FINISHED TRANSCRIPT
EIGHTH INTERNET GOVERNANCE FORUM
BALI
BUILDING BRIDGES – ENHANCING MULTI-STAKEHOLDER COOPERATION FOR GROWTH AND SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT
25 OCTOBER 2013
14:30
OPEN MIC SESSION
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This text is being provided in a rough draft format. Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) is provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings.
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>> CHRIS DISSPAIN: So thank you all for making the effort to come. We are going to start the open mic session. The idea is that you come to a microphone -- and there are a number dotted around the room -- and you can talk about anything at all you want to talk about in respect to the IGF. And if that doesn't work, you can talk about anything you want to talk about at all.
So who wants to be the first person? You can talk about anything that's happened this week. You can talk about a workshop that you were in when you learned something. You can ask questions. You can talk about main sessions. You can talk about the IGF itself. You can give some feedback on how this week has gone and whether you thought the facilities were good and the organisation was great and was the main room too big and all of that stuff.
It's truly, truly an open mic session. You can talk about anything.
A gentleman has his hand up. If you go to the microphone, sir, yeah, you can speak.
And if everyone else would like to form an orderly queue behind this gentleman, we'll get started.
So if you could introduce yourself and tell us where you are from, that would be great.
>> HISHAM ALMIRAAT: Thank you so much for the opportunity. My name is Hisham Almiraat. I am Director of Global Voices Advocacy, also known as ADVOCS. I have had a wonderful opportunity throughout the week, and I've made a lot of contacts and networked with a lot of like-minded activists.
My main frustration, though, has to do with the fact that a lot of civil society organisations, so-called civil society,. I came to the conclusion a lot of them are masqueraded as civil society, but they represent most of the time private interest groups or are sponsored by their own government.
Most of civil society organisations I know come from Morocco -- I am Moroccan national -- don't have the resources to fly all the way to Bali, but they still can send emails. --
>> I was just going to ask, you said "so-called civil society." I was wondering if you could define civil society and how you see it.
>> HISHAM ALMIRAAT: Most of the time it has to do with the way they are financed, they find resources to send people to wonderful venues like these ones. So I can speak of one group, since I am a Moroccan national. There are supposed to be two Morocco delegates here in Bali, but I struggle to find them. I don't know if they are in the room. They must have checked their high tide bulletin, must be at the beach.
But in any case, there are things happening in Morocco, and if you will allow me just two minutes --
>> CHRIS DISSPAIN: Yes, go ahead.
>> HISHAM ALMIRAAT: -- to read one statement from one civil society organisation based in Morocco. It's Mamfakinch. That's the name of this organisation. So on September 17th, Mr. Ali Anouzla, a journalist, and the Arabic language editor of Lakome.com, a popular online publication, and also a journalist known for his critical reporting of the highest political figures in Morocco was arrested after he published a link to an article in the Spanish paper EL PAIS, which contained a link to a video attributed to Al Qaeda.
He was held without charge for a little over a week before being formally accused of "material assistance to a terrorist group, advocating terrorism, and initiating a terrorist act."
He is now being held in a prison in Casablanca with convicted terrorists pending his trial. This case has sparked an unprecedented campaign of support, both nationally and internationally. Now his site and several mirrors of his site have been reportedly blocked in Morocco. His arrest and the apparent ISP-level filtering of his site and those of his supporters mark a major setback for freedom of expression in Morocco, which has, in recent years, prided itself -- in recent years has made strides increasing Internet access to its citizens and pulling back online censorship.
The February 20 movement, the country's version of the so-called Arab Spring, operated mostly online and mostly freely. More recently, the convicted pedophile led to a massive online campaign that enforced the monarch to rescind his pardon, an unprecedented move in Morocco's history.
So Mamfakinch condemns this. We consider the charges to be unfounded under international law and call for immediate release and for charges against him to be dropped. We also call for Morocco to lift all ISP filtering and online censorship in the country.
Thank you so much.
>> CHRIS DISSPAIN: That's fine. Thank you very much.
>> SHADI ABOU-ZAHRA: My name is Shadi Abou-Zahra. I've been asked through the Dynamic Coalition on Accessibility and Disability to just give an update on the report. I want to report that from our perspective, this has been one of the best IGFs so far in terms of accessibility. We really want to appreciate the host country for all the work they're doing, particularly on a fairly short turnaround, I think, this year in particular. Also the IGF Secretariat and all the work that they've put in and the effort. So we're really seeing a lot of progress, a lot of improvements in terms of accessibility and inclusion of the IGF.
There have been issues, particularly with the connectivity and the remote participation, this year. Unfortunately, even though the bandwidth has been pretty good, it was more technical issues. We will report on this in our report and also update our guidelines for future IGFs, but we really wanted to thank the host country for their work.
>> SUSA CHALMERS: Thank you. It's really nice to receive positive feedback.
Ma'am, would you like to make a comment?
>> I am from China, so I will speak in Chinese, so please use earphones.
>> SUSAN CHALMERS: Sure, we will just watch the transcript too.
>> LIU DUO: Okay. My name is Liu Duo, and I come from the Ministry of Information and Communication from Republic of China, People's Republic of China.
First of all, on behalf of the Chinese delegation, I would like to thank the host country, Indonesian government for your thoughtful arrangement for this IGF conference, and I thank the particular organisation of IGF Secretariat.
I'd like to make a few observations regarding this conference. First of all, at this conference, a multistakeholder cooperation for Internet Governance has been the consensus. We come to realise we need government, international organisations, civil society, and private sector.
However, we need to have clear-cut roles and responsibilities of all parties. The goal is for the public interest, for the safety and stability of Internet across worlds, but not for just one individual country or for a few individual countries.
Secondly, all parties have come to realise the importance of changing the governance mechanism. The massive surveillance over the Internet that has come to the attention of the international community may just be the abuse of power for Internet technology and management by individual companies on the surface of it. But the root cause is there is a big gap in the management of Internet at the moment.
As the Brazilian delegate said, it is time for us to look for a new direction and to deliver on the principles of multilateral, democratic, and transparent established by WSIS Summit.
Thirdly, it is important for us to establish consensus in the Internet Governance principles. We uphold the protection of human rights and the freedom of speech. This is the consensus across the globe.
At the same time, we must realise that principles such as development and multilateralism are equally important to the development of Internet. We welcome the proposal of Brazil to host Internet Summit in April 2014. It is a conviction that this Summit will make new contributions to the development and governance of Internet.
Thank you.
>> CHRIS DISSPAIN: Thank you very much.
And the next person?
>> JIM PRENDERGAST: Hi, Chris. Jim Prendergast with the Galway Strategy Group. Question about -- wait, that's a another meeting in a few weeks.
First off, I do want to start off by thanking the organisers, the Secretariat and the Balinese delegation. I thought the meeting ran fairly well. The security was excellent. Plenty of food and coffee. I think that's an improvement over last year, certainly something people appreciate.
The bandwidth issues, while not perfect, I think were a vast improvement over years past as well, so that's to be congratulated.
The other thing I wanted to talk about is sort of the uniqueness and different formats for sessions. I moderated a flash session that was extremely interactive. We only had 30, 35 minutes, but we had probably like 25 youth speak, which is something I think that was unique amongst all the other panels out there. The kids walked out of the room very excited, very energetic compared to some of the earlier sessions that they were in. So encourage the continued use of those types of formats. I hope more panelists will try and use them in theirs because as an audience participant, it certainly makes it a much more worthwhile experience. Thank you.
>> CHRIS DISSPAIN: Thanks, Jim.
And I can tell you that outside of this convention centre, for people who are looking at the Twitter feeds, et cetera, et cetera, that session was -- sounded extremely interesting, and I've had people say to me that's the one thing I wish I had been out because it just sounded as if it was a really great session. So congratulations.
So we can all go home, then, if no one has any other comments? Oh, sorry, there's a Closing Ceremony we have to have. But this really is an open mic session. You can talk about anything you like. And I am not going to take too much longer before I start calling it quits.
So no one has any comments on the IGF? Nobody wants to respond? No one's got anything to say about the session this morning? I can see somebody standing up and leaving the room. No, walking to the microphone.
>> Just if we can hang on for one second, we have a statement that we want to share, but the person who has been asked to read it on behalf of our group may not be in the room yet.
>> CHRIS DISSPAIN: Sure.
>> Because we came rushing in from one of the many fruitful sessions that we've been able to have, so if I can just ask your indulgence for --
>> CHRIS DISSPAIN: I will indulge you with pleasure.
>> Thank you.
>> PINDAR WONG: Thanks, Chris. Pindar Wong, Hong Kong.
This is my first IGF. I have been an IGF skeptic for many years. I am glad I am no longer an IGF skeptic given the dynamics I have seen this week. Congratulations on a great event.
Just like the flash session, I think in terms of looking at format going forward, one thing you may consider is keeping presentations to a minimum, just maybe one or two minutes. That was the problem that we had in our session. There's so much expertise in the room that if -- if I may, if you can try and find mechanisms to encourage dialogue, that will be great, because again, there's so much talent here, it would be a pity not to tap into that.
Practical suggestion, again, is making sure that everyone's read the papers before coming because, again, just looking at titles and turning up to the session may not always sort of result in the best kind of interaction.
Thank you.
>> CHRIS DISSPAIN: Pindar, thanks. And just so you know, the thing about long presentations is a thing we say every year to everyone. We say please don't make long presentations; this is supposed to be interactive. And every year some people make long presentations, but I completely agree with you.
>> NORBERT BOLLOW: Thank you. Norbert Bollow. I am one of the co-innovators of something called the Civil Society Internet Governance Caucus, and I would like to -- actually, it's Bollow. I would like to react to the thought that so-called civil society organisations are perhaps not what many people think of when they hear civil society, and what I would suggest in response to that is to create a new stakeholder category, multi/other, because if we sort of established standards for what is civil, these standards should not have the effect of somebody being denied. Everybody should be able to be allowed to voice their concerns, but maybe not everybody should call themselves civil society.
Right now, if you don't fit anywhere else, you get reduced as civil society. That might not be the best approach. Thank you.
>> CHRIS DISSPAIN: Thank you. So think about -- I am really interested actually -- Susan asked a question earlier on, I am really interested, people in this room, if any of us have the faintest idea of what the definition of "civil society" actually is. I just assume it's everybody, but I don't know.
Olga.
>> OLGA CAVALLI: Thank you, Chris. Thank you for giving me this opportunity. My name is Olga Cavalli, a representative of the Government of Argentina, and I would like to thank the host. I think it's been a great meeting, a great place to host this meeting.
I would like to thank the IGF Secretariat for all their work. I would like to thank all the colleagues that invited me to moderate or to talk in their workshops, and also those colleagues that worked with me in organising the access meeting -- the access main session, Focus Session. It's the jet lag. Sorry. This time of the day it's very strong.
I would like also to announce, as a university teacher, that we are organising for the sixth year the South School of Internet Governance, this time for the first time in the Caribbean, Trinidad and Tobago, in the frame of the 25th anniversary of the Telecommunications Union. The call for applications for fellowship will be open very soon in our webpage, governmentalinternet.org, so we will welcome candidates from Latin America and from the Caribbean, and we have trained more than 300 people so far in this six years, so we are very happy with this new Caribbean stage of the project. Thank you very much, and it has been a great meeting.
Thank you, Chris.
>> SUSAN CHALMERS: Olga, before you go, I just wanted to ask you a question. I was wondering, I'm curious because I was wondering -- or to any other government representative in the room -- why governments come to the IGF and what the value is from a government perspective.
>> OLGA CAVALLI: Well, it's a good question. I must say I am kind of a multistakeholder person, not governmental person. I am also a university teacher. I am also active in our Internet Society chapter in Argentina, I am the Secretariat. And I am also active, a board member of the National Center of Engineers, and there I have created a commission for women and engineers. So I have several activities. I cannot say myself that I am a fully governmental person.
So I find the beauty of this meeting for being multistakeholder and for being equal footing. I think that's unique, and that's the fantastic beauty of the IGF. And I have been so privileged to be in all the eighth IGFs, and I was privileged to be representing my country in Tunis in 2005.
So I think that governments come to the IGF, those governments that are willing to come, trying to understand this new model of interaction. But I think that multistakeholderism already happens. If you think of all the projects that happen in all the countries, like fiber into rural areas or doing IXPs or cooperating creating local content, those are multistakeholder projects. Those are somehow a partnership in between the government and between private companies, academia, technical community.
So we shouldn't fear for multistakeholder because we already have it in our lives. And technology is blending all that. So I think that governments come here to share experiences, to learn, and to participate in equal footing in this beautiful meeting. Thank you for the question.
>> SUSAN CHALMERS: Great. Thanks, Olga. Thank you.
We need to raise that up a little bit.
>> CHRIS DISSPAIN: It probably would have been easier just to take it out of the stand and hold it, but anyway.
>> Thank you. I am Mr. Aziz from Morocco and reading the statement on behalf of 20 civil society leaders from 18 different countries from the Freedom House delegation.
The 2013 IGF provided a valuable space for the members of our group to engage with other stakeholder groups through the Focus Sessions and also through side meetings and consultations with representatives of governments, businesses, the technical community, multilateral bodies, and civil society organisations from all over the world. We urge all stakeholders to continue to engage and participate in future IGFs to strengthen the Forum's multistakeholder process and to uphold the principles of openness, transparency, and inclusiveness.
Without the IGF, there is no comparative venue for civil society to directly raise its perspective and concerns with leaders in government, the private sector, and the technical community.
We share the sentiment with the vast majority of IGF participants that the Internet Governance process can and should be improved but stress the importance of upholding and strengthen the multistakeholder approach to ensure that the Internet remains open, global, secure, and resilient.
In calling for more efforts to promote, protect, and advocate for human rights online, our group has underscored three broad principles and recommendations.
First, all laws, policies, regulations, terms of service, user agreements, and other measures to govern the Internet must adhere to international standards of human rights, including but not limited to Article 19 of the UN Declaration of Human Rights, guaranteeing the right to freedom of expression; Article 12, guaranteeing the right to privacy; Article 20, guaranteeing the right to free association. As an important step, states and other stakeholders must look to Human Rights Council Resolution 28, adopted by consensus in July 2012, affirming "that the same right that people have offline must also be protected online, in particular, freedom of expression,: and pledging to explore further, "how the Internet can be an important tool for development and for exercise in human rights."
This applies to ending illicit online surveillance by any government. To be legitimate and lawful, any surveillance must be limited, targeted, used to deter or investigate criminalized activity and subject to independent judicial oversight.
Second, consistency across the many spaces for discussion around Internet Governance issues, including those spaces clustered around regional, subregional, national, linguistic, and other groupings is crucial to ensure the principles of openness, transparency, and inclusiveness are upheld in all venues. This is not multistakeholderism for multistakeholderism sake, but rather, recognizing the need to represent all voices, perspectives, and interests in setting standards, norms, and policies that affect the Internet, both locally and globally.
The term "multistakeholder" is often used and applied to the wide range of events, groups, and processes. Various international organisations as well as national governments must make it a top priority to replace lip service to multistakeholderism with genuine efforts to bring all stakeholders to the table on equal footing.
Third and last, transparency and accountability. Transparency and accountability are the crucial next steps in the Internet Governance discussion and need to be fully implemented by all stakeholder groups. Businesses are beginning to recognize transparency reports are serving their users and their corporate social responsibilities as well as their bottom line interests. Governments likewise should ensure that their policies and practices are fully transparent as a means of preserving their legitimacy, credibility, and more authority with their own citizens and the international community.
In instances of content censorship, surveillance, shutting down, or deliberate slowing down of networks or other methods of Internet control, these two stakeholder groups must work independently and together to divulge details about these measures and have them open to public debate.
In addition, government should institute strict controls on the expert of surveillance and filtering technologies to regimes that have failed to demonstrate a commitment to upholding human rights while the private sector should take a closer look at some of their own practices in this domain.
In some countries, bloggers, activists, and other Internet users are subject to beatings, imprisonment, and even murder when they post information critical to the authorities.
We thank the Government of Indonesia for its warm hospitality and dedicated efforts in successfully hosting the Eighth Annual meeting of the Global IGF. Despite the confusion during the summer over whether the event would be held in Bali, we were able to convene our delegation of civil society advocates, activists, and academics from more than 18 countries.
However, three of our colleagues had to cancel their attendance owing to visa issues. The letter granting certain registered participants permission to obtain visas upon arrival in Indonesia came too late, was rejected by airline officials, and was not extended to participants from all countries. For future IGFs, it would be preferable to announce the visa on arrival special procedure well in advance and officially notify the appropriate channels.
Thank you.
(Applause)
>> SUSAN CHALMERS: Thank you. Thank you.
I see we have Mervi over on the other side of the room. Is that you? Would you like to go ahead?
>> MERVI KULTAMAA: Yes. Thank you very much. My name is Mervi Kultamaa from the Foreign Ministry of Finland, and basically, I wanted to reply with a question of why governments come to the IGF meetings.
But first let me share my appreciation for this year's IGF and what a marvelous job the Secretariat does with such scarce resources.
But from foreign policy perspective and from my personal perspective, why I come to the IGF meetings. I am interested in discussing about how the present multistakeholder Internet Governance model can be further developed and strengthened. This is my first point.
And the second topic of interest is how Internet can be harnessed for the benefit of developing countries, especially the least developed countries, and I am glad that development stays as cross-cutting issue in each IGF meeting.
And the third question relates to human rights, which we have discussed in length also in this year's IGF, and how the respect for human rights and freedom of expression apply on the Internet sphere.
And I think IGF really provides a marvelous opportunity, basically the only opportunity that we have globally, to interact with peers, but also with all stakeholders on these issues, and this year's debates were, in particular, very constructive with the Brazilian initiative, and we look forward to the follow-up to that.
A point of concern that I wanted to share with all is the IGF funding, since the IGF is currently functioning on half of the budget that it really needs. And one of the problems is that there has been no possibility to hire a new Executive Coordinator. Now there is a positive development in this regard that two foundations are to be established to accept small donations. So I hope that all stakeholders put their money where their mouth is and really reflect on possibilities to help and to fund the IGF to make it stable and to make sure that we can come here to enjoy the discussions also in the future.
Thank you.
(Applause)
>> SUSAN CHALMERS: Thank you. Thank you very much.
I think we'll -- sir? Would you like to go ahead, and then over to you.
>> MASHIUR RAHMAN: This is Mashiur Rahman from -- I am representing Shikkhok.com, an education platform, and this year we got ISIF 2013 Award.
As IGF, as a global platform, we are facing a lot of challenges, but I'd like to highlight one of the challenges that we are facing is we are -- all the content in the Internet is mostly in English. How we can address the local people with the local content. In this context, we are working with the local language, Bengali, to distribute education material to the blind people, poor people, remote people who don't have access or cannot even go outside of their room or house or go to the city to get the education resources.
So I think IGF is doing a wonderful job, but IGF -- I think IGF needs to address these local challenges, the local people. Although through IGF we got a lot of connectivity in the rural area, we got excellent connectivity, but what will we do with this connectivity if we do not have any good content, if we do not have any resources in local language? Because our local people cannot understand English. They cannot even understand how the Facebook is working.
So IGF -- I think IGF also needs to add this -- besides the other issues, needs to add this about this local languages or local minor people. I think Indonesia, like Indonesia, a lot of islands there, local people cannot interact in the English language. So this is the big challenges for the local people like us. So I look forward how we can work together to address this problem.
Thank you very much.
>> SUSAN CHALMERS: Thank you. Thanks for your intervention. Thank you.
>> JACKSON MIAKE: Hello. My name is Jackson from Vanuatu, Pacific Island country.
I do acknowledge the organisers of this IGF. Actually, this is my first IGF. I am really delighted and happy what's been discussed throughout the week.
I come from government policy development kind of work, and while we continue to talk about multistakeholder, developing countries do depend a lot on the government for basic services as well as infrastructure, et cetera.
As government, we do have continuous battle with civil society, which we are yet to define what it is, but to keep things going. And from my view, our responsibility as the government is to keep and to ensure that services reach our citizens, taking into consideration that we do have competing priorities, such as climate change, global warming, infrastructure, health, education, et cetera. Government has an important role in the multistakeholder model setting to ensure citizens contribute to the policy development process.
And something that we've found that's been very helpful in this multistakeholder is involving everyone in our decision making and ensure everyone has a role within the multistakeholder.
Just referring to the question why governments attend IGF. Personally, for me, and for my personal view, I think governments should be taking the lead in the multistakeholder model setting to protect the interest of our citizens with continuous dialogue with the civil society. And overall, our role is to develop policies that encourage investment and growth of ICTs and telecommunications as well as other sectors, doing this in an open, transparent, and accountable manner.
And finally, my additional comment is to reach multistakeholder cooperation and to preach that we must keep working together with developing countries like the Pacific region, and we need capacity building and support, and we need to join hands to deliver projects in small island states.
Thank you.
>> SUSAN CHALMERS: Thank you, Jackson.
For those of you who have just come into the room, this is the open mic session. We have been discussing a number of different topics ranging from the session formats. We've heard a few prepared statements. And a few answers to a few questions. So just feel free to raise whatever you'd like to raise relating to the IGF.
Norbert, I believe you are next.
>> NORBERT BOLLOW: Yes. Thank you. Norbert Bollow, civil society. I want to respond to the question that has been raised, what is civil society, and to do so, I want to quote from a document that speaks to this, which has very sill credibility. It is the Council of Europe's code of good practice for civil participation in the decision-making process from 2009, and it says that -- well, it talks about something called NGOs, and it defines it to refer to organised civil society, including voluntary groups, nonprofit organisations, associations, foundations, charities, as well as geographic or interspace community and advocacy groups.
The core advocacy of -- sorry. The core activities of NGOs are focused on values of social justice, human rights, democracy, and the rule of law. In these areas, the purpose of NGOs is to promote causes and improve the lives of people.
It goes on giving much further good stuff. Please contact me if you want the full reference. Thank you.
>> CHRIS DISSPAIN: Thank you. That's great, and I got that. Is it limited to NGOs, or is there space -- hold on. Let's let that percolate around the room. We will come back to it. Otherwise, we will spend the whole time talking about that.
Sala.
>> SALANIETA TAMANIKAIWAIMARO: Thank you, Chris. Sala Tamanikaiwaimaro. For the transcripts, I am from Fiji and speaking on my own behalf.
I would just like to say one of the core things about Internet Governance Forum for me and one of my wish lists throughout the years has always been effective meaningful discussion.
Numerous issues that have been percolating throughout the week, it's all the more critical. Whether it's increasing the number of countries represented within the GAC within ICANN or whether it's increasing participation from underserved regions, of the 193 countries, at least 90 of those countries are from developing regions, and most of them aren't here or at least represented.
Having said that, it doesn't take away the need for dialogue and continued and sustained dialogue. But just to add to that, I want to be officially on the record that I don't think that multilateralism is a solution to enhanced cooperation. Because if you take an analogy where parents who try to legislate children's behavior, it just makes them rebel all the more. But what we can certainly do as a community -- and again, I am speaking just on my own behalf -- what we can certainly do as a community is celebrate at least the more than ten years of practical examples of enhanced cooperation. But what we certainly cannot dismiss is the need for increasing accountability and transparency, particularly in relation to the critical and conflicting issues that people are not comfortable to discuss and be prepared to dialogue.
Thank you.
>> CHRIS DISSPAIN: Thank you, Sala.
The gentleman.
>> BERNARD ADONGO: My name is Bernard Adongo, and I am from Kenya. This is my first IGF. This is my first IGF, and I wouldn't be participating if I wasn't -- if I didn't receive an award -- FIRE Award. It is done by AfriNIC. It has been just -- it's been -- I would really like to express my gratitude to be able to be part of this. It has really, really opened my eyes, and I think it is a testament to IGF that you can involve people who are really working at the very fringes, because what I do, I own a company where we do custom engagement. We help businesses engage with their customers where we bridge -- we use SMS and we use the Internet to bridge everything together. And I think in a lot of the developing countries, a lot of people consume Internet through SMS. And I think it is kind of sort of genius to be able to involve people from other -- at the very fringes. I was with other award recipients and grant recipients, and I realised that they are all working at the very, very fringes of something you might not call mainstream Internet. So I think it was really a good experience for me.
The other thing is even some of my fellows have mentioned when it's involving new stakeholders, it is important to bring meaning in organising the way their sessions are going to be so that they make more impact and they are able to benefit more from basically the whole system. Otherwise, it was -- I have really enjoyed the sessions. It has widened my mind. It has grown my scope. And I am so grateful for the Seed Alliance, AfriNIC, and IGF in total. Thanks.
>> SUSAN CHALMERS: Vlad.
>> VLADIMIR RADUNOVIC: Thank you, Susan. My name is Vladimir Radunovic from DiploFoundation. I wanted to convey three messages that I have been asked to, two from the workshops and one is a personal message.
The first one refers to capacity building. Today we had a capacity building workshop, and there was a general feeling that throughout the IGF, especially the main sessions, high-level sessions, a lot of representatives of the governments and private sector, also the others, kept using very frequently capacity building, capacity building, capacity building, but however, our feeling was that this has become a bumper sticker, a word which has been used without too much follow-up on that.
And in our discussion, we wanted to of in size that capacity building is far more than just a training or just bringing people to IGF, which is all relevant, but it is a complex process which involves in situ training, online training, tutoring and mentoring, training for trainers, evaluation of trainings, community building, fellowships, policy immersion, and opportunities for newcomers to dive into the process. This is a complex process. It requires a lot of fundamental support for the organisations that are doing capacity building, including finances, to be able to understand these efforts for the IGF, and this comes as an invitation, especially for governments and the private sector to support capacity building more than they just talk about it.
The second message comes from the workshop on eParticipation, where we explore the opportunities and limits or, as our friend, Bernard would say, not problems but challenges of remote participation. Firstly, to thank to the IGF Secretariat and all the crew for really giving their best for the eParticipation to work. But then also emphasizing that without a bigger support from the whole IGF and, again, all the stakeholders to support eParticipation as a fundamental process, again, not just a service of the IGF, but a process between the two events of evolving people into the process is a must.
And maybe to support this, we are not talking only about remote participation, but also social media and the other. There are recent statistics I think from this morning about the Twitter feeds basically says that it was 25,000 people that tweeted IGF 2012 or -- sorry 2012 -- or IGF 13 hashtags within these couple of days tweeted or retweeted and that these tweets managed to get to about 10 million different followers on Twitter. So IGF was found around, and we need to capitalize on the strengths of the social media and eParticipation.
And the last very short message by Diedre from St. Lucia, asked me -- besides all the stakeholders, mentioned users, users, users.
>> Thank you so much. It's important for these terms, capacity building, thanks for explaining that. For those who may not be familiar with the term. And thanks also for those statistics. That's really -- that's really exciting to hear.
We'll have the gentleman in the blue shirt, and then in the white shirt. Thanks.
>> WOUT DE NATRIS: Thank you. My name is Wout de Natris, and it may be confusing, but I am speaking as a personal role at the moment. But I would like to give some observations just that I have seen in the past few days.
I think the first is that I am very happy to see that the things changed here, that you are just up front and there is no longer the big forum because that was very exclusive for everybody else in the room, I think.
The second thing is that over the years that I have been to the IGF that the most interactive workshops where the moderator disassociated themselves or himself or herself from the panel. So in other words, very direct interaction by moving through the room, one-on-one questions and comments, and then you get a great discussion and debate, and usually with good results because you really hear the things you want to hear.
So started this morning with 40 questions, and then sort of answering half of them, which may also not be constructive. But that's what I saw.
I think on topics we heard in some workshops that there's a lot of associations or companies who are not here because they just did not show up at the IGF or they don't know that it exists. Perhaps it's possible to do some serious stock taking over the coming months to see who would we want to have here next year. So what we heard, for example, is that we missed the software vendors here because -- and the developers, we missed them here. We missed law enforcement here. We talk about them, but there's no response from the room in most workshops. So there has to be something in the topics next year that makes it interesting for them to come, but also it is a possibility, then, to discuss with them and the problems that some people seem to be having.
I think the other one I think that may be a thing for the IGF to do -- and I am going to give the example on IP version 6 here. I was at a meeting last week, and it's a very personal reflection, but I heard we are not doing IP version 6 because the manager of a big company says I can't handle the people that are going to call through the call centre. And then I thought it can't be true that you are writing some sort of a manual for the call centre and not talking to the CEO saying it's about time you start doing IP version 6.
So in other words, do we talk to the right people in some sessions? And could there be people at the high level, people present here, to make them understand why it is important to change IP version 6 or do more work on spam or more on cybercrime, but that they understand why that topic is on the agenda and not just the lower-level civil servants that go to the workshop and then you talk to the same level and we go home and we've discussed it nicely.
So that's maybe something that we could think about, is it possible to do a little in-depth session for people who don't understand it or are at a level to make differences.
And the last one is that I'm very happy that all the presentation of the IETF, the Internet Engineering Task Force, are here because I think they did a really great job at being here, presenting, telling the world what they were doing, and how they could interact in the future.
And as a last one before I give my compliments, that when I tweeted where I'm going, tomorrow I am leaving to IGF, and then someone who follows me on Twitter that I don't personally know said yeah, thanks, I know your passport number, your birth date, all your names because the database has been hacked and it's on the Internet. So in other words, if we talk cybersecurity, cybercrime, et cetera, et cetera, at the IGF, let's protect our own website as a community and protect the personal data of the people that participate here.
Having said that, I want to give my great thanks to the people who organised it from the IGF and Indonesia and Bali because I've never been to a more friendlier IGF than this one.
(Applause)
>> CHRIS DISSPAIN: Sorry. I need -- if I can just ask for one second.
Did I hear you just say -- did you just say that the IGF website was hacked?
>> No, it was not.
>> WOUT DE NATRIS: Well, that is open, and anybody can access it. But I got a tweet from a law professor in Lydon saying I just know what your passport number is. I know what your address is. I know what all your full names are and your birth date. That's exactly what I had to fill in on the IGF website.
>> CHRIS DISSPAIN: Okay. So we'll take this off -- obviously, off the microphone, but we need to get that information from you as soon as possible.
Gentleman over there.
>> MARTIN LEVY: I am going to take it back to points from the previous gentleman who brought up the subject of IPv6. My name is Martin Levy. I am from a company that has focused on IPv6 for years and years and years, and I am going to tell you a wonderfully positive story from this IGF.
The local hosts and the local network operations centre that is operating the wi-fi and the network here has provided you all with both IP version 4 and IP version 6 networking, and the massive devices here have used IPv6 quite successfully.
I am going to ignore the little hiccup on the wi-fi a few days ago. We'll just continue.
But the percentages of traffic have been in the region of 20% to 30%, where the general populace of the IGF attendees, predominantly non-geeks, have been using their predominantly out-of-the-box standard laptops or smartphones or tablets and have successfully pumped quite a lot of IPv6 traffic in and out of this venue.
The other thing is I got the tour of the network operations centre, and I want to provide a shout-out to the techies that are sitting back there running everything, all local and wonderfully smart. They gave me a quick run-down. Everything done with standard hardware, available off the shelf, standard connections to their local Indonesian telecos, no special work done whatsoever to deliver IPv6 withinside the four walls of this convention centre.
So for those people that still go back and either talk to their local universities, to their local governments, to service providers, and still have an issue with v6, that shouldn't be the case in 2013, and this is as great an example as any that IPv6 can be delivered to the masses without a problem. And the final shout-out is thank you for the infinite amounts of tea and coffee that have been provided. This is a vast improvement. Thank you.
(Applause)
>> NNENA NWAKANMA: Thank you. My name is Nnenna, and I am speaking on my personal behalf. I want to just make four quick sentences.
The first sentence is that the video quality, the quality of the video of the Opening Ceremony was not very good. We couldn't exploit it well from the media perspective.
The second is I would like to put it to the MAG and the organisers that we should plan IGF with an intention to make the physical participants smaller than the eParticipants. I think if we have it in mind that we have more participants outside of the IGF venue, that will help our planning.
On that, I've been tracking the eParticipation itself, and I would like to say that there is a lower level of eParticipation this year, but this is not necessarily due to the lower quality in the eParticipation technical details and platform, but in the time difference. There is a huge time difference between Bali, Indonesia, and most of America, Africa, and Europe. And that explains the low level of engagement from people participating online.
And I would like to still continue my last sentence on eParticipation and say that in Baku -- and I do recall in Nairobi -- with the help of Diplo, we had a social media team, and that social media team was very effective. I was actually hoping that we would have a better social media team here, and I am a bit disappointed on that end.
I am one of those people who were tweeting, but unfortunately, I could not tweet in French. So I am hoping that by next year we will have a multilingual social media team that will help chat more, engage more, and get more meaningful and valuable input from remote and even online participation.
Why do we need these people and in different languages? Because people look at things different ways. I didn't have people tweeting gossip about IGF because we are so engaged. So we need people to tweet content. We also need people to tweet people. And that is what makes remote participation very interesting.
I hope we will be able to pull this off by next year. I will be happy to contribute in my individual capacity from my Twitter handle, which has at least now 5,000 followers.
Thank you.
>> CHRIS DISSPAIN: Thank you very much. Very valuable input and feedback, and I don't know who was first, so you three can fight amongst yourselves. Matthew? Matthew.
>> MATTHEW SHEARS: Okay. Thanks, Chris.
I'd just like to say what a fantastic job this has been that's been done by everybody. Considering the various states of lack of clarity as to what was going to happen with the IGF, I think I really would like to say my appreciation, and I'd really like to call out the Secretariat because I can only imagine -- Chengetai, if you can just get up for a second, please. I know you will get this in the next session, but honestly, the Secretariat --
(Applause)
Having experienced the workings of the MAG firsthand, I appreciate the work the MAG does. This has not been an easy task this time around, and it's been a fantastic event.
The best way for me to illustrate that is to say that it was a terrible decision whether I go to one of three workshops or a Focus Session, and when I am in that particular type of situation, I know this has been a success.
The only thing I would say going forward is if we can start the review process as soon as the IGF is over. I know that's a lot of work for the MAG. I am sure there are many of us here who would like to help with that. But starting the planning and the review for next year at an earlier basis. We have big issues to address, still have to address funding, still have to address outputs, so let's get started on that then build on the success. Thanks.
(Applause)
>> My name is Izumi. I am from Tokyo, civil society. I am a member of the Multistakeholder Advisory Group. I asked my friend to stay because in addition to efforts by the Secretariat, I'd like to really thank and commend the works of the local host team. One of them taking care of the Webcast, the wi-fi connection, despite the lower budget than they wanted. And we really had a good environment in which we could really spend our focus on substantive discussions.
I organised one workshop about the power of the Internet to deal with the disaster and climate change. Valance was a hidden hero on this effort in Indonesia, together with the colleagues working since 2004 about how to cope with the disasters, afterwards using the technology. And I was pleased because I ran a similar session last year in Baku, but this year we saw an increase of people, and half of them participated are from Indonesia, and half of them, again, are the first-time comers to the IGF.
So I would like to invite more comments as Pindar has mentioned, as being a first-time participants, because your input here now is very, very taken seriously and to improve furthermore of the quality of the IGFs to come. Really, you should really guide us.
With that, I saw several developments or new actions being discussed here by different people I met for the first time or a few times in the world, and I'd like to just share one such a thing from my friend who just had to leave last night, Anne Benfar, who we discussed to open up following the summer school there. Would you like to have some Asia Pacific regional summer school. Down the road, next year, June or mid-June, likely in Hong Kong. We would like to reach out to the youngsters more about how significant these will be in the years to come.
Last but not least, perhaps, in addition to asking the question to government why you come here, I'd like to also ask some governments why you are not here. I just heard that from my friends that some governments are seeing this as not really legitimate international governmental meetings or IGF not being sort of international organisation in such status. So I think we should convey more of the serious participation of the governments together with the private sector, technical community, and civil society, makes the legitimacy more or our legitimacy more so they can go outside the box.
You may be aware there are not too many governments from the region who are participating. That's a pity. And so we'd like to really focus on this for the next IGFs.
Thank you.
>> SUSAN CHALMERS: Thank you Izumi, and I would just like to also agree with Izumi that as a member of the Multistakeholder Advisory Group, really encourage first-time participants to share their experience at the mic. Please do.
Olivier.
>> OLIVIER CREPIN-LEBLOND: Thank you very much. Olivier, Chair of the At-Large Advisory Committee in ICANN. I have a few personal comments I would like to share with everyone here.
The first one is that I've thoroughly enjoyed this IGF. The maturity of the discussion has increased so much over the years that it's -- it really is showing now the fact that it's coming into the deep part of the discussions, and I think that we do have some discussions that are reaching a point where we're reaching conclusions, and that's a good thing. And certainly the level of engagement has increased an enormous amount.
That said, there are a few concerns that I have, certainly with regards to the theoretical aspects of some of the discussions, the minutes of multistakeholderism, the principles of capacity building. A little bit like my colleague and friend, Vladimir Radunovic from DiploFoundation, capacity building is extremely important. Let's just stop talking about the principles of capacity building but actually going to implementation of capacity building, and that requires funding, and funding is the big elephant in the room here. There is not enough funding for capacity building to bring people to locations like here to be able to discuss things face to face.
Remote participation is great, but being able to meet with like-minded people in the corridors of the room, corridors of the centre, outside, is something that you cannot experience by having remote participation. So there needs to be funding from all sorts of organisations.
Especially I would ask the private sector. There are millions of companies out there that don't even know that this forum exists and that the discussions that start here eventually give rise to discussions that will affect the Internet and the Internet business model as we know it. There are very few funders, very few sponsors that actually bring people over to these fora, and that's really deplorable, and I hope that they will -- there will be more funders effectively for them.
In fact, some of the volunteers that come here are so determined that they take several days to come here. I would just like to note one person, Budoir Shunday, at the back of the room, he has taken three days to get here.
>> Was he walking?
>> OLIVIER CREPIN-LEBLOND: No, he was stuck in airports all around the world. But he is here, and that's what's important. I think all people who really want to be here have come here. But there are a lot of people outside these walls who really wanted to come here but were not funded to come here, and that's really, really deplorable.
One of the problems I see is the coverage of the press. There is not enough press coverage in the mainstream media around the world. I just looked at the BBC website. The technology page talks about Twitter. IPO talks about Amazon reducing its losses and about all sorts of other things, but it doesn't talk about the Internet Governance Forum. Oh, yes, it certainly talks about the new gTLDs, the four new gTLDs that are IDNs, international domain names that have been released, and that's an excellent thing, but as far as the Forum is concerned, it's very, very difficult to find information.
So of course, you cannot blame companies for not knowing that this even exists if they cannot read about it in the mainstream media.
So that's really the few points, and I do hope that this last point is heard by the media so that we're actually able to go and reach more people out there because this is really something that will affect them ultimately.
Thank you.
(Applause)
>> CHRIS DISSPAIN: Thanks, Olivier. I guess we need an IGF press office, Chengetai, a big one, with lots of -- well, something exciting needs to happen that the mainstream media can come and look at.
Paul, you are next.
>> PAUL WILSON: Thanks, Chris. Thanks, Susan.
Paul Wilson from APNIC, as the IP address registry for the Asia Pacific. We are really excited about this IGF event in our region, the second IGF only in Asia, first in east Asia.
We were really keen to see the event well attended, well supported, and successful, and I think it has been. It seems that it may not have been the biggest IGF, but it's certainly been a great success.
The local Multistakeholder Organizing Committee does deserve a huge round of thanks. I am sure they will get plenty, but I just want to give credit to the fact that they did organise themselves as a fully multistakeholder committee. They put all the work required to have this event happen. With some hitches that I think most of us were probably aware of along the way. So really a huge effort, and I am very glad that in the Asia region we were able to pull this off. I think and hope that this event will help to launch and to maintain a higher level of Asian participation in the IGF because I think certainly by population and by absolute numbers our participation from the Asia Pacific region has been a little below the others.
One of the things that we did spend some time on in the leadup to this region was the regional Asia Pacific IGF meeting, which was also a pretty successful one in terms of its numbers and all of its measures. It also is organised by a multistakeholder Korean Internet Governance Alliance, a fantastic effort by them.
I'd like to mention that at that recent Korea meeting, we were able to announce the next Asia Pacific regional IGF meeting, which is going to be happening in Hyderabad, India, dates to be announced early likely in August 2014. And so I hope to see Asian friends, Asia Pacific friends, and others converging on Hyderabad next year for that meeting.
And I would also like to put in a plug for the Regional IGF Multistakeholder Steering Group, as we call it. You can find the details on our IGF.Asia as the website for the regional IGF, and the Multistakeholder Steering Group is open for absolutely anyone who is interested to join and to participate in the planning preparations for that meeting.
Thank you.
>> CHRIS DISSPAIN: Thank you, Paul. I've got some questions from the room in a minute, but Pindar, you are next.
>> PINDAR WONG: I guess you have seen Paul in action. Izumi was saying comments back from a first-time IGF attendee.
My attendance here is because of Paul and his attendance at a conference.
As I said earlier, I was an IGF skeptic, and in the APRICOT meeting, he said look, you've got to really understand what this is about. You have to come and be here. So why don't you try and organise a few sessions. So with Adam's help, with Paul's guidance, and with other support members, I organised a session on an Asia Pacific issue at the APR IGF, and then issue here with the trade issue, which introduced.
The problem is follows, which is in terms of pitch, that I had to get other trade bodies interested in the IGF was, well, if you don't make decisions, why is it important?
And I think I can answer that and the reason I am no longer an IGF skeptic, having come here and organised these sessions, is I think you have something very, very special here. You have a sense of community. In other words, that sense of community has actually been established over many years of everyone coming to these meetings, and what you have is really trust building. And so whilst I see Paul's sort of initial call for having more commercial participation, the real thing here is that there was flexibility in the system to gather people around for an event that no one could have foreseen. Right? The Hong Kong Snowden disclosures. And then to have this flexibility within this arena to actually be able to address that. That's incredibly valuable. Why? Because no one could have predicted it.
So organisation wise, it's very clear, this is a -- you run a tight ship. Congratulations. But the real value, although my earlier intervention was that you've got great intellect in the room, you've got great people in the room. What I think is really important is raising trust. That is extremely valuable because there's no other venue that is what you guys have determined is you've defined what it means to be multistakeholder and multistakeholder principles. Don't undersell that. What you've got is extremely valuable. The community you have is extremely valuable. And I think that's worth stating.
Thank you.
>> CHRIS DISSPAIN: Pindar, thank you, and I agree with you 100%. I've lost track of whether it was last year or the year before, we had an example of a number of governments coming to the IGF with a particular model that they were proposing and actually being prepared to sit up on the stage and have that model discussed by the room and taken to pieces effectively by the people in the room. And this morning I think you saw another government being prepared to actually sit up on the stage and talk about something about which I'm not surprised I would be uncomfortable talking with them. The fact that they would do it, do it in this environment, is critical, and it's what makes the IGF thing so valuable.
>> PINDAR WONG: Just to build on that, the reason why the trust issue -- because we are in such a new domain, we are all going to make mistakes. My earlier point being here, massive surveillance, clearly that's a mistake. But with trust, you can build in what I would call forgiveness. In other words, okay, we all made a mistake. Full disclosure. Let's figure out what's going on, let's fix it, and let's move forward. Friends make mistakes. Married people make mistakes. They get into arguments all the time. But the strength of the relationship to move it forward is really based on, I would hope, a positive vision of the future and the implicit trust that we'll get through this. And I think that's -- the trust that you have built here is significant, it's meaningful, and I think it's extremely valuable, so congratulations on that.
>> CHRIS DISSPAIN: Thanks, Pindar.
I can't see who that is over there.
>> MARY UDUMA: Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. My name is Mary Uduma, and I am from Nigeria. This is not my first IGF. But I will say that my interaction here throughout the period has been very, very positive, productive, and engaging. IGF afforded me the opportunity to meet great minds, great people, and make friends. It has given me the opportunity to interact with others and share and exchange knowledge.
There are positive outcomes, but I have some worries in terms of what happens after this talk. We are building bridges, enhancing multistakeholder cooperation for growth and sustainable development. That aspect, growth and sustainable development, it brings me to the fact that -- to the point that I am from a continent or environment that affordability, availability, and sustainability are still challenges when it comes to Internet. Yes, we are talking about remote participation. It's when you have access that you can participate remotely. It's when it is affordable that you can participate remotely. And when it is available you can participate remotely.
I did not attend all the workshops. I know that the event has its theme, and maybe the subthemes were woven around that. But I don't know whether there were workshops that were devoted to this, but I must comment the W3C for the new alliance, Alliance for Affordable Internet, I hope that we all will be part of it and make sure that Internet is affordable, is available for those of us that are coming from the developing countries.
I will say that there should be a workshop on how to make Internet work in the developing countries, especially the least developed. And some of our governments, just like one of the speakers has said, that they don't see what is in there for them. It's not a treaty-making process. It's not a process that will help anybody or be enforced by any person. So they don't come as such. But in my environment, it's the government that moves the workings. They are the ones when they lend their weight in any process, it works. So that's what we should consider as well.
But I must say that the organisers have done a great job for us. We had a lot of food, a lot of fun. So thank you for this, and we hope that more developing countries will come and Internet will be made more affordable, available, and accessible for the developing countries.
Thank you.
>> CHRIS DISSPAIN: Thanks, Mary.
We are going to go to the gentleman there in a second and then to Sebastian, but Shadi?
>> SHADI ABOU-ZAHRA: Yeah, just a very brief clarification about it wasn't actually W3C. It's the World Wide Web Foundation. It's very similar. It's confusing. They were both initiated by Tim Berners-Lee. The W3C, the World Wide Web Consortium, is the technical body, and the Web Foundation is what works with the Alliance that was mentioned.
>> CHRIS DISSPAIN: Thank you.
Sir.
>> Sorry. The man who spoke is W3C, and I am Web Foundation. Just in case you need to put faces to the organisations.
>> CHRIS DISSPAIN: Perhaps you could wear badges next time. Or hats, maybe. Hats would be good. Don is in favor of hats.
The gentleman there in the hat, sir.
>> My name is Sonigitu Ekpe from Nigeria. This is my first time. I really thank the Indonesia government for the wonderful treatment they have given to us. And my appreciation goes to DiploFoundation. They credited the awareness of IGC through their online learning, I knew about the IG. I had to say today I am here. I give God the glory for also giving me the enablement.
Basically, those people that have been trained should be able to have a track to know who they are impacting. And there is also a need to make government who is using these resources for their daily businesses to participate fully.
Also, the companies who are involved are expected to do a whole lot of funding, either by establishing a foundation to support the IGF.
My third issue goes to the civil society. We need a platform that could really define a regional integration at the international, at the national, so that there will be transparency and accountability at all levels. For instance, if we are talking about multistakeholderism, how do they organise the structure of the international platform? That's my question for the civil society. Thank you.
>> CHRIS DISSPAIN: Thank you very much, and thank you for being prepared to get up to the microphone on your first IGF.
Sebastian is next.
>> Good day. Thank you very much, sir. I am going to speech French., No, it's not Sebastian Bellagamba. Sebastian may have the same initials as I do, but he's representing South America. I am Sebastian Bashara, French, a member of the ICANN's board who has been selected by users. I am also a member of the governing body of APNIC.
Thank you very much for your transcription of this name.
So what I wanted to say, the first thing was that our Chinese friends have utilized the opportunity to speak in their native language during the meetings, and so I think that we need to support that and encourage all people to use their native languages. There are several different languages. This gives us the impression that we're more international, less English-speaking heavy.
One of the previous speakers thanked the organisers and said that the organisation was excellent. I wanted to say that the sun was warming us outside, there was warm, cordial welcoming on the inside of the buildings, and we had excellent meetings. They were really fabulous. And I think the Lord has helped us to have such great meetings.
The third point that I wanted to make is that there have been a lot of sessions focusing on multistakeholderism and different actors. I hope that at some point there will be a summary of that. It seemed to me that this discussion split off into all different possible areas, the role of technical advisor, the role of governments, the role of civil society, and everyone, really. I hope that we can get some sort of synthesis, some sort of summary of this. That would be very useful. And just one last word. Thank you again to all of the organisers for this conference. Thank you.
>> CHRIS DISSPAIN: Thank you, Sebastien. So we've got three people at the microphones. Markus Kummer needs five minutes of our time at the end, and we need to finish at quarter past. So I am going to close the line right now, and we'll take Pindar first, and then Desiree, and then Sala.
>> PINDAR WONG: I just wanted to share with you in terms of, again, having more commercial participation at the IGF, the experience of this IGF when we invited the W3C Web payments chair, again, the W3C, World Wide Web Consortium.
I guess feedback was a little surprise that a lot of members in this group weren't aware that they are trying to build payment into the core of the Web. This is especially important for routing money on the Internet. But to give an example of the reward, again, W3C chair came, we found out about this wonderful IT event at Addis Ababa at the end of this year, which is, again, part of the celebration of the founding of the African Union. They are planning their technology plan 50 years ahead.
The example here is not just information, not just building trust, but also serendipitous events that we could not have planned for that. That's exactly the audience where, again, they don't necessarily -- you have opportunities for new technical development. So these are the reasons that I will be taking back with me why it's important to come here, not just the information, not just building trust, but also it also makes good business sense. Thank you.
>> CHRIS DISSPAIN: Thanks, Pindar.
Desiree?
>> DESIREE MILOSHEVIC: Thank you. My name is Desiree Miloshevic. This is my eighth IGF, and they have all been very different, and I am very proud that I have been able to come to all of them so far.
And I think I agree with some of what's been said previously, that we have a great community here. There's a lot of trust that is being built within this platform. But I think more importantly, it is important to say that it has been a very inspirational platform for a lot of academics, and events that have been as pre-events to the IGF. And further outreach should be done to the academic community to come and harness all the rich discussions that we have had in many workshops and public policy debates.
One thing that I do remember from the main session on the access and diversity, when we discussed WSIS 10 plus at the millennium digital goal of the MDGs was the fact that best practices. And before I forget, go back home, I'd like to say that it might be a good suggestion to have some of the organisations like the Internet Society, Diplo, and so on to come up with a half a day or a suggestion how to better deal with sharing of best practices among regional and national levels.
Lastly, this has proved it has been an inspirational platform, we now have this Brazil meeting as an additive process to the IGF, so thank you for working on that.
>> CHRIS DISSPAIN: Thanks, Desiree.
>> SUSAN CHALMERS: Sala.
>> SALANIETA TAMANIKAIWAIMARO: Thanks, Susan. I just thought I would speak to the issues that the gentleman from Nigeria raised.
Actually, we facilitated a workshop at this IGF on MS, multistakeholder selection processes, in terms of increasing accountability and transparency in which critical leaders of critical stakeholders were represented. And one of the common threads that they mentioned was that there needs to be clear criteria and particularly greater clarity in terms of definitions and that sort of thing.
One of the other things also is the issue of legitimacy, competency, geographical diversity, inclusiveness and democratization, and youth. And one of the things that came up, certainly, was the different communities have their own established norms, the technical community, the business constituency, where they agree who the focal point is. But in moving forward, if we are to enhance multistakeholder cooperation, we cannot sugar-coat the issues, and we need to address in very clear and tangible ways within the different sectors how this is going to play out.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
>> CHRIS DISSPAIN: Thank you, Sala.
So before I head back to Marcus, I want to say thank you to everybody who stuck around this afternoon and was prepared to come into this open mic. And obviously, especially to those who spoke. And you should stick around as well for the Closing Ceremony because, A, it will be short, I am reliably informed, and B, there will be some speeches worth hearing, I should think.
But in the meantime, perhaps you should give all of yourselves a round of applause. Thank you very much.
(Applause)
>> MARKUS KUMMER: Thank you all for your feedback. I came here, I was prepared that people would throw tomatoes at me or whatever, but I think the feedback was extremely positive.
And I tend to agree. I think it was really a very good meeting in true IGF tradition, the best IGF ever. We have always improved and learned from previous meetings.
Of course there was room for improvement, but I very much appreciated Pindar's comments as a first comer, that we really managed to build a climate of trust, and trust is extremely important, especially at the time when many say the circle of trust has been broken, so we really have to work hard to reestablish that trust, and I think the fact that there is such a platform and you can have these discussions is extremely -- it's invaluable. It would not -- I think it would not have been able to take place anywhere else.
And also the maturity of the discussions, we have witnessed that over the years. I remember the first meeting we had in Athens, one of his analogies with the Indian weddings, boy meets girl, arranged marriages, not yet ready to talk to each other, they are very shy. But gradually, I think we have grown to get to know each other -- (audio interference)
We have learned to talk to each other, and really, a discussion, the one we had this morning would have been unthinkable five, six years ago, I think.
Now, of course, there is room for improvement, and thank you for your comments. And one thing, today we end the meeting and the planning for the next meeting has to start tomorrow, and we said we had a MAG meeting yesterday. We will start the review process, as Matthew had suggested. We'll start with online discussions. We will ask, obviously, for community input. We will have a meeting next February, then, a physical meeting.
But yes, I think we have improved the sessions, but again, we can do better.
The colleague from Nigeria asked the question: What next? And what is in it for governments from developing countries? It is not a treaty conference. No, it was never intended to be a treaty conference, but we took up a challenge we learned at a treaty conference when many representatives from developing countries said they had a problem with spam, so we organised a session with experts around the table on how to deal with spam.
Now, that is not a treaty, but you can learn something, and there will be links to papers where you can actually find something to websites, to specialized bodies, the London Action Plan and so on, where there are practical solutions.
As one participant mentioned -- I think it was Desiree -- the idea may be to have pre-events, technical training before the IGF, came up as a suggestion. We have -- we didn't build in these pre-events to begin with. They just sort of mushroomed, and there are now many of these academic type, the giganet, and the idea of having a technical training event could be an excellent addition to the IGF, that we don't discuss policy but we mix policy with technical training.
And it's also a very positive development that we have seen more and more really highly specialized engineers attending the IGF. This time for the first time we had the Chairman of the Internet Engineering Task Force. They are techies, deep down in the plumbing of the Internet. They don't talk politics. But they began to realise that actually this is important for them to talk to policymakers, to make sure they don't make the wrong laws or make wrong regulation that will actually have a negatively impact on the Internet. So this is an extremely positive development, I think.
And yes, there are many suggestions of organising the sessions. We talked about giving better -- having more impact, more tangible outputs. We tried, and I would be the first to admit we're not yet there. We tried to organise the sessions in a way that would allow to reach conclusions, but on some of these issues, it is extremely difficult to reach conclusions. Questions of principles on multistakeholder, there are widely divergent opinions on Internet Governance principles, but we had great discussion on these issues, and we can continue the discussion.
The same on the role of governance. I think we moved towards middle ground. We are converging ideas where we say -- there was one panelist, to name her by name, Avri sitting there, who said actually that late in life she came to the conclusion that governments actually did have a role. Before she didn't think so. And we all agreed there should not be opposition between governments and other stakeholders. No, they should act in partnership, and governments had the particular role, but they should work with the other stakeholders to make the Internet work properly.
And okay. So let's discuss, then, on how to improve, how to make a better next meeting, make the next IGF even better.
Clearly, a room set up like this is not particularly conducive to a discussion. And a comment was made the roundtable or square setting we had on day two or day three was by far better suited to have an interactive discussion. Here we reverted back to the Plenary mode because we have a formal Closing Ceremony, but we could also have put the session maybe in another meeting room, except having done that, we wouldn't have the benefit of interpretation and also the realtime transcription, so there are always pros and cons.
But definitely, the sessions should be made more interactive, and the comment was made -- that was the starting point. We said that when we started we want interactive sessions without presentations. And maybe we collectively, we were not tough enough on that. I think we need to be tougher next time. We don't want time eaten up by panelists with presentations. We want interactive discussions.
I had positive feedback from the flash sessions. Let's go more for flash sessions. In the ITF they call that sort of thing "birth of a feather." Let's learn from this and move more towards interactive sessions.
Also, obviously, moderation is important, and I think we really have to insist on moderators reaching a conclusion trying to drive the discussion towards a conclusion that would then respond with demand for having better impact.
So with these few words, I would like to thank you all for your extremely valuable input. We will try and start an evaluation on the IGF website so that everybody can give an electronic input, but I think this very first input was extremely valuable.
Thank you very much, and now we adjourn for 16 minutes, and please be back at 4:30 sharp for the Closing Ceremony. Thank you. Thank you very much.
(Applause)
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This text is being provided in a rough draft format. Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) is provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings.
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