FINISHED - 2014 09 02 - Internet Society Open Forum – ISOC@ IGF: Dedicated to an Open Accessible Internet - Room 6

FINISHED COPY



NINTH ANNUAL MEETING OF THE

INTERNET GOVERNANCE FORUM 2014

ISTANBUL, TURKEY

"CONNECTING CONTINENTS FOR ENHANCED

MULTI-STAKEHOLDER INTERNET GOVERNANCE"



02 SEPTEMBER 2014

11:00

INTERNET SOCIETY OPEN FORUM -

ISOC @ IGF:  DEDICATED TO AN OPEN ACCESSIBLE INTERNET





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The following is the output of the real-time captioning taken during the IGF 2014 Istanbul, Turkey, meetings.  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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    >> SALLY WENTWORTH:  Good afternoon, everyone.  We're going to get started.  Good morning I guess.  I would like to thank all of you for joining us today.  My name is Sally Wentworth.  I'm the Vice President of global policy development for the Internet Society.  And you're here for the Internet Society's Open Forum.  

    I see many friendly faces, old friends in the crowd, but also some new faces.  And so we would like to thank you for spending this hour with us to learn more about the Internet Society and we hope ultimately to get involved and become part of our community.  

    I'm going -- we have a lot of people up at the front of the room here so I won't spend too many moments in opening remarks but for those of you who don't know the Internet Society, we are a global organisation dedicated to the view that the Internet is for everyone.  And we carry out that mission and that advocacy around the world through chapters, members, activities, regional activities, policy activities, technical work focused on that view that Internet should be a global medium of opportunity.  So what you'll hear here today is more information about our priorities, how we go about doing our work, and most importantly how you can be involved with us going forward.  

    I've been told that we have remote participation so we'll be taking questions from our remote participants throughout this session.  There will also be a microphone roaming in the room so if you have questions please raise your hand and wait for the microphone to come to you so that those who are participating online can have the benefit of your comments and questions, as well.  And we do hope that this will be interactive.  So please do raise your hands and ask questions and we hope to have a useful dialogue here for the next hour or so.  So with no further ado I would like to begin by introducing our CEO, Kathryn Brown to provide some opening remarks.  

    >> KATHY BROWN:  Hello, everyone.  Thank you so much for taking some time to spend an hour with us, learn a little bit more about what we are doing and perhaps we would learn a little bit more about what you are doing and see if we can make the two things work together.  

    I'm not going to spend any time except to say that Sally has laid out why we're here.  We're very proud to be part of the Internet Society.  We think we're doing something enormously important for the world and for the people of the world that is connecting them.  

    And there are lots of pieces in having to connect people.  

    Part of it is having the infrastructure.  Part of it is having the ability to connect, the access.  

    The pieces of the Internet Society you'll hear and understand they go to the technology.  They also go to the human capacity.  And so there's lots going on in our society around the world and we would like to be able to explain that to you a little bit and then really have a dialogue with you.  I think we should each introduce ourselves so however you want to do that Sally I'll turn it back over to you.

    >> SALLY WENTWORTH:  Sure, why don't we start down at the end of the table and we'll move this way and then we'll turn it over to our speakers.  So Frederic.  

    >> FREDERIC DONCK:  Hello.  My name is Frederic Donck, Director of the European Bureau in Brussels.  

    >> WALDA ROSEMAN:  I'm Walda Roseman.  I'm the chief strategic communications officer.  I had a group that includes stakeholder engagement and also our I.T. capability and our communications.  And I'll be telling you about that more in a little while.  

    >> DAVE FARBER:  I'm Dave Farber.  I'm a member of the Board of Trustees for the Internet Society.

    >> RAUL ECHEBERRIA:  Hi, I'm Raul Echeberria.  I'm Vice President of global engagement of the Internet Society.

    >> RUSS HOUSLEY:  And I'm  Russ Housley, current chair of the Internet Board and past chair of the Internet Engineering Task Force.

    >> SALLY WENTWORTH:  So I'm going to turn the floor over to Raul who will speak a bit about ISOC's regional work our chapter engagement and our efforts to bring stakeholders together around the cause that we have discussed earlier.  

    >> RAUL ECHEBERRIA:  Good morning, everybody, again.  It's very good to see a lot of new faces in this room.  I'm the Vice President for global engagement and I have a team of 26 people working in this group in ISOC.  And it includes the regional bureaus we have five regional bureaus it means that five regional teams working in each of the five regions, in Africa, Asia-Pacific, North America, Europe and Latin America and the Caribbean.  We are very close to having also a stronger presence in Middle East.  So probably in the next few months we will have six regional bureaus in total we have almost 20 people working in the regions and it is very important for us.  And the work of the Internet Society is very decentralized but it's becoming more and more decentralized all the time but they are having presence in all of the regions around the world permits us to understand much better the needs of each region so how to engage better with our projects, developmental projects, capacity building where we pair with national and regional organisations now in after this meeting at 12:45 there will be a presentation the Seed Alliance project.  It's a competitive plan where the Internet Society partners with other corporation agencies.  And we are running this project in three regions, in Asia-Pacific, Africa, Latin America.  We have funded tens of projects that have a huge social impact in the use of technologies.  So these are the kind of things that we do in the regions and also training.  But we engage also the political level.  We participate in the intergovernmental organisations and we have very active participation trying to reach the discussion bringing our expertise to those forums.  So this is something that we can do in the way that we do thanks to the regionalizations that the organisation has.  

    Besides those five regional bureaus there's a very important role that's played by our chapters.  There are more than 100 Internet Society chapters.  Those chapters are local organisations that share the Internet Society values and so for us, we see the chapters in two ways.  It's, one, important thing for extending the ISOC work to many countries in the world.  But also to have more engagement to know what's happening in all of those countries.  And those chapters that we have around the world are 29 of them are in Africa, 28 in European Union, 7 in the Middle East, 9 in North America, 12 in Latin America and Caribbean and 17 in Asia-Pacific.  

    So you can see that the distribution of the chapters is very high.  Now I think the focus of the Internet Society is very focused in not only have more chapters and more presence in many countries and regions and cities but also in having a much stronger relationship between chapters and the organisations.  So we are strengthening the work within the chapters, the chapters can play a very significant role for example now that we are here in IGF in promoting IGF like experiences at the local level so we will be working with the chapters in that and trying to push for this kind of multistakeholder mechanisms around world in many countries.  Also we partner with them in the activities that we run in different countries.  They know exactly what is needed anywhere.  So we can adapt the activities that we usually run through the needs of each country.

    We have especially some works that we have been doing in combination of our centralized structure with the decentralized and regionalized structure.  One of the most interesting things that we have been doing in the last few years is the promotion of ISPs for example.  This is a work that's very interesting and is we feel really very proud of the work that we are doing we ran an IXP workshop a few weeks ago in Georgia for example and last week we had a meeting in Senegal led by the Director there, thank you.  And despite the fact of the constraints that were imposed by the ebola crisis in Africa, we went ahead with the meeting.  And we had a very exciting meeting in Dakar with the African interconnection forum.  So we are using this power of the decentralization the presence in all of the regions around the world for working really in things that make the difference in every region.

    In this case it's many IXPs, ISPs operators from different countries in Africa met in order to discuss how to improve the interconnection in the region, how to make the access to the Internet better and cheaper.  And this is really what matters.  This is basically what I wanted to share with you.  The things that we are doing in all of the regions of course I'm available for talking to you.  We have other regional directors here in the room so we have Latin America and the Caribbean, Frederic Donck from Europe.  And we have also Paul Brigner, the regional Director of North America.  And Rajnesh Singh from Asia-Pacific.  They are not here in this meeting now.  But there are other people from the team that can work with you and talk to you if you have any question or comment to make to us, we are looking for how to learn how to engage better with the communities in different regions and how to build better partnerships so please talk to us.

We are very interested to hear what you have to say.  Thank you.  

    >> SALLY WENTWORTH:  Thank you, Raul I'll now turn to Frederic Donck to thank that global perspective and put it in a practical reality in terms of the work that Frederic is doing in Europe.  

    >> FREDERIC DONCK:  Thank you, Sally and yes thank you for this introduction, Raul.  We see ourself as a hub in our different regions.  We are really there to localize ISOC's overall strategy so we leverage all of the effort actually that's in Brussels, we're based in Brussels.  We too are called on the different forces in the field we have 28 chapters in Europe.  I'm glad to say there's chapter information here in Turkey.  I met some of them yesterday.  I hope if they are in the room, they could show . . .

    So starting with Europe, we are dealing with Europe in a broad sense.  It goes from the left side Portugal to well beyond you, Raul and the Caspian Sea we also go and engage in central Asia and in those countries.  So when I am saying we localize ISOC effort we do then we operate fairly wide range of activities from policy to capacity building technology and stakeholder engagement let's start with policy.  

    Very concretely well starting with the European Union which is a very important stakeholder, we engage policymakers in the European Union outside of the European Union we do that while creating our own events platforms for engagements we have done the last couple of months three different workshops in Brussels.  

    We also create our own event at the regional level.  There was something here in Istanbul in June covering critical issues for this country but also for the European region.  It was very successful.  It also enabled us to engage a large variety of stakeholders from the Government to business, Civil Society and of course technical academy.  We engage the university.  We know there's a representative here and I would like to thank them for their support.  So we see this really again as a platform for engagement on different issues that we feel are important for the region but also are in line with priorities.  So in Europe we have focused this year on issues of Network Neutrality, digital content and of course trust and identity including the area with privacy and the right to be forgotten in Europe and I'm happy to answer any questions about this engagement.

    So that would be it for our policy engagement either we create an event or support an important event in the region.  EuroDIG is one of them.  We already started discussing our engagement for the next year to come for we have strongly supported the last two EuroDIGs in Lisbon and in Berlin.  Again this is about leveraging our efforts in the region.  Many of my colleagues sitting here at this table were there in the different EuroDIGs so it's just a way for us to make sure that we can have a great alignment between our international group on strategy and local investment.  

    Russia is another important country for us.  

    We have invested in many different areas starting with the technical community.  We support the different ENOGs that take place in this part of the world Russia and countries.  

    I have mentioned our technical capacity building engagement.  I have Jim here in the room.  

    We have led several efforts in eastern European.  We have actually contributed to the launch of different IXPs in countries as air mania, Serbia, Georgia and we plan to go to Montenegro by the end of the year and talking to the Government again an some IXPs and last but not least central Asia we also are planning to organisation a workshop with governments, European Commission World Bank in Southeast Asia this is still a plan we have we would like to launch a pilot in central Asia we saw it worked well in the Asian region we would like to do it again so this is exchange of best practices between the bureaus so we would like to reproduce the success in central Asia.  So this is in short the concrete things that we are doing in the Bureau.

    >> SALLY WENTWORTH:  First off I thought I saw a hand up.  Was there a hand up in the room?  No.  Okay so hopefully there will be now.  

    Just to shake things up a little bit now, I thought maybe I would ask if people who are in this room, if you're a member of an Internet Society chapter, could you raise your hand?  Excellent we have a group of people who know us well already and I would like to ask ISOC staff you've seen the regional Bureau but others, if you could raise your hand.  

    Excellent.  Part of what I wanted to do is make sure that as we move into discussion, first of all, that we have discussion.  

    If you have questions or you have thoughts, things you want to raise, we encourage you to do that so that we're not just up here talking at you but that this is a conversation with you.  

    But also that you use this time especially after we conclude this part to get to know each other and to identify perhaps members of the ISOC staff or other chapter members that you have wanted to meet or work with before, that this is an opportunity for you to do that.  

    The Internet Society is -- we talk about this a lot.  We are a society.  We are a community.  And interpersonal engagement is really the way to get things done.  

    So if you have a question, please don't be shy.  Otherwise, we can sit and talk here for a long time.  But please do talk to each other.  And we encourage that kind of engagement and dialogue.  I'm going to turn it now to Walda Roseman she's our chief strategic communications officer and she's going to talk about some of the things that we're doing in that area.  

    >> WALDA ROSEMAN:  Thank you.  I have another question.  I saw a lot of hands go up that you were a member of chapters.  Well, actually a couple of questions.  

    How many of you are members who are not members of chapters?   Ah, there's a hand, one.  We're going to work on that with you.  Second question, since so many of you have chosen to join the Internet Society, how many of you would say that your families know who the Internet Society is?  Not as many hands now.  But some.  This is good.  

    Okay.  So the job of my team is to make sure that everybody's family, friends and the influencers in your communities and in your countries and in your regions and at this conference and beyond know why there is an Internet Society and why we are all members of that Internet Society.  And why the Internet matters.  You've heard a lot of what we do here.  We stand for the Internet, which means that we stand very strongly for the people who use the Internet and who we hope will use the Internet.  

    We know there are about 3 billion people now who have access to Internet.  And we know we're only halfway there or less.  And so we have a big job ahead of us.  

    My group is responsible for communicating what we are, why we are, who we are but also helping you communicate why you care, what's happening in your area, and what we should be paying attention to when we're building public policy positions, technical policy positions, and also developing infrastructure and watching how the Internet is working.  In other words what makes the Internet Society unique are not the very fine people in my biased view who are on the staff of the because we find a lot of fine people in this business.  But you, that you are the society we right now have about 60,000 individual members.  You have already heard we have 105 chapters around the world.  Two of those, by the way, are not regional chapters.  One of them is in communications.  We can think Vint Cerf and others for getting that started and you, too, can join that one and one of them is on accessibility.  That is not a geographic chapter.  

    We have -- not all of our members are members of chapters so we have one fine representative in this room apparently who has chosen not to be part of a chapter.  And that's fine.  And we also have about 160 organisations.  Who are members and those organisations span everything from large operators, content providers, we have also smaller companies that are springing up all over the world.  We have a lot of the ccTLD providers, the regional registries.  

    We also have Government agencies NGOs and international organisations.  In other words our organisation membership is multistakeholder and our individual members are clearly multistakeholder.  So I don't want to take too much time other than to say that what we are trying to do is build means for you to tell us more effectively what you think is important.  We have a platform called connect.  Those of you who are members know about it.  Sally and her group and others are increasingly putting out issues for comment early on.  So that when we speak, we speak with an informed and global voice.  And we will be actually after this meeting having a member meeting to talk about the IGF itself.  We hope you will all come.  I'm going to stop there and I hope what we can do both in this meeting and throughout this conference is have conversations about how you think you can be part of what we're doing and how do we build the society so it's more than just the Internet Society but it's what we're trying to do is a worldwide movement on behalf of a global Open Internet.

Thank you.  

    >> SALLY WENTWORTH:  Thank you, Walda.  I think it's now my turn to speak a little bit about the policy priorities for the Internet Society.  And it's a fairly easy task when we're here at the Internet Governance Forum.  I think we're all here because we care deeply about the Internet.  We care deeply about the way that it's governed and we feel strongly that the governance of the Internet should be multistakeholder, inclusive, bottom-up, transparent, and done in a way that is for the good of the global Internet and for all of its users.  

    That is essentially the overriding policy goal for the Internet Society on a worldwide basis.  

    We all know that the Internet is a tremendous technology that brings people together.  It drives international commerce.  It creates communities, it enhances individuals' ability to participate in their governments and in their governance.  

    It does a lot of things to enhance creativity.  But we can't take that medium for granted.  

    And it is increasingly the case that the policy and regulatory environment for the Internet is a major determining factor as to whether the Internet remains this tool for growth and community and development.  

    And so at the Internet Society, we spend a lot of time thinking about the policy environment, the enabling environment for the Internet both at the local level, at the national level, as well as at the global level.  

    We understand clearly that the policies and the proposals that we see in the United Nations, in regional organisations, they don't come from nowhere.  They come from  serious questions and concerns that policymakers and their communities have at the local level.  There are concerns about affordability.  There's concerns about access, how to create local content.  How to remove barriers to connectivity at the local level and the regional level.  In some cases governments want to know how they can control this medium better which is also obviously not something the Internet Society is interested in.  But what we are interested in is having a conversation about how to grow it and how to strengthen and harness the power that the Internet has in a local community.  

    Those concerns that governments have can be addressed locally in some cases.  In other cases they bring them to either regional or international organisations.  Organisations like the United Nations hopefully the Internet Governance Forum but also places like the International Telecommunications Union the OECD, APEC the World Intellectual Property Organisation.  So there's a clear relationship between the concerns that policymakers and communities have at the local level that Raul and Frederic spoke about and how those emerge at the global level so what the Internet Society tries to do is connect those dots to try to address the policy questions that come up in a way that is supportive of an open global Internet that's to the benefit of everyone to understand these hard policy problems.  They are very real.

    And to work with the local communities through chapters through many of you in this room to try to address those questions as close to home as we can.  I think it's clearly been the case in the last several years that we have seen much more interest and engagement by chapters in the  Internet Society in this policy discussion and I would say from my perspective at ISOC that's an incredibly encouraging development.  One that we want to support and we have seen the benefits of it already.  We have seen the ability of chapters to create a local policy dialogue within a country that simply wasn't there before.  

    The regional local IGFs are a tremendous force and a tremendous opportunity to take that multistakeholder model and move it to the local level and show real results that matter for policymakers and matter for the local Internet community.  So there's a lot to do.  There's a lot to do to address security issues privacy issues affordability these are all difficult sticky policy issues that need a community like Internet Society to get together and address.  

    So that's what we do.  And we really hope that this kind of a session and ones that we'll have later this week are an opportunity to strengthen the engagement and the discussion amongst us so we can create that enabling environment together that will help the Internet grow.  

    So I think with that we have a question, I think a remote question, is that correct?  Okay.  

    >> REMOTE MODERATOR:  Yes, we have some questions.  Test, test.  

    Can you hear me?  We have some questions from India.  

    The state of NGO in India, the people who asked some questions, all ISOC chapters all over the world.  How many chapter heads are in this section.  The people ask.  And it's going to you.  400 million still don't have appropriate Internet in India.  

    All chapters’ collaboration and stakeholders’ collaboration will make ISOC more active and also address all Internet users at a grassroots level.  

    This is not happening from the day it was established.  Now net neutrality with ISOC and IGF and what was established the first charter.  

    I guess the people it's going to you.  

    >> SALLY WENTWORTH:  Are you able to scroll up on the chat so we can read question?  

    So I think there was a question -- I did hear a question, Raul, about how many chapters we have around the world?  

    >> RAUL ECHEBERRIA:  I will try to answer the question and make my comments but please if  I don't answer properly don't hesitate in making the question again.  

    We have -- I said we have 202 chapters around the world, 17 of them are in Asia-Pacific.  Sorry; 102 chapters.  

    17 of them are in Asia-Pacific and 2 of them are in India.  

    I don't know if that was one part of the question.  

    And with regard to the 400 million people without proper Internet in India, this is of course a matter of concern not only in India for us but in everywhere.  And this is one of the things where we put the focus.  In fact there have been some discussions in the recent days about people who feel that now the discussion is different because everyone is connected.  

    And we emphasize that we still have to work a lot in bringing on board getting connected half of the population of the world that still is not connected.  

    But it's not only about to connect people, that's the first  step, the important one.  But after having the people connected, we have to work for making the Internet really a transformation tool.  For improving the quality of life of the people.  And the exercise of the Human Rights, a tool for freedom, a tool for the betterment of human, social and economic development.  

    So the work is an endless work.  It's something that we have to do every day.  And every day we will face new challenges.  

    But of course, we are worried about those 400 million people that's according to the question have no proper Internet access in India.  And if there are any concrete ideas or as I say before we are very interested in hearing what we can do better in every part of the world, in this case in India.  Thank you.  

    >> SALLY WENTWORTH:  Thank you, Raul.  I see a hand -- two hands, one there and then one in the back over there.  And if you could introduce yourself before you ask the question, that would be excellent.  Thank you.  

    >> SEUN OJEDEJI:  Okay.  My name is Seun Ojedeji from Nigeria.  I work for the University of Nigeria.  

    I have two questions.  

    My first question is to Russ.  I don't know if I can ask the question because he hasn't spoken yet.  But it's about IETF I wonder why IETF doesn't move around like other events like and ICANN why is it normally in a specific region most especially U.S. and Canada for instance I'm not sure if IETF is in Africa at all.  

    Because I think it's when it moves around that's actually what makes more participation.  Because right now participation within IETF from Africa is very low.  And we need some justifications from organisations in Africa to actually sponsor their staff of to attend those events.  

    Also, it can be difficult to attend from Africa considering issues so on and so forth so maybe if you come to Africa maybe participation can be improved although I understand most of IETF work is also in the Middle East.  But I think physical participation could also encourage remote participation.  

    So I am in the Middle East.  But I think if IETF could move around, could also help.  

    My second question is to ISOC.  Anybody can answer that within ISOC.  And this is in regards to the ISOC sponsorship to IETF developing I'm sure.  There are quite a lot of people who have applied to fellowship.  By the way I'm an ISOC Ambassador to this meeting.  And I'm sure there are quite a lot of people who have applied for the IETF scholarship again especially from the Developing World is there anything ISOC is doing to kind of -- if it means to because most of the things it will say you have to participate before you can get fellowship so is there anything ISOC can do to perhaps encourage participation from the developing region?  By perhaps reducing the very difficult requirements that have been set on the IETF fellowship application.  Thank you.  

    >> SALLY WENTWORTH:  Thank you for those two questions.  Russ, can I turn to you first and then we can address the second question about fellowships.

    >> RUSS HOUSLEY:  So the IETF is an organisation that's structured and designed to make the Internet work better from a technical perspective.  We do this primarily by developing standards for the protocols that make the Internet work.  Through an open, transparent and we hope inclusive process.  

    At the same time we have our face-to-face meetings in places that are as convenient as possible to the people who are participating.  

    So we do that right now one meeting a year in North America, one meeting a year in Europe and one meeting a year in the Asia-Pacific region.  

    As we have seen increased participation from South America, we have just scheduled a meeting in Buenos Aires a couple of years out.  

    As we see participation from Africa, even in mail lists as you acknowledged before we see physical people showing up I think that is the way to get our interest in terms of going to an area is by getting involved.  

    This is exactly what happened shortly before we went to China.  We saw a considerable increase in participation from China.  And a few years later we then had a meeting in China.  

    So there's a chicken and egg problem is what you're saying, how do you participate if you don't ever come to my neighborhood?   

    And we are working with the Internet Society to create additional remote participation opportunities during the meeting but right now the answer to your question is people need to get involved in order for the meeting to actually go to your region.  

    >> SALLY WENTWORTH:  Thank you, Russ.  And you had a second question that I think is very important as a follow-on to that which is the Internet Society is quite committed to the goal of strengthening participation in the work of the IETF to Developing Countries and we do have a fellowship programme that's focused specifically on that.  And I wonder if I can call on Toral Cowieson quickly.  She's in charge of that programme for the Internet Society.  And she can explain a little more about the criteria and the opportunity of participating in that fellowship.  

    >> TORAL COWIESON:  So thanks very much for that question.  Because it is an important question.  And for all of our leadership and education programmes, we want to make sure that we're setting the participants up for success.  And what we have learned over the years, I think it's been I want to say 2006 when we first started the fellows to the IETF programme, it is such a technical community that we found that when we brought in people who were not familiar with the IETF at all they weren't getting as much out of it as we would have liked to have seen so we did change the requirements over the years so that people who are coming know enough about the IETF to actively be able to at least understand Working Groups and that's why as you pointed out there's so much work that happens over the mailing lists so even for the regular participants they are participating through the mailing lists.

    And so that's why it is structured the way it is in terms of the selection process.  

    Now, that being said, we are also seeing that the process is becoming very competitive.  And we do have quite a few participants from countries in Africa.  So it is happening.  

    And in terms of what we're doing on the ground, we actually work with the regional Bureau directors Dawit is in the room for example.  He works with his team to have an IETF or open standards day to increase awareness about how you participate to learn about the IETF.  So even if you're not actively a fellow, how can you start engaging?  So applying for the programme and being set up for success when you actually attend.  And that being said, I'm glad you're here as an Ambassador to IGF.  

    >> SALLY WENTWORTH:  Thanks for that.  I'm going to turn quickly to Russ Housley.  He had some initial introductory remarks and I know we have a question in the back but Russ has to head out shortly so I want to be mindful of his time.  

    >> RUSS HOUSLEY:  So I'm here because the Internet Society provides an organisational and administrative home for the IETF and the Internet Architecture Board.  I'm presently the chair of the Internet Architecture Board and I'm the past chair of the IETF.  So the IETF's goal, as I said earlier, is to make the Internet work better.  And we do that by developing open standards and the standards discussion is concluded when you reach a point where there's rough consensus.  

    And we often say it's successful when there's deployed running code.  So rough consensus and running code is kind of the motto of the IETF.  

    It's important to recognize that no one is in charge of the Internet.  In fact I think that's very obvious from this meeting here, that that's a core principle.  But really the Internet works when people choose to cooperate.  

    The diversity that that environment creates sometimes makes reaching that rough consensus a bit difficult.  But when it is achieved, we end up with a better specification that's more clear and strongly supported and thus, more likely to get  deployed.  

    So that discussion is really important to the whole creation of an open transparent Internet standards process.  

    The IETF welcomes online participation.  That is there are many people who participate only on the e-mail lists not just the face-to-face meetings.  And those voices have provided valuable contributions over the years.  And if you can't get to the face-to-face meetings, I encourage you to get involved in one of the technical discussions.  Right now the IETF has roughly 120 Working Groups working on different technical topics.  

    All of the documents are available online.  And available to everyone.  There are no fees or anything associated with getting to those documents.  

    And the goal is to have one Internet, an open, global, voluntary standards that make that happen, that maximize scalability and interoperability and avoid specialised protocols in particular places.  So I also want to have a few comments about who Internet Architecture Board is.  It's a group of 13 individuals that provide architectural advice to the IETF and to the Internet Society.  

    The IAB also manages the liaison relationships for the IETF with other standards organisations who provide oversight for the RFC Editor and for the protocol parameter of the IANA function.  

    We very often host workshops and those workshops are important for the IAB to get a broader perspective on the technical advice that it provides to the IETF and the Internet Society.  

    That's it.  

    >> SALLY WENTWORTH:  Thank you, Russ.  So we're going to conclude with -- well, we're going to conclude presentation part and then we have a couple of questions in the room.  

    One of the advantages of the Internet Society community is that you come in contact and interaction with some of the very people who were involved in the Internet from its earliest days, Dave Farber is among them and is now a member of the Internet Society Board of Trustees and we're quite happy to him -- to have him here this afternoon to provide some concluding comments.

    >> DAVE FARBER:  I'll try not to preach too much.  

    The Internet Society really has a significant role that we keep forgetting in the ecology of the net it provides a binding tissue between organisations and in some real sense hangs at the top of the pole here and my notes just vanished courtesy to the fact that the Web around here is in bad shape but I'll add a little bit just so I don't misquote myself along the way.  

    Okay.  Collaboration is fundamental to the way the Internet Society operates.  In 1992 a number of people -- a number of the pioneers of the interpret, old fogies got together and they weren't old at that point to recognize that in fact there needed to be something that people could view that bound together all of these organisations, the IETF, national organisations, international organisations, to represent the users of the Internet at all levels.  Corporate levels.  But most importantly the public, the users of the Internet that was just starting to expand at that point.  

    I think Vint Cerf who was one of the people who was there.  I was there and Bob Kahn was there and Larry Landweber most of you know those guys.  

    We needed to provide a vehicle that people could look to because we expected the Internet Society was going to grow rapidly.  And there were already forces that were arguing that the style of the Internet is an open, uncontrolled -- relatively uncontrolled mechanism that operated on standards that were derived by the community by the IETF was important.  Was also had pragmatic things like provide a home for the IETF.  I think Vint put it nicely when he looked at -- this is American translation -- that the society was going to be the AAA of the Internet, the Motor Corps of the Internet.  That people could join, not just industry could join.  

    I think we have come a long, long way from those.  I served on the first Board of ISOC and watched it grow at a difficult start.  And blossom.  And rejoined it as a Board Member two years ago but sort of watched with some pride to see it grow.  

    We're now in an era where things have gotten considerably more complicated.  First the Internet is big.  It impacts the national issues.  It impact elections.  It impacts education.  It impacts everything.  As usual there are a lot of forces that want to control it and a lot of forces that want it open as it was in the early days.  The current world of surveillance even makes it more difficult.  And the Internet Society is going to have to engage in those areas.  And we expect to engage in those areas.  Fooey on notes.  I don't speak well from notes.  

    Very important part of the Internet Society is the people who support it.  We're going to have Board elections coming up.  We strongly encourage you to look at the call for nominations and step up and take a part in it.  It's a competitive process.  We welcome diversity.  There's no inner group of people who are going to get elected come hell or high water.  

    So we strongly you recommend you bite the bullet and devote the time to it.  And devote the time to your chapters.  And to educating your leaders.  

    Your national governments who basically don't understand the Internet.  I think fundamentally that's the problem we're going to have to fix.  I spent a year in Washington trying to educate our Congress and they are relatively up on it.  In many places the Internet just doesn't make any sense to them.  So one of the jobs of you people and the society is to help educate and help expand the Internet.  

    This is just the beginning.  

    When I give talks usually I point out a very simple thing, if you think the last 25 years was wild in this, stay tuned for the next 10.  I mean, we're going to change in dramatic ways and we're changing already.  

    We've gone from -- and I'll stop preaching.  We've gone from the world of desktop computers or comp centre computers now to cell phones to SmartPhones.  That's going to continue.  Smart watches, 3D construction things in homes.  It's going to change dramatically.  And we're there to make sure that when it changes, it changes in a constructive way that makes it available to the citizens of the world.  

    >> SALLY WENTWORTH:  Thank you, Dave.  That was a good conclusion and a good point to which to launch the rest of the conversation.  We've had a couple of questions in the room.  There's a person up here.  But there's also a gentleman in the back.  Could you raise your hand again.  Yeah.  Wait.  Back.  Back.  Yeah.  He's been in the queue for a while.  

    >> AUDIENCE:  Yeah, hey, so I don't have a question but I wanted to add to the question asked about the Indian chapters.  

    So I actually represent Internet Society Bangalore chapter.  And we have of four active chapters in India.  And the regional Bureau of ISOC is doing excellent work in doing a lot of initiatives within India.  

    We know we have a lot of challenges in terms of geography and people.  But still a lot of work in terms of connecting with the Government and the Civil Society is being done.  A lot of committee initiatives from ISOC are being done in India.  

    Global initiatives from ISOC like the wireless networks.  They are very well connecting to the grassroots.  So we have challenges.  But ISOC is pretty active in India.  Thanks a lot.

    >> SALLY WENTWORTH:  Thank you.  And thank you for your commitment and work.  

    We have a question up here now.  Could you raise your hand again and if you could identify yourself?  Thank you.  

    >> MATTHIAS TRAIMER:  Thank you very much.  My name is Matthias Traimer.  I'm a Government representative.  I come from the Austrian Government.  

    I've been following both the WSIS process and IGF just from the beginning.  Of course I have seen a lot of discussions, also, with the Internet Society.  And I really want also to congratulate your work and this is much appreciated also by our governmental agencies, although of course we often hear also very critical voices.  But this is the important I think core method to speak openly and also to criticize.  

    Why I took the floor is two things.  First of all, I will maybe come back to you and your European representative because we are doing of course a lot of discussions in the Austrian Government, events on the Open Internet and so on.  But we don't have a national IGF so far and that's what I'm going to introduce.  And we have a launch event very, very soon.  And we plan to have it regularly starting in 2015.  And so we'll come back to you and maybe also getting not only your advice but also to invite the Internet Society.  

    My question to the people on the panel, I mean, to be very honest when we speak about this term of multistakeholderism.  Meanwhile I think Wolfgang Kleinwachter who introduced this term very much in EuroDIG for example said already last time that we have to be cautious that this term multistakeholderism doesn't become a term of a well established multistakeholderism.  

    The problem I think many of us face is there are of course always very, very excellent people with these various organisations.  But often these IGFs are a kind of meeting of old friends in the club already.  

    So how is the Internet Society dealing with the challenge how to really get multistakeholderism in the way that would also address people that are not among us so far that we really touch also let's say because when I talk to people and say, do you want to be part of IGF?   They are really very deeply involved in Internet methods so far, be it companies, be it NGOs and so.  

    But say, well, we did not have a chance so far to be involved in IGF discussions.  

    Don't you think for example we should really also at the IGF really ask much more for this online remote participation and so on?  We know it exists already.  But I have also moderated quite a lot of panels so far in these various events, it doesn't really work.  There are one or two questions maybe.  So does Internet Society have a vision how to -- what has to be changed or improved in multistakeholderism?  

    Thank you very much.

    >> SALLY WENTWORTH:  It's an excellent question.  I'll try to answer and maybe turn to others if you have ideas.  

    I couldn't agree with you more that we have to expand this notion of the Internet community quote-unqoute.  And you're not the first person actually even this week to raise this with me.  So I think it's on the minds of many of us.  

    We can't have an Internet Governance Forum for the same people over and over.  We need to bring new minds and new expertise into this conversation.  

    And not just for the conversation itself.  We were just in a session this morning with the Small Island Developing States.  And one of the points that was raised was to effectively expand connectivity, especially in hard-to-reach communities, it has to be a policy or an approach of the entire community that you have to bring the health sector and the agricultural sector and the economic ministries into this discussion this isn't about ICT for the sake of ICT but rather it's about ICT as the foundation of -- as a foundation of the Information Society that brings all of these parts.  

    And we have to be careful in -- we use terminology that we all understand but when we start speaking to our sectors and start speaking to other ministries that we're communicating the objective which is maybe more than just the terms.  The terminology should not become a barrier to participation.  

    I also think what we're seeing at least in my impression is that at the local and regional level there is I think a greater ability to do.  And maybe in your national figuring that's an opportunity to say you know what are the sectors of the economy or of the society that need to be at the table and do that at the outset of building the IGF in Austria rather than sort of add it at the end.  And I think if you can be successful in that it might be an interesting lesson learned for others who are feeling the same thing.  

    But it's a critical point.  And I think as we speak about Internet governance or Internet access we need to speak about it more than just the ICT speaking but more broadly.  I couldn't agree with you more.  

    Does anybody else have -- Raul?  

    >> RAUL ECHEBERRIA:  Yes, let me -- your intervention was very rich and you mentioned a lot of things.  

    So it is difficult to put all of the pieces in order.  

    But the IGF is not the same IGF than ten years ago.  We have 3,000 people here.  

    If I remember well, I think that we had 600 or 700 participants in Greece in the first IGF.  So I think we have expanded this community.  

    The remote participation tools we are never enough happy with them.  But they have improved a lot.  

    Now we have streaming from several rooms at the same time.  And in several languages.  The possibility of participating is really amazing.  There are remote hubs.  

    And I think it is okay -- it is good that we are never enough happy.  But we have to accept on the other hand that it has improved a lot.  

    Three years ago there was not a possibly of remote participation in these kind of meetings, side meetings, only in the main sessions and now we have received some comments remotely.  

    And in NETmundial the ISOC chapters play a very important role in setting up hubs for remote participation, increasingly.  It was very, very good.  And the people participated in a very meaningful way.  Making good comments and everybody in the room was paying attention to what somebody from a remote place was saying.  And the dynamic that was created was really good because there were a lot of meetings with small groups or medium groups, 45, 50 people that were discussing among themselves so it wasn't only the possibility of participating remotely in the meeting but also the synergies that were created in the remote hubs themselves.  We are working a lot in the regional IGFs because IGFs are much more than the people we see here.  The people who are participating in all of the process are much more.  

    Very recently we were heavily involved in the organisation of the North American IGF, the Latin American IGF, and the Asia-Pacific IGF and we participated in others.  Those three that I mentioned happened in the last three weeks.  But we are doing these things all year and all the regions.  And regions, sub regions, because it's not just one IGF, regional IGF for a big region.  There are a lot of sub regional IGFs.  

    And the other thing as I said before that the chapters have a role to play with the service or the organisation in promoting the local IGFs and many of our chapters are already doing that.  

    We have recently very is interesting example from Germany that they are promoting multistakeholder dialogue the ISOC chapter in Mexico is very active in setting up the national dialogue in Mexico.  And when we bring those issues to the local level, we see that the topics that are discussed in those processes are much broader in what we see in the Global IGF.  

    And my last point is that other places where we are working a lot is in the capacity building because it's not only about bringing people to IGF, this is something that we do and we have a lot of ISOC Ambassadors here.  That is people -- ISOC is helping to bring to the IGF to engage in IGF.  

    But we need also to work in capacity building to facilitate a meaningful participation for the people in this kind of process.  In the local, regional and global level this is something that we spend a lot of energies in.  So I think those are some of the things that we are doing.  Things that we see that can be done.  And of course we are very interested in, as I said many times today, in partnering.  We do that.  Everything we do is in partnership with other organisations.  Because as we see it, it's always more valuable when we do these kinds of things in partnership with others because we are not only do the promoting the IGF and discussions but are also building partnerships in different levels.  It is something that's very important.  

    >> SALLY WENTWORTH:  Thank you.  

    >> I think you've heard from Raul a very good description of where we are from the IGFs and from Sally on the public policy side.  I just wanted to add and pick up a point that you've mentioned.  It's -- we're talking -- and I hear many people actually here at this IGF talking and among our chapters talking about how comfortable it becomes to be talking to those people who already understand what you're saying.  

    Whether there's agreement or there isn't.  

    And of course when one is focused on public policy standards, immediate goals and objectives that have a critical nature to them, you're first target becomes those who are right in a position of making decisions.  

    However if I look in this room, I'm very happy to see so many young faces and at this point in my life almost anybody is young.  But I don't see the people who grew up with the Internet.  I don't see and nor do I hear from for most part the people who think the Internet is like electricity.  That it will always be there.  It will be there globally.  They will always be able to use it.  That they can trust  it because that's how they do their homework and that's how they socialize.  

    These are people we are very conscious of we're not yet reaching enough.  

    That these are the people who are going to be making the decisions about Internet either consciously or unconsciously.  

    They are the innovators.  They are the users.  They are the ones who are not yet online but will be online and will be deciding what to do online.  

    And so as I think all of us are looking at our next steps, certainly this is something we're doing.  We need to ask, how do we use the Internet better to get the message out that there is an ecology of the Internet that we're all responsible for?

    And as a Government, it would seem to me particularly someone in Government who is looking at establishing a national IGF, it's an opportunity really to be reaching out to those who don't yet know that their decision makers are influencers and because of that have more power than they realize they do.  And we're seeking help from all of you in how we provide that message to whom but also we're hoping that you're providing that message.  Thank you.  

    >> SALLY WENTWORTH:  So I think we have time for one more question if anybody -- oh, there's one.  Okay.  

    >> SEUN OJEDEJI:  Okay.  This is Seun Ojedeji from Nigeria.  I just want to make a comment in relation to IGF, the Global IGF as a whole because it's been said I attended the new commerce session this morning and one of the questions that was asked was what has the IGF really achieved since its inception and I'm wondering because the college is very good with collecting data and so on and so forth so they ask me -- the initiative for instance will be very useful in the future as a source of data for ISPs so I'm thinking could ISOC help in this area to collect information on success stories or experiences that will actually justify that IGF has actually been making a difference on impacts in different communities it would be good to see that for instance we leave Istanbul, we discover that the over 2,000 Web sites that have been blocked have been unblocked due to the IGF.

So these are actionable results that are as a result of IGF meetings and so on and so forth.  So I'm thinking can ISOC help in this area in collecting data that could serve as a reference in the future.  Thank you.  

    >> SALLY WENTWORTH:  Thank you for that.  And some of that is up to those of you in the room as well as to the ISOC staff.  I think we do want to demonstrate the success of the IGF both at this IGF but also regionally and locally and we do work with other partners, we have a very active blog going this week of different activities that are going on with respect to the IGF, peoples impressions, lessons learned from our Ambassadors, et cetera.  And I think it's important that we continue to push things and support things like the evolution of the IGF.  I think as Raul said the IGF of today is not the same as it was even three, four years ago.  It's evolving.  It's stronger now than it's ever been.  We're quite excited about the best practices forums that are going on at the IGF this week because we think that is a way to move to more tangible outputs of the IGF as well as to support a stronger dialogue among this community between IGFs so the IGF doesn't just become this thing that you go to once and forget about until you come back in another year.

But rather there's a sense of community and discussion and progress on hard topics that happens between the IGF and some of this is taken a little bit from the lessons learned from the IETF process where there is a strong IETF community that works together beyond the meetings and it's about solving hard problems, working together on issues remotely, electronically using this tool that we love so much to actually get work done.  

    So we would welcome any of you who would like to contribute those sorts of tangible stories and outcomes and I know that a lot of others in this community are working very hard with the secretariat at the IGF to accomplish that.  So we have reached the end of our time I would like to thank you very much.  IGF is a very busy week and you've taken be time out of your busy schedules to join us.  

    We hope that that means that we will see your energy both this week at the IGF but also in the ISOC community going forward and that you have put some faces with names that maybe you haven't before.  So that we can be in touch.  I would like to remind those of you since we have so many members in the room already that the Internet Society is having a membership meeting this afternoon at 1:15.  So you have time for lunch and then you can -- oh, I'm sorry.  It includes our chapters and organisational members and anybody who is part of the Internet Society can join this meeting.  It's in Convention Centre Room 6 and that's in 1:15 which is here so you can come back here.  Or you can stay and talk and we'll reconvene in 45 minutes.  

    So thank you very much.  And we'll see you again soon.  



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This is the output of the real-time captioning taken during the IGF 2014 Istanbul, Turkey, meetings.  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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