it sounded like a core principle that you will engage with.  Thank you for that.
 I have sort of two questions in two areas.  One is what is it that you expect from the IGF community?  How do we contribute?  Obviously you said you will come, you know, and engage and listen starting in November, but what can we do in a way to make the job of the commission easier or better?  Or how can we engage with the community?  Because this is a very bottom-up process of people involved in the Internet governance.  What do you expect from us and how can -- what can we do?
 Number two is at the end of your nine-month tenure of the commission, the recommendations, who will they be addressed to?  What are the mechanisms for actually implementing these, presumably after nine months?  What is the mechanism and what is the body?  And who will act upon these recommendation?
 Thank you.
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:   At your will, you can respond question by question or take the questions and comments and come back at the end.  It is to your preference.
 >>AMB. AMANDEEP SINGH GILL:   This was a set of substantive questions so I think I'll respond right now.
 On the second question, who will the recommendations be addressed to, they'll be addressed to the SG.  The SG is setting up the panel.  It is his panel.  The panel will submit its report to him.
 Within those recommendations, of course there will be aspects that of are interest to member states in the forums that are dealing with those issues.  There will be aspects that will be of interest to industry.  There will be aspects that will be of interest to the other stakeholders.
 So the uptake there is for these different stakeholders to decide.  So the panel itself is not going to be directing in terms of how the follow-up should be.  It is presenting recommendations, it's presenting ideas.  And then where those ideas, those recommendations are taken up is up to the stakeholders.  So it's not a decision-making body.  It is a panel which will reflect on issues which we make recommendations.  It's not coming out from a mandate from anybody.  So there's no J (phonetic) resolution, for example, that's setting it up, so it doesn't have to go back to anyone in that sense.
 Now, your first question, what does the panel expect from the IGF, what can the IGF do, I think this is something that we have to think through together.  We have to get to know each other.  And I think this meeting today is a very good step in that direction.  And I have to get to know and the rest of my colleagues have to get to know what are the challenges you're grappling with, current challenges, and what are the solutions where you think there could be -- these solutions could make a difference, but then there are some impediments, or how can we address those impediments.  So I think that's one area of potential collaboration.
 The other area of potential collaboration, Lynn, you mentioned that.  This is pulling in stories from the ground, from your network of what's working well and what is not working well.
 So, for example, if we are looking at digital payments in Kenya, India, or China or in the Pacific Islands, what is, perhaps, working well, and what could be done at the global level, in terms of principles, in terms of approaches that help things move along.
 Likewise in terms of data.  So the various dimensions of data governance you are familiar with, the rights and privacy aspect, the safety/security aspect, the balancing of the rights and obligations of different stakeholders, businesses, intermediaries, the users.  So is the Australian experiment with marketplaces for data, is that of value elsewhere?  Is the ongoing discussion in India on some aspects of data as a public good, is that of value as well?
 So those are the kind of things that we need to pull together in our work, and that's where your -- your experience, your network would be valuable.
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:   Thank you, Ambassador.
 Veni Markovski, you have the floor.
 >>VENI MARKOVSKI:   Thank you, Lynn.
 Ambassador, it's a pleasure to have you here, and I'm the ICANN vice president for U.N. engagement based in New York, so you're welcome when you come there to, you know, get together.
 I have two questions, quick.  Will the meeting in September be open for the public?  And, second, will you have a website with information that you either collect or the one that you have collected, are you going to be sharing it with the community?
 Thank you.
 >>AMB. AMANDEEP SINGH GILL:   So with your permission.  The meeting in September will be a meeting restricted to the panel membership, but we'll have these other open consultations.  I mentioned Africa and Asia and others, too.
 The website, there's a web page that's already live.  It was part of the U.N. org, so it is UN.ORG/EN/digital-cooperation-panel/.  So that is the web page that is already live.  We are live on Twitter at UNSGDGcoop.  And we will build up the website as we go long along.  We will build in the functionality for engagement.
 So, frankly, we are virtual beings at this point in time.  None of us have actually  have contracts, so we have been working in a sense pro bono for a while on this, and we've all put this all together like a startup.  So we are live, we have taken off, and we will build in these functionalities as we go along.
 Yeah, those were the two questions.
 Thank you.
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Ambassador.
 Livia Walpen, you have the floor.
 >>LIVIA WALPEN:  Thank you, Chair, and good morning, everyone.  My name is Livia Walpen from the Swiss government.  And first of all, I would like to thank Ambassador Gill very much for his presentation.  I think it's great you're here today, just one day after the panel has been launched.
 And Switzerland very much welcomes the creation by the Secretary-General of this panel.  We think it's a good time to get a group of leaders and experts from all stakeholder groups and together to brainstorm about how we can, together, improve the cooperation on different aspects of digital governance.
 As you might have seen, Minister Doris Leuthard, the head of the Swiss Federal Department of the Environment, Transport, Energy and Communication, she's also a member of this panel.  And Switzerland is also very pleas pleased that the panel will benefit from the experience and experience of Jovan Kurbalija, the head of the Geneva Internet Tech Forum, as the co-director of the secretariat.
 We hope that the panel will focus on a profound analysis of gaps and potential shortcomings of the current global system of cooperation on digital issues.  I think it should contribute to developing shared understanding of the respective roles and responsibilities of and ideas for cooperation between all actors that play a role in the current governance ecosystem.  This would then allow the panel in full consultation with the global multistakeholder community to develop tangible and implementable recommendations for addressing the challenges and opportunities that digitization entails.
 In this regard, Switzerland thinks that the inclusive, bottom-up dialogue in multistakeholder platforms, such as, of course, the U.N. IGF but also EuroDIG and others, have actually laid an important ground for the work of the panel.  And in our view, this fora should be used to discuss the findings of the panel.  And this would actually not only contribute to gaining legitimacy and support for the implementation in the future, it would actually also strengthen the IGF as actually the global platform for dialogue on all aspects of digital governance and cooperation.
 So thank you very much, and looking forward to, yeah, what's coming.
 Thank you.
 >>AMB. AMANDEEP SINGH GILL:   Thank you.  Thank you very much for the support that has been extended to the panel and the secretariat by the Swiss government.  All good points that you made.
 I neglected to mention, because I didn't see her, we have a third member of the secretariat in the room, Isabel De Sola. 
 Isabel, can you please rise?  Yeah.
 Isabel will be in charge of organizing the consultation process, so she has a hugely important responsibility.  You will see a lot of her.  She comes with loads of experience from diplomatic life, life as a social entrepreneur, life in WEF where she organized a number of high-level panels with people who have very little time and who have huge egos.  So she's an expert at managing all that.
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:   Thank you.
 Raquel Gatto, you have the floor.
 >>RAQUEL GATTO:   Thank you very much, Madam Chair.
 I'm Raquel Gatto.  I work with Internet society, and I'm MAG member representing technical community.  I want to congratulate Ambassador Gill for your appointment and the secretariat, the co-secretariat, and, also, to thank for the opportunity of having this dialogue and understand a little better about the U.N. panel.
 But I would like to stress three major concerns that we have in terms -- and taking the opportunity, as you are shaping the processes, that should be taken into consideration.
 One is regarding legitimacy, the second is transparency, and the third is clarity.
 Regarding legitimacy, as far is understood, the members of the panel are going to -- going to -- how do you say that?  Work in their individual capacity.  I come from Brazil so I'm not an English native speaker.  But -- so they will work into their individual capacity and not representing the communities.  And so I see as a very, very good move to have more of the open consultations.  But I think we need to stress more for how we're going to connect with the several stakeholder groups.  It's good that you are looking to the IGF.  The IGF can really channel this -- this work in outreaching those communities.  But it's really important not to make this U.N. panel working into an ivory tower and forgetting all the crowdsource and this community work that has been done, and will continue to be done within the digital society.
 It's also -- I'm not forgetting technical community.  I was reading the website this morning, and it mentions outreach to civil society, academia, industry.  It doesn't mention technical community.  And one of the risks of the outcomes is please don't forget and don't break the Internet. 
 The Internet is what it is today because it was built on certain characteristics, where we call them variants, to be this open, global, interconnected, and distributed network.  It's the network of networks.  So that's really important to stress every time.
 In terms of transparency within the processes, it's not also opening up for receiving input but it's about meaningful participation.  So while we can send the inputs, we can share the knowledge, but really knowing what's being discussed in the U.N. panel, having more of those open meetings with the panel to be exposed to this discussion is really important.
 And regarding the regional outreach, I heard Asia, I heard Africa.  I didn't heard, coming from Brazil, Latin America.  And I think it's important as well as other regions because not only developing countries have their issues but also the developed countries can have.  And digital issues are for all.
 And in the sense also of transparency to add the NETmundial experience in Sao Paulo where we had this opportunity of having to document fully open for contributions and then having the on-site meeting with the distributed, balanced stakeholders, microphones, and inputs.  And I think that's worth taking a look.
 And on the third bucket of clarity, I would say that there is a very broad scope in the terms of reference that we also should avoid and learn from the lessons of previous efforts like the CSTD Working Group on Enhanced Cooperation, how terminology can sometimes stuck some of the decision making.  And how -- mentioned also going for capacity-building of some sort and outreaching to norms, that needs to be clarified as far as it goes.
 Also looking -- and finally, my final point in terms of clarity.  The IGF has done an amazing, amazing work with intersessional tracks.  And I mentioned the best practice forums and connecting and enabling the next billion efforts.  Really most of what I heard in terms of the mandate with work about three years now with outreaching the local communities, building those stories, especially the CENB has started as identifying policy barriers for access.  And then it has evolved to tackling how we can achieve the SDGs.  Last year focused on SDG 4, 5, education, gender, and 9 which is infrastructure.  And this year looking into poverty, into clean energy, into future workshops work.  And again 9 and 17 partnerships.  So I think there is some work that has been done already.  And it could serve well to the panel also.  Thank you very much.
 >>AMB. AMANDEEP SINGH GILL:  Again, all very good points.  And thank you very much for these detailed inputs.  I don't know how you got the impression that the tech community is not being reached out to.  I think if you listen to the Secretary-General's video remarks, if you read the TORs, if you read the FAQs, everything, that's very much part of the society -- the different parts of the digital societies that we are reaching out to.
 Within the panel itself, there is a strong tech representation including respected robotics professor from Brazil, Edson Prestes, who is active in the IEEE discussions as well.
 In terms of having any event in Latin America, we have not ruled that out.  Frankly, it's a question of resources.  If you and your governments and the foundation you come from give us more resources, we can do more.
 This secretariat is funded by donor resources.  And we are still raising resources as we go about our job.  So if you want us to do more, please help us to do more.
 The NETmundial experience, of course, the CSTD experience, we're aware of that.  Within the panel, you have Fadi Chehade and my colleague Jovan Kurbalija who are very familiar of the NETmundial experience.
 On the SDG question in particular, I think what the panel does touches upon almost every SDG, and the SDGs are a universal touchstone.  They are for the developing world.  They are also for the developed world.  And particularly this aspect of partnerships.  So SDG 17, you have the gender aspect, the future of work aspect.  All of these are there in the SDGs.
 While we are not a panel about development, about digitally driven development, we will see to what extent we can add value to what's going on in context of the Agenda 2030, particularly this issue of financial inclusion to the digital technologies domain and emerging business models.
 And if we are addressing the risks and the unintended consequences, then we are through this prevention approach insulating the implementation of Agenda 2030 from shocks and dislocation.  I think that's very important.  If the Internet continues to function well, if it continues to grow, if inequities and access and other issues are addressed, that accelerates our development.  And that will be part of the panel's work.  Thank you.  Thank you.  And no ivory tower.
 IGF should count itself lucky that you have Chengetai as the link to the panel.  I mean, you are uniquely placed to influence and input into our work.
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  We count ourselves lucky and unlucky.  Lucky in that sense but unlucky because we are, in fact, losing him.
 Before we go to queue, if I can just make -- within the Tunis Agenda which is both the framework and terminology that really supports us, the technical community that I would expect Raquel was talking about had a very specific decision -- meaning, definition.  As we were actually going through the WSIS 1 and WSIS 2 process, of course, the recognized groups in the U.N. system are governments, private sector, and civil society.  But the individuals recognized at that point in time that there were a series of core organizations that had kind of developmental or operational management responsibility for some of the core functions of the Internet.  So the five regional Internet registries, for instance, the Internet Engineering Task Force, Internet Architecture Board, ISOC, ICANN, IEEE, Worldwide Web Foundation.  All of those entities actually came together in this field which was the technical community.  So it's sort of a distinction between that and kind of technical private sector activities.  It won't be the last time you actually hear "technical community" in that sense I would expect.
 Ishag Muataz, you have the floor.
 >>ISHAG MUATAZ:  Thank you, Madam Chair.  I am Ishag Muataz, MAG member from government sector, representing Africa region.
 I would like to congratulate the ambassador and secretariat for their appointment.  And I just want to note that Sudan is going to host the next African IGF.  As we all know the African Internet governance space has gone through different phases through the WSIS process with regional meetings helped from Morocco, (saying name), Addis Ababa, Cairo, Johannesburg, among others.  Within the global IGF initiative, Africa hosted -- Africa hosted the IGF earlier in Egypt, 2009; Kenya, 2011, South Africa and, last, Egypt 2017.  And now it's going to be hosted in Sudan 2018.
 We really want to see this linkage between regional IGF, and we are open to the community and have diversity between various stakeholder groups who all are equal.
 Also, we are working closely with national and regional secretariat of the IGF.  So I think it's really important to have such engagement from the panel on the next IGF.  This will allow the panel to be in touch and address the issue and challenges from African perspective and put it to the globe.
 Finally, I would also like to invite us all to join us on the next African IGF.  And I would be more than happy to provide our support and any facilitations or logistic issues.  Thank you.
 >>AMB. AMANDEEP SINGH GILL:  Thank you very much.  Really appreciate the warm words.  And as I mentioned, engagement with Africa is going to be an important part of the panel's work.  And we look forward to working with all potential partners on making that event a success. 
 In particular, we hope that the members from Africa in the panel, they will take leadership for that and they are all very bright, very accomplished leaders.  And they'll come up with, I'm sure, innovative ideas to maximize the outreach to Africa.
 Just a quick word on the tech community discussion, you know, the beauty of this reframing is that we are not bound by existing paradigms.  I mean, we respect them but we don't really have to go -- if in this exercise all of us are not stretched a bit, then we won't grow.  So I think there is a degree of mental flexibility that we would be trying to stimulate through this.
 Now, when I came into the discussion, there were very fixed notions about how we should define things, you know, how we should define the risks.  But as you brought in different stakeholders, as you connected different parts of the circuit together, new insights emerged and that helped advance the discussion.  So bear with us.
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Thank you.  Thank you, Ambassador. 
 Wisdom Donkor, you have the floor.
 >>WISDOM DONKOR:  Thank you, Chair.  My name is Wisdom Donkor from Ghana.  I work for government.  I just want to give some highlights in the perspective of Africa.  We have some challenges in Africa and some of the challenges are within the agriculture sector.  The other one is the health sector.  We have the education sector, the environment.  And then also we have issues with rural/urban migration and all that. 
 When you take agriculture, for example, we have more than half of the food production globally is going to waste.  And more than half of the food that the world is producing is fed to livestock and all that.  And then there are also issues with nutrition and within that aspect.
 Now, when you look at the agriculture sector, a lot of investment is going into that direction, to innovate -- for innovation and all that.  But it looks like the right digital technology has not been adopted. 
 So I'm just highlighting this so that you actually note it down when you are discussing so this sector should be addressed digitally.
 The same thing applies to the health sector.  There are so many issues, challenges.  And by now developing countries should be moving towards eHealth, digitizing all the health system and all that.  Still, there are challenges in that regard.  So they also need the right technology.
 When you take environment and then climates, for example, we also have issues there.  It looks like we are cutting more trees than we are planting more trees.  So if we can get the right technology there to also monitor the rate at which we are cutting trees and then also any innovative way we can grow more trees to replace the trees that are being cut, the same applies to climate change and all that. 
 There is also issues with our soil health and all that.  I know other countries are coming up with technologies.  And they are using special technologies and all that in determining the health of the soil that people plant on.  So if we can also look at that sooner, we can use the digitization to enhance our crop production.  So if a farmer is going to produce a crop and if they know the kind of soil that is there, then they also know the kind of plant -- the kind of crop they should grow on that particular soil.
 With that we also need to address infrastructure sharing.  I think Raquel raised infrastructure.  When you take Ghana, for example, this bit of government has invested massively into infrastructure.  We also have (indiscernible) base.  Burkina Faso on top of us.  We have Cote d'Ivoire.  We also have Togo and Benin.  Nigeria is also there.  So if those infrastructures can be shared among those around, I think that will also help in bridging that digital divide that we are talking about.  So I think these are my main highlights (indiscernible) that you should also look into to see how we can address them.  Thank you.
 >>AMB. AMANDEEP SINGH GILL:  I want to again thank you all.  Very good points.  And one aspect of the capacity gaps is human resource capacity.  I think it's not just tech that's going to provide the solutions.  It's the people and the processes around that.  So I think that is where we could have some more -- let's say there is a lot of potential for more work there.  I'm thinking, of, for example, the Kofi Annan Center for ICT in your country.  And there are -- the technologies are there.  You mentioned soil health.  There are plenty of technologies to monitor soil health.  Low-cost sensors are there.  And even AI solutions, just good enough AI.  There are examples in Ethiopia, coffee farmers, pesticide use, regulation through that.
 So while it is not the panel's job to go into some of these issues, they come under the competence of -- these are, for example, UNDP, others.  And there are many other very, very competent people on the ground doing these things. 
 Perhaps the panel can look at some of these cross-cutting issues that can enable the developmental use of digital technologies and surely agriculture and health and the environment are the obvious areas, priority areas for deploying those technologies.
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:   Thank you, Ambassador.
 I do hope you can stay with us.
 I think we do have to respect the ambassador's time and our agenda as well.  So if the remaining comments could be quite to the point, that would be helpful.
 Paul Rowney.  Paul, you have the floor.
 >>PAUL ROWNEY:   Thank you, Chair.  Paul Rowney.  I'm representing the Africa ICT Alliance which is an alliance of I.T. industry players across the continent.
 I'd like to say that we welcome the panel on digital cooperation.  I think it can add a lot of value to the work that we're doing in Africa.  I'm also happy to see that Africa is represented on the panel.  I think we have three panelists.  I think we can get an African influence on some of what's happening.  But I also want to mention that I'm hoping that the panel can bypass some of the diplomacy that the U.N. often uses and actually get to talk to the people that are at the fore or at the edge of the digital revolution; that we don't get channeled, through diplomacy, to see some projects that are not really having the effect that we need to benefit our people.
 We suffer in Africa on the continent with a lot of poor or ineffective policy.  And it's not to say we don't have policy.  It's often not implemented well, so it doesn't benefit the citizens.
 And then we have the challenge of technology being misused.  AI, big data, where it's used often against the citizens, Internet shutdowns, social taxes on social media which means that the poor cannot access the social media tools.  And there is an inherent fear with some of our governments that social media is not all good.
 So we need to find ways where we get that balance where everybody starts to benefit from that digital revolution.
 We need a lot of push around supporting these networks, last-mile connectivity, and digital literacy.  We have a disconnected society.  Our rural areas often don't have electricity.  Massive infrastructure problems.  And an important thing that we need to look at that is sometimes overlooked is we need to start looking at radically changing the way which we educate our children on the continent.  We still have the 20th century mentality where we have a classroom and a teacher, and the teacher pushes information.  So it's not a collaborative learning environment which is the West is moving towards.  So if we're going to educate our children for the future, and the future is different to how most of us grew up, we need to radically change the way that we teach on the continent.  And, otherwise, we're producing youth that are out of balance with the new digital economy.
 So, yeah, that's basically what I wanted to add.
 Thank you.
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:   The Ambassador is suggesting we take a few more questions and then he can come back at the end with some comments.
 So next in the queue we have Liesyl Franz.  Liesyl.
 >>LIESYL FRANZ:   Thank you, Chair.  My name is Liesyl Franz, I'm with the Department of State in the U.S. government.  And thank you, Ambassador Gill, for coming today, and congratulations on your appointment.
 And just to pick up on something that Lynn said, with regard to Chengetai, our loss is your gain.  So congratulations on his recruitment and his participation in your -- in your work.
 Questions I have have been touched on, but I'd like to hone in on just two of them, if you don't mind.
 As it was noted earlier, the scope of the TOR, the terms of reference, is quite broad.  In your comments you've touched on things like as mobile payments and cybersecurity, and we certainly heard other areas of interest in what may be called digital -- just really everything these days.  So can you comment on how the scope of aspects of digital cooperation will be determined for the panel?  I mean, there are various ways in which there are cooperative activities that occur in various areas, and, indeed, the proliferation of the Internet itself was the result and has been fostered by a great amount of cooperation already, and there are a number of ways cooperation occurs to address both the opportunities and the challenges that you've noted.
 So a note on scope, either as it's envisioned or as it is determined I think will be helpful for us to understand how the panel proceed.
 Of course we're also happy to hear about exciting and engaging consultation with the IGF community and otherwise.  Perhaps this question may be also directed to Isabel.  Thank you for coming today as well.  But can you let us know if there is any thought on how the panel will take inputs from the various communities, either through the events of outreach that you've discussed, but also from things that have occurred to date?  You know, we're not -- it's not as though there hasn't been a vast amount of work done in this area and various places that could be good resources for the panel.  As well as things that could be submitted in written form by any stakeholder entity.
 So thank you again for being here, and thanks for engaging with the IGF community early stage.
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:   Thank you, Liesyl.
 Here we have quite a queue.  I do hope it's closed, Luis.  Okay.  Good.  Just in order to respect everybody's time.
 Timea.  Timea Suto, you have the floor.
 >>TIMEA SUTO:   Thank you, Chair.  I'll try and be brief.  My name is Timea Suto.  I work for the International Chamber of Commerce, which is -- we call ourselves the global business organization representing businesses in (indiscernible) countries and the world.
 I would like to congratulate you, first and foremost, for your appointment and for the formation of this very impressive panel.  And the focus of this panel to look at ICTs as the vehicle for SDGs, which, indeed, they are, mentioned explicitly four times in the 2030 agenda.  But as we believe, they're there for advancing all of them.
 As I said, my questions have already been asked, and I would just try to focus on two elements.  I'm happy to hear that the panel aims to build on the work already under way in various forums for digital cooperation.  And I'm also happy to hear it builds on the multistakeholder model, and there is this openness to dialogue with different stakeholders from different regions, different age groups.  So I would like it hear more, as my colleague from the U.S. said, on how input can be -- can be shared with the panel.
 And you referred multiple times to the importance of carrying the voice of industry and global business and make this part of the panel.  And I just want to highlight that global business has been working to underscore the ways in which policy choices within and across the various components of the ICT ecosystem can impact this potential of ICTs to be leveraged for wider societal benefit.  And we are looking forward to share this experience and input with the panel to see what business does and what it needs to continue to help to reach these common goals, and how we can make sure investment and innovation is sustainable and can be scaled up where needed to that purpose.
 So we are looking forward to working with you and the panel, and thank you for being here today.
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:   Thank you, Timea.
 Next in the queue we have Rudolf Gridl.  Rudolf, you have the floor.
 >>RUDOLF GRIDL:   Good morning.  Good morning, Your Excellency.  Thank you very much for coming here and presenting to us the HLPDC.
 I have actually one point that has been, I think, made several times before, but which is I think very important, and that's transparency.  The process of the selections of the members of this panel has not been very transparent, I have to say.  And we appreciate very much that you are now here talking to us, and it makes me a little bit worried hearing that the sessions of the panel will be closed and not open, as we are used to in this multistakeholder environment.  So perhaps you could think again about this because you have probably nothing to hide to the community.  If still you prefer to hold closed sessions, it is of utmost importance to have regular communication to the community from your side, and we are very happy that there is somebody who is in charge of handling this dialogue.
 In this IGF, in this MAG, there's an enormous knowledge, an enormous capacity of all the aspects that have been touched upon.  You should really rob from this and not go into some exercise of it has been called the ivory tower.
 Thank you.
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:   Thank you, Rudolf.  Julian Casasbuenas.
 >>JULIAN CASASBUENAS:   Thank you, Madam Chair.  Ambassador Gill, thank you very much for your presentation.  My name is Julian Casasbuenas, MAG member from civil society and part of the Association for Progressive Communications, APC.  APC is an international civil society network with more than 90 members around the world and it has been an active supporter of the IGF since its inception.
 We appreciate the update on the upcoming U.N. Secretary-General panel on digital cooperation.  We welcome any initiative aimed at strengthening cooperation in the spheres of Internet and broader digital government and development.
 We are concerned, however, about its relationship to the Internet Governance Forum.  It is important to mention the importance of the work done so far by all multistakeholders at the IGF for more than ten years in facilitating greater coordination and cooperation in the fields of digital governance.  Therefore, we will appreciate that this panel takes into account the vast body of work related to cooperation and coordination on Internet-related matters that has been done through and around the IGF, strengthening it and linking it to the panel and also to consider the importance of the participation of multiple stakeholders, especially from the civil society and the global south in the discussions.
 Thank you.
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:   Thank you, Julian.
 Next we have Sala.  Sala, you have the floor.
 >>SALANIETA TAMANIKAIWAIMARO:   Thank you, Madam Chair.  Good morning, Your Excellency and members of the commission.  Ms. Pulgar and Mr. Masango.  My name is Salanieta Tamanikaiwaimaro.  I'm from the Pacific, and I speak in my individual capacity, although I'm part of civil society and president of the South Pacific Computer Society.
 Having said that, I note that in 2003, the U.N. Secretary-General then had commissioned a Working Group on Internet Governance, and I note that the distinction between that and this particular digital commission.  And I actually personally, in my own personal opinion, celebrate the distinction.  Where the working group developed principles and met on public policy issues, yours is a more diverse mandate in terms of mapping the landscape and trends. 
 Having said that, it would be remiss of me not to mention this.  I hope, Ms. Pulgar, that you can hear me.  Can you hear me, Ms. Pulgar? 
 Yes, thank you.
 Now, Oceania, which includes the Pacific, it has 27 countries and territories that have Country Code Top Level Domains.
 The SIDs, small island developing states, which I passionately advocate for, are 37 states.  Noticeably, they do not include the territories.  So it's critical that in mapping the consultation -- that in mapping the framework for the consultation process that you not only look a the U.N. states but also the territory.
 So obviously, you know, the AING (phonetic) region, you have 37 states, the Caribbean 16, the Pacific 13.
 Now in terms of consultation, I'd be grateful if the commission could consider reaching out to the various trade missions here in Geneva and the PRUN (phonetic) missions in both New York and Geneva, as well as regional organizations within the Caribbean and the Pacific that are mandated or that have ICT and the Internet on their agenda.  To this regard, I'd like to ask the commission to consider informing the Caribbean Telecommunications Union, Bernadette Lewis, and also the Pacific Islands Forum secretariat, which happens to chair the Council of Regional Organizations in the Pacific in which all the formal ministerial meetings on cross-cutting issues, whether it's trade or ICT or economic matters that sort of -- you know, there's a plethora of cross-cutting priority areas, that they also be informed so that they can be part of the consultation process.
 The civil community in the Caribbean, that's multistakeholder in composition.  Regional infrastructure facilities.  And when I say "infrastructure facilities," I mean the financial infrastructure facilities.  And the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank.  And similarly for the Caribbean region, you know.  They also have this.
 The Pacific Islands Telecommunications Association which is made up of executives of the various telecommunication operators in the region, and the regional research and education networks in Oceania and also in the Caribbean.
 Noting that in the world there are only two regional universities, the University of West Indies in the Caribbean and the Universities of the South Pacific Territory -- the University of the South Pacific.
 Noticeably also the (indiscernible), particularly for USP in the Pacific, the USP net is the largest Internet structure in the Pacific region which also acts as a global repository for diverse information for intergovernmental organizations, international organizations, they had to do with climate change, they had to do with biodiversity and a whole bunch of things.  I won't list it here, but it's important that they also be consulted, and also the various chambers of commerce within the Pacific whom, I noticeably note, are not members of the International Chamber of Commerce.  So reaching out just to ICC-BASIS doesn't guarantee that it will reach the periphery.
 Having said that, again, I congratulate the U.N. Secretary-General on his foresight in appointing the commission.  I welcome the commission's work, and I look forward to seeing vigorous consultations that doesn't include -- that doesn't exclude the Pacific, the Caribbean, and small island developing states.
 With that, I thank you, Your Excellency.
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:   Thank you very much, Sala.
 Sylvia Cadena, you have the floor.
 >>SYLVIA CADENA:   Thank you, Lynn.  My name is Sylvia Cadena.  I represent technical community.  I work for the APNIC foundation.  APNIC allocates the IP addresses and ASN numbers that support telecommunication operators in the Asia-Pacific all the way from Afghanistan to Guam, 456 economies.  Around 20% or 25% of our budget goes to development activities that are targeting especially technical capacity building for telecommunication operators of different size.  So I really want to congratulate the Ambassador Gill and the panel for highlighting the importance of capacity building in scope that the panel is going to take.
 One of the models or that guides our work is the Internet, and I guess you can expand that to technology in general, that the Internet is as safe, as secure, as reliable and resilient as the engineers that are actually trained to manage and operate it at the basement of a lot of those buildings; that we take for granted the work that they do, and we just assume that magically the connection is going to be there.
 I also really want to highlight the importance of the (indiscernible) and regional consultation process, and I'm really glad to see (saying name) here taking notes.  That's wonderful.  We'd like to extend an invitation to her and to any other members of the secretariat for this panel to review the calendar of events that the technical community has.  And many of those events were mentioned by Sala before, or the organizations that run them, to see how they can leverage -- you guys can leverage those events to participate and engage with the technical community in Asia-Pacific.  It's a very vast, varied, diverse region that has very big challenges, distance being one, and the lack of understanding of what really goes on, having the alliance; right?  The super advanced countries that are doing so well in implementation of technology, and others that are lagging behind just next-door.
 And I also would like to highlight your mention of how to collect stories and weave them into the global understanding.  I think that there are initiatives, one I have been managing for the last ten years and is my baby, that is the ISIF Asia program.
 We have been supporting an early-stage concept development projects that are related to Internet technologies and bring them to the IGF since 2011 for an award ceremony that we held at the IGF.  Those are newcomers to this space, are startups in many -- in many ways, and they have stories from the ground.  And our program of course is not the only program, but we work a lot with other programs that are from the technical community investing in solely technical solutions.  And we will be very pleased that you consider some of those examples that are also part of the WSIS champions and the WSIS award.
 And finally, I would like to highlight what you mentioned about mapping gaps.  I -- I would like to stress four that I already see here that I want to take advantage of the transcripts.  You can take them into account in the future.
 First is the gap between the startup community fast-and-run approach to developing technology and the standards community and how the lack of understanding from the startup community actually can bring to a halt a lot of the progress that the Internet has bring.  So it is really important to bring those two together.  They run very different speeds but it's very important that they -- it is crucial for interoperability and accessibility that standards are taken into account, and see how technologies converge.  As the lines are blurred between what is the Internet, what is telephony, what is the cloud and what's going on in everything is kind of taking -- as if the Internet was all kind of -- you know, but anyway.
 I also want to highlight the gap between the investment mechanisms that are existing and the flexibility and reliability to actually deliver connectivity on last-mile solutions. 
 There is a lot of discussions around universal access funds and how can those be used.  Many impact investment initiatives that are challenges, all sorts of ideas in funding and financing to actually deliver on those services.  But there are block roads there.  They are (indiscernible) that are not allowing those mechanisms to operate.  I am really glad to see that you mentioned investment mechanisms in your introduction.
 The last two are around how women, not only use the technology but that they actually help shape it.  I see in my work a lot of initiatives trying to bring lessons to primary school girls and university students to go into a STEMs career.  There is very little support for the actual women engineers on the workforce now, that are comfortable at their new management position to actually continue to do the work that they do.  There are either a lot of effort to get a lot of women on board and women in leadership positions or to get more women to use the Internet.  But for those that are shaping it, there is very little there.  So I think that's an interesting gap to explore.
 And, finally, the one around ethics, I think, is really critical.  To develop a framework, an ethical framework, for investment and for deployment is -- it takes a lot of time.  And the speed at which technology is growing is making it hard to make those ethics components of a framework into the process.  And the corporate I will not name may be caught in that -- sort of the worst-case scenario and making -- putting at risk the trust in the technology that we are relying on to deliver the SDGs and progress for all.
 So I think that ethics component in terms of business and implementation is also key to take a breath and think about how -- how can we bring that ethical approach.  We will make mistakes.  But if we don't start by the ethical -- looking at things from an ethical point of view, it will be very difficult to implement.  Thank you very much for your time.  And thanks for the opportunity to bring my opinions to you.  Thank you.
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Thank you, Sylvia.  Jennifer Chung, Jennifer, you have the floor.
 >>JENNIFER CHUNG:  Thank you, Chair.  Good morning, everyone.  My name is Jennifer Chung.  I'm part of the MAG, and I represent DotAsia Foundation and we are a not-for-profit organization that has a core mandate to promote Internet adoption across Asia. 
 I would like to really congratulate Ambassador Gill for your appointment and also coming so soon after your appointment to come and engage with this community.
 I really wanted to highlight a few things that my colleagues have already said.  There is a lot of knowledge and wealth in this room of past works and things that have already been done and I also, you know, call on you to ask us and ask us to help you in your work and the panel's work as well.
 In particular from the ground up stories, there is, of course, the national and regional initiatives that you already know of.  A lot more colleagues in this room also have a lot of front-line, grassroots communities that do face a lot of problems and have a lot of solutions that you may be already interested in.  So I do call upon the panel to definitely take into account these things.
 I'm very enthusiastic that you mentioned the under-25 representation is strong on the panel, especially since you did mention that the panel will look into issues on the future of work.  That's very encouraging.
 And, lastly, I would like to highlight what my colleagues have also said, would like a little more information on the process of consultations.  I'm very enthusiastic that the Asia-Pacific will be a region will be where the work is focused on a community of consultations and ways to input and would like to hear a little bit more about that.  Thank you for your time.
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Thank you, Jennifer. 
 And I think it's fitting that we close our queue with Christina Arida from the Egyptian government as Egypt was one of the first host countries, one of the earliest IGFs. 
 Mary, with exception, I will allow you to come in.  But we are really well quite behind time.  Mary will come in after Christine and last speaker.
 >>MARY UDUMA:  Sorry.  I requested before it closed.
 >>CHRISTINA ARIDA:  Thank you, Chair.  I will be very concise because my questions are already tackled.  My name is Christina Arida, and I work for the Egyptian government who, as Lynn mentioned, was former host of the global IGF and also the African IGF and co-founder of the Arab IGF. 
 I'm happy -- first, I would like to thank ambassador and congratulate him on his appointment and actually welcome very much the panel and the work that might be really much needed at this stage.
 I'm also happy to see that there are members from both regions where I come from, the African and Arab region, on the panel.  And this is really encouraging. 
 This is exactly to my point.  I think those two regions, they promise so many users that will come into the global arena, populations that are still to come on board to the global digital economy.  And for that, it is important to have voices from those stakeholders from that regions put in and brought on board. 
 And for that, I also would like to understand more about the consultation that is proposed.  Ambassador, you mentioned that the panel would be working through an exciting and engaging consultation process that is also global and regional.
 I really hope that stakeholder groups from those regions that are maybe underrepresented in this arena, in the global discussion, I hope there will be a good plan to put them on board.  And I also specifically would like to maybe draw attention to the government stakeholder group from those regions.  That will require a lot of attention to bring their voices, especially the other stakeholder groups in those regions are maybe less mature than globally.  And, therefore, the government stakeholder group will be important to report in.  Thank you very much.
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Thank you, Christine.
 Mary Uduma, you have the floor.
 >>MARY UDUMA:  Thank you, Chair.  I'm not going to take much time.  My name is Mary Uduma.  I'm from Nigeria.  I'm a member of MAG, and I represent the technical community.  And I'm strong in national and regional initiative network.  That's where I want to come from.  And I want to say that I congratulate you, Ambassador, and I know that you're going to do a great job for us.  And you must have heard us at several meetings and platforms where we raise issues about Internet and what it portends.
 First, I want to ask:  Is this panel replacing the CSTD that was not able to come to terms with enhanced cooperation?  They couldn't agree.  That's one.
 Secondly, job losses, that the new digital economy portends to young people, especially our region, where the population grows every day.
 And third is that we have connectivity and access challenges.  Will the panel be looking at how these would bring in more voices to the Internet governance or the digital world by creating or recommending what access and connectivity will be for the underserved and unserved regions?  We have many in Africa that are not connected.  How would they be connected?
 And I also want to go with Sylvia on what she said about ethics.  And I hope that in that ethics, the new things we are finding out from Facebook and the likes, selling our data, data protection and the rest of them, how will we be -- how will we as netizens be protected.  I hope the panel will be look at that. 
 Not to take much of your time, just to see what will be there.  And when you come to the African region, let me say this to you, that the Africa -- we don't -- we don't have access to do online.  So it might be that you consider beyond just online, host some face-to-face.  Thank you.
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Thank you, Mary.  Very good comments, as were all the comments here over the last hour or so.
 So I will turn to the ambassador and give him some time for the closing remarks.
 >>AMB. AMANDEEP SINGH GILL:  First of all, thank you very much for all those detailed comments and suggestions and advice.  And the three of us have been taking notes.  We have the transcript.  And we'll keep that with us carefully.
 I noted from the various comments five questions so let me address them.
 The first really is about the nature of what this group is.  And I think some of the comments about, you know, transparency, et cetera, are coming from that perhaps lack of full knowledge about what is this.  This is not a replacement for the CSTD group.  This is not a working group on anything.  It's not a task force.  It's a high-level panel of the Secretary-General.  And there is a tradition of such high-level panels since the beginning of the U.N. 
 To give you an example, the Frontline Commission was such a panel.  And that fused two existing fields of work for the U.N. which was development, economic development, and environment into this new area of sustainable development.
 So these high-level panels have a history, they have a tradition, they have ways of being brought together. 
 And I want to emphasize one thing here, so I politely disagree with this characterization that there was no transparency in this coming together.  This has been in the works for one year.  There have been consultations with more than 120 member states in New York.  And our Swiss colleagues know that because at the Swiss and the UAE PRs have taken the lead in some of those consultations.  So almost each one of your governments, if you are representing governments, have been consulted. 
 Since we became active, we have consulted with more than two dozen key member states in New York and in Geneva.  We've also consulted with industries who the Secretary-General himself has met many leaders from industry and civil society.  Leaders on ethics, for example, the Secretary-General's office has engaged them.
 So if there is anything, we have waited far too long to launch this.  It's been one year in the works and very methodical, very consultative.
 And we all know from our experience with national task forces and national commissions -- I've conceptualized and worked with one task force recently.  So there's a balance between open consultation and getting your work done.  So if you are having a meeting yourself, that doesn't mean you are excluding anyone.  That's just a question of method and logistics.  And so there will be public consultations.  There will be two in particular that will be held regionally.  There will be other opportunities.  And we have the Web site.  Everyone's addresses, email addresses are there.  And this kind of interaction will continue so we'll be as transparent as is physically possible, logistically possible for us.
 In terms of the selection of the panel members, that has been done by the Secretary-General's office.  And they've had several criteria in mind, broad geographical representation, gender balance, age balance, cross-cutting matching skill sets, making sure under-35 representation is there. 
 And if there is a concern, for example, about Europe being underrepresented, I would say if you count the secretariat colleagues, you have six representatives from Europe.  I would say perhaps Asia-Pacific is underrepresented because there's a lot of dynamism there.  There are many -- the numbers are really scaling up very, very fast there.  So that is -- if there were to be concern, I would say that is the kind of concern.
 And then, you know, we are covering those kind of gaps.  You can't get it perfect at every step.  We're covering that as we go along through the regional consultations, through ways of engaging.
 There was a question from our U.S. colleague about how do we precisely define our mandate?  So we have the TORs.  The TORs tell us, for example, in paragraph 4 to identify good practices, opportunities, gaps, and challenges in digital cooperation; to outline major trends in the development and deployment of emerging digital technologies, business models and policies; and the possibilities and challenges that generate for digital cooperation.
 Then in para 5(e), from this broad context, we dig deeper into the awareness raising part of it.  So having a narrative in the report that helps people understand the challenges and the opportunities; and then, second, suggesting ways, concrete ways, to enhance digital cooperation by identifying policy research and information gaps and ways to improve interdisciplinary and cross-domain action on digital technologies.
 Admittedly broad at this stage but the panel needs to engage with this.  You know, we can't prejudge, predetermine what Melinda Gates, Jack Ma, Vinton Cerf and others bring to the table their own vast experience with various parts of the digital universe and how we engage with the stakeholders and how that ends up in the report.
 Then I think there is a third bullet in para 5 about effective and inclusive systems of digital cooperation.  That's building on what we already have, respecting that, not overturning anything that is there. 
 So the approach, if I may, my own understanding of this, if I may offer that, the approach to these more sensitive governance issues which may be of concern to some of us or interest to some of us is that of agile and distributed governments. 
 The other day I heard in the ITU a very nice reference to humility and regulation.  I think that humility and regulation has to be national.  It also has to be international.  The U.N. can't get everything right.  The U.N. forums can't determine everything.  So we have to respect national prerogatives.  We have to respect industry prerogatives.  And all these different levels of governance have to work in sync with each other, in full respect of each other and in full awareness of each other so we don't step on each other's toes. 
 I think this would be in a sense the guiding philosophy for us as we search for effective and inclusive ways of enhancing digital cooperation.
 Then there was a question, I think, which was partly addressed to Isabel.  Isabel, you can come in if you want.  How will we organize the process of gathering inputs, so the ground-up process.
 There is -- maybe, Isabel, can you talk about those three aspects?
 >>CHENGETAI MASANGO:  Mic.
 >> ISABEL DE SOLA:  Good morning.  Thank you, Amandeep.  The question was about how we are going to organize the process of receiving inputs?  Is that -- actually, I have -- we have some plans in the works, but I don't know how much I can say they are firm.
 So we have mapped out the universe of digital cooperation as much as is possible.  It's very broad.  And we need to strike a balance between quantity and quality of inputs.  So we would like to be as broad and inclusive as possible but focus inputs towards targeted questions and areas of work that the panel feels they can add the most value to.
 So in the next couple of months, I hope the panel will decide what those focus areas are by listening to forums like this one, by bringing their experience from many years they have accumulated in their respective capacities, and that they can decide on a limited number of issues.
 This speaks also to how we narrow the TORs or how we can really land this panel's work so that it can be implementable and actionable on delivery of the report.
 So what I would like to do -- and these are plans to be confirmed -- is design a process that allows inputs coming from a very broad group but to targeted and focused questions that can land.  So what we would like to avoid with this report is that it be very broad and extremely high level and very aspirational.  We would actually like for its recommendations to be actionable, targeted, sharp, crisp, useful.
 We have the events that Amandeep mentioned, Ambassador Gill mentioned in Africa and Asia.  However, I'm sneakily trying to insert Latin America because that's where I'm from.
 [ Laughter ]
 So I have a personal stake.  I think also that the region has a great deal to share. 
 And then we would like to partner with organizations -- so I've noted down many of your names -- on industry consultations, on civil society maybe from different topic consultations.
 And a last layer to say is that we would aspire to institutionalize a cross-sectoral or interdisciplinary approach.
 So while each of the thematic areas of the IGF or of the digital sphere has developed a great deal of experience expertise and know-how, our panel believes and the Secretary-General believes that there's a degree of silo-ization or kind of individual, closed-off, cordoned areas that need to speak more to each other.
 So in our approach, we would like to bring communities of different disciplines together to think about those same problems and questions in the hope that this will inspire fresher approaches, fresher thinking, and also cross pollinization from the different disciplines.
 Let me stop there and see if, Ambassador Gill, I responded adequately.
 >>AMB. AMANDEEP SINGH GILL:   I couldn't have responded better, Isabel.  Thank you.
 And the point about the small island developing states, you have a champion in the secretariat, Jovan Kurbalija on those -- on those issues, and we will make sure that in our outreach in New York and in Geneva, we make -- we'll make sure that those two communities, the Caribbean community, the South Pacific community, particularly we'll cover that.
 There was a strong call by many of you to use the expertise and the knowledge that is represented in this room.  Absolutely.  So we'll rely on that.  We respect that fully.  And the SG has told us to be humble in this endeavor.  That's the first words he used when we met him for strategic guidance.  He said be humble.  A lot of people think they know a lot, so we have to be humble.
 So that will be our approach, and we'll definitely look forward to working with you.
 I think I have covered most of the questions, but in any case, if there are further questions, please send them across, inputs, suggestions, advice.  Always welcome.
 Thank you very much.
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:   Thank you.
 [Applause]
 We're very honored that you were here and, in keeping with the last comments, very humbled as well.
 Thank you very much for all the time.  It's been very interesting, hopefully very useful.
 We'll take a short two-minute break.
 [ Break ]
 >>CHENGETAI MASANGO:   Let's restart the session where we left off yesterday.
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:   Thank you, everybody.  And I do hope everybody appreciated the time this morning.  It did obviously take time from our equally very important work here, but I think that was just critically important for all of us, and hopefully beneficial and useful to the effort as well.
 I thought the comments and discussions were very good.  So thank you, everybody, for giving it the time.
 I hope everybody had a great time last night, and I hope you kept much of your reasoning abilities intact for today.  We do have a lot of work to get through.
 So let me just put up the agenda here.  What we are meant to do today is to finalize kind of an overall workshop track formation, and, in fact, normally the workshop selection process.  Historically we have left some of the workshops approved conditionally and have had requirements to go back to some of the proposers with, you know, suggestions to increase diversity or that sort of thing to bring the workshops up appropriately.
 We also need to close on an overall theme.  We need to determine what we want to do for the thematic, previously called main sessions, and that is primarily sort of determining which themes and how many, and then determining how we're actually going to organize ourselves to support those.  So I suspect it will probably be no more than a very top level, short theme -- not even a theme title but kind of this basket of issues in this theme.  And we'll have to get a subset of the MAG to go away and work that.  We have some thoughts on how we can perhaps do that.
 We also need -- I think we can come back a little bit on kind of the open forums and the overall scheduling.  And we also have discussions on the NRI requests for their participation within various parts of the IGF annual meeting program.  Same thing for the dynamic coalitions and Best Practice Forums as well.
 So I think as everybody can see, it's a tremendous amount of work in front of us.
 I'd actually like to make a suggestion.  And I also want to recognize that -- I mean, this process is squeezed, and it's too squeezed at one level.  One of the things I'd like -- and we may need to work through lunch.  If we don't work through lunch, then if there's some people that are interested in terms of thinking about how this process can be improved next year, the whole process, not just this stage three, I think it would be helpful to get an informal meeting.  And of course that would subsequently be brought back to the MAG, this year's MAG and next year's MAG.
 But there are some clear improvements we could see.  If we had done a call for issues and had the ability to do a call for issues earlier, allow some time for the MAG to actually understand the themes and the shape of that, kind of debate them a little bit, maybe look at the subthemes and see which ones were most of interest and we thought most appropriate in terms of advancing IGF interest and community interest, and then of course we could actually use that to further shape the call for workshop submissions and even perhaps scope out some of the high-level thematic sessions and provide a little more information, a little more content to the workshop proposals.  And of course with more time we could have left more time for the grading process to complete, for everybody to understand where this left us in terms of set against the community's desires as expressed by a call for issues and which sort of balances or imbalances we might like to address. 
 I don't know about you but I have so many charts in front of me with so many different calculations that while I can understand what every one individually of those individually, I don't feel like I'm actually seeing the forest.  I'm seeing a whole bunch of little trees.  And I'm not sure that's actually painting a thoughtful enough picture about the shape of the program overall.
 So when the working group goes to meet, whether it's here or somewhere else, I really would like to ask them to think kind of pretty broadly, pretty freely about what this process could look like with more time.  You know, it's our expectation that we will have more time next year with the earlier appointment of the MAG process, so I would hope that we take advantage of that and we don't just try and sort of run the same process, which I actually think are missing one or two kind of fairly useful interim steps.
 Having said all that, I think where we left the discussion last night was the secretariat, Eleonora, was going to go away and look at the expression of community interest as evidenced by the call for workshops.  And, you know, if -- if 10% of the workshop submissions were on theme A, she was going to pull in -- we assume we have 60 slots.  10% of 60.  So she was going to pull in the six highest ranked proposals.  And we would then look at those and understand which ones had already come into the top 40 and which ones were coming in below so we would see what those proposals were that were ranked highest in a profile match with what the community cared about.
 So I'm not quite sure what kind of tables or, you know, formats we have to walk through that, but if we could do that.  And in particular, if it shows us where we've pulled in workshops that were not in the original 40 and/or where, if this is true, we might want to consider dropping out some of the top 40 because it's an overrepresentation of a theme based on the community interest, that we kind of look at that net -- the net workshops, if you will.  Assuming everybody understands the 40 and has a good profile of the 40 and the 40 seems to be quite, sort of, a key, firm baseline in this room here.
 If we could go through that quite quickly, see what the profile looks overall, which ones were net in and which ones were net out, maybe then we could go to the topics around sort of main themes, community sessions, and perhaps let the secretariat, because I don't know if they've had time, to run the diversity statistics against whatever the new 60 is.  Again, that being kind of at the speaker level by region, stakeholder, and gender.  If they've done that, we can do that now.  If not, perhaps we can do that after lunch.  Or alternatively, we can ask the secretariat to go away and do that and come back to the room and say with these 60 workshops, this is what the profile looks -- what it looks like.  And we can ask the secretariat or a small working group working with them to suggest ways where we could address any of the kind of imbalances we might see in the diversity.  And I really do think at some level it's kind of really detailed, thoughtful work that takes a lot of time, and a lot of that work I think isn't, frankly, best suited to 50 -- 50 people in a room, you know, reviewing a lot of statistics that are just coming in, in to all of us.
 But let's start by looking at the -- you know, the net in, net out against that exercise, and then determine where we go from there.  Is that a reasonable way to approach or at least take the next step?
 And I have to say, because one of my -- one more comment.  What I worry about a little bit, I saw some analysis that I think Zeina and Sala had done late where they looked to some of the cybersecurity proposals and said here's a whole bunch of cybersecurity proposals that had a really strong regional flavor or participation that aren't in the top 60.  And it's really, really good analysis.  I actually just don't know how to pull that in and merge it with the set of workshops we have in front of us.  And I think it's -- frankly, it's probably a couple days' worth of work.  So I think we need to figure out how do we get comfortable that we have the right shape of the program overall, and then, frankly, I would ask the MAG's support to allow the secretariat to go away and do the diversity work and come back to us with a proposal for how we can get the diversity to the MAG's clearly stated -- stated desires.
 So that's kind of what I'm thinking.
 Eleonora, are you ready to walk through the net in, net out from the 40 to the 60 and show us the profile?  Whatever you think is the sensible way to walk through this, please.
 >>ELEONORA MAZZUCCHI:   Sure, Lynn.  Thank you.  Hi, everyone.
 So actually Luis is displaying on the screen right now a list of workshops by theme that include the top 40 as they were -- as they were discussed yesterday.  And then below them in bold, the additions that would or should be made to rebalance that theme appropriately according to the community's interests.  So I think Lynn just mentioned a net in, net out.  There is actually no net out in this list.  What I have -- we have done per theme is simply indicate which additions could be made to that theme to appropriately balance it but have not made any subtractions to the top 40.
 So each theme is indicated by tab in this spreadsheet with the number of submissions associated with it that correspond to the proportion of submissions that came in through the overall workshop pool.  So at the top -- so for instance right now we have cybersecurity open.  At the top of the list, those are the original submissions from the top 40.  You may remember that there were not very many, given that this was quite a popular theme, both in the workshop -- overall workshop proposal process and in the call for issues.  And then below that in bold are the additions in order of their scores that we would have to make to sort of beef up that theme and bring it -- bring it close to what the community's interests were.
 And then in red below the subthemes are the most popular subthemes from that -- from that theme as indicated by the workshop proposers.  And so that gives us an idea of, you know, whether the subthemes in the theme in this list appropriately reflect the subthematic interests from the workshop proposers.
 And going tab by tab, you see that for quite a few themes, you would have to make some additions to correctly proportion those themes with the community -- with the community interests.
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:   Thank you, Eleonora.  Just a quick question.  Does the MAG actually have these charts or are though they posted publicly?  No?
 >>ELEONORA MAZZUCCHI:   I think we need to share them.
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:   Can we share them out because everybody is squinting at their screens to try to read it in the Webex or up there.
 So if we can get that out to everybody.  But let me just try and say what I think we're doing really clear.  This is really helpful, Eleonora.
 So Eleonora said, for instance, if there were 70 cybersecurity trust and privacy workshops out of 344, that's roughly 20%.  If we're going with 60 workshops, then 20% of 60% is 12 workshops.  If in the top 40 -- I don't know what it was.  But if in the top 40 there were eight cybersecurity workshops -- I think there were five, they would be adding in more to get to the top 12.  So the profile would match basically that bar chart we had in terms of interest.
 What's really helpful is they also include the ranking so you can very clearly see by the time you get to workshop 10 you're looking at 256.  As a proposal, we should probably take a harder look at it.  The scores as well, which is really helpful.  The variants, if there were any part comments.  Both the theme and the subtheme.  If you can scroll over, Luis, because I can't see further.
 And I think they were in the -- What's beyond subtheme?  Or is that the end of it, Eleonora?
 >>ELEONORA MAZZUCCHI:   So underneath the subthemes in red are the top -- the most popular subthemes that came in through the workshop proposal process.  So it's just to give a comparative view between the subthemes in this list and the most popular ones, and to get a sense of, you know, are there -- are we appropriately representing the subthemes that the community wanted to see.
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:   Okay.  So, Luis, can you scroll it over just a little bit?  I just want to make sure we all understand what we're actually about to look at as well.
 So for instance, the top 17 subthemes in this one within a theme would be Internet for Development SDGs, Future Work in Internet Markets.  So if we wanted another correlation between how well are the subthemes aligning with the community interests as they come in with the themes, that's the place to look.  And also information on the format and duration.  And I assume we're going to package those up and get them out to the MAG as quickly as possible.
 Eleonora, I have to thank you both.  You and Luis, as I was saying a moment ago, I was on last night and the two of them and Sala at 11:42, 11:43, 11:45, everybody is sharing huge files and questions and trying to understand what they were looking at.  It was very immediate work.  And, in fact, it picked up this morning at 7:00 a.m. as well.  So I think everybody has been working really hard to try to pull this together usefully.
 Liesyl, you have the floor.
 >>LIESYL FRANZ:  Thank you.  Since the queue couldn't be seen, I'm sorry to also raise my hand.
 First of all, thank you very much, Luis and Eleonora, for this chart.  This is really, really illustrative and very helpful.  If you could send it out, that would be great.  I am close enough where I can actually see it but the links -- the information would also be useful to have. 
 I'm still a little confused about the next process.  But now that I see this, I'm coming into focus a little bit more.  But one question I have is that if we have a block of 20 that we are filling with the gaps and we've -- and each of the themes that we have there has a certain number of workshops listed in bold that were not included in the top 40 but are listed by rank, do we have a sense of how many of that 20 should go to each theme.  Is that the number that's listed there?  Otherwise, I'm not sure we have a --
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  We would know the answer to that -- we know the answer to that if our assumption is that the workshops we want pulled up into the top 60 reflect the percentage of the themes in the total set of submissions we received.  So if we receive 344 -- we did.  We received 344 submissions.
 >>LIESYL FRANZ:  Right.
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  If one of the themes has 34 submissions, 34 of 344 is 10%.  10% of 60 slots would be six slots.  What's bolded is -- what they then said is that in the MAG's 40, these were the ones that made it.  So let's say three made it.  The next three are the next three highest ranked --
 >>LIESYL FRANZ:  Right.
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  -- to get to six so we maintain the percentage.
 >>LIESYL FRANZ:  The ones that are bold there get us to that number of --
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  60 with a comparative percentage.
 >>LIESYL FRANZ:  Okay.  That calculation of how many it takes in each theme to get to our 20 is done here in this bolded -- okay, thank you.  That's helpful for me.  Thanks.  Are we done then?
 [ Laughter ]
 This is great.  This is great!
 [ Laughter ]
 But I think the next step is that then has the diversity analysis been done, I guess.
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Right, no.  We have some proposals for those as well.
 >>LIESYL FRANZ:  Thank you.
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Wai-Min and I were actually having a conversation yesterday.  It wasn't on this directly.  It was sort of talking about traditional secretariat roles and a lot of the U.N. processes versus this one. 
 This one, of course, because of our values and principles and the sort of communities we all come from is sort of much more hands-on.  And there's been a tendency for the MAG to do much of the kind of detailed work.  Whereas, in a lot of the other processes -- and these are my words.  This is not what Wai-Min said.  He can come in and correct the words -- there would be more reliance on the secretariat to do some of the finer shaping and, if you will, accommodating across the fact that we are a U.N.-convened process and activity meeting in open, bottom-up, multistakeholder. 
 And as we can see from time to time -- we have almost every year -- there are certain expectations from the different communities, expectations from host countries that the secretariat in most U.N. processes would actually have some discretion to actually accommodate, understanding the desires of all parties and kind of overall framework.
 And I think over the years, we've kind of slid to trying to do all those decisions in this room. 
 But I have to say I think that's an almost impossible task in terms of all the things we're trying to measure because you need to get it so far and then you need to go away and look at it and think and come back and maybe suggest some more and review it again.  I think we need to split pieces of the process out.
 I also think there is the opportunity to rely a little bit more on the secretariat to do some of the more detailed gap analysis so they could come back and say, you know, if I look at all the speakers that are now in the 60 workshops that the MAG says they want to go through, these regions are pretty much underrepresented.  We need to find a way to bring those regions in.  Or the gender male/female balance isn't quite right.  They can look at it and do the analysis and say it's really kind of -- that particular issue is more pronounced in this theme or subtheme or in this region, and they can actually direct the appropriate activities. 
 I think we do need to think about that.  Because in contrast to -- and I was struck by the last hour-and-a-half discussion, the wealth of information in this room and in the IGF ecosystem in general, what we know, what we've all done, our values, our principles, who we have access to, what we care about is just so tremendous.  And I sit here thinking we are all sitting at spreadsheets looking at four decimal points of a percentage, and I'm not sure that's actually providing as much value as it could to sort of the whole field of Internet governance. 
 Maybe going forward we can think about how we kind of allow enough time in the process to think strategically around what is the community telling us about what is important and how do we make sure we are actually getting those topics and a program that's addresses those with, I think, a little more time for things such as the main sessions; possibly a little more time for figuring out how we integrate some of the intersessional pieces of work and some of the NRI pieces of work so that all of them are fully nurtured and really strengthened as much as possible.
 And I think that's from my perspective more the sort of high-level strategic work I think the MAG could be doing if we could get the split of kind of work balanced appropriately between the secretariat and small working groups and the full MAG.
 But there are some cards up in the room.  There's some requests for the speaking slot.  Again, to make sure we're not losing anybody, are there any questions specific to what we're proposing people look at and where we are at this point in the process just now? 
 We'll keep doing it step by step.  Do people understand what will be in front of them in that spreadsheet?  And where we are in the process?  If not, please, please do ask.
 So if people could just ask for the queue on that point specifically, and then we'll come back to the general queue.
 Zeina, was your comment on that question?
 >>ZEINA BOU HARB:  Yes.  Thank you, Chair.
 My question is regarding the gaps that you are going to fill.  I thought that we agreed yesterday to fill the gaps with the proposals that were coming from countries or nationalities that was totally removed from all the approved workshops.  Now, either I tried to find all the workshops that can fit under the example that we have here in front of us, but I couldn't see any proposal that is missing, none at least from the Arab region. 
 I don't know if they had also French speakers because also we talked about we have to include some French speakers.
 So actually I will not be able to understand how -- it shouldn't be the following ranked proposal.  We talked about the proposal to fill the gaps.  It's not related to the ranking.  Thank you.
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  I think there's a difference -- we did try that yesterday.  That was the exercise we tried to go through for several hours, about four hours, to get people to suggest where they think either a topic or a gap or something wasn't reflected.  And I thought we had agreed that process wasn't working at least on the day.  And, again, this is where I think the squeezed time hurts us a little bit.  Let me just finish, though.
 And the room had agreed that we would go to this approach.  And now that we've got those 60 there, look at what that tells us for diversity.  That 60 may have addressed some of the things you've said.
 I think the other point is there was quite a different -- quite a few points made yesterday that said don't know that it's really fair to just say that a workshop ranked 320 should be up as one of the five workshops because why did we go through the grading process and why are we so insistent on criteria.  So that there needs to be, if you will, a compelling reason to say that the workshops that were rated fairly low out of the 344 need to really have a seriously compelling reason to be pulled up and put in front of workshops that were rated 60, 70, 80.  I thought that was actually kind of where the room was yesterday.
 And nobody is saying diversity isn't important.  We are just trying to figure out how we understand what we have in a proposed -- all little letters, in a draft proposal for the 60, what diversity do we have, what imbalances do we have now, what are the ones we need to address.  We actually want to address it to your point.  It just wasn't working in the process we were doing yesterday.
 >>ZEINA BOU HARB:  So does that mean we have remaining -- we have set other slots to be filled with those areas that were not represented or it's going to be for all the workshops accepted, this is the road to take them?
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  What it would mean is if something said -- this is the cybersecurity theme up there.  If someone said there's a cybersecurity workshop that needs to be pulled up that's not one of these now seven or eight or whatever proposals are there, there needs to be a compelling reason to pull that one up and knock one of these others out.  So, no, there are not new slots.  It would be a trade. 
 But people want to do that and people want to make sure we have got the right diversity.  We're just trying -- I think we don't have a disagreement in whether or not it's important or we want to do it.  I think we're just trying to find the right methodology to actually do it.
 Is there anybody else who wants to come in and comment on that question or can help?  I had Nacho in the queue, then Lianna.
 >> (off microphone).
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  I didn't know if we were -- if you are in the queue because you want to speak to this question specifically, then we'll keep working through the queue.  I'll put you in at the end, Lianna.  So, Jutta.
 >>JUTTA CROLL:  Thank you, Chair, for giving me the floor.  First of all, I would like to thank Eleonora and Luis for the tremendous work they've been doing during the night hours.  I think it's very useful now that we have kind of a better overview and we have the principle of meritocracy as well as the diversity aspect all around.
 It would be very helpful for me to see the tab on human rights, gender, and youth.  I don't see it right now.  Perhaps it's there.
 [ Multiple speakers ]
 I haven't received the email.  There is human rights.  Okay.
 The thing I wanted to point out is when we go to the score, from my point of view, we also need to take into account the subthemes that are addressed.  And I would like to see at least one proposal that is dealing with child online protection or child online safety.
 >> There are already two.
 [ Multiple speakers ]
 >>JUTTA CROLL:  That's not child online.  And they are not the highest rated.  So there are two others that are rated higher which are directly related to child online safety.
 I have been going through -- during the night hours through all the proposals that are tacked to child online safety properly.  And I would just suggest that I comment on these.  It must not be in the whole group.  I can give that advice to the secretariat when they draw up these proposals into the whole set.  Thank you so much.
 I do think it's important to keep that in mind, that we are talking about child online protections.  And in the proper sense, more than 50% of the Internet users worldwide are under the age of 18 so we need also to talk about child online safety.  Thank you.
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Thank you, Jutta.
 So let me -- I mean, I was trying to get questions.  Are people okay with this process?  What we can do now that everybody has the chart in front of them would be to do what Jutta just started to walk through with human rights.  We can do that on cybersecurity.  Look at what's in that spreadsheet, get some of the first impressions in terms of topics missing. 
 Zeina, if you have had time to go through it and you think there are some really important workshops that should be pulled out, then talk us through those.  Just quick and to the point, I think this workshop should be included because it provides X. 
 We can actually perhaps just note that below and then we can allow the secretariat to go away and look at that and run some of the statistics.
 I think the other point we also said is we wanted to look at the diversity of the whole program.  We look at the diversity including the open forums.  We look at the diversity of the program including the main sessions.  We look at it including NRI collaborative sessions, should the MAG support them.  I think that's another layer of work that we would allow the secretariat to do.  If you are walking in off the street, that is the IGF program.  It is all those activities.  In fact, we use them particularly open forums, to bring a lot of other stakeholder groups in, normally governments and senior policymakers.
 Let me just keep going through the queue.  If we can, just stick to --
 >> (off microphone).
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  And it actually had a -- the title is Your help with Analysis by Workshop Idea. No?  Okay.
 [ Multiple speakers ]
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  What I would like right now is clarifying questions.  Liesyl.
 >>LIESYL FRANZ:  Sorry if I'm just repeating my other questions.  Are all the ones in bold for each theme come up with a total of 20?
 >> (off microphone).
 >>LIESYL FRANZ:  What does it come to?
 >>ELEONORA MAZZUCCHI:  It comes to a total of 28 because there are no subtractions made.  There are a couple of themes that are oversubscribed.
 >>LIESYL FRANZ:  Thank you.  Now I have the question -- now I still have a question about what we're going to do.  Are we going to get the diversity analysis?  Because that will help.  I think it addresses Zeina's question.  Sorry.  You guys have done so much work, I hate to even ask.
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  That's what we're trying to get to.  I want to make sure everybody understands the process we're doing.  Really just looking for are there clarification questions still?
 >> MIGUEL IGNACIO ESTRADA:  Sorry.  Just want to introduce myself because I have never done that today.  My name is Miguel Ignacio Estrada.  I'm LacTLD manager.  I'm from Argentina. 
 I would like to congratulate France and Croatia.  They are the only ones who beat us in the World Cup, are in the final.
 Just to see if we could just work with this because it's a really good analysis.  It fields all the things that we have already defined and worked through several months and then see if we could bring more balance in other ways, not by undermining our own analysis and also to stress that within our own analysis, gender balance and regional balance is included.  So I don't want to work again what we already worked with.  I don't know.  Maybe, again, flash sessions and we could build a whole track of lightning sessions to bring more balance in that way.
 But I think the work is already done in that way.
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:   That's a very important point, Nacho, and thank you for continuing to bring us back to that.
 I'm still looking for clarifications.  I'm not ignoring the queue up there.
 >>HEIKI SIBUL:  It's Heiki Sibul from Estonia.  I have a question.  Should we lose any workshop in the top 40 in this analysis?  No.  They are there.  Wonderful.
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:   They are assumed in, yes.  And I think everybody is saying that with everything we've looked at, they are good and they should be kept.  It's never just an automatic thing, but...
 So Timea.
 >>TIMEA SUTO:   Just to echo something that is very, very valuable because I'm struggling with finding the proportion of speakers and what that brings.  So I would -- again, I really, really appreciate all the analysis and this is very, very helpful, and I will hate to ask but we can't do that.  I don't think we can judge this process of pulling in workshops on its merits unless we see the diversity that brings in and the stakeholder groups and regions.  So if we can have that over lunch, maybe.  I'm happy to help with that in any way I can.
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:   And Miguel had brought in a couple of additional things as well, such as lightning sessions and flash sessions.  So that's a piece of the solution.
 Do people understand the process we're in now?  Do you want to just go and look at the diversity analysis that the secretariat has been able to pull together so we understand that?
 Eleonora and Luis, can you work your magic?  While you're pulling that up, Rasha has asked for the floor.
 Rasha.
 >>RASHA ABDULLAH:   Thank you, Lynn.
 I just have -- thanks to Eleonora and Luis, first, for doing all the work.  I'm just a little concerned that we're pulling in a lot of workshops on some -- on some of these tabs.  I -- for example, I'm looking at the heights, gender and youth, and we originally had two workshops and we pulled in an additional ten.  And I'm just wondering about -- I mean, that sounds to me like that's a lot of workshops that we're just putting in without -- without really following much of the criteria that we had -- that we had imposed.
 I'm not adamantly against it, but I'm just trying to think out loud.  I'm just concerned.  I think that's a bit too much.  I'm not sure if we want to at least make sure these workshops we're putting in are actually going to solve the diversity problems that we had, but -- right, but then can we reserve the right to take some of these out?
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:   Let me clarify.  It's not a given that those 20 are in either.  What we're going to do in, and the process now is to go look at the diversity statistics, now that we have the 68.  See what those diversity statistics tell us.  We still have a question on whether or not we want eight themes or there should be less themes as well because one of them had less than 5% of the workshop proposals came in and I think none were accepted in the top 40 so we might question whether or not we need that theme and those workshops.  But that's exactly the process we're going to do now, on the basis of diversity, on the basis of are the topics oversubscribed.  After I will say, though, as one measure, if we had to pull in ten workshops, that means we now have at least the number of -- the percentage of the program that the community said they were interested in is now dedicated to that theme.  So I think we need to have a discussion as to whether or not we think that is kind of the only piece of guidance we follow or do we want to look back and say, yeah, maybe 12 workshops out of 60, then this really is too much.  We're not putting enough attention on these others.  And I think that's got to be a qualitative, substantive discussion for the MAG.
 All this does is ensure that we have a program that reflected the percentage of interest the community expressed.
 >>RASHA ABDULLAH:   If I may, I just want to make sure that we pay enough attention to the quality of the workshops at the end of the day, because that's important.
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:   Absolutely.
 Veni, you had your...
 >>VENI MARKOVSKI:   Thank you, Lynn.
 You answered.  I was going to make the same point that you did to Rasha's comment.  However, we also need to be aware that if we choose the -- if we choose the argument about how many proposals were submitted within the global number of proposals, and we give a guidance for the next year IGF where somebody may say, you know, oh, let us submit, then, a hundred proposals, and then we'll get half of the slots, you know, so to speak.
 So we cannot choose only one criteria for including or excluding proposals because then we are undermining our -- the work of our colleagues next year.  So we have to be extra careful not to get into this discussion because, I mean, I'm coming from the social network background, you know, and thinking this is an invitation for the 12 next year to build -- you know, to damage the whole idea.
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:   No; agree.  If it can be gamed, it will be gamed.  Agree.  If that's all we were doing we would sit at home and just let an algorithm do this or an Excel spreadsheet do this and that's obviously not what we're here for.
 Raquel had her hand up, and then I'll go to Frederic and back to the -- do you want to come in directly on Veni's?  Raquel, do you mind if we let Frederic come in first?
 >>FREDERIC PARUTA:   Just to echo some of the comments.  We also have 70 workshop proposals from the -- from the French IGF.  I would not push to have 20% of the workshop from the French IGF being presented.  So it's all a matter of balancing different -- I could also act on the diversity, meaning there are so few French proposals that have been worked out in the past year that for the sake of diversity, we should push up.  So it's all a balancing acand I just wanted to echo Lynn's comments saying that it's a bottom-up process, but there's also secretariat which is doing a lot of work, and I think a lot of work needs to be done also, and to balance all those various requests, requirements on the different issues, diversity being one of them.
 Thank you.
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:   Thank you, Frederic.
 Raquel.
 >>RENATA AQUINO RIBEIRO:   Yes, thank you, Madam Chair.  Just sticking to the point of the process and the methodology, we've been talking about diversity, but are we considering also the mergers?  In respect to the human rights, gender and youth track, for example, yesterday I mentioned there is, for example, cross suggestion to merge the workshop number 411 with workshop number 156.  That would give at least one slot instead of two, and so on.  That's just an example.  We don't need to discuss now, but it might be helpful.
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Apologies if this is confusion.  Who wants to come into the queue on just a clarification on the process question?  Okay.  I saw Wisdom, and then we'll go over there to Danko.  Wisdom, you have the floor, and I'm assuming, Helani -- okay.
 Wisdom.
 >>WISDOM DONKOR:   Thank you Chair.  For the record, my name is Wisdom.  If I understand, you're looking at the rebalancing.  What Eleonora is saying, we are to look at the workshops that couldn't make it, the important ones, and see if we can add them to what is there.
 Am I correct?
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:   That would be one of the reasons we would look at that.  Another reason would be in the example that Raquel just quoted, if you look at the spreadsheet, two of the workshops that it was proposed we pull up to get from 40 to 60, there's two comments which says these two workshops should be merged.  So in that kind of instance, it makes sense to look at the two, see if they should be merged.  If it makes sense topically for them to be merged, then we merge them, and good news is we have, you know, a free slot or get back to the number.
 >>WISDOM DONKOR:   So I also want to find out how many workshops are we considering to add to each of the baskets?
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:   We're still working at this point on a number of 60.
 >>WISDOM DONKOR:   60.
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:   And I think there's probably an expectation that we might be able to accommodate a very small number more if needed, but that means we would need to reduce the number of open forums or that sort of thing.  We need to find physically a room for them.  So we need to manage to a fairly I think tight expectation of 60, but...
 >>WISDOM DONKOR:   Okay.  Lastly, I have noted down some workshops from developing countries, and if possible, I can submit it.
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:   If you could wait until we go theme by theme and suggest then specific workshops.  I just want to make sure everybody understands what we're doing and the process now, because if not, it's not fair.  You won't be able to participate later in the discussion.
 So right now it's just do people understand what we're doing?  Let me just recap.
 What I think we're doing right now is the secretariat has said, as one measure of guidance, we want to understand what the community's interest is.  We took that overall spread through the 344 and the secretariat said these are all the top ranked proposals matching that spread.  That's what's in the spreadsheet.  And Eleonora has identified in the bold those that were getting us from 40 to -- in fact, we're at 68.  They didn't come through the first 40.  We also said we need to look at diversity across a whole host of different metrics, and we need to understand the diversity of the program when we look at the complete program.  So with open forums and main sessions and NRIs and that sort of thing.  So there's obviously some additional work.  Nacho makes the point repeatedly that we can use lightning sessions and flash sessions to again help with some of the underrepresentation.
 But that's the next step of the process.  Hopefully the immediate next step of the process.  But we would start going through one by one.  The secretariat has some diversity statistics -- oh, the secretariat is working on some diversity statistics that they will be able to show us.
 >>WISDOM DONKOR:   Thank you, Lynn.  I think we need to agree quickly.  The time is already 12:00.
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:   Sorry.  I agree we need to move quickly.  We could perhaps start going through the themes and see if there's anything that jumps out at us that we should look at, and then we'll come back and look at the diversity statistics when we get them.  But like the one I just quoted, there were two workshops there where they both said they should be merged.  We can look at that quickly, see if it makes sense and move on, get a first high-level profile.
 I think we had Helani and then Sylvia.
 >>HELANI GALPAYA:   Since it's anyway my turn to speak, in terms of disclosure, I'm actually part of this gender panel that was proposed for merging.  I actually think that's a really good idea.  It should merge.  There's one common speaker in common.  We're probably going to say the same thing.  Merge by all means, yeah.
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:   Sylvia. 
 Thank you.
 >>SYLVIA CADENA:   Just for the feeling first.  Thanks, Eleonora, for doing all of this.  This is awesome.  That's what I was dying to have yesterday.  I need an expert spreadsheet.  So thank you very much.
 Second, I just wanted to say that just for the sake of feeling that we are making some progress, could we kind of lock the tabs where we don't have anything in bold and say with this category, we kind of take -- move on to the ones that we have proposals in bold?  There are two -- I think there are two or three that we could say, okay, this is kind of closed, and then we can focus on the other ones.  And if we need to revisit, then we go back.  I just need -- personally, I need to feel that we are getting somewhere.  So that would be great, if possible.
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:   No, I'm totally ready to go to the tabs and start to have a substantive discussion as well.  So we could either start with cybersecurity or if you want to start with a quick win, we can go to whatever tab you were referring to, Sylvia.
 >>SYLVIA CADENA:   For example, the tech and other topics, other, other topics, that doesn't have anything in bold.  So I guess we could say.  I think we have something to discuss on the media and content just because of the ranking so low.  So that probably will be some discussion.
 On the gender one, there are mergers that need to be discussed to figure out how that one goes.  I guess that's HR, gender and youth.  On the evolution of IG, it would be a very small discussion because those two are highly ranked and there are no discussions for measures.  The merging tech --
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:   Slow down.  Let's slow down and go through one of them.  I think that's a good suggestion.
 >>SYLVIA CADENA:   So if we go one by one, personally I think can we leave the cybersecurity one and the gender and youth one to the end?
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:   Sure.
 >>SYLVIA CADENA:   Because those are the ones that have more.
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:   Let's go to the far right tab then which is the last one that's there is the technical and operational topics theme.
 >>SYLVIA CADENA:   Great.
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:   What Sylvia is saying, of course, is that in the exercise of the MAG going through and identifying the top 40, all eight of these workshops were in the top 40.  And again, I think that's only one criteria.  I think we should ask ourselves do we think two net neutrality workshops is appropriate in a field of, you know, 60 workshop slots?  Just as an example.  Are there any other -- when you look through this knowing your region's interest and your stakeholder community's interest, is this kind of a reasonable profile of topics you'd expect to see under -- under this theme?
 There are some -- there are some candidates for merger.
 And I think for mergers, yesterday I think there was sort of agreement that said if there's a top 40 workshop and there's a merger solution, like the first one which is ID number 40 was ranked third and there's a merger suggestion with 218, I mean, I think we just tell the organizers of ID workshop 40 that there were, you know, some MAG members who thought there were interesting or complementary points in proposal number 218.  You might just want to go and look, something like that.
 You know, if there's -- you're ranked 10 and 12 and there's a suggestion to merge two of them, I think we have a more substantive discussion here in the room.
 Sorry; the mic.  Lianna?
 >>LIANNA GALSTYAN:  Especially it has a 90-minute format.  So they can actually accommodate workshop 218.  So that suggestion to go to that additional one would be good enough.
 Thank you.
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:   Okay.  Thank you.
 Are there any -- I don't -- I think we need to do kind of a high-level -- I was going to say a smell test but it's probably a look test.  Is there anything we think looks, you know, odd, overrepresented, underrepresented?  Does anybody have just sort of a reaction of eight out of 60 being on these topics or do we sort of draw a line and say, you know, right now it looks okay.  We'll continue to work through the process, come back and look at the diversity and then figure out what we might move in or more out?  Or are there any specific concrete suggestions to move something in or a concern around, you know, you've looked through these and you recognize that there's no African participation, for instance.  Those sorts of observations will be really helpful to put, and we can possibly even just note them on the bottom of the spreadsheet and then continue to move those thoughts or concerns forward.
 So I saw Wisdom and Mary's hand go up.  Sorry; and then Paul.  I'm not sure when.
 We should now move back to using one queuing system.
 >>MARY UDUMA:   Okay.  Can I?
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:   Please.
 >>MARY UDUMA:   I have been raising my flag for clarification.  First my question is this number we're taking, will it be the number we work with or would we have opportunity to go back to do that and not make it and balance -- balance as we have been talking about; right?  That's one question.
 The second question, taking up topics, they're all within the 40 -- 40 -- first 40 bracket.  So does it mean that it's taken, it's given that we don't need to get back to any of that work again except for diversity?  Thought is when we're taking cognizance of reserving numbers for the local host?  Because that is very, very critical as well.  Since we heard about it yesterday, I kept thinking about it wouldn't it be nice, I'm hosting a big program like this and I'm not given reservation.  Are we taking care of the reservation for the proposals from Paris?  Thank you.  Paris.  Sorry.
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:   I'll work backwards and then give the floor to Frederic.  Yes, I think we need to do that.  And, in fact, I understand the groups in France have been working together to kind of do their own merger recommendations.  And we would ask Frederic to bring those in as we get to the appropriate theme.
 And no, it's not the -- yes, we will come back and revisit them for diversity and also for overall profile.  You know, as a point right now, we've got 68 workshops.  If we believe we can only support 60 and we think we might want to pull a couple in, specifically, then clearly we need to merge a couple of these or take some out.  But I think rather than trying to manage to the number now, if we go through, because the next topic over is media and content.  And, in fact, media and content had I think 4% of the total workshop submission proposals.  So relatively small number.  That's just 4% of the proposals we had were focused on this.  That would indicate it wasn't a huge interest for the community.  It was in one of the top 17 subthemes, but when the secretariat did their analysis, they're actually pulling in three workshops that were ranked, you know, relatively low.  79, 131, and 140.  And in that instance I think the question in front of the MAG is should we have a theme on media and content, one question.  If we think that there's not enough workshops or interest to pull a full theme together, are the workshops themselves interesting enough and should we simply find another place for them in the program or do we just say we can't cover the entire waterfront.  This is maybe one we leave -- we leave aside.  So I think that's the kind of qualitative discussion.  If we can go through all eight of these tabs before lunch, I think we could come back with a reasonable profile afterwards and maybe look at some of the other diversity.
 But I want to turn to Frederic.  Frederic.
 >>FREDERIC PARUTA:  Just quickly to complement and to add what was said by Mary and by Lynn, for instance, the French national IGF has been working overtime yesterday evening especially on this subject.  We managed -- they managed to merge sometimes two or three workshops.  The information -- this other media and content are almost half of the French proposals.  It's an issue that the French IGF community feels very strongly about. 
 And, for instance, on that -- on that issue, we have -- out of the five merging process they proposed yesterday evening or early this morning, three of those are on these issues.  So I just wanted to make a plea for this particular topic, even if it's only 4% of the overall workshop proposals for the French IGF.  As the host, it's a topic that should not be set aside or should be considered thoroughly.  Thank you.
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Thank you, Frederic. 
 Do you think in the background you could share with us what the recommendation is, which would say these three workshops we're now proposing be merged into this one and the new title is and what that looks like.  We can put that here on the spreadsheet so it becomes part of the overall discussion and take the discussion decision later.
 >>FREDERIC PARUTA:  Yes, I can do that, maybe not as precisely as you may wish to have the title.  It's the proposal from the French IGF, you already have it, 161, workshop 161 to be merged with the workshop 95.  And then it's on information disorder.  You already thought that 161 was by itself a good workshop, but it has been merged -- or it's a proposal to be merged with workshop number 95.  I don't have the headline in front of me, but you would be able to find it on the list.
 Then on digital journalism, that's my take of it, the French IGF had a proposal to merge workshop 191, 271, and 273. 
 And then on hate speech, there's a proposal to merge the workshop 80, 81, and 83.  Thank you.
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Thank you, Frederic.
 I think we can note those and just pull them in again to the discussion.  I would just say for myself I was a little bit surprised that a lot of these topics were -- so few submissions came in, given how full the last three or four months the media has been and the concern has been on this.  But I think we need to, again, reflect whether or not this is worthy of its own theme or maybe there's a couple of workshops that we pull in to some emerging topics as opposed to emerging technologies or something, if we think some of the workshops have appropriate interest.
 I need to -- I have Wisdom and then Paul in the queue.  Wisdom.
 >>WISDOM DONKOR:  Thank you, Chair.
 Yes.  I was thinking alongside Mary -- the submission of Mary.  But I also like to say that we shouldn't forget the fact that we are in a strategic position to hit all the divisional sectors of the world, most especially the developing countries.  So there is -- this proposal lets that in.  Again, it talks about the inclusion of IG in Africa (indiscernible). 
 This proposal is a good one, but then it was marked down.  So we can look at this proposal as well.  The number is 189.
 And then there is another one that talks about the 4 Cs.  I think I raised this yesterday, Proposal Number 213.  So we can look at this to sort of address the issue of clean energy in helping in assessing the Internet that we're all talking about.  It also goes as far as addressing some of the current -- currency issues.
 We can look at this proposal critically and see if that one will also pass the mark.  It's also a good proposal.
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Thank you, Wisdom.
 If you can suggest which kind of tabs you think -- I mean, I'll let you just go off and do it, which tabs -- or which themes they would actually be under.  Tell us the workshop number plus also the ranking.
 >>WISDOM DONKOR:  The Proposal Number 213 falls will under the tab development, I think innovation and economic issues.  And then the other one, inclusion of IG in Africa falls under data inclusion and accessibility.
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Okay.  When you have a moment, if you can tell us what the ranking is as well, just so we've got consistent information.
 Paul, you have been very patient.  You now have the floor.
 >>PAUL ROWNEY:  I think I forgot what I was going to say.
 I think it was really about the French IGF.  I think we definitely need to accommodate those.  I see the merger suggestions which I think will help.  But it would be useful if they could be mapped into the spreadsheet we got earlier, in the baskets and highlighted so we can see how we can get -- ensure that they fit in.  Otherwise, it would be unfair.
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  No, I think that's good.  Let's see if we can do that.  I understand the French have actually done that with the workshop.  Yeah, we can put those in the worksheet and we can also add the two that Wisdom just suggested as well.  I would just sort of add them below your bottom analysis there, Eleonora.
 And I think I need to ask everybody to take responsibility for ensuring Eleonora has the right information that she can put in so she's not trying to track it back through transcripts that aren't yet published and finding it. 
 I think we can make sure from Frederic's side that she gets the specifics.  And, Wisdom, if you can do that as well in the two you just mentioned.  Make sure Eleonora has the right information so she can put them in the spreadsheet.
 I'm happy to help over lunchtime, Eleonora, if the whole thing needs a little extra support.
 Liesyl, you have the floor.
 >>LIESYL FRANZ: Thank you, Chair.  I think I'd like to do two things.  One is answer a question I don't think anybody has answered that you've raised about what themes to keep and all of that.  I think we put out the themes -- put out the call for issues.  We captured the themes.  There are eight themes.  I think it would be odd, even though -- I think it would be odd for the community to see that those weren't all reflected.  So even if there's three workshops or whatever that we bring into the theme with the smallest number, I think we should capture all the themes.  That's my two cents about starting the discussion on that.
 And then that helps us give the platform for those -- I guess it's this one right here, the one that's on the screen, media and content, for some of those additional themes, just as a matter of principle keeping all the themes we had.  If we drop one, there's no understanding of the community of why that happened.
 Secondly, I guess I have a question about what process we're injecting into the IGF MAG deliberation process with regard to the host country workshop proposals and concerns.
 I appreciate the effort that the French teams have made in trying to merge and improve the proposals by doing so, that they would put forward to this process.  But that's a new -- let's just be honest with ourselves, that's new and not something that we've done before. 
 There have been other ways -- I think somebody said it yesterday, other ways that host country speakers, panelists, issues have been accommodated in IGF program.  It's just that this is now taking up will the workshops that have been evaluated.
 And I just want to know if this is something that is a new protocol process for us, something we should note.  Are we doing it as a one-time thing?  How many do we think we -- if we are going to do it, is there a number that we can put it on?  And perhaps that's been part of the ask of the French teams to figure that out for themselves.  But I'm confused about exactly what we're doing and what precedent it may set for how we -- how we do this going forward.  Thank you.
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Thank you, Liesyl.  I'll answer it and then I'll ask Chengetai to come in as well.  I actually don't think this is a new precedent.  I think it's just being brought a little bit more into the open with the MAG here because I think there's always been some secretariat discretion over the years to accommodate all sorts of things.  Sometimes possibly even a last-minute open forum request. 
 And, again, I think this is partly understanding that we're organized within the U.N. system, and there are certain expectations and protocols they follow.  And then there are other sorts of protocols that this other Internet governance community follows.  And the secretariat has done I think a job in the past of trying to blend those two.
 And I don't think, just as with everything we're doing, there's any one guiding criteria.  I mean, if -- honestly if whoever the host country co-chair was stood up and said we need to do something on, I don't know, cats or something and it totally didn't make any sense, I think we'd all say no.
 But I think if we look at some of the things that are coming up through the French suggestions and some of the things -- that, in fact, this was a theme that Liesyl has identified in the call for issues, frankly not well-supported by workshop submissions per se or at least not ranked highly, that I -- to your earlier point, if we think the community said they were interested in these themes and we think we ought to keep them, I'm not sure I actually agree with that just in principle.  If we think we ought to keep them, we should try to find a way to staff it appropriately.
 In this case, it seems like we have from my perspective kind of a reasonable marriage of some interesting topics that are of high interest and many workshops submitted by French civil society with a dearth of appropriate workshops in a theme.
 Literally, there were no workshops supported in the top 40 in this theme.  The three that have been pulled up are because of this other exercise.  If we think we want to keep the theme, again, I think a lot of this is kind of -- wouldn't say it's an accommodation, but I think there are strategic and political and courtesies sometimes even in terms of considerations that help shape an overall program when it's something like a U.N.-like event.  That's just kind of my approach.
 I would ask Chengetai or Markus as well to maybe sort of share how much this is a new process or a different process.
 >>FREDERIC PARUTA:  Just to say I'm a representative of the French government.  But those proposals -- those mergers come from the French IGF, and they concern many organizations which are based in Paris but not French.  It's Reporters without Borders.  It's the Francophonie.  So it's not French government imposing new topics.  It's not political at all.  It's just that the French IGF did its job and gathered the actors present in France to have some merger proposals to you.
 >>CHENGETAI MASANGO:  Thank you.  Just, first of all, I would just like to say that I agree with everything Lynn just said.  So I will not repeat those areas.
 But we have had proposals from host countries before on adding workshops.  I think one example was -- I think it started from the Turkish IGF as well.
 And I think these types of requests are going to continue.  So if we could find some sort of mechanism to accommodate them, then that would be good.
 They have various points here.  I mean, they are spending a large amount of money hosting the IGF.  I think it is important if the topics are relevant that you do have a little bit of local flavor in the annual IGF meetings when we do go around.  I mean, when we do go around, we're supposed to have also sort of like a regional focus.  Next year -- I mean, next time if we go to another region, then we can have people from that area as well of focus, from that area.
 The other point I also would like to make, when I was reading the emails from the MAG members as well, some submissions were submitted in French and they were poorly translated, either through Google Translate or et cetera.  And we don't have a hard-and-fast rule that says all workshop proposals should be submitted in English.  French is a U.N. language.  It's a working language as well.  It's a U.N. working language.  So I would also give them a little bit of leeway because of that as well.  But, yes, it's up to the MAG.
 >>LIESYL FRANZ:  Thank you.  I appreciate your addressing it.  And I certainly appreciate a more transparent process for this kind of thing than we've had in the past.  So I do appreciate that.
 I just wanted to put some parameters around it for myself, for our numbers here, for our process.  I'm not wedded to my point, my position on the themes.  You had asked and hadn't gotten an answer.  I thought I would at least start the dialogue on that.
 But if it accommodates some of the issues that the host country, whether they're French or not, proposals come in, that's fine. 
 I guess I would just say we can't pretend it means that -- I mean, in the batch that I reviewed, there was some that would clearly proposed by, I would imagine, that would fall into this category.  They didn't meet the criteria that we had set out probably mostly for diversity, at least in the ones I reviewed.  So I think perhaps mergers -- the merger proposals that Frederic has listed out is one good way.
 I think another conversation yesterday that was useful is to see another fact of the global -- the benefit of the global IGF is to have the global discussion and bring some panelists into other workshops that are on similar issues.  That may be another way to accommodate them rather than the whole wholesale proposal.  Just a thought.  Thank you.
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Let me see if we can go for a win-win here.  I think we are sort of saying on the basis the community was accepting eight themes, we would keep this theme in.  It's a reasonable accommodation in terms of topics that we think are important to the community overall and that we will simply work to make sure -- I mean, if we're staying with our overall reflective level of interest by the number of workshops, there was a proposal for three in here.  One of them, in fact, is one of the ones that Frederic just spoke about merging, the one that was originally ranked 79.  We can capture the other two I think he had put in and come back and revisit them.
 But it feels like we're saying -- if anybody objects strongly, they can raise their card or put a note in the chatroom -- that we would keep the media and content.  And also I recognize that I'm pushing this a little bit, pushing the boundaries of what's in the room here, that we would work with the French civil society, French IGF, the host country on their suggested proposals to get another one or two of the workshops in, possibly replacing the two that were will pulled up and ranked 131 and 140.
 Again, until we get this whole thing rough and look at the diversity statistics, it's all just a working plan.  Not trying to approve every one of them one by one.
 If that's okay, just quickly, tech and operational topics -- I'll go back to the queue.  We were talking about tech and operational topics, then I lost track of how we moved into media and content.  We did want to go through and make sure that if there's anything that jumps out that says something is overrepresented, underrepresented, we think there's regional diversity, at this point, just anything -- you've all spent a lot of time looking at these workshops.  If there's anything you think when you look at this tab looks funny in terms of what you think your stakeholder and your region, your community, would expect to see in something, tab this.  This is a good time to bring it up at a high metalevel, and we will move them all that way.  When the statistics are ready, we can come back and look at it one more time.
 I will go to the queue.  Rasha is in the queue.
 Rasha.
 >>RASHA ABDULLAH:   Thank you, Lynn.
 My comment was actually in favor of the media and content category given that that's my area of specialty.  Having said that, though, I support the three workshops for reasons that are very different from Frederic's.  I actually do echo Liesyl's comments regarding the host country workshops.
 But having said that, I -- I rank these three workshops quite high, and I actually thought they were of high quality.  And so again, I'm just thinking in terms of the process here, and again, I'm thinking could the low scores be because the majority of the people who judge these panels were maybe not interested in media and content or not specialists in the area or -- I'm trying to understand why would these workshops end up with low grades.
 I'm not sure if it would be appropriate for some of the people who actually ranked them low to speak out and tell us why they think these were not very good workshops.  I'm not sure if that's appropriate at this point, but I think it's useful to know why some of these workshops are ranked quite low.
 I'll stop here, but I'm definitely in favor of at least including these three in the final list.
 Thank you.
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:   I think I might invoke Nacho's words about integrity of the process and the work we're actually doing and --
 >>MIGUEL IGNACIO ESTRADA:   Thank you, Miguel Ignacio Estrada for the record.
 First of all, I want to appreciate Frederic's willing to ease this process by proposing mergers, but I think we should take the care on the grading of the proposals he is proposing for mergers, because otherwise, our own process would be undermined.
 Second, I agree with Liesyl's comments on keeping the themes we have already defined.  We work on that for a couple weeks.  Again, we shouldn't be going against what we work before.
 Then I went through all themes and all the workshops and found that there are seven mergers that could be done based on the suggestions.  So from the 68, we could go down to 61, and then we could -- if we have room, we could fill the others, taking into account other criteria.  But again, I want to insist gender and regional balance was already considered in the workshop evaluation process.
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:   Thank you, Nacho.  I think those are good points.  And gender is pretty easy because it's pretty straightforward.  Region, it's easy to say we've got good regional balance in every one of the workshops individually, but if every one of them has WEOG and the others occasionally have Latin America or Africa, that's where you get the heat maps that Sala gave us which looks, you know, heavily slanted towards WEOG countries, and a lot of the other countries have significantly less.  I do think that's still another diversity characteristic we need to look at.  But I agree with you in terms of if they didn't have appropriate diversity for that workshop, they should have been ranked quite low because they were critical criteria.  And I really appreciate you bringing us back to the integrity of the process and kind of faith in it as well because I think we need some high-level principles we can continue to revert to.
 Next in the queue is Sylvia.
 >>SYLVIA CADENA:   Thank you, Lynn.  Sylvia Cadena, technical community.
 I went through the tab with the technical and operational topics and reviewed the three on net neutrality, and they are very different approaches.  They all score really high.  So in my book -- and they are not all involved.  So I think they kind of own their place or gain, win, whatever the right term -- exactly, the right place.  So I think that list in my book is good to go.
 On the media and content tab I checked the three proposals, and I -- I -- in principle, I'm fine to including them for the reasons that were mentioned before by Rasha and Paul, I think.  The only comment that I have to our learned friend from the French delegation is that I am a bit -- I see that it will be great, for example, to try to look for more stakeholder balance in the proposals that are on that category; that the comments about those three are based on very little, if not none, stakeholder balance.  And the balance is heavily on civil society.
 So if the France, the local host is can help to bring more maybe government or private sector, then that would be great, because it will bring the diversity that we are looking for.  But if it is another civil society people to a workshop that have five civil society speaker, I don't think that will work.
 So I hope that the IGF France will look into this, not only from the civil society point of view, because a lot of the workshops that score really high but that were not good on diversity is because basically it is civil society all the time.  So worth taking into consideration.
 So I'm okay with those three, and then I guess we haven't gone to the other tabs; right?  Can I make comments on the other tabs?
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:   If we could try and close on tech and operation, media and content, I think that would be good.
 >>SYLVIA CADENA:   So those two for me are closed, let's say.  But I really think that we need to contact those workshop organizers, especially the ones on media and content, that are all civil society and make sure that they revise what speakers they have so that they can -- There is one that has on the profiles, when you choose on the system that you select the community profile of a person, and it brings out the information of what stakeholder that person says they belong to, it says civil society; right?  But then on the text of the proposal it says that they are holding all the balance because there is someone from university and someone from operational issues.  So I think there is also a misunderstanding from workshop organizers about how organizations actually -- or people register on that system.  And they think they have a diversity that they are actually not showing on the system.  And I have no idea how that works, but it's -- you can click and see that there is a list that says five civil society speakers, and then at the end when they are described how -- in what order they are going to speak, they are reflecting a different stakeholder.
 So the organizer is actually assuming that they are reflecting a diversity but the system is showing us it is not.  So just be mindful of that.
 Thank you.
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:   That's a helpful comment and we should look at that and make sure the instructions are even more clear.  If there's any other suggestions, that would be helpful.
 Next we have Ben Wallis.
 >>BEN WALLIS:   Thank you, Lynn.  So you were asking for us to highlight anything we thought might be out of kilter.  I'm only look at the media and content.
 So looking at the top 40 and looking at the stakeholder diversity, I calculated 46% of the speakers were from civil society, 24% from the technical community, and then private sector 12, government 11, IGOs 8.
 So I've heard people talk a lot about gender imbalance and geographic imbalance, not so much about stakeholder imbalance.  I don't know whether that's less important to the MAG.  But in the media and content of those three that have been proposed, I just note that workshop number 186, three of the four speakers are civil society; 415, four of the five speakers civil society.  And Sylvia was pointing this out, too.
 So I wanted to their that, and I didn't know you were going to say that when I joined the queue.
 But on the media and content specifically and as a general point.  So just we kind of take these statistics into account when we're deciding what to add and what to merge.
 Thank you.
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:   No, it's a good point.  And stakeholder diversity absolutely does matter.  I think we've also said that we're not going to expect to get every diversity on every workshop, because by the time you do region and every stakeholder, and gender is easier, that we really want to look at the whole.  So I agree the profile on any one theme is certainly something we should look at.  And if something is all one stakeholder group or 80% one stakeholder group, that's not good either.  But I just want to make sure that everybody doesn't think we're going for 100% on every one of them, but we certainly want a really good, healthy, robust mix.
 With the media and content, I don't know that we've -- we're all having the same conversation, frankly, because we've got three that were proposed that were pulled up from the highest ranking exercise that Eleonora did, which had rank 79, 131, and 140, and then the French IGF have come in and said we had a number of workshops in this category, and we're proposing a bunch of mergers and coming up with three main topics:  digital journalism, maybe it was citizenship, I'm not sure, hate speech and media.  And they're reworking -- they're looking at the mergers and saying this could be a different title and a different profile.  And we don't actually have those details yet.  They just committed to go in and do that work, which is the same work that anybody else we ask to go into a merger is going to have to do as well.
 So this is where I think, you know, we get into these iterative and reiterative processes.  And certainly as a MAG in a full meeting like this, we're not structured to actually continue to do that.  So I think we need to document what the will is of the MAG at this point, continue going through the other tabs, and then ask the secretariat to continue to work it and refine it and bring it back to the MAG.  But I don't know how we go through all the iterations we need to go through as the full MAG.
 So the notes that I actually have around media and content says there's these three here, noted some of the comments around the fact that they're overrepresentative of civil society speakers and that should be rebalanced, and then also some suggestions from the French IGF for some additional categories there.  I think we said we were going to give those additional merged workshop proposals to Eleonora to put in the spreadsheet, so ultimately when we look at all the diversity we have everything in.  But...
 Is everybody still okay with that as a high-level process?  It's iteration that I'm really trying to figure out how we manage going forward.
 Rasha, is your comment directly to that?  Because otherwise we'll go back to the queue.  Okay.
 >>RASHA ABDULLAH:   Just a very small clarification, just to make clear that my earlier comments were on the three workshops pulled up by Eleonora.
 Thank you.
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:   No, as was Ben's as well.  But I know there was an earlier expectation that some...
 Okay.  Zeina.  Zeina, you have the floor.
 >>ZEINA BOU HARB:   Just to make sure that the secretariat take into consideration the list of workshops that I sent by email to the MAG list.  It includes workshops on media and content, on child online protection, and SDGs in the MENA region.  Those -- I think these areas are missing in the accepted workshops, so I would like to suggest to consider looking into these workshops and especially, and surprisingly there are two of them which has French speakers included in the proposal.
 Thank you.
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:   Thank you, Zeina.  When did you send that email?  Just now you sent the email?  Okay.  Just there are rather a few emails going back and forth so it was helpful.  Thank you.
 Xiaofeng.
 >>XIAOFENG TAO:   Thank you, share.  I'm Xiaofeng Tao.  I have two suggestions.  I suggest there is the proposal 415 and 333.  The media and content theme can be merged.  First of all, only three proposals accept in these themes.
 Second, they are talking about a similar topic and their score is similar as well.  This is my first suggestion.
 Second suggestion is that they are low workshop proposal except the big data subtheme.  I would suggest we can consider 232 proposal that ranked the top one in this subtheme.
 Thank you.
 Also, I encourage MAG member give more merge chance to -- to people, to IGF.
 Thank you very much.
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:   Thank you Xiaofeng.
 Danko, you have the floor.
 >>DANKO JEVTOVIC:   Thank you, Chair.  I tried to speak earlier when we had more general discussion but we had a bit of like a queue breakup so I'm taking concrete discussion.  But coming back to it, first of all I thank secretariat Eleonora for this work and I very much support the way how we try to do it with this table now.  And I think we should take into consideration more of the diversification criteria, not only the question of country that is -- country that is coming up again and again.
 I'm coming from Serbia.  I'm from technical community.  But from my country and basically from the region, there are almost no proposals, and this is how it is.
 So if we prepare -- if we accept all this criteria, we should also get back to the quality, and this is somehow represented in the score that we have.
 So going back to the themes.  And thank you very much for returning to the point where we left yesterday.  I wanted to say something about the technical and operational issues.  And DNS and ICANN used to be a focus earlier, but it's not a hot topic anymore.  And I that we seem to be lacking in participation from the technical community stakeholders, and this I think shows in the number of proposals we do have.  So most of the technical proposals are already in the top 40 list, and in this way it's nothing that can be specifically done with any additional concrete proposals, but I think DNS and identifiers are still critical for Internet infrastructure, for security, and to access the content of course.  And challenges security and privacy that are changing regulatory environments, and we see impact on DNS and specifically on domain names.  And to some regulators, DNS seems to be the convenient place to solve the problem of the bad content removal problem.  And even if we say that statement can be interpreted in different countries in different way, as possibly a danger to remove content that is seen as not politically convenient and also there is a problem with how really to remove the content that is really not -- shouldn't be on Internet.
 So I'm surprised a bit how these issues are not more prominently discussed here.  I think they're very important.  And this is sentence I never expected to say but I think we needed more lawyers in this -- in this group because I'm a technical guy and a manager, and usually these themes are brought up by law persons.
 So we need more understanding of DNS and how we can do it in the context of the IGF, and hopefully to find a way how to identify development and promote best practices, how to regulate identifiers in the content -- of the content on the Internet.
 I'm not sure, as I said, how to put it in perhaps because we have these proposals that we have.  Maybe we can try thinking of how to form something like a DNS dynamic coalition or find some other structure.
 And earlier I was informed by some of the proposer, by AFNIC, that the French country code registry hasn't been accepted in the systems, so they're not in our total list.  So maybe we can ask our French host maybe to rethink all the subject and maybe try to put it somehow in some of the themes that are out of the list of workshops.  So try to find some other structure.  I still feel very strongly about that, and thank you for this time.
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Thank you, Danko.  Thank you for the patience with the queue too.  We intended to try to move and close on a specific question but opened the floor.  Appreciate it.
 We'll see if -- not leaving that open, we'll see if there are any of the other folks in the queue that want to speak to that later because if there's a proposal that says there's a topic that's not here that they believe the community would expect to be here, then we should take a conscious decision as to whether or not we go away and try to source that or we're okay because we think it reflects the role of the community.
 Let me see if there are any other communities on that specific point as we go forward.
 And the next speaker in the queue is Raquel. 
 Raquel, you have the floor.
 >>RAQUEL GATTO:  Thank you, Madam Chair.  It's just a (indiscernible) after you call on me.  I'm not taking this point, though.  I have been in the list also for a while.
 So I'm going to take two approach.  One is more on the process, and the second one is more on the content itself of the discussion.
 On the first point about the process, I think we need to have some clarity on the outcomes that are expected here.  And I would suggest that we have three lists that we could work with.  One of the approved workshops proposals that we all agree -- or do not have any opposition, that could be a starting point to kick off this process.  And then a second one which is the approved ones which suggestions, so those that could have some more improvements in diversity or, for example, including some local suggestions.  And, so, one, I think they're approved but the MAG recommends some of those suggestions.
 And in this case, we also needing to pragmatic.  I mean, here -- whatever we decide here in terms of the improvements that are needed does not necessarily reflect what is going to be presented at the IGF.  Yes, we wish that they are but change happens.  And when those workshops take place, some speakers might be canceled and so on.  So we need also to take into account that we can go so far and then that's it.
 And the third list is for the workshops with conditions, which means that they are not approved.  They will need a MAG member and the secretariat efforts to go in, for example, a merging process that seems to be more risky or those are very important topics that need to be worked further.  So that would be a third list.
 We saved the slot in the agenda to keep in the top 60, but those would only go for the agenda after they get clearance in this process.
 Mergings, for example, can be very, very time consuming.  But in my experience, last year I had two that I was kind of coaching.  And they went really well.  I mean, so -- so I think it worked, the process.
 Now, going to the content itself, regarding -- I think I got a little confused.  I think we are under two tabs.  We are under technical community and media and content.  And we should not wave in on the others.  I would skip for that and come back for the others.
 For technical community, I would agree that we approve the ones that are here now.  They are all in the top 40 ranking.  They are diverse.  And we can -- we can look later into proposals that we can bring topics that are missing.  But if we could agree on approving.  And I think Sylvia brought that in, I would be fine and we could move on.
 On the media and content one, I actually took the time here multitasking and looked into the proposal to merge 161 and 96.  I think it could work actually because they have different speakers' lists and stakeholder balance.  For example, 96 brings a little bit of the private sector that could be included there, and the other 161. 
 I was not responsible for this track.  But if I was reviewing, I would be worried just with geographical diversity in terms of the organization also.  If we can broaden up -- they are all from WEOG countries.  It might be why they get also a low rating, ranking, rating, anyway.
 So I think I will stop there.  Thank you.
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Thank you, Raquel. 
 Frederic was just saying that I think it's 161 and 95.  Okay.  You said 96.  95, okay.
 [ Multiple speakers ]
 I like the suggestion, which is what we did last year.  We had those that were, again, assumed approved.  I think people would say that's probably the 40.  But there were others that everybody sort of agreed should be rolled in that's approved with some additional suggestions.  There were always conditional approvals, conditions specifically on specific criteria being met which the secretariat then judged whether or not those criteria had been met and pulled in later.  So I think that's a good nomenclature.
 If I just try -- I'm worried about our ability to get through everything for the rest of the day.  It feels like, again, we're building the whole picture.  It will be done when it's all done.  But right now it feels like technical and operational topics are those eight that are in there are ones people think we should go forward.  They were all in the top 40.  Is that a true statement?  No strong objections? 
 On media and content, I think where we are now, we had the three that were there.  We've had a couple of different suggestions, for instance, to merge 161 with 95.  And it seems to be the suggestion from the French IGF and supported by a few people here who have looked at it.  And that was already in there anyway.  That's one I would say we should -- in this interim stage, we would say it's approved.  Maybe it's approved with suggestions, and then we actually need to see the final merged workshop.  Given the one that was there was significant.  And, of course, the suggestions are addressing the stakeholder balance which has come up in a number of conversations here.
 I think we probably need to put a question mark behind ID 186 and 415 which again were pulled up through the moving from 40 to 60 exercise.  Let's call that the secretariat exercise. 
 But then there were a couple of other suggestions both from the French IGF and Xiaofeng that we have captured here that I think we feed to look at and get final proposals.  So those are probably not even at this point approved but ones we want to come back and revisit.
 It would be hard to approve them given I don't think anybody has had a chance to look at them.  As compelling as it sounds in terms of the title and the topics, I think in terms of due process I think we need to actually see something that says this is that topic.
 It's time to break for lunch.  I'll come to you, Lianna.  Before we break, I want to try and outline kind of what we need to get the picture to, but what we need to get through this afternoon, which is still a number of additional topics beyond this workshop selection process.  I think we need to either sort of think creatively or try to really find a way to move through quite quickly and look for major objectives and rely on the secretariat to go away and take the notes, do the analysis, and bring it back to the MAG with respect to the kind of overall diversity announcement.  I'm happy to support that process. 
 Lianna, you put your hand up and you were next in the queue.
 >>LIANNA GALSTYAN:  Thank you, Lynn.  So I have a question about the mergers, how we are going to do this process actually.  I don't really know. 
 Do we suggest that all the proposers to come together and have a new proposal?  For instance, if we look at the media and content, we have workshop Number 78 which are suggested in both into workshops 161 and 415.  So both of them, like a subtheme is fake news, the suggested mergers were 78. 
 So my question would be how to do this merger.  Who are we going to suggest to?  We need to think about this.
 And, also, I've gone through 78 workshop and had a look at content and suggestions that they have there.  And it is graded actually 3.5.  And if we consider that the highest workshop that has a grade is 4.5, so 3.5 is still not that bad.  So maybe we can consider while the other workshops -- we consider will as well which we cut in line for the grading.  So 3.5, 3.32, et cetera, about the merit thing.  I would just like to throw this question so we know for the others as well how we're going forward. 
 Thank you, Lynn.
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  I had one suggestion.  Let me just throw it out.  One of the next things we need to do is to talk about the thematic sessions and the main sessions.  If we believe that we're going to have a thematic session, formerly known as main session, for every one of the themes we choose, I think what we need to do is to ask for a subset of MAG members to come together to pull together a thematic session on media and content.  And obviously this needs to come back to the MAG for approval. 
 But we could also ask them, in this case, to look at the five or six groupings.  You have three that are in there from the secretariat exercise.  We've had another three new groupings be pulled up.  We could ask that group to look at those, request a merger if a merger seems appropriate, but they actually take responsibility for shepherding any of these merger suggestions to come up with a track, as long as we say there are going to be four workshops in that track.  And we strongly support one, approve one, and these other two are approved with suggestions or approved with conditions but that we ask the subgroup that's actually going to pull together the thematic session to do that.
 Failing that, I think the only way that we can do that is we then need to rely on the secretariat.  It's either a subset of the MAG organized around a thematic main session that's going to do some track work as well or it's the secretariat.  I don't see another resource that we can -- or process that we can call upon to do that.
 If people want to think about that, or do you want to react to it quickly?  This is directly trying to respond to Lianna's question about how do we manage in this one in particular where there were a number of workshop suggestions.
 Mary, you have the floor.  You were next in the queue.
 >>MARY UDUMA:  Thank you very much, Chair.  My name is Mary Uduma for the record, Nigeria technical community.
 Yesterday I suggested a methodology for us to be able to get through all this, that if we can break up into themes and get all these things we are saying within the group and we work parallel, we will save time.
 Now we have suggested some MAG members come together to look at thematic main session.  Yes, that will help us so by the time we come back, we would be able to -- we would have something we just worked on.
 I know I am a new MAG member.  I don't know how you have been doing it in previous years.  But when we are doing evaluation of these kind, I think since we've gotten to a point where we are taking decisions, it will help us if we can break into groups and do it in parallel and come up with something faster.
 If it's not acceptable by MAG, we'll continue because every person will have something to say if we do it in plenary.  Thank you.
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Thank you, Mary.  And let me just clarify, I think we needed -- after the HLPDC, I'm not sure I got the acronym right.  But after that session this morning, I think we needed to come together as a group to figure out what the process was overall. 
 It's certainly possible to break out into breakout sessions and then assign the remaining six subthemes, I guess, across if the MAG felt that was appropriate.
 My suggestion for the main session was not that we -- we don't have time today to start brainstorming around what the topic might be for main session theme A, or thematic main session theme A.  It was more to recognize that we were going to have these thematic sessions.  We need to drive a process to get the MAG members to sign up for them, and they will need to manage themselves in a small working group to debate a topic and a proposal for the -- which kind of goes back to the process which was run a few years ago in the MAG.  We did something a little different last year.
 Let me just quickly before we try to close -- I do just want to close quickly.  The work we need to get through the rest of the day, we were pretty certain we needed an overall theme.  It's Friday.  I suppose if we went away and did some work with the secretariat and the French and got down to two or three and put them in front of the MAG and had that complete by early part of next week, that probably still works, unless we think we can get through that today.  It works in terms of timing.  I'm kind of looking at Eleonora.  I think the timing is when we put out the meeting summary that we need to have that known.
 And obviously, like I said, we have a process of how we're going to proceed with preparing the thematic main sessions.  And then we have a series of discussions around various community sessions, so the request by the NRIs and BPFs and DCs.  And that conversation will probably take a little while.  And I think that's pretty much it.
 Mamadou.
 >>MAMADOU LO:  Thank you, Chair for giving me the floor.  Mamdou Lo, private sector for the record. 
 Just to emphasize what Chengetai said earlier on translation as it is never the same as original when a document is translated.
 We had one document translated lose 30% of it's real meaning, losing cultural and social substance as language is related to culture and social aspect. 
 Personally, I experienced the issue during workshop proposal submission with African proposers asking me if they can make proposals in French or not.
 As regard to this evaluation, my (indiscernible) to have workshops and other proposals in the other U.N. staff languages and evaluating them on those languages.  Thanks, Chair.
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Thank you, Mamadou.  I think those are the three pieces of work in front of us, going through this high-level analysis on the six we remaining themes.  The discussion on the overall layout.  Again, how many main sessions?  Are we splitting the three-hour sessions into two, given the feedback we have had that three hours is too long?  And we see a shorten program so we have more to fit into less spaces, that kind of overall programming?  And then a discussion on some of the requests from various parts of the community so we get that overall shaping.
 If people think that we can move through that at a high enough level this afternoon, we could stay in the main room.  If people want to get into some breakout groups or do work over lunch, we can do that as well.  If you want to come back and spend one hour at the beginning in the afternoon in breakout groups with people trying to get through the themes quickly, you then need to come back in the room and bring the room up to date on those themes and I think expect questions as well.  So there's a piece of me that says it's probably close to doing it twice as opposed to once.
 Any strong preferences?  Anyone want to try to make breakout groups work, or do you want to come back into the room here?
 >>SYLVIA CADENA:  Sylvia Cadena, technical community. 
 I think that considering we have been working like a day and a half already in plenary, I think it would be really unfair, I guess, for the whole process to break into groups now.
 I full agree.  I have been dreaming of can we just use that (indiscernible), get post-its and just get over it.  It's not going to happen. 
 I think we should stick to the methodology we have used so far, although I 100% value working on small working groups.  I just think this is the process we kind of already started, just having the last three hours or two hours.  And that will probably not be that useful because you have to do plenary again to report on what those small groups come up with.  So it would be even worse.  I'm not saying this will work.  Thanks.
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Helani.
 >>HELANI GALPAYA:  I think there is value in trying the small groups, although I see points what do we do about the remote participation.  I don't know.
 I would also just suggest -- I mean, we're all sitting and having lunch and I'm a workaholic, so not everyone would like this.  I would love to sit together with just a group that's working on whatever and just start talking.  Thanks.
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Anybody else has kind of a quick point on this?  Ben.
 >>BEN WALLIS:  I was drawn to your concern that if we break out and then come back together, we might end up doing the work twice and we've only got three hours.  I think we should just continue in the full session.
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Let me just try and -- just quickly, I think the process we could follow this afternoon we come back -- and I think the ones that take the longest are always the first few and we kind of wet our teeth on cybersecurity and human rights, gender and youth, which is also quite difficult.
 I actually think we can get through the rest of the six quite quickly in terms of we assume these are approved because they're in the top 40.  Here are some we think are probably approved subject to some things being done.  But we think they're minor and they'll be done.  Maybe there are some questions on -- really not sure -- there's some big conditions or maybe even some mergers.  We can, I think, document that pretty well.
 I think then the next question is is -- is the kind of finalization of those things, particularly anything that's approved with conditions or the mergers, a process we want to put with the secretariat or is it a process we want to try to link towards the thematic main session discussions.
 So I think those are -- and I think they're both reasonable.  I mean, I think it really -- you know, if the MAG commits, the MAG needs to commit and we need to recognize where we are over the next few weeks.  The northern hemisphere, heavy holiday period.  And -- what was I going to say?
 And if we could get through that in sort of an hour or maybe even come back a half hour earlier, I don't know if we can do that, really, with transcribers and...
 >>CHENGETAI MASANGO:   (Off microphone).
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:   That's true, too.  So we can do it again?
 [ Laughter ]
 And then hopefully we can get through the other -- I don't think there's a big discussion on the thematic main sessions.  I think it's more looking at the overall planning timetable the secretariat sent out a of couple models before, and then people just need to determine which sort of groups they want to participate in in the development of those main sessions, and we can get close, go away, and then come back and make sure we've also got appropriate diversity in those groups.  We don't want just one stakeholder group developing a main session by themselves.  They should have other input as well.  But I don't think that's a huge -- a huge process.
 But I think, you know, we end up again in all these processes spending time working the process.  It would have been nice to say we're going to have a main thematic session on -- on media and content or cybersecurity, and here are some of the things we think it would be really interesting to do in a main session.  Or the policy question we would like to answer at a main session, or -- We don't have time to do that in the room but I think that's really useful work we can do in the breakout groups that are supporting it.  I think those are substantive discussions.  And then again we have the overall planning timetable where I think some of the discussion comes in with respect to the NRI request and the DCs, BPFs, et cetera.
 So I really need everybody's kind of support either to push on, trust in your fellow MAG members and in the secretariat, sew know that we're close enough, and we will continue to watch all the thing that matter to the MAG, all the diversity characteristics, and that we will return that back to the MAG once we get close to the near final workshop submission process.  And as Nacho keeps pointing out, of course we have the open forums, we have the main sessions, we have flash sessions and lightning sessions, all with the help, again, of appropriate diversity, whether it's topical or other diversities as well.
 Liesyl.
 >>LIESYL FRANZ:   Thank you, Lynn.  Just a quick question.  Is it possible before we leave -- I hate to ask this of the secretariat, but is it possible to get that diversity assessment for the 68 that we have on the front side of the afternoon so perhaps that gives -- well, it will either give more comfort or less, or maybe the same, but at least we'll have a sense of where we are with this spreadsheet as it is, and we'll know what we need to fill in.  Whether it happens this afternoon or subsequently in small virtual groups.
 Thank you.
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:   No, that's a great -- a great discussion.  I need to look at Eleonora to see just the 68, not taking into account the conversations we've had here.
 Sorry?
 >> (Off microphone).
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:   Yeah.  So she -- she thinks we can --
 >>LIESYL FRANZ:   I think it would be impossible to do it for --
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:   The 68.
 >>LIESYL FRANZ:   Well, it would be possible, I trust, for the 68 that you've already captured.  I think it would be, you know, asking a miracle to encapsulate all the other parts of the conversation that -- you know, that we still need to fill in.  But just having that data point would be helpful.
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:   Right.  Thanks.  And I agree.  I also like -- Nacho made a suggestion earlier.  He said when he looked at the 68 that are there and the suggestions for mergers that he thinks there are reasonable suggestions for mergers that would actually take seven out; right?
 >>MIGUEL IGNACIO ESTRADA:   (Off microphone).
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:   So I think we still do the analysis on the 68, but I think if, Nacho and Nebojsa, if you can put a quick document together that says what those are, maybe that's something we can look at as well and take into account.
 >> (Off microphone).
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:   Okay.  So I guess there's a motion for a picture.  I'm sure everybody feels really up for that.  And then if we can ask everybody to be back promptly at 3:00, that would be -- that would be great.
 Thank you, everybody, very much.
 [ Lunch break ]
 
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:   We will come to full order in just a minute, but I wanted everyone to be aware that I asked Eleonora to send to the MAG list the set of statistics, diversity statistics that she and Sala worked on.  And there really was a joint effort, and Sala did the really heavy lifting, and we even had great diversity in our workshop, too.  We had an emergency save from Jennifer on the file, and we had people helping with the statistics and the organization.  So really a great effort.
 If people could open up that document, and then Sala is actually just going to walk us through so we understand what we're looking at.  And then we can use it to support some of the discussions after.
 And I guess Chengetai is not joining us this afternoon.
 >>SALANIETA TAMANIKAIWAIMARO:   Okay.
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:   Just everybody have the worksheet in front of them.  It just came in literally at eight minutes past the hour.  It's called diversity for the rebalanced workshop list, top 68.
 Let's just kind of get organized for the afternoon here.  What we -- What this set of statistics does is shows us a diversity profile, which again Sala will walk through in a moment just so we all understand how to look at it.  I don't propose going through every one of them just now because that will take far too long.
 What I think we agreed just before lunch is we will then come back and look at the remaining themes at a very high level, how do they look.  We can have at that point a quick look at the diversity statistics to see if there's anything that we need to kind of fix immediately.  And then have a discussion on whether or not we think that's kind of the right overall profile, the right set of topics, look at any of the suggested merger candidates, and get close to the bones of a track for that particular theme, a track of workshops for that particular theme.  Then I think we're all going to have to go away and spend a little bit more time on the diversity statistics, look at the merger proposals and things we might pull in, and the decision in front of us is whether or not we ask the secretariat to do that, perhaps with a small number of MAG members, and get that back out to the MAG or do we want to try to do that by theme with subgroups of MAG members.  Realize this work is going to need to be done virtually, it needs to be done quite soon, and that will be over the heavy holiday period for the northern hemisphere, just so we have some of the key parameters in front of us.
 We then need to look at the overall block booking so that we can have a discussion on the number of main sessions.  We can respond to the request from the NRIs for various sessions, BPFs, DCs, et cetera.  I think we owe those communities an answer in the near term.  And of course that discussion impacts a number of workshop slots we have.
 And if we can, we would also look to agree the overall theme.  But again, if we have to, I think we can take a few minutes offline or on our flights home or something to look at the list that Eleonora sent yesterday of those possible themes.  See if the French have had any additional thoughts and try to coalesce on something on the mailing list.
 I think we're pretty close.  I think, you know, there were no major discrepancies in viewpoint, so hopefully we can leave that to -- to a subprocess.
 And that's the work, I think, in front of us today, unless I've forgotten anything, which I don't think.
 So with that, Luis, could you put up the document that just came from Eleonora?
 Okay.  Cool.
 And then, Eleonora, I'll just let you talk -- sorry.  I mean Sala.  If you could talk through it.
 >>SALANIETA TAMANIKAIWAIMARO:   Thank you, Chair.  Good afternoon, everybody.
 So I'm asking you to open the sheet which Eleonora sent you.  So has everyone managed to open it okay?  Right.
 Now, the sheet will have a lot of subsheets at the bottom.  Do you see the one where it says "speakers" on the left?  Does it say "all speakers"?  It should just say "speakers."
 Okay.
 >> (Off microphone.
 >>SALANIETA TAMANIKAIWAIMARO:   No, it should just say "speakers."  Okay.  Yes.  So these are all speakers.  Can you see it?
 Okay.  For the top 68 workshops, toes are -- basically this is what we call a -- that's the masthead data for the top 68, so it has all the different categories.  So if you look at the first column -- can you see the first column, it has ID?  So in it, that's the workshop ID.  Can you see the second column, it says "title"?  Right?  Now the third column, it says "theme."  The fourth column, "subtheme."  Can you see that as you're looking through the subtheme, it's different as you go down?  Same thing for theme?  Right.  And if you look at the next column, you see "gender."  You see that?  Right.  And you'll see "given name" and "family name."  Right.  So given name is basically first name and family name, surname.
 Can you see the next column, you see "organization"?  Right.  Are you all seeing that?  Very good.
 Can you see the next column, it says "stakeholder group"?  Right.  And the regional one, you have Asia-Pacific, African.  Right.  And then you have "national."
 Does anyone have anything that's not that I said?
 Right.  So basically those are what we call indicators, so when we take you through the eight themes that have been analyzed, the columns that I took you through, indicators that were used to analyze the data.
 So the first -- the first theme that the secretariat identified was cybersecurity.  So could you go with me and click on CS.  Can you see the CS?  Right.  Click on CS.  Can you see that?  Right.  That's the total number of workshops under the cybersecurity theme.  So you will see from that particular sheet that you have theme and subthemes.  And so within cybersecurity overall, there are diverse subthemes.  For example, you have the algorithms, you have legal and regulatory, you have data privacy and protection.  Can you see that?  Very good.
 Now let's go to cybersecurity.  The cybersecurity in its long form.  Have you clicked there?  No, no.
 >> (Off microphone).
 >>SALANIETA TAMANIKAIWAIMARO:   Right.  That one.  Can you see that, the one that's on the Excel?  It's called "cybersecurity."  You got that? 
 >>  Cybersecurity diversity. 
 >>SALA TAMANIKAIWAIMARO:  No, not cybersecurity diversity.  Did this sheet get named?
 >> No it says "cybersecurity by ID" or "by speaker," so we need "by ID."
 >>SALANIETA TAMANIKAIWAIMARO:   Can you see that sheet right now that's up on your --
 >> Yeah.
 >>SALANIETA TAMANIKAIWAIMARO:   Okay.  Very good. 
 Okay.  Are we seeing the same thing?  CS by ID.
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:   I think Sala's worksheet has slightly different names on the tabs.  The one preceding this was the cybersecurity by ID, so it had the specific workshop information.  This one is the cybersecurity by diversity so it looks at all the workshop proposals and tells you about the diversity within that proposal.
 >>SALANIETA TAMANIKAIWAIMARO:   Can you see this CS by ID?  Right.  If you go to the left, you see that?  It says row numbers by 18?  Whenever you see a number like that, like 18, that's the ID of the workshop.  Everyone clear?  Right.
 The second thing you see over there, cybersecurity trust and privacy, that would be the theme.  Clear?
 Now right under that you'll have the subtheme called "cybersecurity best practices."  Is everyone clear with that?  Right.
 And if you see dropped down from the subtheme, you'll see the breakdown in terms of region and gender.  So, for example, the first one you see there -- and this is how you read it -- workshop ID 14, theme is cybersecurity trust and privacy, subtheme is cybersecurity best practices.  So the regions represented in this workshop are Latin American and Caribbean, where there's a male, and Western European and other group, female and male.  Got it?
 So that's how you'll read this particular sheet.
 And if you see the next few columns, which read civil society, count of regional group, government.  Those are the count.  Can you see? 
 Does anyone need any clarification on any aspect of what you're seeing right now?  Feel free to ask.
 All clear?
 So are you okay for us to move to the next?  Okay.  Let's move.
 So the next thing you'll see is the CS diversity.  Can you see that?
 Now, that diversity is basically a breakdown, a high-level snapshot of the regional count for all the cybersecurity workshops, where the speakers are coming from in the top 68.  Thank you for the clarification.  Very important.  That's the count for the top 68 under cybersecurity.  So for the African group you have ten, for example; Asia-Pacific, ten; Eastern European, four; intergovernmental, three.
 Now, if you look at the next table it at the bottom, it's stakeholder group, civil society, government ,intergovernmental.  So that's the top count for -- top 68 count for the stakeholder composition.  And you'll also see the same for gender.
 So basically if you go through the rest of the columns -- sorry, the rest of the spreadsheets, you'll see -- you'll see the sheets on the different themes.  And they've pretty much been analyzed according to how the cybersecurity one is analyzed.  So I don't think I have to take you through the rest if I take you through the first one properly.
 So with that, I thank you, Chair.
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:   Lianna and then...
 >>LIANNA GALSTYAN:  Clarification.  Lianna speaking.  We have intergovernmental organization in both columns with label as stakeholder group and also as region.  Should we add the numbers so that we have a clear number there?  Maybe there is some mistake.
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  I think the issue is because if you are an intergovernmental organization, you are not region specific.  But if somebody is participating -- actually, maybe I need to ask Eleonora instead of just assuming. 
 When it actually talks about your region and we have it in intergovernmental organization, were they identified as a international organization in the region count or should they have actually put in a region?
 >> (off microphone).
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  They what?
 >>ELEONORA MAZZUCCHI:  (off microphone).
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Mic.
 >>ELEONORA MAZZUCCHI:  Sorry.  So if you work for an IGO and you are making a submission or you are listed as a speaker, you're asked to identify your stakeholder group as IGO and your regional group as IGO.
 >>SALANIETA TAMANIKAIWAIMARO:  Can I just say something?  If you go to the master sheet, the first sheet I showed you, if you ever need any clarification for any of the indicators, you go back to the master sheet.  So if you go to the column which has "stakeholder group," you scroll down and you'll see "intergovernmental organizations." 
 So, for example, you can see on the master sheet, row 1, column 3, Guy Berger, UNESCO, intergovernmental organization and then you will see South Africa.  Now, remember the indicater for South Africa is just -- that's just his nationality but he works for intergovernmental organization.  That's just because the intergovernmental organization falls within the indicator for stakeholder groups.  When we developed the data, that is how it is extracted.
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Thank you, Sala. 
 I mean, this is obviously a lot of data.  And Sala and Eleonora are still working together to do a grand, grand total where we look at all of the 68 workshops and we just come up with a total profile.  Obviously that will be another critical piece of information.
 What we're thinking is once we actually get the main sessions populated and the NRIs in or whatever other sessions are going in, that we can recalculate those statistics so we get a really global view.  This in particular will help with some of the Secretary-General's reporting on gender as well.
 But as I think what we need to do just in the time we have in front of us here today is to go back to the earlier spreadsheet we were using which had the 68 workshops by theme and see how we feel about the workshops that are assumed to be in through what we were calling the secretariat exercise, moving from the 40 to the 68 so we can again kind of get a sense of which ones we're assuming are approved, which ones are approved with probably some conditions or some additional work required and there are also, of course, merger questions.
 In the background, we've had -- for instance, we asked Nacho to identify where he thought there were some merger opportunities on the basis of the 68.  He has sent -- since sent that email to everybody, but that's not been reflected in here.
 Some of the other proposals that we've heard in here this morning have not been reflected either.  This 68 is against the secretariat proposal.
 So if people are clear, in other words, the 68 is not a final list and these diversity statistics are not a final, this is kind of a midprocess iteration, a midprocess look, and I would propose that we go back to the earlier workshops, the one that Luis is showing -- I mean, the earlier Excel table, the one that Luis is showing up there now, and go to another theme.  I'm trying to pull it up myself.
 We did technical and operations and media and content.  Let's just choose one or two others so we can after lunch get the sense of it again and then come back to gender, cybersecurity.
 So if we go to "evolution of Internet governance," that tab.  So this says that there were three that were in -- I'm still trying to pull mine up -- and then two that were added. 
 Where's the title?  Can you move it over to the left so we see the title, Luis?  Thank you.
 So, you know, if we had the time, we would look at these.  We'd look at the workshops.  We'd go back and we'd look at the diversity criteria to see sort of how we were doing against the diversity criteria for this particular set of themes.  If somebody wants to try to do that quickly, we can.  I think at this point it's more general observations in terms of workshops or merger suggestions.  And the presumption, given our discussion before lunch, is that we would keep this as a separate theme.  I have to say it's not something I'm particularly sold on, to have a theme and to have four or five workshops I think possibly overcomplicates it.  If we think the workshops are important, perhaps there's some other way to accommodate them as well.  And I say that because, of course, we're also limited on the number of main thematic sessions we can have as well.
 
 Timea, did you have your hand up?  You have the floor.  Let's go back to using the queuing system as well.  Timea and then Jutta.
 >>TIMEA SUTO:  Thank you.  I was just looking at the stats for this particular group.  From what I observed from all of these five workshops, a total of 20 speakers and there's one from the private sector from 20.  I find that a bit lacking.
 >>JUTTA CROLL:  May I?
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Yes, Jutta, please.
 >>JUTTA CROLL:  I just had a look also at -- there is a proposal to merge I.D. 65 which has speakers represent only civil society with workshop 44.  And when I look at workshop 44, it says it has private sector from the African group, government from the African group.  So the merger would improve the proposal and also the overall statistics with regard to the speakers from diverse stakeholder groups.  I do think it could be solved just by merging the workshop number 44 into this -- into the 65 workshop.
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  (off microphone).
 >>JUTTA CROLL:  It's already on the list there.  It says it could be merged with workshop 44, and workshop 44 had two speakers from the private sector.  The problem that Timea addressed could somehow be solved when merging.
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Just forgive me.  What are the two workshop numbers?  44 and?
 >>JUTTA CROLL:  65, ranked 41, I.D. 65.  And there is a suggestion to merge this with workshop 44 which is not yet on the list for "evolution of Internet governance."  Looking into the statistics for workshop 44, I see that they have two speakers from the private sector.
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Okay.  We'll note that.
 Sylvia?
 >>SYLVIA CADENA:  Just a clarification, that's exactly the same workshop I mentioned before lunch break that on the profile -- the community profile, it says -- everything is civil society.  But if you read the description, it says this is academia.  So the organizers think that those speakers belong to different stakeholders.  And the system is showing a different picture.  So if you read the application, the diversity of stakeholders is done.  So it is kind of --
 >>JUTTA CROLL:  It's still missing private sector.
 >>SYLVIA CADENA:  It's not all civil society.  I ranked that one.  I looked at that one and the system is telling you it's all civil society because if they picked from the community profile of that person.  But in the description, it says so and so is a professor of the university, that's academia.  The other one is technical community.  They have different stakeholders.  That's what I'm trying to say.  I can't remember exactly.  Just take a look at the actual workshop proposal and you would see the diversity is not all civil society.
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  We can look at that and address it at the same time.
 Are there any other metalevel observations?  Are we happy going forward with a theme called "evolution of Internet governance" and four or five workshops?  Lianna.
 >>LIANNA GALSTYAN:  Thank you.  I have just observation of dropped-out countries among which is Armenia.  And we have got several applications, and none of them got in.  Actually two topics that are going in the same "evolution of Internet governance" that are workshops 39 and 24.  And they got their grade 3.7 and 3.6.  It's not in this list actually.  That's what I'm trying to say.  They are grading less than 4 than we have here.  But the grades are still not that slow, it's 3.7, 3.6.  If we can somehow make that in a reserve basket to look for that later on in order to have participation of those countries as well.
 And then another one is from Russia.  By the way, we don't have Russian submissions accepted.  So that is workshop 15, 1-5.  It also got grade 3.6.
 My suggestion would be to have some bottom line and add those workshops probably for later consideration.  And if we have some other format or whatever, we can bring those in.  Thank you.
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  That's a good suggestion, Lianna.  That's what I have been doing on my own notes and my own spreadsheet here.  And, of course, we have the transcript which is extremely valuable.
 All right.  Helani, sorry.
 >>HELANI GALPAYA:  Just wondering -- thank you.  Helani Galpaya.
 The NRIs, if this turns into a main session, would be here where we would maybe look at NRIs?  Or would the country representation try to take care a little bit of that?
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  I think that's a very good session -- a very good question because if we look at this main session slots, again what defines a main session historically has been a larger room with interpretation.  That's physically the only difference in terms of the sessions.
 With the three-day venue and with an opening and the closing -- and, of course, the closing, a significant portion of that is actually hearing from the community, I think that's one we want to protect.  That means we basically have four three-hour slots.  And we also fortunately, I think, had strong input from the community for some years now that three-hour sessions are just too long.
 If we took those slots and split them in half, splitting them in means you need some time for the room to empty, the room to be reset up, and people to come in.  Maybe that's 20 minutes.  That means you can have two sessions either of sort of equal duration at 80 minutes each or you could have one at 60 minutes each and another at 120 or whatever the math is.
 But that's -- that's the territory.  So if we have eight main thematic sessions and we have a request from national and regional IGF main session which is actually a thematic session, in fact, their proposal is that it's on Internet governance.  I have forgotten the exact title.  Anja, can --
 >>ANJA GREGO:  Yes, it's the evolution of Internet governance with a focus on the multistakeholder approach.
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  So perhaps that's one main session which kind of gets three things accomplished, if you will.  It's both multistakeholder and Internet governance and an NRI view which I think is -- I actually think it's an excellent title and theme from them as well.  So that's a little bit of a long answer to your question. 
 Yes, the assumption was that the themes would have main sessions.  That's the next agenda item we'll actually come to.
 So we would go forward with the top three I.D.s, which are 324, 224, 275.  Those would be assumed to be in because they are within the top 40.  We got two that are bolded from the secretariat proposal and suggestions that we look at a couple of specific workshops that came from a region that -- a region, several countries -- that are underrepresented.  So we'll drive a process to look at it.
 Is that okay?  Do we still have the same process in mind?  Excellent.
 Emerging technologies, now in this one there were six that were all in the top 40.  But I would also ask everybody to take a quick look and see whether or not we think we've got the emerging technology appropriately covered with these six workshops.  Five of them are on artificial intelligence, and one is on blockchain.  And trying to see if there are any suggestions for mergers.  36 could be merged with 257 which is one of the ones above.
 Does anybody have Nacho's list in front?  Was this one of the areas he thought could be merged?  I have a lot of sympathy for Nacho's -- we should respect the integrity of the process and the integrity of the ranking and grading process that we all did. 
 I mean, I also think that having five out of six focused on artificial intelligence, it is extremely important but I also think it's worthy of a more thoughtful look to make sure that the topics are substantively different.  Just waiting for a moment, not seeing any.
 >> LIANNA GALSTYAN:  Lianna speaking.  So Wisdom suggested workshop for merging or bringing back, 256 which is about developed blockchain and the representation.  The presenter is from Bahrain.  This is one of the countries that has been dropped as well.  I would suggest somehow merge or bring back -- sorry, it's 256.  If you agree.  Thank you.
 >> (off microphone).
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  What, Sylvia?  Mic.
 >> (off microphone).
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Again, following the process what we would say is we would consider adding 256 or -- I don't know, maybe even there's a merger capacity as well.  I recognize that all we're doing is adding here.  But I'm also putting a lot of confidence in Nacho's -- the fact that within the top 40 there are suggestions that there are numbers that could be merged.  In his estimation, he thinks they could be merged which would take six slots out.  We would have to look at that as we go forward when we are looking more at the substance.  Anybody who wants to comment on this?  Rasha.
 >>RASHA ABDULLA:  Thank you.  I'm just -- we all worry about regional representation, but I don't think we can worry about every single country that was not represented because there are many countries that are not represented. 
 And I'm looking at workshop number 256 and I'm seeing all the organizers and speakers are male except for one.  And I mean I haven't had a chance to read the actual content of the workshop, but I'm just thinking we need to be very careful about this.  Just because it has one speaker from Bahrain who's actually an organizer, not even a speaker -- he is, I guess, both an organizer and a speaker.  I don't think this is reason enough to include workshops that might mess up the diversity even further.
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:   And I think that's a true statement.  I think we need to do that same analysis for every one of the ones that have been suggested.  Not just for how strong they are as a workshop themselves but at the others that are assumed in and ensuring that it's complementary or it's adding to the -- and again, maybe it's a matter of pulling forward some of the speakers or even some of the concepts into the existing workshops.
 But, you know, what I take away from you is that there are potentially some interesting points of intersect and we should look at it.  Not that it comes up.
 Renata, I think are you the next in the queue?  Renata, you have the floor.
 >>RENATA AQUINO RIBEIRO:   Yes.  I would like to -- Renata.  I would logic to reinforce Rasha's point that we don't need to have every country have represented.  But 258, which is the Dominican Republic, was the only workshop set by this country.  And it was suggested the merger with 171.
 So I think in this case, which is an Africa workshop, multistakeholder -- multistakeholder cybersecurity in Africa, so you could have multistakeholder cybersecurity in LAC.
 So I guess what I'm saying is not merging countries but regions.  That would be it.
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:   Thank you, Renata.  I think you were actually talking to cybersecurity theme; right?
 >>RENATA AQUINO RIBEIRO:   Right.
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:   So we'll note that when we get there.
 Sorry, what, Sylvia?
 So, I mean, again, I think as I'm going through this I have to say -- I mean there's taking -- there's taking reasonable process paths through and there's ones where I think we're starting to aggregate so much that we lose some of the content.
 I would just like the MAG to think about, when we go to the next topic here, whether or not it makes sense, if we're going to have a main thematic session, that we ask the subgroup -- we'll have the subgroup of the MAG, that we ask the subgroup of the MAG to look at those topics and all these suggestions that have come forward from the MAG.  So you can't walk in and start lobbying and putting a whole bunch of brand-new suggestions in, but that they'll look at these suggestions and figure whether or not it's appropriate to pull in some of the speakers or some of the content from some of the other proposals that have been judged, and let those people take responsibility for the main thematic session and refining the track.  The MAG has built the track, for the most part, but we have approved with conditions and evaluate for merger and a weakness in diversity.  We should figure out how we improve that.  We need to have a path for actually closing on those action items.  And the only sort of sensible one I can see at the moment is a subgroup of MAG, the same subgroup that's taking responsibility for developing the main sessions.
 So just give me a little bit of time to think about that.  I'll come back and put the question to the floor.
 Let's see, who is in the queue?  I guess we have Sala and then Rodrigo.
 Sala.
 >>SALANIETA TAMANIKAIWAIMARO:   Thank you, Chair.  I just have a suggestion, and also to volunteer.  I just -- I just had a side discussion with Luis in relation to when MAG members are grating the workshops, they have the merger suggestions.  So if we were to filter those -- filter those comments, and actually -- because Luis is right, it's, like, so long.  But if we actually summarize it and filter it, where there are comments that duplicate each other, remove them, and just make the list of the top 68 and made it available to the MAG, do you think that would be something worth pursuing or would that just be redundant?  It's up to you.
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:   Just tell me what the end result would be.  The end result would be an aggregation of comments and merger suggestions?
 >>SALANIETA TAMANIKAIWAIMARO: Yes.  And the end result would be -- the end result we would have a baseline from the process of grading in terms of the merger suggestions, and then if there were things that people think should be added to that, that can be easily.
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:   And that could be given to whatever process was actually going to look at ensuring that we had refined and we were following up on those workshops that we believe needed some additional refinement.
 >>SALANIETA TAMANIKAIWAIMARO:   Yes.  Because it's based on the premise that when the MAG members were grading it, they read the workshop thoroughly and extensively.  So they would have done the work already.  So to reduce the time.
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:   Carrying on with Nacho's respect the integrity of the process and rely on it.
 Rodrigo, you have the floor.
 >>RODRIGO VALLE DA FONSECA:  Thank you, Madam Chair.  I was reviewing the workshops here on emerging technologies, and I notice that there is one -- there are two workshops on artificial intelligence, but they also -- they only have participation of civil society.
 I think we should have one with participation of governments.  And there is the workshop number 396 was ranked in position number 80, 3.8 grade, which has a participation of OECD, the European Commission, and the Berkman Center task force.  And this is a very important workshop for the OECD, also for the European Commission.  And part of this workshop will eventually inform the process, the concrete process of a legal, intergovernmental framework for artificial intelligence.
 So I think we should maybe consider pulling this project back in.
 Thanks.  Thank you, Madam Chair.
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:   Thank you.  And we can note that as well.  And again, I'm assuming that there is going to be some small team that's going to go in and spend some -- some really thoughtful time looking through.  And if we do do it by theme, the number of workshops that any group needs to pay attention to is relatively small.  Most of them have between five eight.  Cybersecurity is quite a number.  So hopefully we could work to ensure that the ones that had some shortfalls were, in fact, improved.
 Helani had a hand up and then Christine.  Helani, you have the floor.
 >>HELANI GALPAYA:   Thank you, Chair.  Helani Galpaya.  I'm not sure whether to bring it here or when we talk about development, innovation, economic issues, but I actually have been reading that session, and there's a session there on accountability for algorithms, which I just want to put out there to the MAG whether that's not better suited for emerging technologies.  Because it is about algorithms and ethics and sort of slightly futuristic.
 Thank you.
 I'm talking about proposal number 98.
 It's fine here.  It's listed in black in the section I'm talking about, so it's a proposal, but it might be better suited create more merger possibilities with emerging technology.
 Thank you.
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:   That's an interesting suggestion.  It could break up the stakeholder group as well.
 We could note it in both places.
 Christine, you have the floor.
 >>CHRISTINE ARIDA:  Thank you, Chair.  Actually, I was not planning to intervene a lot in the workshop, leaving it up to the MAG members, but I want to get back to the issue about the Arab region that Zeina mentioned.  And I know the Arab region is mainly split into two regions, which is the African region and the Asia-Pacific.  And if we go to the diversity, we'd find both regions probably represented.  But the Arab region within the IGF context does perform as a unit because there is the Arab IGF and, I mean, there is a lot of momentum that happens on all areas with respect to Internet governance, whether it's capacity building, whether it's other activities related to IG.
 So going back to the workshop of 256 or whichever other workshop, I looked again what Rasha mentioned, and I saw there are actually four speakers that are from the Arab region, one of which is the female -- the only female on the list.  So I'm not speaking for this workshop or any other workshop, but I'm just saying there might be a need sometime to actually look at regions that have been there and have sort of pulled out or have weaker representation right now, and encourage them to come further.
 Thank you.
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:   Thank you, Christine.
 Julian, you have the floor.
 >>JULIAN CASASBUENAS:   Thank you, Madam Chair.  Just a brief comment on proposals 182 in emerging technologies.  It looks like a panel, maybe another roundtable that is specified.  And we were recommending that we need to involve the audience and not just an extended set of panelists before.
 So also comment on 227, which has eight speakers, but it doesn't reflect properly how it will be roundtable format.
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:   Okay.  Thank you, Julian.
 Who is -- Raquel, you have the floor.
 >>RAQUEL GATTO:   Thank you very much, Madam Chair.  In fact, I want to go back to Rodrigo's suggestion.  I was just reviewing, because I was responsible for this team, and so I was among those that looked into some of the potential mergers in my teams, but I didn't put out the numbers.  And this is one of them that I would suggest with the number 11 that is also there.
 Number 11, for example, was one that I -- in terms of diversity, had only civil society and private sector representative, and this 396, there is -- for me they are very close together, had more of the government and academia representation.  So I think there is a potential merge there to consideration.
 Thank you.
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:   Okay.  Thank you, Raquel.  We're just noting all of these and we'll have to come back and revisit them.
 So there have been quite a number of suggestions here, I think, with respect to possible ways to merge this and even whether or not one made more sense in a different theme or basket.  Timea, you have the floor.  Sorry; did I miss you earlier with Raquel?
 >>TIMEA SUTO:   I think so, but it's a pretty small window so I won't hold that against you, Chair. Thank you for giving me the floor.
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:   Depends on how far it comes down.
 >>TIMEA SUTO:   Doesn't matter with the queue, I think.  Just wanted to make a quick suggestion in the interest of time.  I was wondering, we did have a almost consensus agreement that we like the top 40 and that we accept the top 40 to go forward.  Now, there are three themes that I can identify that are completely filled up by the top 40.  Can we assume that those are done and look at the others?
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:   So I --
 >>TIMEA SUTO:   And not think about -- From what I see it's the themes on emerging technology that are filled, the digital inclusion and accessibility, and then there was a third one which I was -- I think it was the technological and operational topic.
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:   I think we're trying to go through it at that kind of high level.  I think to take it as a blind assumption -- the first thing I did when I looked at it, the first five out of six are focused on artificial intelligence.  Are they all substantially different from each other or are there some that can be combined and there is room for a different emerging topic.  So I was hoping to get some of those quick observations out and then move on, because we don't want to visit the 40, but I think we should say does that make sense.  When you look at it as a whole now that we're through that grading exercise, is that what you would expect to see?  We're spending six slots on emerging technologies, and five of them are on AI and one on blockchain.  And maybe that's okay, but I think we all need to ask ourselves that question.
 >>TIMEA SUTO:   From what I see the top themes, the top themes from that team were those two.  So...
 .
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:   And I think we're just about to exhaust that one anyway.  So, yes, we will move on with that one.  And we did take note of the couple other minor suggestions, though.
 So if we could keep moving through quite quickly, and I really do mean quite quickly so we can get to the other pieces of work that really will help serve us well over the next few weeks.
 We have digital inclusion, accessibility, of which, to Timea's last point, of course, the 13 or so that are there were all in the top 40.  I don't know if anybody has had time to do a sort of thoughtful review of them in terms of it looks like there were some opportunities for mergers in quite a few of them.  But -- And, Paul, you have the floor.
 >>PAUL ROWNEY:   I'm not on the queue, but thank you.  But I think there's one important workshop that's missing that I just want to put forward, which is ID 285 on open telecom data which is about community networks, which is quite important for us on the continent.
 I actually evaluated it, and it was number three on my ranking, but on everybody else's ranking it's on 71.  But I think it's worth a relook.  There's some pretty amazing speakers.  It's very diverse.  And I don't see how it fell through the cracks, unless I missed something when I read it.
 That's 285.  ID 285 on open telecom data.
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:   So we'll put that below the line as well to be looked at for -- and I think separately we'll have to go through the Nacho merger exercise as well.
 Any other reflections on -- this area is an area that's important to the community and to the MAG.
 Now, actually, Eleonora, where do we find the extra eight?  So if, in fact, digital inclusion, accessibility according to the community expression of interest might have said ten workshops and they have 13, how do we actually find that?
 Because I think just as we're being -- there are 68 workshops in here.  You didn't edit any out.  So if some are overpopulated on the basis of what people expressed for the call for interest, I think we need to ask ourselves the same question in both directions.  If the call for interest would have said there should be ten workshops in 60 and we've got 13 or 14 in here, is this particular topic overpopulated, which might give us room to pull in some of the other ones that are less.  But which are the ones that are overpopulated?
 If you know it quickly, that's fine.  If not, we'll come back.  Okay.
 >> Sorry, Lynn, can I ask a clarification again on the workshop?  I'm looking at the list of workshops, and I see 20, 23, 24 and 28, and none of them are on community networks.  So I don't know what ID you are referring to.
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:   285?
 >> There is no workshop 25.  That's what I'm saying.
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:   285.
 >> Ah, okay.
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:   Okay.  Let's leave that open question for Eleonora as well, because everything we're doing so far is suggesting that maybe there's one or two workshops we ought to pull up, and maybe there's some opportunity for mergers.  But we need to recognize that at this point in time, we're at 68 workshops plus requests for a few more, and we have somewhere between probably 60 and 66 room.  So at some point we will have to look for mergers or if some of them are overrepresented on the basis of the community interest, find a way to merge or cut down.  But those are all ranked very, very high within the top 40.
 So we'll note that for a moment.
 The innovation and economic tab.  So this is the area where three basically made it in the top 40, but in fact they would have been eligible for eight.  Helani.
 >>HELANI GALPAYA:   So I looked at this.  The gender diversity is almost at parity, 49, 51%.  Huge overrepresentation of WEOG countries.  40% Western Europe, et cetera.  14 and 21 Africa and Asia respectively.  So it's not as bad as some of the other thematic areas, actually.  And the stakeholder groups, again very heavily, 44% civil society, but the rest are quite evenly spread out.
 When it comes to the actual proposals, I think the first thing to note is in the Excel file, somebody made wrong merger suggestions.  Like there's somebody suggesting merging sessions 208, 78, 401. These are all like fake news or some other themes, so I think that's just a technical mistake.
 But the closest thing that is good for a merger -- so I think there are one, two, three, four serious candidates for merger that I looked at.  If anybody is interested.  179, 385, 391, and 389 that are all on the theme of future of work, digital work, technology and work, our future and work, et cetera.  That kind of stuff.
 And I propose 385, which is challenges and opportunities, how will technology reshape jobs, be merged with 443 which is highly ranked and is anyway in, which is the Internet and jobs, preparing generation Y and Z for future of work.  And I actually read through the details.  They are quite looking at the future and emerging changes.  So one just focused on youth.  The other doesn't particularly have a youth focus but is focusing on the future.  So that seems a very close candidate and some -- one of the reviewers I think has suggested the same.
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:   Thank you, Helani.
 We have Raquel in the queue or is that an old hand?
 Julian.
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Thank you, Helani. 
 We have Raquel in the queue.  Is that from an old hand?  Julian.
 >>JULIAN CASABUENAS:  Thank you, Madam Chair.
 It's just a comment about remote participation.  When I was looking into the digital inclusion and accessibility proposals, I -- my feeling is that proposers are not aware about the possibilities of using the online platforms that will be available.
 So my question here is if -- and it's a general comment.  If it will be, like, a WebEx available for all the participants?  It would be very well encouraged to use all the same platform so it would be easier to increase the remote participation because in the proposals, it's not clear what's the strategy to get more people involved online.  Thank you.
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  If I understand your question, I mean, I think the WebEx platform is going to be there for all of the workshops in all of the rooms.  Was that the -- go ahead, quickly.
 >>LUIS BOBO:  Sure, it will be available as in the IGF.  I think what you are saying is the point that are the proposers informed -- well-informed about all this.  And I think we take that into account to make it clear in the proposals. 
 I think in the description of the online participation how it will be encouraged, there is some points but we can make it clear for next year's.
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Thank you, Luis.
 Julian.
 >>JULIAN CASABUENAS:  I think it is important because if you see probably others have the same comments.  They mention to use Adobe Connect and Twitter strategies which can be also used, of course.  But I think that it will be important to have a uniplatform for the record to send and for going back into the session and see how remote participants were involved, will be very useful.
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Okay, thank you, Julian.
 Sylvia.
 >>SYLVIA CADENA:  Thanks, Lynn.  Actually, picking up on Julian's point, a few weeks ago I asked Luis for the data of the columns on the applications of remote participation because I also picked on the same issue that some of the proposers identified tools, platforms, and a lot of methodologies.  I think the application form is asking people to be knowledgable about how to use the applications, but it is also clear they don't know what is going to be available.
 So I am working on it.  I haven't finished it.  But I was doing a review of what tools were suggested and what can be integrated or not with the tools that are existing and probably my idea was to suggest to change how we ask people to put the information on the application form in the future so they know Adobe Connect or whatever and what is complimentary and how that will work.  Because, otherwise, you may have a really interesting breadth of information that happens on all of those online collaborative spaces.  But if there is no way to collect them, then it would be lost for the IGF. 
 So I'm working on it.  I hope to be able to find the bandwidth and the time to finalize it and make some concrete suggestions.
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Thank you, Sylvia.
 There's nobody else in the queue.  I think I have one question of some of the private sector representatives here.
 If you look at the workshops that are actually in, is that a reasonable sort of set of topics?  Ben.
 >> BEN WALLIS:  I thought you were going to ask about the diversity because I have just been crunching numbers to compare to see whether that was fixed by adding the 28.  Civil society has fractionally more speakers now than it did in the top 40.  The others are more or less the same.  Technical community actually dropped down to 18%.
 So adding the 28 on its own hasn't helped redress that imbalance, and that may well be the same with the geographical and the gender diversity.
 I wonder whether -- I feel like the top 40 are on merit and leave them be.  But maybe with the other 20 or 28, they can get in but they will be told they have to fix the diversity in their proposal.
 So if they have got no private sector or government speaker, they can get in if they add a speaker and maybe drop one of where they have got multiple from one.
 And the same can be true -- if you are missing one from that region, you can get approval, if you can get one from the African region or Asia or whatever it is.  It might be simplest to just have that rule.  And I'm not suggesting we try to work out exactly -- as you said earlier, there won't be perfect diversity.  But if all of those 20, 28 are told you can get in if you improve your diversity, I think that will help improve diversity overall without trying to fix every little dot.
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  I think that's a good point.  Again, we still have flash sessions and main sessions, things to roll in as well.  I think that's a key point.
 Just quickly so we can keep moving on to the next, I mean, those eight workshops, is it what people expect to see in terms of the theme on innovation and economic issues?  I see a few heads nodding yes.  And I'm assuming so since there were no kind of counterproposals. 
 Let's now go back to human rights, gender, and youth.  We need to make these conversations quite short because we do need to get to some critical things here.  Again, I think we are going to take this work off into subsets.
 So human rights, gender, and youth, there were three that were in based on the top 40 and another five that were added in. 
 Jutta, I know you have had some thoughts on this.  Is there anything else you want to add at this point?  I got a couple of notes from earlier as well.
 >>JUTTA CROLL:  Yes.  Thank you for giving me the floor.  I had not put my name into the queue.
 I do think this was the area, my expertise -- I went through all these proposals, and I do think many of the suggestions to merge proposals do stand for me.  But I feel confident that other evaluators had the same thoughts about merging some of these proposals.
 What I still do see -- even though now two of the proposals that went in and are bold here do address child online safety, they do deal with child online safety but not with child sexual exploitation on the Internet, which is still an important topic.
 And together with Mary and Wisdom, we have discovered that there are two workshop proposals that aren't in and both probably because they did not have enough diversity.  It's the number 239, online child exploitation and the number 405, protecting children online.
 The first one I mentioned stems from the Western European and Others Group mainly.  The other, the second one, comes from civil society from the African group.  So if these two were merged, they both would fulfill the diversity criteria.
 And if, on the other hand, we could have some mergers among the proposals, the 12 that are already listed, then maybe there would be space to include the merged proposal of these two into the group.  And then we would also address the very important topic of child online sexual exploitation.  Thank you.
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Thank you, Jutta.
 >> (off microphone).
 >> (off microphone).
 >>JUTTA CROLL:  I do think we could reduce by merging all the 12 that we have now to check probably, and then there might be space to squeeze in.  The other two are merged into one, so it is only one more.  And then it would be 11, and it would still be below the number that would be accepted by a proportionate approach.  Thank you.
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Thank you, Jutta.
 Helani.
 >>HELANI GALPAYA:  A clarification question.  In the Excel file that Sala sent out, is this the topic that's identified as digital inclusion, or am I looking at the wrong -- human rights, okay.  Is that on the right-hand side?
 >> (off microphone).
 >>HELANI GALPAYA:  H.R.  Thanks.
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Eleonora, what I still need from you is a list of those -- just a moment -- a list that we would take them out if we were actually going with a profile that matches the community's desire.
 >>ELEONORA MAZZUCCHI:  To answer that question, we are oversubscribed in the digital inclusion theme and in the technical and operational topics theme.  In digital inclusion, we should be closer to eight submissions.  In technical and operational, we should be closer to three.
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  And we had 13 in digital inclusion, I think?
 >>ELEONORA MAZZUCCHI:  Yes, and eight in technical and operational.
 >> (off microphone).
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  No, no, no.  We're just -- what we said earlier, last night when we left, was that one of the criteria -- there is no single, dominant, overriding criteria.  One of the criteria is to try and reflect in the program the expression of the community's interest as defined by the workshop submissions that came in.
 So, you know, if we think that there are some topics -- when we do that exercise, what Eleonora did was pulled in those that were under, didn't identify where in the top 40 we were oversubscribed on the basis of the top 60, the community's interest.  So, you know, we're already oversubscribed in the terms of the 68 that are there with some suggestions around the room to pull some other, one assumes, deserving workshops in.  We can't continue adding against a tight constraint of space.
 So one of the things we're going to have to look at when we start looking at merger suggestions -- and Nacho had a list.  He said amongst the top 40, there were merger suggestions that might fix part of this problem. 
 I also do think we need to go back and look and say if eight on digital inclusion would give us a profile to match the community, I think we owe it to say is that the right number or is that too much.  I think we just need to do that in terms of balancing overall. 
 I'm not suggesting we do that now.  I think we need to continue going through the exercise.
 Obviously they're in there because they were ranked high.  They were ranked in the top four.  But at the same time, I think we need to say is 13 out of 68 workshops on digital inclusion really the right profile?  Maybe.  But we just can't assume it is.  A lot of it is guiding criteria. 
 Frederic.
 >>FREDERIC PARUTA:  And to make things worse, I also have on this -- I don't have a few -- I just have five overall merger proposals from the French IGF.  I mentioned three this morning.  I just have two more.  And this one is in this category.  It will be to merge workshop 94 and workshop 436.  It would be consistent with diversity because we will have some WEOG speakers, African, and Asian.  And they have made particular efforts to contact directly the correspondents in Asia to try to build up a common proposal.  Thank you.
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Thank you, Frederic.
 Timea, you have the floor.
 >>TIMEA SUTO:  Thank you, Chair.
 Regarding your earlier point and the discussion on over- and underrepresented themes, I think we have been sort of the past two days doing a really, really valuable effort of trying to reflect the community's interest.
 I don't think -- I'm not convinced that the community's interest needs to be represented down to the last decimal point.  I don't think the MAG needs to run a popularity contest.  I think we've done our best through the last month to grade workshops.  We ended up with a list based on merit.  That merit had very carefully chosen criteria against which we measured those workshops.  We are doing our best for the next 20 or 25 to bring in more diversity to bridge gaps.
 Now, I don't think it's in any way warranted that we throw out workshops that we all agree are diverse, are well-thought out, well-reflected, are in the top in order to bring in workshops that we did not think are diver enough, we did not think are well-thought out enough.
 I understand we need to reflect the interest of the community and we are doing our best to do that.  I don't think we have to do that at the expense of the process that we all went through in the past month.
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  So I actually support that in terms of integrity of the process.  And at the same time, I hear lots and lots of talk on diversity and things that are adequately represented in the program.  At some point, we will not be able to add anymore.  And if we feel strongly enough that those diversities aren't reflected, we're going to have to find some other measures to take some out is my only point.  It's a logical thing to say the reasonable allocation would have given you eight.  We have got 13.  Is that the right number?  Could we combine one or two and get the same quality of the program and the same topics and get another one in?  I think it's a question we just need to ask ourselves. 
 We still have yet to get to the table, which we need to get to very, very soon now, that actually looks at the slots available to us for everything we'd like the IGF program to cover.
 So on the human rights and gender, I think we took some comments earlier, took these comments now.  It would say that two were pulled in of the top 40 and then to get to the appropriate community ranking we're pulling in another 10.  I mean, to kind of a reverse point on the quality, I mean, we could also say we're pulling in workshops that are ranked 90, 93, 94, 117 and we are missing this whole batch between 60 and 100 and there might be some that are worthy there that are of the interest to the community as well.  This is an imperfect process.  I think we just need to keep checking the overall criteria and the overall guidance.  The purity of our process would question whether or not these are the right priorities to have if they are rank would so very low.
 The last category we actually have to go through is the cybersecurity. 
 Sorry, Raquel.  Sorry.  Raquel and then Renata.
 >>RAQUEL GATTO:  This one is a fair hand.  But I need to do a disclaimer.  I accidentally discovered how to hack the speaking queue.
 [ Laughter ]
 It's true.  So if you put your hands down, it goes to another page. 
 Luis, perhaps, later, you want to fix that. 
 You put your hands down and I didn't realize that you can -- the first bullet is get me back to the queue and I go up.  Sorry for that, Timea.  Just jumping in front of you earlier.  It was an accident.
 But, now up to my point.  I was looking into the human rights tab and so there is the point of merging so we're not talking anymore on 12.  I think with Jutta's point, we are now talking about 10.
 Then one of the subthemes that I think it's important to consider is refugees.  I was looking quickly on the proposals.
 I don't have -- back also to Timea's point on recognizing the integrity of the process.  So I'm not going on the substance itself.  But I think there is an opportunity to merge and get at least the subtheme up, the proposals that I saw not only two that are here, 346 and 139, they are pretty similar, tackling refugees' rights and online environment.  But also there is a consideration on the comments for 145.
 And just one of the things I looked, for example, at the geographical balance, it was more with Europe, et cetera.  But perhaps it's just reflecting the needs from the region.
 But in any way, just to make the final point, refugees, for example, are the community that we are also tackling on the intersessional work for BPF gender.  So I think that's something we can -- we can take profit of.  So thank you very much.
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  I think that's a good point.  When you actually look at those, at least in the title without looking more closely, it does seem as though there's probably some commonality.
 Who is -- Renata, you were next in the queue, I believe.
 >>RENATA AQUINO RIBEIRO:   Yes.  Renata, chair.  I would just like to read the comment of Deirdre on chat and ask MAG members if they remember such workshops to probably recommend to change the format or merge with another.  So the comment is regarding what Julian said about remote participation, please, based on previous experience, no remote participation workshop should have breakout group.  Will exclude remote participant.
 I just finish here.  It's a longer comment, but the idea is clear.
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:   Yeah, that's hard as well, because I can see where some topics really would be well formed.  I know we've had some workshops in the past that have split out into breakout groups because it allowed them to make fast progress in a broad set of areas, and it's a tradeoff.  I don't know how we feel about that and I don't know if we have the example in the 68 or not.  Is it just a reminder to remember or was it a caution that that's kind of an issue?  Maybe we can just note it in the...
 >>RENATA AQUINO RIBEIRO:   I think more a caution, just to follow up.
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:   Thank you, Renata.
 So human rights, gender, and youth.  Jutta, yes, you have the floor.
 >>JUTTA CROLL:   Thank you, Madam Chair, for giving me the floor.  Jutta speaking.
 I just wanted to underline what Raquel has already said about the refugee theme.  I do think the refugee proposals are not all gathered among human rights.  We do find also some proposals addressing refugee issues in other baskets.  And I definitely think that proposal 346, refugee rights and online environment, and 139, refugees' digital rights, they not only belong together, they would benefit from each other if brought together.
 I thought, to be honest, 139 a little bit poor, and I do think it needs improvement and it would benefit perfectly from being merged with 346.  And then we would have another space in that basket.
 Thank you.
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:   Okay.  You're supporting Raquel's other point.  Okay.
 Good.  Are we done with this category?  Move to the last one, cybersecurity?  Move through it quickly.  We still have a lot of critical work to get through.  So cybersecurity.
 There were four that came -- no, sorry.  Scroll down.  There were five that came through in the top 40, and 13 that would get us to the appropriate profile.
 Any overall comments or suggestions?  There were some number of them that had merger suggestions.  But of the ones that are suggesting merge, I don't actually even see them in the ranking here.
 Sorry.  75 is.
 Any reflections, comments?  Rodrigo, you have the floor.
 >>RODRIGO VALLE DA FONSECA:   Thanks, Madam Chair.  I was reviewing the cybersecurity issue, and I'd like to make a point on project 393.  This is a project that was made and presented by CGI Brazil which, by the way, is multistakeholder in its nature, its composition, and I think there is a gap there that must be examined.  In the range of the possible approved workshops there is no one deeply dealing with jurisdiction.  And that's something that should be present, in my opinion.  So I think we should bring in the next workshop in the rank that bridges that gap, and it's precisely the project 393 presented by the CGI.  It's ranked 88th and had a good grade of 3.125, and there is no other proposal before it, if I'm not mistaken, concerning this subject.
 So I think it's very well elaborated and deals with key topics on the jurisdiction agenda, such as the recently enacted cloud act, the e-evidence framework within the European Union.  And this proposal is also organized by Brazilian think tank which research topics related Internet and society, and I think it brings a reasonable balance of speakers from different countries and regions.
 And additionally, and I think this is -- contributes to the diversity issue.  It's an almost all female panel.  There are only two men, one being moderator.  But I think if this workshop, 393, should be included in the cybersecurity things.  Thank you.  Thank you, Madam Chair.
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:   Thank you, I've noted 393 for consideration by the...
 Any other reflections?
 Xiaofeng?
 >>XIAOFENG TAO:   I think first off, 320 -- I'm sorry.
 I think workshop named 320, data governance in smart city, is almost the same as workshop proposal 232.  232, the big data governance.  I think the score almost the similar and the direction almost similar.  I suggest these two -- I mean 232 and 320, could consider it merged.
 Thank you very much.
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:   Thank you, Xiaofeng.  Noted. 
 If there aren't any more comments on this one I think we need to take a few minutes to think about the process we're going to drive to bring these to conclusion, and then I would suggest we go to the schedule table and have a discussion there on the NRIs.  Everybody takes a minute and remind themselves of the NRI request and BPFs and DCs and open forums.  All the other pieces that vie for a piece of the program space.
 But I -- So what I proposed earlier was we -- we'll come to the slide in a moment and we'll figure out what we're doing with the main sessions, the main thematic sessions, but on the assumption that we have a main or thematic session for virtually all of these themes covered one way or the other, I had said that I had proposed -- I think the secretariat has to do some kind of weeding and pulling things in and we need to look at some of the requests that came in from -- Nacho said, for instance, there are some proposals in his estimate that could be merged that were in the top 68.  And we ought to just look at those and see what that does.  And there have been some requests to pull some in, et cetera.  That we kind of clean this list up and get a new list out to the MAG as a -- you know, we're getting closer and closer list, I guess.  An interim list.
 But then we ask if we have a working group for main session on theme A, that we ask them to look at the workshops that are within that theme as well.  And all those that were accepted with some sort of condition or needs (indiscernible), that that subgroup takes responsibility for working that with the proposers.  It should help us to give us a more cohesive set of tracks and workshops and certainly help some of the kind of diversity questions we have seen.
 If the MAG doesn't want to do that, then we're going to have to rely on the secretariat plus a couple of volunteers to do that and pick that list up because it's not an inconsequential list.  And clearly it does need some thought and some time and attention to get those messages out to those workshop organizers and have a rationale for whether or not those workshop proposals go in or not.
 So are people kind of ready to move forward on that or do you want to go to the schedule and look at what we have with the overall schedule and time slot first?
 I guess I can ask Luis to put that up so that people have that in mind.  It's the one that's in the input documents.  It shows a couple of different scenarios, and it shows the 2017 and 2016 schedule as well.
 Let me pull it up here, too.
 So it's right there on the top of the screen.  And again, it's in the input documents.
 The far two right columns are 2016, 2017, just for information.  The three scenarios.  I think one of the first ones we probably need to think through is the thematic or main sessions.  As we said earlier, we basically have four three-hour slots because the morning session -- because there's an opening session and a closing session, and those typically take up those full slots.
 I don't know if people think we can get away with a shorter closing ceremony, for instance, and get one more main session in of an hour.  That's typically when we take stock of the community, and maybe there's something we want to do in a closing session this time, given the Paris Peace Forum alignment and that sort of thing.  So we probably shouldn't give that up now.
 So if we assume that those two are preserved, we've got four hours of -- sorry, four slots of three hours.
 And the calls that we have at the moment, just from the conversation here in the room, would be sort of an assumption, I think, that there is a thematic main session for each one of the themes.  We have eight themes.  Plus we have a request from the NRIs for a main slot as well, which I think fortuitously is about Internet governance, so maybe there's an opportunity to merge that set of activity with a main theme on Internet governance.
 Typically we've also had requests from BPF and the sessions for workshop slots as well, not necessarily a meaningfully interpreted session.  Is that right?  They're just normal workshop sessions; right?  The BPFs and DCs?
 >>ELEONORA MAZZUCCHI:   So BPFs have typically had 90-minute slots.  DCs in the past had 90 minutes last year.  They reduced them to 60 minutes.
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:   So the DC sessions will be 60 minutes, and there's a request for 15 of those to meet the criteria that were established to be a healthy DC session.
 We have five BPF sessions, counting the CENB as well.  I guess we have to decide whether or not those are 60- or 90-minute sessions as well.  And of course depending on what we to with those and the open forums of course determines how many workshop slots we have available.
 Open forums.  I don't know if the secretariat has had a chance to look through or had any more thought on the open forums in terms of what number we're likely to -- or you propose we'd arrive at.
 >>CHENGETAI MASANGO:   We know that three are getting called right at the moment.
 >> (Off microphone).
 >>CHENGETAI MASANGO:   Yeah.
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:   Three get combined.  That brings us to 29?  Was it 30 going down or 32 going down?
 30.  So now we have 27?  I guess if three are combined into one.  So 28.
 >>SYLVIA CADENA:   Lynn, sorry.
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:   Yes, Sylvia.
 >>SYLVIA CADENA:   My name was on the queue and I just want to comment also on the open forum.  I don't know if other people had a chance to review the open forums, but I was -- and with respect to my colleagues from ISOC and Latin America, but I really think that the first one is not an open forum.  It's a book launch, and I really think that we should look at that.  That's like all organizations launch books during lunchtime.  They ask us a favor to get access to one of the meeting rooms and organize those launch of books or have cocktails to do that, but I don't see that as an open forum.
 And the role of the Argentinian government in that is it's not the publisher of the book.  So I would really appreciate if you can take a look at that.
 Thank you.
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:   Why can't I see them here?  Thank you.  That's a good point.  My eyes are crossing.  So we'll take that out.  I was just trying to find the list of open forums.
 >> (Off microphone).
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:   Sorry, what was that Sylvia?
 >> (Off microphone).
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:   Okay.  Is it Julian who is next and then Raquel?  Julian.
 >>JULIAN CASASBUENAS:   Thank you, Madam Chair.  I just want to call to the attention the timing for the dynamic coalition sessions.  As you can see in the table, in 2016 we have 90-minutes sessions, and in 2017 it was reduced to 60 minutes, and I heard a lot of complaints about having -- I know it's hard because we have only three days this time, but I just want to call the attention to the MAG that it was a lot of complaining from dynamic coalitions about having only 60-minute sessions.
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:   Markus, you have the floor.
 >>MARKUS KUMMER:   Yes, thank you.  I had put my name in the queue but as Julian had just mentioned the point.  To clarify, the DCs actually formally request 90 minutes.  It's up to the MAG to decide whether or not to give 90 minutes, but it's not that the DC requested for 60 minutes.  It's for 90 minutes.
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:   Thank you, Markus.  Just a second.  Chengetai, was there anything you wanted to add?  I couldn't hear what you were saying.
 >>CHENGETAI MASANGO:   No.
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:   So that was Julian.  We have Liesyl, Raquel and then Sala.
 Liesyl, you have the floor.
 >>LIESYL FRANZ:   Thank you, Chair.  I guess I realize that my proposal here will probably have mixed reviews, but as an outgoing member, I feel I can take the prerogative to suggest and urge the MAG to think about an innovation that I think would lead to a much richer and more integrated program.
 If we have eight themes, or six or seven, whatever we decide to come up with in our aggregate on the themes, I think it makes a heck of a lot of sense to figure out if there's a main session that would cover those topics and bring in the various topics that have high popularity, ones that may be missing, diversity that may be missing, and incorporate the open forum participants, the BPF participants, the DC participants, the NRI participants, obviously not wholesale but get the voices into that integrated discussion about a topic that has been designated as something the community cares about.
 I strongly urge you guys to consider this innovation, because I find that these organizational main sessions lose some of that integrated discussion, lose the richness of the integrated conversation and become reports about what they're doing.  And I just -- I just really urge you to consider that going forward.  If not for this year, then for next when I won't have a chance to say it.  But I just think it's something to consider as a new way to mix it up for the main sessions or thematic sessions.
 Thank you.
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:   I think the key point is that there shouldn't be just sessions that are just reporting out on work that's actually happening as a key part of the program.
 >>LIESYL FRANZ:   That is one of my points.  There are several in there.
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:   I know.  And then I think another one of your points is, to me, kind of an inherent assumption that because it's a DC stream of work on artificial intelligence, that somehow it doesn't have its own set of diversity and own set of breadth in the topics, which I just want to make sure we understand that they're all operating to those same sort of requirements and expectations as we try to insist here in the workshop.  And I'm sure there's a great variety of performance against then but they're not monolithic, single streamed.
 So let me continue going through the queue and then we'll have to see what the MAG wants to do with Liesyl's suggestion and of course with the overall profile we actually -- we actually have there.
 So next in the queue, I think is it Julian?
 Or was that an old hand?  If it's an old hand, then Raquel, you have the floor.
 >>RAQUEL GATTO:   Thank you very much, Lynn.
 So I have three points.  The first point is related to the open forums.  I would like to point out that regarding the first one about the book, ISOC is not an organizer.  We are part of -- we contributed to the book, but we are not an organizer.  I think there was a mistake in the list of organizers there.  I think it's a request from the Ministry of Argentina.
 And on the more high-level point on open forums, I would be careful because of the role of the MAG.  And I think Chengetai touched on that yesterday, on defining the criterias and not changing the game because the way it's put there, it's not a prerogative but it's a slot made for the governments and for organizations to showcase their activities and interact with the community.
 So perhaps as the MAG role is different from the workshop proposals evaluation and more into defining those criteria moving forward or perhaps going back to those proposers and making clear rules, just as a more high-level point.  It's not an issue with the book itself or anything like this. 
 Full disclaimer, ISOC is one of the requesters for the number 40 where we are showcasing our global Internet report and the activities we are doing within the community and outreaching also for IGF community.
 On the main session discussion, I would pick on some of the points that I think Liesyl raised.  I think it's important -- we were discussing earlier about those sessions that they need to feed and integrate into each other. 
 We were discussing during the lunch break, we did a quick meeting with the CENB folks interested from the MAG.  And that's one of our suggestions, for example, that although we have this session, it's important to bring more of the discussions and the comments we had for the CENB.  It needs to have a feed and somehow integrate with the main session if any is around the SDGs.  And this exercise should be done by all the tracks.  I do believe that.  So thank you very much.
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Thank you, Raquel.
 I think it's Helani next, although I thought I saw Markus' name a moment ago.  That was an old hand.  Is it Helani? 
 Okay, Helani, you have the floor.
 >>HELANI GALPAYA:  I know this was touched upon yesterday.  Could somebody list in really short bullet point format, give me the criteria for what an open session is meant to be and what are the rules for getting in?  I have heard particularly that obviously governments can apply.  So can other international -- intergovernmental organizations.  Can civil society organizations that are regional or international apply?  And what is the definition of "regional" and "international"?  What are these things?  I'm really unclear about this.
 >>CHENGETAI MASANGO:  It's on the Web site.  I'll ask Luis to put it up, if he can.
 Civil society organizations can, if they have global, I mean, activities that reach at a global level.  APC, I think.
 >>HELANI GALPAYA:  CGI.br, I love them by the way, it's not a criticism.  They are not a global organization, but they are in the list.
 >>CHENGETAI MASANGO:  But they are in collaboration with somebody else, right?
 >> (off microphone).
 >>HELANI GALPAYA:  I'm really just trying to understand.  That's it.
 >>CHENGETAI MASANGO:  Let's put it up.
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  You want to put up the criteria or the list?
 >>CHENGETAI MASANGO:  The criteria.
 So if I can read that out for people:  All governments, treaty-based international organizations, and global organizations with international scope and presence, with operations across regions, dealing with Internet governance-related issues are invited to submit requests for an open forum.
 So international in scope, across regions.  Open forums should focus on governmental organizations, IG-pertinent activities during the past year and also allow sufficient time for questions and discussions.  Governments and treaty-based international organizations will be given slots on a priority basis. 
 We try to make it as simple as possible but also quite strict.
 >>HELANI GALPAYA:  By that criteria, really, CGI.br is a Brazilian organization.  The Council of Europe has something that really just sounds like a really good workshop proposal, right, and it's not talking about past activities.  So where do we draw the line?
 >>CHENGETAI MASANGO:  Council of Europe has three.  Those are the ones we are going to work at and we are going to reduce into the one.  But as an organization with international scope, Council of Europe meets that criteria.
 As for CGI, I'll have to take another look at that because, yeah.  I mean, I'm just being honest here.
 >> (off microphone).
 >>CHENGETAI MASANGO:  But if it was a government, then yes.
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Let's call --
 >>CHENGETAI MASANGO:  So they qualify.  Yeah, no, no.  That's straight.  They qualify.
 >> RODRIGO VALLE DA FONSECA:  Is it clear?  It's a council but it's a government council.  Sorry.  Can I?
 >>CHENGETAI MASANGO:  Yes.
 >> RODRIGO VALLE DA FONSECA:  Thank you.  Thank you, Madam Chair.  It's a council but it's a government council.  It's multistakeholder but the government creates the CGI.
 >>CHENGETAI MASANGO:  And if the government supports it, then yes.
 >> RODRIGO VALLE DA FONSECA:  Thank you.
 >> SYLVIA CADENA:  I think the point is just try to review that.  In the past with open forums, ten -- like just a small percentage of the overall program.  This is 30 percent of the program.  Just have a look at those and review.  I'm not saying drop this, drop that, draw a line here.  Let's have an analysis and review.  So when it is communicated to them, these expectations are met because there are some that are not that straightforward to see if they fit or if they don't fit.  That's my only point.
 >>CHENGETAI MASANGO:  It's true.  We did make an effort to encourage governments and international organizations to apply.  So that's a result of a successful outreach effort.
 [ Laughter ]
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  I think we have 27.  With three Council of Europe going to one and the book one coming out --
 >> (off microphone).
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Mic.
 >>CHENGETAI MASANGO:  Yes, we have to look at the book one again.  Yes.  You're right.  I mean, again, let's list for discussion.  You are making good points.  The secretariat has to go back to the list and look at that book launch again.  If it's just a generic book launch, it is true that book launches were done at lunchtime or afterwards.  That is true.  But if it is something more than just a book launch -- I'm sorry I haven't looked at it, refreshed my mind with it -- then it stays.
 We have marked it and we will review it, yes.
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Also going back to the queue.  Sumon, you have been very patient.  Thank you.  You have the floor.
 >> SUMON AHMED SABIR:  Thank you, Chair.  Actually, I would like to comment -- just want to make a comment on the main sessions, the eight or six or whatever it is, to address one issue raised by the French ambassador started, the inclusion of more local speakers.  And that really -- I also feel it promotes and encourages governments to being involved to take more host IGF initiatives.
 So the main sessions are actually raised by the MAG members (indiscernible).  So if we can work with a local organizer to have at least one speaker in the main session from the French people so that will fill them more into the program.  Thank you. 
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Thank you.  I think that's a key point to take into account and at the same time it's a global organization so we need to get the right speakers in line.  I think it's a good point.
 Rasha, you have the floor.
 >>RASHA ABDULLA:  Thank you, Lynn.  Just a suggestion regarding the open forums since they seem to take up a big chunk of the program, acknowledging the nature of the IGF and preserving the role of the secretariat and deciding on the final list.
 But this is just an idea that is maybe to help the secretariat with the process.  I'm wondering if we can have a very short review form for the MAG members, just like a score from 1 to 5 and a little space for comments.  And that list is only meant to be for the secretariat.  They don't need to publish it.  They don't need to publish the results, but just to get a feel of what the MAG thinks about every individual open forum.  Just wondering if that might help.
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  I mean, I think that's maybe something we can take into account for next year.  We continue to refine the roles of the MAG and the secretariat.  I'm not sure what criteria we would rate them on other than those few lines that are up there and I think we have to trust that the secretariat is doing that for this year, and we obviously can't add new criteria or new -- so if people are okay, I would ask the secretariat to go back and look carefully at all of the proposals that are there. 
 Maybe as we accept the proposals, we can make it clear as well that we will continue to look hard at these and that they need to, whatever, be -- allow enough time for questions.  They need to be robust, whatever, so we actually have something that we can come back and give them feedback on, if, in fact, we think it's just a one-way presentation of an activity because that's not the purpose of those slots.
 I think that's a -- something that would be good to think about perhaps going forward, Rasha.  I don't know how that would be done in any kind of an appropriate time frame now with everything else in front of the MAG and it's kind of changing the rules.
 >>RASHA ABDULLA:  If I just may, I really mean a very brief thing.  And it's only meant to guide the secretariat and give them a feel of what the MAG thinks about the open forums.  I don't mean to interfere in the decision.
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  No, I know.  I'm just sitting here thinking there's now one hell of a lot of work in front of the secretariat and we're down one person in two hours and it's summer vacation.  MAG's going away.  They're going away as well.  I think this is probably a case where we need to say it's good enough for this year and move forward.
 I think the only thing we could do -- I mean, right now we're sort of moving around the edges.  Is it 28 or 27 or 26?  It's not is it 12?  And maybe that's something we need to try and get ahead of for future venues when we actually understand the venue early enough that we understand the days and the capacity early enough because then we could say, there's a limited number of slots.  It's going to be by region.  We could put criteria on it so that we did perhaps get to a smaller number.
 Mary, you have the floor.  Let's keep moving through these quickly but we need to come to an agreement on the NRI requests, DCs, BPFs s, the overall profile and then what we do with main sessions.
 >>MARY UDUMA:  Okay.  Thank you very much.  I just want to seek clarification from Liesyl on her comment on the main session.  I hope I'm free to say that.  I'm not talking about open forum because I believe that's something that's developed over the years on what we have been getting out of the open forum.  So I think to attract governments, I think the open forum is critical.  So even if it's occupying 30% of our program or 20% of it, if government is missing in IGF, an intergovernmental organization is missing in IGF, then we would just be talking to ourselves.  And we need to get them in and they will also support us at the local level.
 Having said that, I come back to Liesyl.  Just a point of clarification, what is the essence of the main session?  What was that supposed to do at the main session?  I don't have -- I don't have clear understanding of why the main session should talk of issues than telling the whole world that came together what the dynamic coalitions or BPFs have been doing and then taking a topic that would interest everybody.
 So I need a clarification of that.  I need to know what the objective is all about for the open session.
 Having said that, I know that we are proposing open session for NRIs and also for access and connectivity.  And I think there are innovative topics we are looking at, they are very, very critical to the whole world and especially the developing world.  So if you can tell me what we are looking at that the main session is not giving or meeting the objectives so that we could will see from next MAG -- next IGF, maybe we can have a different look on it.  Thank you.
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Thank you, Mary.
 Rodrigo, you have the floor.
 >>RODRIGO VALLE DA FONSECA:  I'm so sorry, Madam Chair.  It was to clarify about the CGI.  I forgot to lower hand.  Sorry.
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  That's great.  Thank you.
 Julian, you have the floor.
 >>JULIAN CASABUENAS: Thank you, Madam Chair.
 From the Association for Progressive Communications, we want to propose that MAG consider to propose to offer an open forum space in Paris for the U.N. Panel on Digital Cooperation.  Thank you.
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Can you help me understand what an open forum space is?  Oh, sorry.
 [ Laughter ]
 Julian, thank you.  Sorry.  I just stopped reading it.
 Yes, I think that's probably a reasonable workshop session to set aside.  Thank you.
 Timea, I think you are next.  You have the floor.
 >>TIMEA SUTO:  Thank you, Chair.  Just on the topic of main sessions, I want to echo something that my colleague Mary said earlier, which was a really good point.  What is the purpose?  Why are we doing them?  And I think the main sessions -- whenever a person goes to a conference, the first thing they look at is who are the keynote speakers, who are the highlighted -- what are the highlighted sessions?  If I want to understand what the organization and the event is about, I look at the highlighted sessions which is in my mind the same thing as a main session at the IGF.
 And I think those are really good opportunities to really highlight what we are doing here and the themes and the issues that are coming out from the IGF, which is why I also support what Liesyl said earlier of trying to pull together the different streams that are under the IGF, be that intersessional work, NRIs, the main policy stream as Raquel said, to try and get the messages from this work and bring them under common themes and common understandings we have and try to build high-level participation, good points on the program and really showcase what we're doing here, not individually in this stream or that stream but together under a theme that we all agree on. 
 And I think that's what we mean by having thematic sessions.  And with having only six days and limited time, I think that's the interest of all of us to try and build these elements together rather than individually.  Thank you.
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Thank you, Timea.
 Liesyl, you're next in the queue.  And I also want to extend the offer to Markus if he wants to come in and talk at all from the perspective of, you know, your role in the DCs.  I don't think otherwise we have really kind of representation here.  So that.
 And then maybe I could ask Anja to also talk about the NRI requests so we have that clearly in front of us.  And then we'll come back to that schedule and start to figure out where we are.  We need to get the shape of that agreed before we leave here today.
 So, Liesyl, you have the floor and then I will call Markus and Anja.
 Liesyl.
 >>LIESYL FRANZ:  Thank you, Chair.  I only raised my hand to offer my version of response to the question that was directed to me.  Is that permissible?
 Thank you for the question, Mary, because I think it's a good one.  Over the course of the years, essentially two-ish criteria for the main sessions have been that they are in larger rooms, they take up three-hour blocks which would be three-hour block for one main session or two or three.  Probably two is the most we've ever done.  And they are translated into all of the U.N. languages.
 I think even historically they were the only ones that were transcripted, but that has changed over time.
 The way that they've been conducted I think over the 12 years has varied, of how they're devised, how they're organized, what the topics are, but I think it's fair to say from my perspective that they've always had a connection to the main theme, the original IGF main themes, and then some massaging of those with sometimes either specific topics or even broader topics.  So they, over the years, I think have been experimented different ways on how to address those main theme topics.  Or a significant issue or event.  For example, in Bali there was a main session on surveillance.  In 2015, there was a main session on the WSIS+10 review.  So accommodating, you know, timely issues that the IGF community is interested in.
 That's, from my perspective and my understanding, but I of course defer to the secretariat, current and former, to give an official view.
 I hope that helps.
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:   Thank you.  Before I go to -- let's take Markus.  Before you talk about the DCs, is there anything that either you or Chengetai would like to add following up from Liesyl's comments specific to main sessions?
 >>MARKUS KUMMER:   Just a few words to sayest both Timea and Liesyl described very well the purpose of a main session.  And historically, the MAG devoted most of its attention in shaping the main session, actually at the MAG meeting.
 So the main sessions are -- I think Timea made it sort of clear what the average participant at an give looks at first in the program, as they are the main showcase.  They are translated in all U.N. languages.  I can imagine in France there may be French people who are not that familiar with English vocabulary, and obviously they will be grateful to be able to rely on translation of the main session.  So they are in many ways the centerpiece of the meeting.
 Now to the DCs.  The DCs were given in the past three years main session, and this year they actually looked at the approach they might have taken and as it was to be a more thematic approach, they agreed to coalesce around one of the main themes, and they propose holding a session for the theme development, innovation, and economic issues.  And they would like to give special focus to sustainable development on this issue.  And that is the proposal that is on the table for the MAG to consider.
 Thank you.
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:   So, Markus, the proposal you sent to the MAG was for a 90-minute main session for the DCs around a theme plus the individual DC slots.
 So with the DC slots, do we -- I mean, if, in fact, -- Liesyl used the term kind of organizational or operational meeting.  If it's an organizational or operational meeting, historically we've made rooms available for those sorts of meetings but they're not treated as though they're a full part of the program because it's sort of kind of internal working group meetings.
 If, in fact, they are meant to engage the community, not a one-way report out but a real engagement since that's something we want to do across all of the programs, then I think there's a pitch for it to be part of the full process.  But any sense for how the DCs are thinking about it?  Because as I understand it, they don't actually submit proposals.  They simply have to have been active and submitted a paper or something.  Is that a fair statement, Markus and Chengetai?
 >>MARKUS KUMMER:   The selection process is slightly different.  Essentially the DCs have to submit proof to the secretariat that they have done work, but we have in the past been asked for the DCs that want to be part of the main session to also submit papers as an input into the session.  But the process in that sense was different.  And as to your question, the DC sessions are usually here to discuss substantive issues the DCs are dealing with.  They're not organizational in a sense of what's the next deadline when we should meet again but they're really here to discuss the papers they have prepared.
 And some of them done real substantive work throughout the year, and the point was that 60 minutes was just too short to go threw all the papers.  But of course everybody from the community is invited to join the sessions.  They are open by definition.  This is one of the preconditions.  The DCs have to subscribe.  They have to respect the principle of being open, admitting anyone who is interested in their work and having open lists so that everybody can follow their work.
 So these are open sessions and the more commune engagement --
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:   Just a follow-up question, then we'll go to Sala.  But are they -- and operational organization is obviously not the right term, but are they primarily working sessions?  Because there's the opportunity to give them, I think, possibly rooms for their working sessions, assuming we can actually find a room for that.  We could probably even put them in the program so that people understand that there are these community working sessions in the background.  But do they require -- and I suppose if it's internal working session, do they actually deserve a proper workshop slot, I think is the question that I'm putting out to the table.
 >>MARKUS KUMMER:   Well, they are working sessions, indeed, but I mean they are open working sessions.  And what the DCs, I think, would like, that they are part of the official program.  Also, obviously it's in their interest to attract as many possible participants and future participants.  But they are not here so much to explain the work that they are doing.  That's why the DCs also want the main session, to get exposure for those who don't want to dig deep into their work.  But there are more working sessions where they really look at their work, but obviously newcomers would always be welcome to that.
 But as I said, they would like to be part of the official program and have a 90-minute session to do their work.
 Thank you.
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:   Let me -- We're getting late to the hour.  I think a 90-minute session for 15 DCs for a working session in the very compressed timetable we have is a lot.  Everybody is reducing a lot.  We're taking workshops down by 40%.  You know, at this point, there's no kind of comparable reduction there from the fact that we stayed at 15 for 90. 
 What I was trying to understand is whether or not -- and maybe there is some additional criteria, but if it is primarily a working model, maybe there is an opportunity to give them a room, and maybe they get 90 minutes, and this is kind of community working sessions or something.  So they're visible, they're advertised, but it doesn't need to take up a formal -- formal workshop slot.
 I'm just trying to think a little creatively here because it's a packed program.  And I'll let you respond to that but then go to Sala.  No, Markus, please.  It was a direct question.
 >>MARKUS KUMMER:   I think your suggestion is a very good one.  I think we can be creative and flexible, maybe also use 30 minutes that would be part of the lunch break or something like that, or starting a bit earlier in the morning outside the official meeting times.
 But the main thing for them is to have the room and 90 minutes.
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:   And just to be clear, since it was said in a hurry, I very much support the work of the DCs.  I think this intersessional work is extremely important.  It's what keeps the community engaged throughout the year and it actually delivers work and value.  So I'm really just trying to understand what's the right profile here of the program given some hard tradeoffs that we need to make.
 So, Sala, thank you for your patience.  You have the floor.
 >>SALANIETA TAMANIKAIWAIMARO:   Thank you, Chair.
 Markus, I noted your proposal via email where you had proposed -- where you communicated to the MAG that they were considering two options, A and B, A being the report and B being discussions around a theme.  And I've just been hearing Liesyl's comments and the chair's comments.
 In terms of -- in terms of the DC wanting to -- I mean not wanting.  In terms of -- My personal views are that the DCs are part of the IGF, and they should be featured within the main program.  And I really appreciate your flexibility, especially the DCs' flexibility in terms of noting our constraints with time and room and that sort of thing, to be willing to go into the lunch hour and also, you know, going outside of the usual IGF time, which means, like, early morning.  And please communicate to the DCs had a it's appreciated.
 One of the things I'd also like to communicate to you for the record in terms of the transcripts, even though I put it on the mailing list, is to please -- please commend the hard-working members of all the DCs for the amazing work that they've been doing.  I went through the reports that they have been doing.  Massive, massive work.  And it's critical because we always have newcomers who come into the IGF.  And the French ambassador very -- he articulated yesterday that, you know, that he'd been doing outreach to even the French community, to those who hadn't even heard of the IGF process.  And it's important that they understand what the intersessional work.  And I think if you -- yes, we should have them in, you know, like your working rooms where you have your -- your working meetings and that sort of thing, but at some stage, to allow people, the community to actually access and to know the kind of work that you're doing.  Particularly -- particularly especially because a lot of the work that you do has tangible impact on changes in the landscape as we've seen with the example with the French where the regulator implemented one of the DC's work in terms of net neutrality.  We were informed in about June, I think.  Around about June.  So with that, Chair, thank you.
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:   Thank you.  We need to move, you know, quite quickly through the next couple of sessions here, so let me just try something.
 With respect to the DC sessions, what if we go away and work with the secretariat and see if we can find the rooms, work towards seeing if we can find a series of 90-minute slots, and that they would be kind of community sessions.  So they would be advertised within, you know, the IGF set of activities, but that that would allow us to free up some program workshop session slots.  Is that a reasonable -- reasonable approach?
 Looking to the MAG.  I mean...
 At one level we have a lot of things that are being oversubscribed now, which as Chengetai alluded to is good news.  The bad news, of course, is that when you're oversubscribed, that means you need to make some hard tradeoffs.
 So I saw lots of heads nodding yes.  So we will assume that.  Hopefully that returns some additional slots to the workshop sessions as well.
 BPF.  Can we just touch that quickly?  We have a request for four plus the CENB.  I think that is work that is critical.  It's work of the MAG.  I don't know if there's any further clarification needed on those.  The proposal is for either 90-minute or 60-minute sessions.  Have you had any indication, Eleonora?
 >>ELEONORA MAZZUCCHI:   Sorry, no.  Just a quick note that they're not requests, meaning that the secretariat didn't hear from BPF coordinators that they wanted these slots.  Just to differentiate them with DC sessions.  They're -- Yeah, they're slotted as part of the program process.
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:   So they always do have slots, and it's pretty good.  Maybe even 60 minutes is enough if push comes to shove.  They've had a series of -- I guess they've always had 90 minutes in the past so we need to go back with them and check, check what their requirement is.  So we'll do that offline.  It is really important work, so, from my perspective, if they think 90 minutes is really what's required, then we should work to support that.  And we'll have to ask the CENB coordinators the same thing.  The same thing as well.
 Open forums.  We were sort of down to 27 with the secretariat going to take another hard look at those.  I'd like to invite Anja now to give us a really quick resume of what the NRIs are looking for in terms of main sessions and collaborative sessions.  And then I think we have to come back to the topic of the main sessions and how we're going to organize and structure that work, and also complete the workshop selection process.  So those are the tasks ahead of us in the next hopefully half hour, 40 minutes, and see if there's any other AOB.  So Anja, you have the floor.
 >>ANJA GENGO:   Thank you very much.
 Very quickly, during the taking stock process, the NRIs also took stock of their own participation at the 12th annual meeting of the IGF in Geneva, and it was agreed unanimously that the main session was extremely useful to the NRIs for their internal engagement.  But also, I think there was an excellent feedback from the wider community to that session that it provided an excellent content. 
 In addition, it was also agreed that the collaborative sessions were excellent pilot project that the MAG agreed to implement last year and very useful for the NRIs.  But I would say the taking stock process that was conducted across the wider community of the IGF also showed that there was an excellent feedback to those sessions by the stakeholders that are not directly affiliated with the NRIs.
 So in that sense, following that decision of the NRIs, in February we conducted a process for agreeing on a topic of mutual interest for more than a hundred, at that time, recognized NRIs.  So with this, I would like to inform the MAG that just recently, two weeks ago, we managed to finalize this process, and it was decided that the NRIs' main session will focus on the evolution of Internet governance.  Specifically within the thematic framework, the session will focus on the application of the multistakeholder model at the national and regional levels.  And in this context the NRIs will exchange good practices and challenges that are confronting impacting Internet policies at their respective levels.
 Of course the session format for this session will be developed in accordance with the IGF main session guidelines as it was last year.
 When it comes about the collaborative sessions, the process for deciding on the topics is under way.  The reason why we did not finalize our list is because the MAG did not finalize the list of workshop proposals, and we would like to avoid the duplication of the topics.  But I have to say to the MAG, once the workshop proposals are finally adopted, we will be very quick, because we already have the inputs and we already have the metrics.  So it's just a matter of whether we will decide to go with the first, second or third priority, depending on the selection of the workshops.
 I will just also kindly remind that we have a very good communication with the Best Practice Forums co-facilitators, and specifically with the cybersecurity BPFs.  Next week we will be discussing potential synergies.  So maybe in that sense there could be a collaboration between that specific BPF and the (indiscernible) in terms of the cybersecurity topic.
 And before just I would like to conclude and kind of remind the MAG that the NRIs were really last year full of understanding for all the difficult conditions we had, especially I'm referring to the split that was assigned to the NRIs main session where the NRIs compromised that their session will have a split in between the two segments of an hour and a half long.  And it really affected, I have to say, the debate that was happening because it happened at the peak of the debate.  But I think the format was excellent.  And I'm just reminding this because I know there are those impressions from 2016, NRIs main session when the format, unfortunately, was affected by the sudden change in the room setting.  So we didn't have a roundtable, we had a panel and that, of course, also affected the discussion.  But I think last year that was, to a good extent, corrected.  And I believe the NRIs are very much self-aware that this year that session will primarily aim to be very interactive and to provide excellent content to the wider community.
 Thank you. 
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:   Thank you, Anja.
 Any questions, just quickly on the NRI request in terms of clarification on the request before we move back I think to the table, the schedule table?
 Luis, maybe if you can just put that up.
 So I think the kind of pinch point we're facing at the moment is around the main session slots again.  Those sessions that would take place in one of the larger rooms with interpretation.
 We essentially have eight slots if we take the four slots and break them up into two sessions.  And the sessions would have to be kind of roughly about 80 minutes apiece or you know 60 minutes and a hundred minutes or something because of the need to tear the room down and set the room up for the next one.  And the hard limitation there are the interpreters, the U.N. interpreters.  They work in three-hour blocks.  And we even tried to see if perhaps we could get, you know, a half hour break in between and make the block three and a half hours long so we'd have more time, and that's just not possible.  If I understand correctly, after three hours you bring in another team of interpreters, so of course it doubles the expense.
 So that's what we're faced with.  If I just tot up quickly the requests for main sessions, if there's assumptions that we have a main session for each one of the themes we have -- and I think we should probably look at all of the eight themes quickly and see if that is an appropriate assumption going forward.  I think there was sort of an assumption that was true -- that would give us eight requests there and a request for dynamic coalitions to have a main session and the NRIs to have a main session.  So that would be ten requests for eight slots. 
 Again, I will remind everybody these slots are significantly shorter than they have -- most of them have actually been in the past years.  They were three hours.  On the other hand, I think it will really serve to focus them and get to the critical points and the high points really quickly.
 Just trying to peel that back a little bit with the eight main themes, one of the suggestions might be given the NRIs have suggested they actually look at Internet governance in national and multistakeholder -- I can't remember the title, but it's probably just because of the time it is here in the week.  One of the themes we had, of course, was around the evolution of Internet governance.  It's not a huge leap to say that with the four or five workshops that I think we have identified for the main part of the program, that that could be a main session that even a couple of the MAG members could work with the NRIs to ensure that we were sort of bridging the NRIs' notion with some of the other workshops that are there.  If that was accepted, that's nine for eight slots.
 >> NEBOJSA REGOJE:  I have a question.  This NRI main session, would it be for three hours or just one and a half?
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Every one of the main sessions has to be for somewhere between an hour or an hour and a half, not only because of the limitations on the room but because there's been overwhelming comments that three hours is just too long.  Of course, there is another proposal we don't give the NRIs a main session slot.
 >> Question:  Is that on top of the six sessions that the NRIs were asking?
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  The NRIs are asking for between four and six collaborative sessions and that is in addition to that, yes.
 >> There is no proposal yet calling all the content for those four or six or whatever?
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  They have said they would come back to the MAG with the proposals once they understood what the workshop selection from the MAG process was so they weren't duplicating or redundant.  They would come back.  They have a proposed set of themes and they wanted to do one complementary program.
 Christine and then Paul.
 >>CHRISTINA ARIDA:  Yes, Thank you, Chair.  I think it was actually the evolution of the Internet that was proposed -- of Internet governance that was proposed by the NRIs with a focus on multistakeholder process. 
 And I think this idea that you have put forward speaks for the innovation that Liesyl was suggesting, that we actually do that.  And so if there is a group from the MAG that can really work with NRIs to do that, I think that would be a very good way to go on with that.  I actually support that very much.  Thank you very much.
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  That might be the opportunity to look at some of the things that are coming out of the High-Level Digital Cooperation Panel and use that evolution of Internet governance to kind of support or share stories or wherever that kind of direction evolves, to make that linkage even.
 Paul, you have the floor.
 >>PAUL ROWNEY:  Thank you.  There's a sort of request that -- listen to the whole thing before anyone shoots me.  There's a request around the themes that there should be something on access.  I see access crosses as a bit of a -- crosses a lot of them.  What I'm suggesting is when we talk -- when the themes have their sessions, that access is highlighted or the lack of access in each of the themes where it's relevant rather than having a separate discussion on that.
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  That's actually a useful suggestion.  If we were to put up quickly a list of the eight themes, that might actually lead us to determine whether or not they were all kind of independent or, in fact, could be aggregated. 
 I'm sure Luis will find it like magic in just a minute here or we can all open our spreadsheets back up.
 Lianna, you have the floor.
 >>LIANNA GALSTYAN:  Thank you, Lynn.
 Just to support the idea of collaborative session being a coordinator of the Armenian IGF, I would like to say that last year which was the pilot program of the collaborative session, we have faced those sessions and were really very successful.  And on the taking stock, as Anja mentioned, we have received very good input and feedback that these sessions were really very good.
 And as this is a bottom-up process with the NRIs, we have launched that, issues, whatever we have on national and regional levels.  They will come back with that topics whenever we set.
 I don't want the MAG to have an impression that NRIs do not work on that.  Everything is ready there, and the topics are very relevant on a national and regional level.
 So we reserve spaces for the collaborative sessions would be  a useful addition on the program for the overall IGF.  Thank you.
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Thank you, Lianna.
 Let me just quickly go through the eight themes we had in our call for workshops.  We had the cybersecurity, trust and privacy.  We had digital inclusion and accessibility; evolution of Internet governance; human rights, gender and youth; emerging technologies; technical and operations; development, innovation, and economic issues.  I'm missing one.  Media and content.
 So I guess the question in front of us is:  Do we think that those are all worthy of individual main sessions?  And I guess, Paul, your comment was -- I don't know if the digital inclusion, accessibility, that you would say was not a separate topic but we should make sure it is embedded in as many of the kind of main themes?
 >>PAUL ROWNEY:  Unless you are specifically referring to the access portion, I actually see that's covered under the digital inclusion as a subtheme.  So that's fine.
 I might get shot for this.  Things like human rights and gender and youth cross everything.  So whether that's a separate or whether each of them address that in the sessions, I think could be considered.
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Nobody should get shot for anything here.  I think we all fully recognize that we are really respectful of the different diversities and priorities and perspectives.  We are all just trying to make a tight schedule work. 
 Wisdom, you have the floor.
 >>WISDOM DONKOR:  Thank you, Madam Chair.  My name is Wisdom for the record.
 Looking at the main sessions, I think we have to look at this strategically.  What would be the interest topics for the participants that will be coming, most especially the government officials that will be coming to the IGF?  What are the topics that we are looking for?
 I'm thinking that, one -- access and connectivity is one major issue when you come to the developing countries.  So we need to look at this carefully.
 And then number two, what are we to do about education?  We are talking about outreach, capacity-building, and all that.  Out of education, you have the cybersecurity.  You have the gender issue.  You have the trust issues.  You have the child online protection issues.  And all of that comes with it.
 And then we are also lucky to find ourselves within the UNESCO environment.  And at UNESCO more or less, like, we're globally with educational institutions and all that.
 So we are at a very strategic position where we can reach out to everybody through the educational systems in the world, most especially the developing countries.
 So we have to look at this carefully and get a theme that would be educational or something.  And that will help us address -- if you travel a lot -- if you travel, UNESCO is everywhere in the world.  So thank you, Chair.
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Thank you, Wisdom.
 Zeina, and then I have a proposal to put forward. 
 Zeina, you have the floor.
 >>ZEINA BOU HARB:  I was looking at the first two, digital inclusion and accessibility.  And the other one is emerging technologies.  I don't know if it's possible maybe to have a session that merge the access.  It can be like firm access to emerging technologies.  You add the access and connectivity to that part.  We will have one. 
 And the digital inclusion can be added to development because as I see, it speaks about online education, about indigenous people.  It's related mostly to economic and development, so we can have one slot freed.
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Thank you, Zeina.
 Helani and then I will come in.  Helani, you have the floor.
 >>HELANI GALPAYA:  Thank you.  The issue of emerging technologies is mostly about blockchain and artificial intelligence and not about inclusion and access.  So they're not a natural merger candidate, right?  That could be completely different topics.
 >>ZEINA BOU HARB:  You can call it access to emerging technologies to have the link between both, and you remove the inclusion to the developing --
 >>HELANI GALPAYA:  To me it doesn't flow naturally at all.  They are completely different.
 >> I would like to support Helani on that one.
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Let me just quickly -- I have one quick question, and then I will come to the proposal.
 I'm just tired, I guess.  The High-Level Forum on Digital Cooperation -- every time I tried to get the acronym I get tongue tied. 
 The high-level panel, they've requested an open forum or in the process of requesting an open forum.  And I think it's probably reasonable to give them that or a workshop slot or something.
 One of the options is do we think there's anything that's substantive enough in that that would rise to a main session.  And what just flashed through my mind quickly -- I'm not proposing this but what flashed through my mind was the WSIS+10 session we had a few years ago.  I thought that was a great session, but there was a specific set of text in front of everybody that we could actually walk through and get the individual stakeholders to comment on.  So there was something fairly concrete.
 This is probably still quite early and maybe something which is more of a workshop open forum where there's a debate and dialogue and discussion is perhaps more --
 >>CHENGETAI MASANGO:  It will be after the first meeting.
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  It will be after the first meeting which is in September, of course.  And this is in November.
 So they would have something further to report on and update, but that could be still a workshop or an open forum-type session where they -- I mean, at one level the difference here is interpretation.  It's all Web streamed and it's all transcribed.  This is just a matter of whether or not it's in a room that has interpretation.
 So I'll leave that there for a moment.  If we look at the eight themes that are there -- and, again, I'm just throwing things out there.  This is not -- I'm not sure we need a main theme on technical and operations, if I look at what's actually in the technical and operational theme.  It was net neutrality and a DNS workshop, and those really have been around for quite a long time.  If we're really trying to drive towards newer, kind of really current topics, I'm not sure, again, looking at workshops that are there that would arise to that.
 I do think emerging technologies is good.  I mean, that's the whole point of a lot of the concerns in the U.N. around frontier technologies and artificial intelligence and impacts on society and data and jobs.  So I think that's a pretty rich area.
 I obviously think development, innovation, and economic is an extremely rich area.  Some of the comments I had a moment ago.  And, of course, we try to continue to reach out to the private sector.
 Media and content, I'm not sure that I think that that rises, too.  But I may just not have been thinking about it enough or put it in the context -- which I think Frederic was nodding yes -- would agree.  And France in particular is a country that's very reach around a whole host of those kind of notions.  So we can leave that there for another minute.
 I'm assuming cybersecurity, trust and privacy, again, is topical and interesting and vague enough that that would stay in.  And digital inclusion and accessibility.
 So if I can just continue with two more.  We have the evolution of Internet governance where I think to make that interesting, there needs to be a kicker or something.  And I actually like the idea of doing something like that with the NRIs.  It really talks about what the evolution is and how it's actually impacting at a national and local level, which I think is something that a lot of people are really trying to understand now.  Particularly when we hear things like multistakeholders are dying and these models aren't really working.  I think when we look at the local levels, in fact, it's anything but that.  I also think it's anything but that at the U.N. and international levels.  So that would be a proposal to keep that one in as well.
 And then we have the human rights, gender, and youth.  And there's probably a very strong pitch for that to be a main session.  There was a proposal that said really all of those things you could argue are across.  And we have relatively few human rights session, I think, in the program now.  Or is that not true after the 68?  Not true?  After the rebalancing.  And we have the request for dynamic coalitions. 
 So even if we took out technology and operations and we gave the evolution of Internet governance slot to the NRIs' request and figured out how we integrated that, we would still have one, two, three, four, five, six, seven -- actually we have eight, including a media and content slot.  So we just go through that again.  I told you which ones are taken.  If we do that, we have cybersecurity, trust, and privacy.  We would have digital inclusion and accessibility.  We'd have one on evolution of Internet governance, but that would be the one that we would ask the NRIs to take the lead on developing with some interface between the MAG.  We'd have emerging technologies; development, innovation, and economics; media and content.  Did I say human rights, gender and youth earlier?  And DCs.  That's eight.
 The only other option is to get to an even smaller list if we think that having kind of eight themes of 80 minutes or something is just too kind of overpopulating it.  Otherwise, if we really think we want main sessions that are really tied to the themes the community has identified as important, then I think that's the current proposal on the table.
 Other proposals are absolutely welcome as well. 
 So we have Sylvia on the floor and then I think Liesyl.  I can see you were. 
 Sylvia and then Liesyl.
 Sylvia, you have the floor.
 >>SYLVIA CADENA:  Thanks, Lynn.  Well, I'm a bit confused because on the scenarios, we had only four main sessions planned, right?
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  We had four slots of three hours each, and the proposal is that they get split.
 >>SYLVIA CADENA:  Okay.  I think it would be -- it would make a lot of sense to follow the themes and the fact that the dynamic coalitions have asked for the session on development and innovation.  It kind of fits into the development and innovation and economic issues.  It could fit there same way as the NRIs are taking the lead on the evolution of Internet governance.  So that will kind of pick (indiscernible) that they grant this request that they use this because it fits into this scenario, I guess.
 My comment on the main sessions, or my question more, would be like what will be the input?  What can we give some input into those?  And my take there is, like, when I was reviewing some of the workshops that -- my substantive workshops, there were some workshops that had an excellent structure for a main session.  Like, they were covering a variety of issues that they were either well run -- I don't remember exactly.  But maybe there are people that are not included in some of the selection of workshops that could also co-facilitate some of those sessions and take the subsets of workshops that were submitted on that topic and figure out, out of that, what voices can you bring into the conversation?  So it brings more community input as possible that went through the workshop proposal.
 And on the -- on the -- the first one, on cybersecurity, privacy.  That one says trust?  If I'm not mistaken.  The first category is cybersecurity, privacy and trust?
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:   Trust and privacy, yes.
 >>SYLVIA CADENA:   Following on the input from the French delegate that trust is one of the things that they are more interested in, maybe we could also -- if we are looking for the leaders for each one of the main sessions, maybe the French local host could lead that one, or -- I don't know, I'm just throwing that out there.  If it fits into the general theme of trust and digital revolution, maybe one of those main sessions can actually fit.  And again, on a similar token of the others, take the subset of workshops that were on that that were not selected.  See what dynamic coalitions, BPFs.  Not to organize the French way of how this should be done but using the community input and having French speakers and whatever.  But trying to have that as a co-leading the process, if that might work.  I don't know.
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:   To answer your first question, the main sessions have been the responsibility of the MAG to organize, and, frankly, they can think as creatively and innovatively as they want with respect to topics and themes.
 Liesyl, you have the floor. 
 >>LIESYL FRANZ:  Thank you, Chair.  Liesyl Franz, U.S. government.  I figured I would finally follow the taking-the-mic protocol and introduce myself.  Apologies for that. 
 A couple things.  One thing I really liked Sylvia's suggestion about using the idea of the NRIs sort of taking the lead on the main session on the -- on the theme that was there, their proposal and repeating that with the DCs, with the development, innovation, economic issues.  I really think that that helps a lot with the integration that I've been talking about, and the sheer logistical issue of space constraints.
 The -- With regard to the themes, though, while I think we -- as I said earlier, we -- I do think we -- my view is that we keep all the themes.  I'm just not sure that my view then translates into that each theme needs to be reflected in a main session, particularly if it's sort of a lower -- there's a lower number of inputs in the workshop proposals.  So I suppose that would -- this is not a position.  This is a suggestion.  This would take media and content perhaps off the list of main sessions if that's a protocol you want to use to try to save space.  But if it gets beefed up in any of these other discussions about topics or issues, then I understand.  But I just think that may be one way to handle it.
 I think just having the theme reflected in the workshops that are on the program reflects the theme.  So hopefully those are two space issues.  Thank you.
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:   Okay.  Thank you.  Let me just be -- If we assume we have four slots of three hours each and we're splitting them in two, with the proposal I made we actually have room for eight slots, obviously.  And what falls out is we don't do a direct technical and operational one, because those topics were pretty much net neutrality and DNS sorts of things.  And the evolution of Internet governance theme is one that the NRIs could perhaps drive for us and with us.  And there's no need to force the dynamic coalition into development economic -- development, innovation, and economics unless we -- unless we want to.
 I know the DC -- no, no.  I know.  I know.  I know that that is their proposal.  I just know that development, innovation, and economics is a huge topic, and we really want to encourage private sector participation.  So I actually don't mind kind of maybe taking two shots at that.  And if we ask some of the MAG members, you know, that are very active in the private sector to go away and put a really hot presentation together with significant leaders, again given we're in Paris and the HLPC.  I'm just saying we don't need to cut another one out we actually had kind of a reasonable fit with the eight slots.  I just want to make sure that people aren't trying to force fit something that wasn't necessary to force fit.  And it doesn't mean we can't still do more innovation with the DCs in development, economic and private sector with the --
 >> One question of clarification.  We have nine themes; right?
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:   Eight themes.
 >> So then why drop in the operational?  If there are eight slots, why drop in it?
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:   Because the DCs were coming in.
 Let's make our comments really quick because I've got a long queue and it's quarter to.
 So Liesyl, you want to come back in two finger on that?
 >>LIESYL FRANZ:   Just quickly two finger.  One is I forgot to comment, Lynne, on your comment about the main sessions being organized by the MAG.  That's true, but the main session guidelines require that there is substantive and considerable consultation with the community.  So that could be the DCs, that could be (indiscernible).  That could be any number.  So I don't think that rule precludes sort of the partnering of the NRIs or DCs or CNBE or whatever in the context of a main session.
 The only other thing is that I think the decision about the main theme needs -- I think it might help to disaggregate whether we want a main theme on the topic -- the MAG, not me -- or based on the topics as a whole, and the number of -- perhaps the number of workshop proposals that came in, but I don't know that that means that we have to be wedded to the topics of the proposals that made the top whatever.  Top 60.  So on technical and operational, if there was a desire to capture another topic in technical and operation that doesn't reflect net neutrality and whatever the other one was, I can't remember, then perhaps that's something to consider.  And that would lead, in my view, toward using the same sort of idea with NRIs and the DCs and give the space to the theme.
 Thank you.
 >> (Off microphone).
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:   I'm sure we can do that, and there are a whole bunch of guidelines around how all these come together.  I think so I'll leave that right here.  Ask everybody to go to their comments.
 What it sounds like we have now is either the straw proposal that I put forward, which has actually and operational out and the DCs with a focus on economic and maybe another private sector, or we say that we want something different, if you want to have a discussion with private sector and DCs and understand whether that becomes one session and now there's another free session.  But then we need to very quickly get some idea of what that topic is and who we're going to get to organize it and structure it.
 So anyway.  Let's see.  Who is next in the queue?  Timea, you have the floor.
 >>TIMEA SUTO:   Thank you.  Following the comments from my colleagues here, I don't have answers.  I have a couple of suggestions.
 One, concerning a main session on multistakeholder model or the evolution of multistakeholderism -- and please don't take this as anything against the effort of NRIs to bring their perspectives together because that's not where it's coming from, but I feel that multistakeholder -- multistakeholderism is the essence of IGF.  It's a standard that we all hold, all of the sessions, all of the discussions around.  It's an example of how this works in practice.  So I'd rather have multistakeholderism, as Paul suggested, as cross-cutting theme across everything that is IGF.  So I don't know why we need a main session specifically on that.  Just thinking out loud.
 Second, on giving NRIs one main session, why don't we give the NRIs six or seven main sessions?  They all asked for collaborative sessions on certain topics.  Can't we build in those messages from those collaborative sessions into the main sessions that we have?  I suspect we will have a lot of overlaps on those themes.  We can even think about on what date to organize that collaborative session, the next day to have the main session or morning, afternoon, or something like that.  A suggestion again to try to build up more participation on issues that are really important to the communities, different spaces.
 And then regarding the proposal on -- on development and issues, we did have comment from the private sector MAG members and others, we had discussion a month ago or so, and we had a proposal put forward to the MAG with the title "Designing Effective Policies for Inclusive and Prosperous Societies.  What's Needed?"  What you wanted to propose a policy discussion around the elements of enabling policy environment that would help of the flourishing ICT and the Internet in different regional context.  But to actually have a concrete discussion on that.
 I am a bit skeptical that we will be able to do that in an hour and a half or an hour and 20 minutes, to leave room with people coming in and out, and with the contribution of 17 dynamic coalitions.  I think that's how many we have this year.  But we can give it a try.  Why not?
 But I think if we want to have meaningful session that can distill clear messages, we need to think about a little of narrowing down these broad themes, and then we can do that with the MAG members who are interested in organizing the session on the theme but we need to think about it a little bit.  But the time we have the themes we have and who is organizing them, to really find a specific focus.
 So these are three suggestions that are in my mind.  And I said they're not answers, but I'd love for you to consider them.
 Thank you.
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:   Okay.  Thank you.
 Just continuing to go down through the queue, Samuel.  Samuel Bambo, you have the floor.
 >>SAMUEL BAMBO:   Thank you, Chair.  My name is Samuel from Cameroon.
 We will be holding the IGF in the heart of Paris Peace Forum, and we have always wanted to use the IGF as a form way head of state can exercise some bragging right.  And I was thinking it might be wishful thinking, it might be, but I was thinking that we could have a main session on the Internet and peace during the Paris Peace Forum with a couple of head of states actually being present.  And I don't know how we can pull this off, but -- I don't know.  But I think if we get into contact with President Macron, he might help us out.  And I think this is a rare opportunity for MAG, and we might not have such an opportunity in a long time to come.
 Thank you.
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:   Thank you, Samuel.  I think that's actually in line with what the French are considering through two possible shots, the opening ceremony at the IGF and then also they're considering a high-level forum or event of some kind specifically coincident with and looking for synergies with the Paris Peace Forum.  So I think those are covered through other slots in the program, not through the main slot here.  But obviously a very excellent idea.
 Mamadou Lo, you have the floor.
 >>MAMADOU LO:   Thank you, Chair, for giving me the floor.  Mamadou Lo, private sector from Senegal.
 Just to add my voice on recent proposal of having a main session on capacity building and Internet governance, because I think it will be also in Paris at the UNESCO where generally issues on education within U.N. are discussed.  I think it's important to have such a main session.
 Thank you.
 >>KENTA MOCHIZUKI:   Thank you, Chair.  My name is Kenta Mochizuki for the record.
 Actually, just in case, I'd like to remind you that we can also get back to the result of the call for issues.  There were 476 inputs in total.  So when thinking about what kind of main sessions or other sessions we should hold, maybe we can get back to the result of the call for issues.  Maybe, you know, now we've got to focus only on the number of workshops submitted, but at the same time we should consider the result of the call for issues.
 Thank you.
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:   Thank you.  And I hope we certainly are doing that and that there was tight alignment between the call for issues and the workshop submissions, and that's driving the profile here.
 Who is it -- Mary.  Mary, you had the floor.
 >>MARY UDUMA:   Thank you, Chair.  My name is Mary, for the record.  Technical community.
 I want to raise the issue of the main session, the main session we're talking about.  And Timea said multistakeholderism is the essence of the Internet governance.  And we are looking at the evolution of the Internet governance.
 Let me give you perspective.  At the local level, where the NRIs are coming from at the local level, do we have all the stakeholder groups there?  That's the issue.
 So since we are going to have mixture of people, a lot of newcomers coming to the IGF, this message need to be passed through.  And this message need to get to high level.  This message need to go.  So that at the local level, it will be imbibed, the message.  We're evangelist of multistakeholder model in everything, or in Internet, for instance.  So some don't even understand that.
 So if you say it (indiscernible) the essence of IGF, the newcomers, do they know?  Those that have not been in IGF process?  You sitting there in this room, you know it.  But what about the person outside?  Does the person know it?
 So I don't think that is a starting point at all.
 So we --I think that if the NRIs have come up -- we did a lot of consultation, bottom-up, to come up with the topic we want to present as main session.  So if we look at that, I don't think that taking it up is like taking the whole IGF.  No.  I think we need -- we know our targeted audience, and we know those that would -- it would make difference in the relationship at the local level.
 And again, you've seen that since we started the main session, taking up the main session, the number of NRIs have grown, and you can build with them and.  You heard Anja when she was making her presentation.  That's one bit.
 The other bit is we're asking the private sector to join the DC in bringing -- in doing the main theme on -- in economic -- I think is it -- sorry.  The theme on economic development; right?  The DCs.
 So -- so let's see the private sector.  Instead of just DCs, let's see the private sector join hands with the DCs to organize that.
 And again, the NRIs are just trying to make sure that we put more member and we create the visibility.  And we have seen the result and the report of that in that, even at local level.  Policies are being changed because there is Internet governance process in some -- in some countries.  So that's -- that's for that.
 I'll also come to connectivity.  When I look at the -- the diversity, the inclusion and diversity, we find out that there are -- the topics there, they're not addressing directly access and connectivity.  There are various subtopics that are proposed.  If we look at that, it has -- it has -- I'm coming, please -- it has more of mixed bags.  So if -- for us from the developing countries, access is a challenge.  Connectivity is a challenge.  So we think that is an issue that if IGF should be discussing the topic on access and connectivity, we are touch the heartbeat of the developing countries.
 Thank you.
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Thank you, Mary.  I would like to close the queue now with, I guess, it's Michael who is the last one there unless it's not scrolled down because we are at the top of the hour. 
 I hope we can convince the transcribers to stay a bit longer.  I think we're going to get to some kind of critical discussions here. 
 It would be nice if we thought we could get through this in the next 15 or 20 minutes.  I don't think we can go much beyond that.
 Actually I'm not quite sure what we're discussing now because we have a proposal that says there are eight slots, eight proposals.  There was sort of an open one that says maybe the technical and innovation, if we take that out, maybe there's a topic that wants to come forward.  If there's not something that's striking people right now having spent the last month or so going through all the proposals and going through this, I don't know if we're going to come up with something.  And if we were going to do that, we can look at further condensing maybe the DCs and the development, economic, and innovation.  I actually think that's actually a pretty hard lift to work across the DCs and across the private sector in a relative short period of time. 
 Personally I suggest we only ask them to do that if we think there's a compelling topic that we really want to make sure there is time for on the agenda.  If this is sort of a "let's just hold that slot back in case," I'm not sure I would say that's a robust enough reason to go forward at this point.
 So we'll come to the few folks that are there.  But concrete proposal is -- as I have read out several times, if -- what I'm going to do is call for support for that or nonsupport, in which case we will have to figure out how to take the conversation forward. 
 So, again, apologies for the pace here.  But I think this is something we all have been staring at for a while here so we just need to keep moving on.
 Raquel, you have the floor.
 >>RAQUEL GATTO:  Thank you, Chair.  Raquel Gatto, Internet Society for the record.
 So reason to jump in, as my day job took me out of the room for a few minutes, it was good the wrapping up that you did to get an idea of the discussions going on.  And I was precisely jumping on the drop of the technical and operational track theme, I think we need to be cohesive here if we are going to have thematic sessions, main sessions.  To drop one would involve a more substantive discussion.  And while coming from the technical community, I'm not comfortable because I haven't gone back to my constituency.  And that's a natural topic that would be relevant for them. 
 And I think it's risky just to drop because we need room without having the substantive discussion.  So either we have thematic sessions or we go into more of this. 
 Especially if -- again, I heard Timea, for example, we had meaningful discussions here I think we need to consider and especially after hearing this morning about the U.N. panel and the sort of misunderstanding about the representation of the lack of a better word the core technical community. 
 I think I would have a strong feeling on dropping just based on this -- how to say -- need room argument.  Thank you very much.
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  I appreciate your comments.  And it would be fine if you go back to the community and ask.  But I want to make it clear the main sessions are the MAG's responsibility for the entire -- the entire process and the entire community.  So we just need to make sure that it fits again with what we think is the community's interest. 
 And my comment in saying that before was that when I look at the workshop proposals that were reviewed here, they're on net neutrality and DNS.  So it just feels a different level of excitement. 
 I'm going to stay with the queue.
 >> I'm sorry, Madam Chair.  They are also about Internet protocols, so I think there is something there.
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Sumon, you have the floor.
 >>SUMON AHMED SABIR:  Thank you, Madam Chair.  I was actually agreeing with what Raquel said actually being part of the technical community.  We feel that we should not drop the operational track without reconsideration.
 But as long as the general MAG actually we can work on it and we can find out a nice proposal actually. 
 In fact, the gap I can see always in the IGF area as being an operational person, that always a government person try to do a things that are technical, that are ruled by policy, and what can be done by policy to do with technicality.  As an operational person, I always feel that the IGF in the main sessions there are personal topics there.  That's my personal opinion.  Of course, we can decide after seeing the proposals.  Thank you.
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Thank you, Sumon.
 Michael.  Michael Ilishebo, you have the floor.
 >>MICHAEL ILISHEBO:  For the record, Ilishebo Michael, government sector group, Zambia.  My main concern is I'm looking -- the question is we have not adopted the IGF theme for this year yet.  Am I correct?
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  We have not adopted the final one.  There was a proposal from the French and a discussion that kind of -- what's the word -- kind of innovated on that.  But it was pretty much around digital revolution, revolution and trust were the kind of two big -- the exact wording, no, we do not have that yet.
 >>MICHAEL ILISHEBO:  Okay.  Understood. 
 Now the issue at hand, just to support other speakers who have spoken before me.  I'm looking at the IGF taking place in Paris and at the UNESCO headquarters which is a U.N. organization that's used much education.
 I was looking it in the sense of why can't we adopt the suggestions from Wisdom Donkor where we bring in education as the main session theme.  Why education?  Because without education you can't reach out to anyone else using the Internet.  It's only education that covers much of the topics that were discussed at the IGF. 
 So basically I'm looking at it being the home of the education, UNESCO.  We should adopt education as a main session.
 Thank you.
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Thank you.  I think I have two comments.  And I think we need to make sure we really recognize that it's the French government that's actually the host country.  And while it is taking place on the premises of UNESCO, and we are very, very thankful of that, it is the French government who is actually in the position of the honorary host country position.
 And I think given we actually spent sort of an hour on that discussion yesterday and my kind of view of where the community was leading, it was pretty much around the two pillars of digital revolution, revolution and trust.  And 90% of the suggestions I think that came up all were pivoting on one of those two, so I think we need to stay within that realm.  And maybe we can find some other way to bring the education in even more here.
 So if I go back to -- I'm absolutely fine with leaving the technology and operational in and having this kind of strong alignment between the themes that we've actually.  And I think if we're going to -- I assume that means there's support within the MAG for asking the DCs and the private sector to work together on a session which covers development and economics.
 And then the other one is, I think -- Markus, from the DC perspective?  That's appropriate, too?
 And then the second one, of course, is with respect to the evolution of Internet governance theme.  I think there we've said that given the NRIs' proposed session for that, that I think in this case we would ask them to be the sort of driver for that, if you will, with MAG involvement and that we're kind of combining two separate requests that have come up. 
 It's a little bit different than the way we've traditionally organized, quote-unquote, main sessions.  But I think in this time and environment, it feels like the right -- the right kind of compromise forward. 
 Is that a fair statement?  Everybody running out of energy?  I see a few heads nodding yes.  And, yes, everybody is running out of energy.
 Okay.  So we have those eight thematic sessions or main sessions.  I agree an hour can feel short.  80 minutes can feel quite long.  If we actually assume we are splitting the three-hour session into two with a 15-, 20-minute break in between that basically means people should move forward with their planning assuming it's 80-minute sessions, which for practical purposes is nearly 90 which I think starts to make a fairly -- a lot of the conferences I go, their main sessions are an hour and that's it.  They move through quite crisply.  So I think it will be a good exercise for us at some level as well.
 Sala, you have the floor.
 >>SALANIETA TAMANIKAIWAIMARO:  Thank you, Chair.  I wonder if we would be able to let the discussions simmer for a bit.  We might think differently or we might just accelerate and if we could get back to it by virtual meeting just to finalize.
 And whether -- and I just wanted to propose the sum of these themes particularly in relation to discussions with the NRIs, BPFs and DCs, if it could taken maybe offline with some of the MAG members to see give and take, just so it can reduce some of the -- I mean, just so it can accelerate and get some traction.
 And if we could have an indication maybe by the secretariat of the maximum allocation of times so we could do a ratio and see what's practical and come back to the virtual meeting and have that.
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  I think -- look, I'm always for leaving things open to the last minute, but I think there's a great danger in that.  I think we lose state, we lose context, we lose a lot of MAG members over the next six months.  And I come back to the fact we are operating with a reduced secretariat for a period of time.
 If we could go for a presumptive close on those eight themes.  And, again, people should assume it's 80 minutes.  If somebody puts their hand up and says I can absolutely live with 60 minutes, fine.  I'm sure we can find somebody else to take longer.  I think if they can find 80 minutes, it's probably a fair compromise to go forward.
 Sala.
 >>SALANIETA TAMANIKAIWAIMARO:  Just five seconds.  There's an email sent by one of the technical community reps to the mailing list.  I know we are the midst of discussions.  They would like to go back to their community to verify some stuff and come back to us.
 But in terms of the eight themes, I think we are pretty much at a consensus, plus or minus slight deviations.
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  I don't know what the mail list of the technical community, but I'm assuming there's interest in the technical community reps that are here for there to be a technical and operational main session for the global community.
 >> Chair, Sumon and myself are volunteering to take the lead on trying to get the topics for a possible main session on technical and operation. 
 If Raquel and others, former and current -- Veni, technical and operational groups have ideas on how we can address that so we can -- we don't have to drop the session.  But Sumon and I will take the lead on that.
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  I actually don't think the technical and operational community is any further beyond than any one of the other themes, except possibly the two that the NRIs and the DCs have thought of because right now we have a theme category. 
 There was a proposal that came in from the private sector.  I think you're right on time. 
 I think this is the point in our process this year where we would say these -- you know, we can put a little blurb together about where we are and what we are going to do with these eight sessions. 
 Then we need to ask the MAG members to all sign up for a role in developing and supporting these main sessions.  It is the MAG members with obviously support from others in the community.  But it is going to be people in this room that are actually going to own the proposals and the development and the soliciting speakers and everything else for these main sessions.  It's been a responsibility of the MAG.
 So I think we need to offline ask people to indicate which ones they want to be engaged in and helping develop.  I suspect there will be some conference calls which will kick around some possible topics and sessions.  And we will continue sharing those with the MAG through the virtual meetings that we have. 
 I think that's -- the process you and Sumon just laid out is the one we need to follow across all of the themes.
 So we will put a request out to everybody that says this is where we are with the main themes at this point in time.  Ask people to sign up and begin moving that forward in those individual work groups.  Recognize, again, that the MAG has traditionally had a view of the main sessions as the whole MAG and helped to develop them and enrich them.
 We also need to finish the workshop.  Now, what we just did some of these counts of reduced open forums, the DCs becoming kind of a community event in a side room, we think frees up some additional workshop slots.  We will look at that with the secretariat to see if that's really true and take it forward.
 Take the next iteration on the workshop proposals that we've all gone through here, and we had a proposal that said the team that was going to stand up and look at a main session for, for instance, cybersecurity, trust and privacy, one of the eight we have here, would also take responsibility for helping to close on any of those workshops that were accepted with conditions.  So we want to make sure that's what people understood and are taking away as well.
 Again, we can write that up so it's more clear as well.  Typically what happened is, like Raquel said earlier, last year she volunteered to be a mentor for two sessions and the MAG requested they merge.  What we did for every workshop that was provisionally accepted a MAG member put their hand up and said I will go work with those workshops to ensure that they understand the MAG's request and meet it and fulfill that and bring it back. 
 We're saying same process, just maybe perhaps rather than individual members we can do that through the subgroups that are established for the main sessions.
 And Markus is coming in with a two-finger --
 >>MARKUS KUMMER:  Sorry.  You said for the DCs to have community sessions in a side room.  That I don't think was my understanding of what we had agreed on.  We said we could consider having 90 minutes, having 30 minutes of the 60 minutes into a lunch break or at the morning before the session -- the normal beginning of the session.  But I don't think we were talking about side rooms.  We were talking about normal rooms like workshop rooms.
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  I understand the request.  But I think the discussion we were having in the room was that if they're largely working sessions, I think we want to indicate those are largely working sessions and that they perhaps have a different profile than some of the other sessions in the program and that they would perhaps just be indicated differently.  And I think Chengetai used the words sort of "side rooms." 
 They would be there, they would be visible, and they would be promoted.  I think we want to make it clear if you walk in that room you should probably expect something more that looks like a working session and not a full integrated workshop session.  Is that clear and fair and okay in cool!  Quick.  Gavel.
 [ Laughter ]
 Yes, please.  Markus, just quickly, again, we're doing a lot of things on the run here.  We need to go back with the secretariat and take a deep breath.  But we assume there are Webcasts required in those rooms as well.  That was the assumption, and they were there.  We have provisionally had 11 rooms.  We were trying to keep the rooms to lesser tracks because of the direction from the community to have less parallel sessions, et cetera, et cetera.
 Ben, you have the floor.
 >>BEN WALLIS:  Thank you, Lynn.  Maybe it was a question or clarification on what you said about how we finalized the workshops.  And so I can see the sense in having those themes following that theme looking at the workshops that have been pulled up in that theme and setting conditions. 
 I think both you and I talked about some of those having conditions, and that would help us deal with the imbalances and improve on the imbalances.  So I just wanted to clarify, it's only those ones that have been lifted up.  It's not the 40.  It's those from the 28 and any additional mergers that have come and the 40 are left.  I guess that was the clarification.
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  So I think --
 >>BEN WALLIS:  There's one more question.  Will those themes -- I mean, some of these themes don't have any to consider if you are not looking at the 40.  But will those themes then report back to the MAG on what they think the condition should be before that's fed back to the workshop?  Or is that just going to be done without any visibility?  Those are the two questions.
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  It's getting late to ask those questions.
 [ Laughter ]
 So I think we've said -- and we will go back and write this up to try and give kind of a process and direction.  I think we said for the 40, we largely assume that the 40 are okay.  If there were suggestions for mergers, we could simply surely go back and tell them that maybe some interest.
 If when we're going through them again in our working groups on a theme, we see that some of them really don't have an appropriate balance or could be improved by, I think it's okay for the MAG to say that to them.  But I don't think there's a fix there.
 For the ones that we've pulled up from the 40 to the 68 and then a few others people said maybe there's a merger, there's a redundancy, or here's some new ones we could consider, I think we should look at those in the context of helping to address any balances we saw with the ones that were accepted as part of the 40, right?  That's what you were -- I don't know if anybody else followed that.
 We will try to write that up again.  We still have flash sessions and main sessions and to help with some of the imbalances.  By and large, I think we're pretty good on gender, and it seemed -- I haven't looked at the 68 mix; right?  But it seems like we're pretty good in terms of regional and stakeholder diversity in the panels, mostly.  But I think when you look at the heat maps, at Sala did the other day, there's a lot of WEOG speakers and relatively few speakers for most of the other regions.  So just as an operating principle, if you're looking to put new speakers into some of these panels or activities, consider not WEOG.  I mean, even just those little actions would help, help a lot.
 I don't -- I want to give some final words to Frederic here in a moment.  Any final words to Wai-Min or Chengetai.
 Before I do that, is there anything that we haven't yet addressed that the secretariat sort of desperately needs from us before we close?
 We'll take the theme for the titles.  I think we're pretty close.  We'll take the theme discussion to the list, the title.  And we can help get appropriate messages back to the NRIs and things as well.
 I guess we haven't actually looked at the collaborative sessions yet.  Maybe we should -- now that we have the list of 68 and there's a better profile for the NRIs, maybe the NRIs could look at the specific workshops that are there and come back with a request on those and we can take that up at one of our first future virtual meetings.
 Which we need to get that schedule out again as well.  Maybe we go to a, you know, every three weeks or something for the next two months with the season, and then pick it up again at every two weeks when we start to get into the period closer to the conference.  So people should look for those Doodle polls.
 So any final comments?  Yes, Raquel.
 >>RAQUEL GATTO:   Just a suggestion, Madam Chair, for the virtual meetings.  I think, as we are now with all this information in mind, it might be easier to move next week.  And then I know it's holiday season so I don't want to be unsensitive with the vacation time, but if we can next week already start with this process, I think it's good to pick the momentum and not slow down.
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:   So I think that's true.  Maybe even the week after so that we have next week to actually get some of these documents out to talk about the process so people have something in front of them that they can review.  So maybe not next next week but the week after.
 We had Helani and then Liesyl and Mary.
 >>HELANI GALPAYA:   Radical departure from the current topic, but given the amount of work that the MAG members have to do and the secretariat really has to do, you know, they've been doing most of -- a lot of this work.  I'm concerned once Chengetai is gone, when he is gone who will take up that slack?  And what's the process for appointing the replacement for Chengetai for the short period?  And I guess that's a question for really DESA I'm asking.  I think we needed that yesterday, possibly.
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Yeah, and I think we'll go around with a few more questions here and we'll ask Wai-Min to comment on that in his closing remarks.  But I think it's a pertinent question.
 Liesyl.
 >>LIESYL FRANZ:   Thank you.  Liesyl Franz, USG.  Thank you for giving me the floor. 
 I just wanted to come back to something that you mentioned a couple times, but we haven't had a chance, and understandably so, but you mentioned a couple of times that given the process we've been through, not only in the evaluation working group, the evaluation process and sort of this process for feedback from MAG members on how the workshop proposal evaluation process went, just in my own memory lapses, it might be good if I do that in sort of a nearish term.  So will there be sort of a call for input or do we do it organically?  Is there some way you would like us to do that?  Thank you.
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:   Yeah, I had actually hoped it would take place here in the background.  That would be ideal but we're out of time.  Rasha obviously has some thoughts on that and then we'll go to Mary next.
 >>RASHA ABDULLAH:   Yes, thank you.  I was actually thinking of doing a meeting during lunch today but then I realized we were so early on in the process that we had no idea where we were going with it.  So I thought we had to wait.  But maybe over the next week or two, I'll call for a virtual call and I hope as many MAG members as possible will join in and give us some feedback to leave recommendations for next year.
 Thank you.  And I actually recommend that while fresh on your mind, as you said, just jot down any notes you have about the process so that we won't forget what happened.
 Thank you.
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:   And why don't we make that a special optional call of the MAG as opposed to the working group so that we really open it up to everybody.  But we'll make it a separate optional call, not try and squeeze it in in one of our virtual calls.
 Mary.
 >>MARY UDUMA: Thank you.  For the record, my name is Mary Uduma.
 I want to say that it's been a productive meeting.  And I want to thank you, the Chair, Lynn, who are doing so well.  And I didn't know we'll get to this point.
 [ Applause ]
 You've done so well.  Thank you very much for leading us.
 I want to thank Chengetai and his team.  It wouldn't have been better without you.  And the way you turn around a process, I mean, like magic.  New things come.  You have process and given us new information.  We've done so well.  Thank you very much.  And we look forward to earn this -- giving us another Chengetai.
 We want to thank the French government as well.  I want to thank my colleagues.  Helani; right?  Liesyl.  And a good friend I just met is Raquel.  Thank you very much.  It's been a pleasure working with all of you, and I've learned a lot.  I've learned from professor -- professor -- okay if I don't even put your surname, I think.  Rasha has been wonderful.  Your marking scheme helped me as a newcomer to help me to follow.  And we'll continue to fine-tune it until it becomes very, very, very smooth.
 And Suza (phonetic), your contributions have been very, very wonderful.  I'll mention -- please.  If I don't mention your name, please I -- don't be offended.  I'm just very excited to have been with you.
 And then our statistician, Sala.  Sala, I come to learn from you. I'm amazed at what you do.  You're excellent you continue to do that.  And we'll continue to work as a family and whenever we come to consensus and continue the program.  The essence is that the world would come together at IGF and learn new things and go back to their individual countries and locations and apply these things and will come up with tangible and actionable recommendations.  I think that's the essence of the whole thing.  Thank you very much.  It's been a wonderful time.  Wonderful three days.  Thank you, thank you.
 [ Applause ]
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: It may be the first time we've heard "wonderful" used to describe the last two days.
 [ Laughter ]
 There are a lot of words I wouldn't want to use.
 Let me turn to Wai-Min and then Chengetai and then we'll go to Frederic.
 Wai-Min, if you could, please.  I've been tapped in the haul quite a number of times as well with respect to what is the plan for support.
 >>WAI-MIN KWOK:   Yes.  First, I must say that DESA, we are as surprised by the move the Chengetai and we know in advance of you, a few days I would say, but it's sudden.  So we are preparing for the replacement of Chengetai.  Obviously you know he is an asset.  And I have full confidence and trust with my colleague IGF secretariat who we all work closely with.  And I'm also offering myself.  If you notice any gaps, anything that you think, we, I mean DESA, we have our resources to chip in and help in this interim.  But please, you know myself now.  Anything that I can do, we will.  I mean the IGF secretariat is -- we want IGF to succeed and we know the critical role of IGF secretariat.  I mean with that, I'd like just to join Mary to congratulate all of you.  I think this is a lot that has been achieved.  And of course to Lynn as MAG chair.  And again, just to take advantage of this to again congratulate Chengetai.  And I'm sure that we will have a good and successful Paris IGF.  Thank you.
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:   Thank you, Wai-Min.  We do appreciate all the support we get from DESA as well, and I guess we're looking forward to more.
 Chengetai, any final comments?
 >>CHENGETAI MASANGO:   I'd just like to say thank you all very much.  This MAG has been very enthusiastic, and these three days have been wonderful.
 [ Laughter ]
 Also, I'd just like to say don't worry.  We have an A team here.  We have Anja and Eleonora and Luis.  So I'm sure that is going to be a very smooth transition.  They have been working here for at least three years so they know what's happening, and you know they are very, very good.  I mean, all of these documents.  Mary was thanking me for the fast turn around.  It wasn't me.  It was these two for the documents.  Thank you.
 And of course you have Wai-Min.  He is the most efficient person I know.  So you don't have to worry about the support from DESA.  So it will be great.  And thank you, Lynn.
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:   Before I turn to Frederic I really would like to recognize Anja, Luis, Eleonora and Sala as well for all the work that's actually happened in the background with the statistics and crunching and data tables and things over the last few days.  It's been an extraordinary amount of work.  They were all at it until midnight last night and then this morning at 7:00 it was starting again.  So just really appreciate it.  And Sala is magic.  Really magic with Excel.  Very, very helpful.
 [ Applause ]
 So Frederic, it's up to you to bring us home, as they say.
 >>FREDERIC PARUTA:   So this is the end of the week.  I don't have anything written or ready to say but I know what I want to say.  I would like to thank the team of the secretariat.  I would like to thank Chengetai, Lynn.  Very adroit, as we say in French.  She managed to get -- to drive us through.  Luis, Eleonora, Anja.  We have a great team here, so we are quite confident as host country to be able to work with the great secretariat.
 A year ago I had no idea what MAG meant.  I even -- I think I intervened as a French delegate during one of the meetings and go why is the workshop from France not there anymore and so on.  I had no idea.  And Lynn was very kindly telling me, well, this is not a private meeting but open to observers.  Now I know how things work.  You did wonderful work today, yesterday, and on Wednesday.  David Martinon left knowing the challenges but also very excited about the prospect.  We will try to do according to the idea that he has been able to promote in Paris.  And I'm very sure we will have a wonderful IGF.
 And I just got the weather forecast.
 [ Laughter ]
 25 degrees, slight breeze, funny, on the 12th, 13th, and 14th of November.
 [ Laughter ]
 [ Applause ]
 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:   I don't want to drag this out any longer because we're keeping the U.N. staff here.  We're keeping the transcribers online as well.  We're keeping all of you from dinners and glasses of wine or flights or trains or whatever.  I just want to thank everybody.  This is not a comfortable process for anybody.  I'm sure it's not comfortable for me, whether it's your first time or your third time.  It's not comfortable for me either when, you know, I would prefer that there was adequate time and we could actually have fuller discussions where I was confident everybody understood where we were and where we were going and how we got there.  But I appreciate your kind of supporting the slight pushes from time to time.
 And I think the reason that's possible is because I think every MAG member here understands how much we all care about the principles and the values and the openness and diversity and inclusiveness, and we want to get it right.  And it doesn't mean that at any point in the process we're there, but I think everybody is convinced that we really do want to get it, get just as right as we can and that's what holds it all together.
 So thank you all very much and safe trips back home.  And as Vint always says, we'll see you on the net.  Thank you.
 [ Applause ]