Sixth Annual Meeting of the Internet Governance Forum
27 -30 September 2011
United Nations Office in Nairobi, Nairobi, Kenya
September 27, 2011 - 09:30AM
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The following is the output of the real-time captioning taken during the Sixth Meeting of the IGF, in Nairobi, Kenya. Although it is largely accurate, in some cases it may be incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. It is posted as an aid to understanding the proceedings at the session, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.
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>>CHENGETAI MASANGO: Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Chengetai Masango, and I just want to say a few words of welcome. Welcome to the sixth meeting of the IGF in Nairobi.
This is the first meeting in SubSaharan Africa, and also the first meeting of the renewed mandate.
I suppose most of you are new delegates, since this is the new delegates' session, and I hope you will enjoy the IGF experience.
Engage in discussions with the different stakeholders, and also that you will be able to bring back something that you have learned here or something that you have seen or heard to your home institutions and share the knowledge.
Also, I just want to say that I'll be here, I'll be walking around. If you have any issues or concerns, you can come and see me or you can come and see any of the staff of the IGF Secretariat. You can recognize them by the badge. They will have a blue "S" on the badge.
So with that, I'll give it over to Jovan who will start the session.
Thank you.
>>JOVAN KURBALIJA: Thank you, Chengetai.
Good morning, and welcome to the IGF.
My name is Jovan Kurbalija. I am from DiploFoundation. And I have been one of the veterans of the IGF process.
And as you can see, due to the great successes of the IGF in achieving gender balance, I was asked by three ladies to moderate the session.
This is already a good sign from the very beginning, and I would like to start by introducing Olga Cavalli from Argentina, one of the experts, especially on development issues and inclusiveness in IG process. Ginger Paque from Venezuela. Ginger is a pioneer in the field of e-participation. And Nurani Nimpuno from Sweden, one of the leading experts in bridging the technological aspects of the IGF and social, political and economic.
Well, it looks a bit more promising. When we entered the room 15 minutes ago it was empty, and I was worried we may have the communication to -- difficulty in engaging in interactive communication. Still, we will have a slight challenge to creative interaction, which is the main purpose of this session.
We are supposed to provide some introductory remarks, but the key is that you ask the questions, and there is no stupid question except the one which is not asked. And some of you who are further down in the room may send us some smoke signals in order to draw our attention, but we'll find a way to notice your hand and your intention to interact or to participate.
Well, I tried to put on the screen -- yeah, it's not on the screen that. I don't know how technical you can do it. Well, we decided to divide this introductory session into two parts. In the first part we will provide the quick reflections, almost metaphors of our understanding of the panelists of Internet governance, and the place of Internet Governance Forum in broader Internet governance space.
In the second part of the session, we'll try to provide the practical hints and inputs, how to navigate the IGF, next four days, because we are at the very beginning of extremely exciting event, and you will see, we will have really a difficult situation of choosing the session that you can -- that you can attend. And sometimes I wish I can be virtual to be at three or four sessions. But despite of the technology and all the achievements, we cannot do it yet.
Well, I will start with my metaphor, which is especially for locals they will understand it. It is a Jua Kali metaphor. I don't know if I pronounce it correctly. Jua Kali. Jua Kali means literally "under the sun," but it is a term which used in East Africa, especially Kenya, to describe the sector of the economy which you can find on the streets of Nairobi and the cities in Kenya, the sector of the economy which is based on innovation of ordinary people, people trying to find simple and practical solutions for complex problems, using their creativity, ingenuity, and creating really, really remarkable artifacts.
Why did I decide to use this method? Internet is, to a large extent, Jua Kali invention. As you know, the Internet was initially conceptualized to connect computers, not people. And the history of the Internet is the history of, we can say, unintended or collateral inventions. People realize that they can use e-mail, they created e-mail protocol and started using e-mail.
Later on, Tim Berners-Lee had to find solution for organizing documents at Cern. He created World Wide Web. And almost all major events in the history of the Internet were innovative Jua Kali events. People had a problem, they had to find solution, and they invented. They invented new tools, new procedures, new services.
Unlike Jua Kali in East Africa, Internet became, by the time, bases of the economic, technological, and social structure of the modern world. And you suddenly have Jua Kali solutions, solutions brought to the invention as a basis of the modern society.
There was a need to govern that new invention, Internet, and Internet governance process was initiated, and the history is about -- for the Internet is a long history, almost 30 years, and we won't go through the whole steps. But for us, the most important phase is the last phase of Internet Governance Forum and the WSIS, World Summit on the Information Society, which started in 2002. We will celebrate, next year, ten years. And this is how we came to the IGF Nairobi.
People started trying to find governance, legal, policy solutions for this great invention. And as you can imagine, for those of you who are from Kenya, it is not easy to govern such innovative, vibrant and unpredictable space. As, for example, Jua Kali part of the East African economies.
And that is one of the tensions you will notice throughout the Internet governance discussions. That vibrancy from invention, from innovation, bottom-up approach, creativity of millions. And on the other side, need to govern it, because a lot rely on Internet.
Our economy, our social structure. There are great risks.
And that's the major tension that exists throughout the Internet governance process and the Internet Governance Forum.
This is my metaphor. A bit longer. Jua Kali metaphor of the Internet, and we will distribute the post indicating the -- a bit longer explanation about this metaphor.
Now I would like to invite, first, Olga to give her reflection on the position of the Internet Governance Forum in the broader IG debate.
Olga.
>>OLGA CAVALLI: Thank you very much, Jovan.
First I would like to thank the people of Kenya for organizing such a fantastic event.
[ Applause ]
>>OLGA CAVALLI: And this is my first time in this lovely country so I hope to have some time on the weekend to visit, and thank you very much for your hospitality.
I would like to congratulate and thank the IGF Secretariat, especially Chengetai, who has done a remarkable activity organizing all this meeting with really limited resources, limited time. It's a very broad meeting. It's very wide. And it covers a lot of issues, a lot of people, a lot of international coordination. So I think he has done a remarkable job. He and all his team.
Having said so, I am very happy to be here. Thank you for inviting me to this session.
I would like to share with you that IGF and the WSIS somehow changed my life forever. That night in Tunis, or afternoon, I think, when the IGF was decided to be, because we needed a new space for debate, I had never knew that this meeting would change my way of working and interacting with people forever. Because since then, I have been involved in such a marvelous and broad space of interaction and debate with all of you.
And it changed my life.
I hope for you newcomers, and perhaps those who have been participating more time, have the same feeling like me. I know that my fellows here share the same feeling. I hope that you also can make your IGF experience being so rich and broad as it has been for me.
My participation was always related with the government of Argentina. I am an advisory of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, but I am also a university teacher. So I have noticed, coming from a developing region and a developing country, that our region needed more participation. So we have engaged me and other colleagues in fantastic new things, all came through the IGF.
So it's not only talking about policy, about the Internet, but it's also talking about you, about your communities, about your people, about your students, about your colleagues, and about your countries and the needs that you have.
So use this opportunity to learn. Don't be afraid that you will lose with some acronyms and some strange words. Ask all the questions that you need to ask. And for the moment, this is my comment. And I will come back to you with some other things I would like to share.
Thank you very much.
[ Applause ]
>>JOVAN KURBALIJA: Thank you, Olga.
Ginger.
>>GINGER PAQUE: Thank you. I am not going to go through and repeat all of Jovan and Olga's lovely remarks, but I do join them in saying asante to the people of Kenya, and to all of you, young and old, in Internet governance, because I see we are not all newcomers. And I assume that even though you are perhaps new to the IGF process, you are not new to Internet governance. You do know that Internet governance that we talk about is ubiquitous. It is not just here at IGF, four days during the year. It's not just in Kenya. It's not just in Geneva. It's in your countries, it's in your cities, it's in your regions. It's what happens everywhere with what happens to you as a user, it's what happens to you in your stakeholder group.
So we need to remember what we do here is important to take home. Later I know Tim will give us some tips on how to bring that home, but four days doesn't change it. What changed the world for Olga is that she brought it home, she brought it into her work. She made changes. She works towards bringing Argentina and Latin America into what's happening and what can happen, what's possible for Internet governance.
So the IGF process is a year-long process, and a global process. It's not just what we do here, but here we can talk, share best practices, and even worst practices, and figure out what are the issues and what are the solutions.
So we're not going to name names, I don't think. I think we're going to look for solutions. And I invite you to ask all of the people that have been around and those of us who are in the hallways, stop us, ask us, "Well, hey, what do I about this," or "Where can I address this," because making the IGF work is about taking solutions home. So we want to make sure that you find what you are looking for here.
Please ask us, and please help us to help you.
Thank you.
>>NURANI NIMPUNO: Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Nurani Nimpuno. I work for a technical infrastructure organization based in Sweden.
I'd like to join my co-panelists in thanking the Secretariat for this fantastic -- the fantastic effort they have put in. I don't think people realize that although this is a very big conference, the Secretariat is quite small and there are many, many volunteers who volunteer their time and resources to make this happen.
I think today we take the Internet for granted. In many, many countries, it's part of the daily life, and it has become part of the country's infrastructure, and this wasn't always the case.
And coming from a technical organization, I think -- and many people in the technical community didn't quite realize how big an impact this would have on people's daily lives. And we see the results today.
What I think makes the IGF unique is when it started, it was actually the only forum that brought together all these different stakeholder groups: technical and academic communities, business communities, civil society, and governments. We all had our different meetings and we all discussed these things. We didn't call it Internet governance, but we -- so even before I came to an IGF, I had discussed Internet governance. I just didn't use that term.
So before the IGF, we didn't have this sort of unique forum. What I think is fantastic for the IGF is that it's inspired many, many local efforts of this sort, and this is one of the results of the IGF, I think, that has resulted in many, many other local and regional discussions.
So if you have not been to a local or regional IGF, maybe you should look up if there is one.
I think -- Well, before we go into some of the practicalities, I think another thing that I think is interesting is that you have seen that the IGF itself has evolved as the Internet has evolved. I think we all know the 640K is enough for any computer, and we know that that's -- that the Internet has -- the computers and the Internet has changed a lot since that was said. Same with that we thought 4 billion IPv4 addresses would be enough to cover the needs for the Internet. And that has grown enormously since.
So I think if you are new to the IGF, and even if you don't think that governance itself is something that affects you, I think you will find at the end of this week that you will have new insights.
And I would actually like to encourage people to not only go to the workshops that cover topics that they are already experts in but go to the other ones, and you will find that you go back with new experiences.
Thank you.
>>JOVAN KURBALIJA: Thank you. Well, I didn't mention that the ground rule is you can interrupt us whenever you feel that you would like to comment or to add a question. Please just raise your hand or use other means to draw our attention to your intention.
Well, we heard the really, really condensed and insightful remarks from my colleagues here on the panel, and probably there are two key messages. One is that there is a strong empowerment aspect of the IGF. As Olga indicated clearly, and it applies to all of us, we learned a lot. We developed our skills, our understandings. Our understandings of other cultures, our understandings of other professional cultures, which I always highlight. I'm lawyer and diplomat by training, and I learned a lot by interacting with engineers, people involved in business community, different organizations. It was an extremely enriching experience. And that's one definitely of the highlights of the IGF.
And what Ginger said, it is a process. We are today in Nairobi, but the process goes throughout the year. There are regional, national IGFs, discussions, different forums. And one, if I can call it, highlight a third message from the introductory remarks is be open for discovering new possibilities. This is the key. Start navigating, and we will discuss in the second part of the session the way how you can navigate based on our personal experience. How you can benefit and get the most out of this really rich offering and rich menu that we have today in Nairobi.
Well, that's the first part of the session. Let me see if there are any questions from the audience or comments from experienced IGF'ers who are sitting behind their screens.
I am always amazed how many people are cognitively present at the meeting while they are browsing the net and using they are using their notebooks. They are probably somewhere in Brazil, Argentina, U.K., China, whatever the place.
Any question? Let me see.
No signals or signs.
It seems that we have a clear understanding what is the role of IGF in the broader Internet governance ecology, if we can call it.
In the second part we will focus on practicalities of the IGF, and I would like to invite, again, Olga, Ginger and Nurani to give us their personal advices, how to choose a session, how to interact, how to solve this problem of following two or three sessions at the same time, how to follow what is going on in the remote participation. Please keep in mind that beside us physically present here, there are currently 42 hubs worldwide, and probably close to thousand people who are following it remotely. Not just passively following but also participating, interacting, making their comments. Therefore, it is a very vibrant e-community around the IGF. They do not have a privilege to experience such great hospitality of our Kenyan friends, and this is their disadvantage, but they can focus on the issues and they can provide very good insights from their homes and places worldwide.
Olga, what is your sort of --
>>OLGA CAVALLI: One comment that I would like to add to Jovan's words and this is something I would like to remark. That remote participation was not always there. So don't take it for granted. It was a great effort from my colleagues, Jovan, Ginger, and other DiploFoundation people.
And for us, that will live so far away, paying a ticket from Argentina to everywhere is always expensive, unless we go to Uruguay or Chile.
So I think countries that are very far away from main node of north, this is very appreciated, and it has been a fantastic effort that grew from very, very initial initiative. I think 2007 we spoke about this in Geneva. And now it's installed, all the hubs are all over the world. So that's fantastic.
You and your communities can be engaged at the same time. And that has a major power. And using the Internet. This becomes fantastic.
So my advice would be find your issues of interest and try to make them up. We have main sessions and workshops. They overlap. So you have to do the map to find the right place. And sometimes just go around and be free, and you will find fantastic things that you didn't think you wanted to attend but they grabbed your attention.
So don't be so structured. I'm an engineer so I always try to be not so structured. My son and my daughter, they tell me I'm kind of a (indiscernible), so I try to get out of that. So go around freely and talk to people and hear what is happening in one room and change to the other one.
And, also, something which is very interesting from this meeting is that, as Jovan said, it's multistakeholder. Me, as engineer, had to adapt my language to lawyers, diplomats, civil society experts, other technicians. So this is really challenging. But it's fantastic. But -- Because it will broaden your view, and your knowledge.
And that's all for the moment. I will let my colleagues talk.
Thank you.
>>JOVAN KURBALIJA: Yeah. Also one of the first discussions at the IGF was about understanding the word "protocol." As you know, in computer science, the word "protocol" is one of the cornerstones of communication and it's also important in diplomacy. Therefore, we had the bridging exercise in understanding of "protocol" in computer science and diplomacy.
Ginger?
>>GINGER PAQUE: I can see that Nurani had a really good idea and I really enjoyed your point. I see that Olga is picked up on it and I'm going to repeat it. As we prepare to take advantage of these four days, first of all, your conference bags and schedules will be available at the first coffee break at the office right outside this hall, and I suggest that you get your -- take, first, a look at your program, take a look at what's available. Look at the sessions by day and -- well, I start marking it up and circling things right away, but I would suggest that you look at things -- the things that you came here to learn, that you specifically want to either have an input because you have something to offer or you want to learn about because it's something you are very interested in, or, third, that you do -- that you look for something that you don't know anything about. I really like that.
Find something you absolutely know nothing about and circle it and go to that session and bring home something new.
And that bringing home is very important not only once you go home, but from today, from right now. If you have a remote hub in your town, communicate with them. If your colleagues are following you, blog to them. Let them know what's happening. Because they can interact.
This is my sixth IGF, but it's the fifth one I've been at present.
I have actually spoken in main sessions from Venezuela and appeared in -- some people know me from being on the screen in Egypt.
And, yes, Jovan, using Jua Kali? What's your -- the word you used?
>>JOVAN KURBALIJA: Jua Kali.
>>GINGER PAQUE: Jua Kali.
-- we can be in two places at once. You can keep your people at home informed. You can follow other sessions on remote.
You can appear in remote and you can be here and be somewhere else. Some of you are, as Jovan said. You are in two places right now. You're already tweeting or you're talking to your colleagues at home or you're checking your e-mail and you are here.
Let's take advantage of that. Let's make sure that this Internet governance reaches the people that it has to reach, that we find out what we want to do, and that we actually make it happen that we actually do it.
So take advantage of your schedule, mark it up, write it up, and ask the people who look like they know what they're doing. We probably don't know what we're doing, but ask. Find out. How can we most take advantage of it.
I was an ICANN fellow in Puerto Rico, and I found that by asking the people that were the busiest, I found out the most about what I could do, what I could achieve for myself at the ICANN meeting.
So thank you.
>>JOVAN KURBALIJA: Quickly, I reflect on Ginger's comment that as you know, one of the famous U.S. politicians said that we have a -- there are things that we know that we know, we are aware of, and probably we'll attend many sessions on the topics that you know.
Then there are issues and things that we know we don't know, and we are ready to explore, and this is fine.
But there are also many things that we don't know that we don't know. Unknown unknown things.
And be ready to explore and to learn about them. Be open for the unknown unknowns during the IGF.
Nurani.
>>NURANI NIMPUNO: Thank you.
Just to follow up on that point, I think so one aspect is actually finding out about topics that you're not that familiar with, but another thing I'd like to encourage people to do is to actually -- to discover the different aspects, the different views on something that you might be already familiar with.
So an example. For example, internationalized domain names. Someone from the technical community sees that as a technical solution, where you need to find ways of representing different scripts so that it can be represented in the DNS.
But of course there are civil society aspects. There are governmental aspects. There are business aspects.
So even if you're familiar with a topic, you might not be familiar with the different views and what impact it has on different stakeholder groups.
So some of the -- some of the topics might be very familiar to you, but you might not be aware of how different stakeholder groups -- what their interest is within that topic.
Another thing I'd like to -- well, just a few quick tips about the IGF.
So obviously it's a very complex program. There was a new program published yesterday, I believe. If you look at the Excel sheet, it's a little bit overwhelming, so you might want to take it one day at a time, but there might be a few things that are good to know.
So for example, if a workshop was organized before, then there's a report available and that might be a very good way of getting a quick overview of what this workshop is about, what was discussed before, just to give you the background on that.
The other thing that's useful to know is that the way the program is structured is that all the workshops -- sorry, not all the workshops, but many of the workshops are so-called feeder workshops, and that means that these workshops feed into the main sessions.
So the various workshops are organized according to topics, so even if you can't -- and all these workshops are then reported back into the main session.
So we realize that you can't be everywhere at the same time, but if something interests you, you might be able to get a quick overview of what was discussed in the main session.
I would like to also stress what Jovan was saying, that this is meant to be interactive. All the workshops, the main sessions, are meant to be interactive.
We all come from different cultures, from different places in the world, but also from different stakeholder groups, where we communicate in different ways, and I think the IGF has matured a lot over the years. We have learned how to communicate better with each other. We still have a way to go, but it is something that we've -- that's certainly been a learning experience for me.
So -- and I would say that try to engage in the discussions and make it interactive. Be passionate but respectful.
>>OLGA CAVALLI: One more comment.
Remember that -- and this is -- was -- not everything was there before. In main sessions and workshops, you have transcription. This text can be available after the meeting, so you can use it for your research, for teaching, or for just referencing what was said there.
So use that possibility.
And it's also very helpful sometimes when you hear someone and some -- we all have different accents and we talk fast or slow or whatever. You can read there, and it's -- this is extremely helpful.
But it's also for the workshops, and workshops, some of them are held in other languages, so check that.
For example, we are organizing a workshop in Spanish for Spanish-speaking people about use of Latin languages and Native American languages in the Internet, so that's held in Spanish.
So we encourage you to check if you have things more focused on your culture or your interest. Talk to the people organizing, and you will find out. Thank you.
>>GINGER PAQUE: I would also quickly like to reiterate and emphasize another of your points. I seem to be stealing all your points but they're just wonderful.
Don't be afraid to intervene. We don't want those of us who have been here -- well, we want to remain like Mr. Glaser over there. We want to remain permanent newcomers. But we also need the new energy and the newcomers and we need new ideas and new people.
You are the future and the value to the Internet -- to the Internet governance process, not us. We need you to be coming in. We need you to be intervening. We need you to be bringing your new ideas. We don't want to keep talking about the same things we used to talk about.
So you are the important people here. Please take part.
Thank you.
>>JOVAN KURBALIJA: The statement by Ginger, it is extremely important, because as we know, the groups tend to become exclusive by the time even -- even it's in human nature that we socialize with people whom we know, and there is always risks in the groups, although the IGF has been successful in managing it, to become exclusive, and the key for the IGF for the future of the IGF, is to have inclusion and to have a broadening of participation, because the Internet is not anymore just the issue of concern of computer engineers, Internet specialists, lawyers. It is basically the critical infrastructure of modern society, and it is of vital concern for both those who are on the Internet and those who are not, because they also depend, through the economy, through the services, on the Internet, and in that sense, it is extremely important to have a mission for all of us to broaden -- if I can use climate change terminology -- the footprint of the IGF and to have more people involved in the process itself.
Well, we invited the -- sort of to correct the gender balance -- another presenter, Tim Davies, from Oxford. Tim is a specialist in social media and e-participation, and we invited him to help us in reducing the complexity of the IGF communication.
This is the main challenge. How -- over the next four days, how are you going to manage so many parallel workshops, information streams, direct contacts? And ICT provides and Internet provides some tools on the social aggregation, and Tim was kind enough to join us and to share his broad experience from other policy processes in trying to aggregate and to make a simple Google-style access to this complex parallel threads of discussion.
Tim?
>>TIM DAVIES: Yeah. So one thing we noticed in Sharm, when I first encountered the IGF process, was there were not only conversations happening in the rooms when people spoke up on the microphones. People were talking on Twitter, on other back-channels of communication. There was a lot of interesting content being shared. People were writing very deep, reflective blog posts and articles that were really useful to find out what happened the day before, if you didn't want to read the full transcript and go through it.
But it can sometimes be a cacophony of different channels to follow, so what we've tried to do is set up this e-participation aggregator to bring together those different ways of online engagement. So both to support people here at the IGF to engage with the online participation that's happening and help us communicate what's happening to those back home.
So I'll just give you a very quick tour of this and that will give you a sense of some of the online participation already taking place.
So what you can see here @IGF2011.diplomacy.edu -- I'll put the address up at the end -- we've tried to take all the Twitter messages that are being shared using a #IGF11 and bring them in so you can see what other people are saying in other sessions right now.
But we realized with nine parallel sessions, that's hard to follow, so we've suggested for each session that people also tag messages with the number of the workshop, so that then gives us the ability to pull up, for example, all the messages being said in the human rights workshop right now, and we can see, parallel, what's happening, what are the conversations elsewhere that connect with the issues you're following.
So if you're not already users of tools like Twitter or blogging, you don't necessarily have to sign up for those tools now to see those conversations that are taking place and join them, but if you do want to be part of those conversations, just look for someone who is on their mobile phone tweeting or on their laptop looking like they're using this during the session and ask them to show you how that can be done and how you can also participate in that way.
The other thing we're doing here is also pulling out useful links people are sharing, so down the side here, I think I have some -- some links on this page that people have shared on Twitter, so often documents are mentioned in a session, or reports or organizations, and in my experience people often share again on Twitter or in blog posts what those reports were, who those organizations were, and Web links to them. And in the past, I found it really hard to remember and I had to go back to transcripts and find out what those were, and we're trying again to bring those together so you can follow up threads of the conversation there.
To help you find your way around, we've tried to take the IGF calendar from the spreadsheet and we'll try and keep this up-to-date and build a calendar where you can go into each day and session -- it doesn't display very well there -- but go through and you can also, from there, find what's the tag for the session you're in, what's the number to add to the end of your messages.
As we get all this information, we can start looking at what it tells us. And particularly, we can look at trends emerging.
So this here is a tag cloud of all the different tags people are using in their Twitter messages and blog posts, so we can -- I find this very useful to see what elements of IGF am I hearing about and what elements of IGF have I not heard that I should be perhaps tuning into around the event.
So are there words there or topics that come up there over the course of the week that you haven't heard about that might be a new space to go into.
So that's just a tool we've created to help navigate this, but really, it's all part of promoting e-participation. Both enhancing participation for people here and communicating with people not physically present at the IGF.
Many of the people engaging with that Twitter content, with those blogs, will not be here but will be back home, and so we really encourage people to share content, share their reflections to help with that engagement.
>>JOVAN KURBALIJA: Okay. Thank you, Tim. I'm sure that we'll use this tool a lot during the IGF. At least it helped me to reduce the complexity and to have it at one place as many threads and without sort of oversimplifying and losing all the important information.
I think Ginger would like to add something on the remote hubs. Ginger, please.
>>GINGER PAQUE: I don't know how many of you are aware of what a remote hub is or how they work within the IGF.
It is something, I think, that's quite new with the IGF.
We've had a few more each time, but there are about 42 groups of people around the world meeting perhaps at a university, perhaps at their place of work, trying to adjust to the time zone, and similar to how, for instance, a group of people might get together to watch a soccer game in a bar or in a group setting and have coffee, tea, drinks, and enjoy it together, because they can discuss what's going on on the screen.
The same way with the IGF. If there is -- I believe there are two in Olga's city of Buenos Aires where people are getting together. They're gathering, they're watching the proceedings on the screen, but they're discussing in parallel what is happening and more locally, more regionally concerned with their situation. So they're holding their own local and regional meeting while they are participating remotely in the global meeting.
And one interesting thing that does occur to me is that if you keep an eye on the remote participation that's going on through the moderator -- there will be a remote participation moderator on each panel -- you should know who's participating locally -- global -- locally remotely, because they're at home, and perhaps even ask them some questions.
They are part of the participation, they are part of the audience, and part of the process.
They can perhaps give an input and an insight that we don't have here.
So it is part of the group that's present that is participating, and we should take them into account.
So this global process isn't just people from all over the world coming here, it's people all over the world actively participating, and there may be almost as many people participating from their places of business, their universities, and their homes, as are right here in Kenya.
So let's keep them in mind as we -- as we work along and bring them in.
Thank you.
>>JOVAN KURBALIJA: Thank you, Ginger.
Olga, I think that following Ginger's remark on the regional aspects, you would like to make a few reflections on the regional aspects of the IGF.
>>OLGA CAVALLI: Yes. Just have in mind that the original -- sorry -- the original mandate of the IGF was to be a global meeting, but the IGF has been a fantastic space for creation and innovation, as Jovan started with his first picture.
So there, from this meeting, many regional initiatives and national initiatives have started.
So perhaps during the year that starts now until the next IGF, you can get involved in your regional meeting or in your national or you can start it, if you think that there's a need there where you live.
We have a regional IGF in Latin America that had its fourth meeting this year, right? Fourth. And some countries have their own national one.
So have that in mind.
That was not before. It was a spontaneous creation from the communities.
And there are other initiatives also for learning that you can use. You can contact us, Diplo, or me, for -- I organize a school in Latin America about Internet governance. DiploFoundation does a fantastic job all over the world with e-participation in a very interesting program.
So there are many ways of starting from here to the future and involving your communities.
Thank you.
>>JOVAN KURBALIJA: Thank you, Olga.
Well, my eyesight is not very strong, but I haven't noticed any questions so far. It seems that we managed to explain it very well, and we do not want to monopolize the podium, which is not necessarily a very sort of nice arrangement for interaction, because we are lecturing ex cathedra, but I hope that reflections from my colleagues here on the panel will be useful in your navigation of the IGF experience over the next four days.
You're in front of an extremely exciting and interesting process. You can benefit a lot, learn a lot, explore known unknowns, but also, as we highlighted, unknown unknowns, and this is a great start and I think Ginger wanted to add something before we conclude the session.
Yeah?
>>GINGER PAQUE: Yes, I did.
One of the things that you also can take advantage of -- I was reminded because Olga and Adrian are very involved in the summer school on Internet governance. This is a tool that's incredible for learning that. For instance, the DiploFoundation programs in capacity-building, things that LACNIC, that FRIDA do, things that are going on in your own area, that you might not know about.
ICANN, stop at their booth, find out what they're doing, and take home that information, because those are tools that you can learn from, that we can learn from, that we can benefit from your input.
So do make sure you find out about these projects before you leave.
I also wondered if there weren't any questions for Tim about the remote reporting, social reporting, and aggregation.
Were there any questions for Tim? Did we give you an opportunity to ask?
We're trying to be interactive and we're not doing a good job at drawing you out.
Somebody help me out here. Helmut.
So here we have ISOC. Now we have a volunteer from ISOC to --
Who is it in the back? I -- my eyesight is -- okay. Would you please get a mic? Can you turn your mic on and join us?
Thank you.
>>JOVAN KURBALIJA: I can only notice that we have similar hairstyles.
[ Laughter ]
>>GERRY ELLIS: Good morning. Thank you for the option to be the first person to participate from the floor. My name is Gerry Ellis. I'm from Dublin in Ireland. I'm personally blind but I'm here as part of a group called the Dynamic Coalition of Accessibility and Disability. And remote participation is extremely important for people who can't attend for, we say, business reasons, they're busy, they're doing other things, also because of cost. But another big group of people who are facilitated are people who are disabled and who can't physically get here, or if they got here, maybe there would be problems getting around or whatever.
And I'd just like to ask Tim about the tools that he is developing.
Is he taking this into account, and has he noticed that people with disabilities are getting involved in using those tools? Thank you very much.
>>JOVAN KURBALIJA: Tim, and then Ginger can reflect on this aspect of the use of remote participation.
So Tim?
>>TIM DAVIES: So on the social media tools, definitely a lot of it is using tools that should be accessible. I don't know that we've checked fully the accessibility of the aggregator and we should definitely do that and work on that more.
I only get to see people's Twitter names, and faces are such small photos, so who it is going out to is something we need to look at more, but certainly I think remote participation has more knowledge of who is using it at the moment.
>>JOVAN KURBALIJA: Tim, we noticed two years ago, as you indicated, that there was one unintended but great consequence of remote participation, and it is exactly in helping people with disabilities to participate actively in the IGF process, and I think Ginger will -- she disagrees, as usual, with me, but she will now explain why she disagrees. Thank you.
>>GINGER PAQUE: Yes. I disagree very strongly, Jovan, as does happen.
Gerry, first of all, thank you very much for bringing up this extremely important point, and I'm going to take the step of correcting Jovan.
Actually, it is remote participation which has benefitted from the disability coalition; it is not the disability coalition that benefitted from remote participation.
One of the biggest advantages we have developed and are using -- we haven't developed; the dynamic coalition for persons with disabilities has developed -- is the transcripts. The transcripts that we are using and that we are seeing on screen are a direct result of the dynamic coalition on persons with disabilities who have really pushed and worked very hard to get this transcript to help people become more involved, those that can't hear, even those that can't see that can hear or can later access with voice software, but for me, there is a direct symbiosis between remote participation and the people with disabilities, although I guess it's not symbiotic so much in that they have helped us far more than we have helped them.
When we have audio difficulties, when we have low bandwidth, when we can't quite hear, when there's a lag, we turn to the transcript, and that transcript is thanks to the persons with disabilities.
So what I would like to point out is, rather -- we, as Tim pointed out, have been remiss in adapting our software and our techniques because we're so -- every one of us -- with tunnel vision into our own projects who are thinking remote participation, and by being open to disabilities, we have not yet helped them and supported them, but we are taking advantage of their tools.
So, Tim, that's something we're going to have to work on is how do we make -- how do we give back, and how do we collaborate and make it more accessible to persons with disabilities, because there's no doubt in my mind --
How many of you find it helpful to have that transcript on the screen right now? And that's amazing. How many -- do you consider yourself a person with disability? Well, we all have disabilities. We don't just all admit it, so I'm not going to ask that question. I take it back. Because we'd all have to raise our hands.
But some of us are more open in admitting that and asking for help and getting the help.
We do -- we do use it, and it's something we need to be aware of, and we could all be asking our own Webmasters, "Is our page accessible?" And it's not -- we're not doing a favor for the people with disabilities. We're doing a favor for ourselves to make it more accessible. We want -- why do we have a Web page? Because we want people to get into it. We have to make it accessible.
So Gerry, I don't know, do you have another comment to bring in on that? And once again, thank you very much.
>>JOVAN KURBALIJA: We have another question.
>>GINGER PAQUE: Oh, okay.
>>JOVAN KURBALIJA: While waiting for the next speaker, this is a great example of the unintended -- unintentional creativity and development which can have far-reaching consequences.
I noticed in Geneva during the meeting, that diplomats from other foras dealing with the human rights migration/ disarmament are commenting on this new tool, because once you have a transcript, once your words are transcribed, they don't any more fly, like in normal spoken interventions. They remain searchable on the net. And it changes the way how we intervene, how we make a statement, because once it can be found on Google or it can be revisited, it increases the responsibility in using the formal intervention. Therefore, we can expect more and more unintended consequences and developments, as Ginger explained it very well.
We have another question from that corner. Please go ahead.
>>SIVASUBRAMANIAM: My name is Sivasubramaniam. I am from India.
It's good to see this room with a capacity of thousand people filled to capacity for the newcomer session. But would the moderator take a quick poll to ask if how many of those present are first-time IGF participants. So that would help in one of the workshops.
>>JOVAN KURBALIJA: Thank you.
Could you raise your hands, first IGF'ers, if I can call it that, if they please.
>> Wow!
>>JOVAN KURBALIJA: That's great. Yeah.
[ Applause ]
>>GINGER PAQUE: Jovan, if I might interrupt again. I think this is a very good point. I know the people doing -- the transcript -- The people who are doing the transcripts are not even here in the room. They are doing an amazing job through Skype, and I would like to thank them very much for the wonderful job they are doing.
[ Applause ]
>>JOVAN KURBALIJA: Thank you, Ginger.
I got a signal that we should gradually wrap up our introductory session, and I would like to take this opportunity to thank Olga, Ginger, and Nurani for excellent insights, with very good exercise, if I can use camera analogy, zooming in and zooming out.
They managed to -- gave us broad perspective on Internet governance, but also zoom in on practicalities and the way how to interact over the next four days.
Well, we're at the very beginning of this exciting journey, and if I can quote myself, I would like to invite you to explore known knowns, known unknowns, but especially unknown unknowns. I wish you pleasant, successful and enjoyable Internet Governance Forum.
Thank you.
[ Applause ]
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