[discuss] NETmundial Initiative meeting

Sat Aug 30 17:17:47 UTC 2014

Bill,

Thanks for this ambiance report. We need a list of the people who attended,
hopefully expected by 2nd Sep, if someone is in charge of the reporting.
Perhaps a transcript of the debates (2h13min is much too long to watch).
Louis
- - -

On Fri, Aug 29, 2014 at 8:23 AM, William Drake <wjdrake at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi
>
> I sent this to the NCSG list and notice that there's been no follow-up
> traffic on other relevant lists so I thought I might as well pass it along.
>  Unfortunately, my notes on the project descriptions are terrible and I
> don't have time to watch the video in order to fill them out.  If someone
> else has better notes please correct, amplify, etc.  I assume WEF will post
> more complete information in the next few days.
>
> Thanks
>
> Bill
>
> Begin forwarded message:
>
> *From: *William Drake <wjdrake at gmail.com>
> *Subject: **Re: Forum NETmundial Initiative: Food for Thought*
> *Date: *August 29, 2014 at 8:03:41 AM GMT+2
> *To: *Sam Lanfranco <lanfran at YORKU.CA>
> *Cc: *NCSG Members <NCSG-DISCUSS at LISTSERV.SYR.EDU>
>
> Hi
>
> On Aug 28, 2014, at 4:50 PM, Sam Lanfranco <Lanfran at yorku.ca> wrote:
>
> 1. There is a high probability of the establishment of a new "dedicated
> organizational structure" as a significant Internet governance player.
>
>
> This will depend on a lot of factors and there's a long way between now
>  and then, but there are 4 projects being launched that could end up
> needing to be institutionalized somewhere, whether extant or new.  They
> really need to get descriptions of these posted, inter alia because they
> were introduced in such a rushed fashion yesterday (after 90 minutes of
> general statements from high level types about the Internet being a good
> thing we should support) that I strongly suspect most people in the room
> didn't fully get the info (I certainly didn't), much less anyone trying to
> follow on line.  My quick and scattered notes:
>
> 1.  An "issue to solution mapping mechanism," aka a informational
> clearinghouse geared toward helping developing country governments and
> others with orphan and other issues (I'd argue for cross-institutional
> assessments of transparency accountability inclusion etc), about which Lea
> and I have written a chapter that will be in the PDF 'book' released Monday
> and have organized a workshop. http://sched.co/1mJ0A2M  The GovLab at NYU
> has been tasked to take the lead on this.
>
> 2.  An assessment of multistakeholder good practices in other issue-areas,
> from which IG could potentially learn.  This is being done by academics
> involved in the Network of Centers.  http://networkofcenters.net  There
> was an initial workshop in Istanbul in May and there will be a follow up in
> Turin Oct. 1-2.  We will also do a 'host country' workshop at IGF which
> will touch on this work http://sched.co/1mZwy4X.
>
> 3.  Something I think on national-level multistakeholderism, we talked
> about this in the Ilves Panel process and elsewhere as something that could
> potentially be folded together with the clearinghouse function, but Fadi
> rushed through it so fast I didn't quite catch what was being done.
>  Anriette wrote a chapter touching on this for the PDF book I organized
> that will be released at our Day 0 event on NETmundial and its
> implementation http://sched.co/1r7K8s3
>
> 4.  A open source tool kit for the organization of governance initiatives.
>  Again, very rushed explanation, I didn't catch who was doing what.
>
> In addition, Fadi spontaneously asked Klaus Schwab if we couldn't have a
> fifth project in which WEF would help catalyze connecting the next billion
> users.  Most of us from CS/academia almost fell out of our chairs.  No idea
> if there will be any real effort to followup on this.
>
> Obviously, we need to for the projects to be opened up to input etc.
> rather than managed solely by the groups Fadi picked.  I think the folks
> involved all recognize the need for an oversight and engagement mechanism.
>  Virgilio thankfully proposed creating multistakeholder committees to
> oversee and promote engagement in them.  He also suggested that 1NET could
> be the vehicle to populate said committees, which would be a way to have MS
> coordination across groups, but I recognize some folks believe 1NET should
> be buried and forgotten.  Jeremy Malcolm managed to get Pres. Ilves to
> recognize him (I spent a half hour waving to no avail, far end of the room)
> and said CS might prefer to do it through the coordination group that's
> been established, on which Robin represents NCSG.  All TBD....
>
> Fadi also needs to slow down and rethink his impatient "roll it out and
> get it off my plate" approach, as civil society participants stressed
> yesterday.  Somehow we seemed to have gone from a six month period with WEF
> serving as the boot up platform for a broader and more participatory
> process of working on stuff to six months and then we take decisions.  He
> wanted to announce decisions at the February meeting of the GSMA in
> Barcelona, which is a truly bad idea.  A meeting of the mobile industry
> that nobody else really attends is hardly the right place to do this.  Like
> everything else about NMI, it's up in the air now.
>
> 2. The tendency will be toward a "leader-level" (top-centric) notion of
> multistakeholder engagement and a focus on "the transnational nature of the
> Internet" [Forum wording]
>
>
> This is how the forum normally operates but they've come to understand it
> won't be sufficient in this case.  Again, there will most likely be a
> multistakeholder committee(s) composed to oversee the projects and
> mechanisms for virtual engagement.  They don't have a lot of experience
> doing that at the level that IG people would expect so they're going to
> need a lot of input on how to proceed.
>
>
> As an opening position for civil society dialogue around this initiative I
> would suggest that civil society approach the initiative at three levels:
>
> 1. It insists in a full dialogue on what sort of multistakeholder
> engagement model is being considered if such an organization is to be
> established.
>
> 2. It stresses full transparency and accountability along with a broad
> definition of who constitute stakeholders and their roles in decision
> making.
> 3. At the same time civil society organizations: (a) look inward to
> increase the transparency and accountability of their own leadership - some
> of whom are part of the "leader-level" group in this Forum initiative; and
> (b) turn more of their efforts toward deepening and broadening awareness
> and engagement of their own constituencies in these deliberations and the
> core issues at stake.
>
>
> The first two have been done but will need elaboration and repeating.  The
> third is starting, nobody really knew what for sure was going on until the
> meeting yesterday.  A couple CS participants have blogged about it and
> there will presumably be much more to come.
>
> As a first stop, we will be discussing the NMI in Istanbul, first at our
> Day 0 event http://sched.co/1r7K8s3 and later in various main sessions,
> especially this one http://sched.co/1n76j1g
>
> In the meanwhile, the documents and videos are at
> http://www.weforum.org/issues/global-internet-governance
>
> The news release and related are here
> http://www.weforum.org/news/new-initiative-internet-governance-live-event?news=page
>
> Cheers
>
> Bill
>
>
> ***********************************************
> William J. Drake
> International Fellow & Lecturer
>   Media Change & Innovation Division, IPMZ
>   University of Zurich, Switzerland
> Chair, Noncommercial Users Constituency,
>   ICANN, www.ncuc.org
> william.drake at uzh.ch (direct), wjdrake at gmail.com (lists),
>   www.williamdrake.org
> ***********************************************
>
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