IGF 2013- February MAG transcript

Internet Governance Forum Multistakeholder Advisory Group meeting

Paris, UNESCO HQ

1 March 2013

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The following is the output of the real-time captioning taken during the MAG meeting of the IGF, in Paris, France. Although it is largely accurate, in some cases it may be incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. It is posted as an aid to understanding the proceedings at the session, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.

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>>CHENGETAI MASANGO:  Good morning, ladies and gentlemen.  Shall we start the MAG meeting?  Thank you very much.  I want to hand over the floor to the honorary chair to start the meeting.  Thank you.

>>ASHWIN SASONGKO:  Distinguished guests, distinguished delegates, ladies and gentlemen, good morning to all of you.  This is the -- as we discussed yesterday, this is the MAG meeting for discussing the next IGF meeting in Bali.

I understand that through this agenda we will see the preparation -- the presentation for the next IGF meeting from any -- from the logistic side, so I hope during the presentation we can also discuss the logistics side, just what we discussed yesterday, and perhaps some pluses and minuses from the previous IGFs so we can have a better IGF meetings from the logistics side.

And of course after that we will discuss the agenda to discuss the substance of the IGF

And after three days of WSIS and yesterday's open consultations, hopefully we can have a better substance to be discussed as well as organizing the discussion of the substance better.

Okay.  Ladies and gentlemen, I hope we can start as soon as possible, and we have to conclude also at the end of the meeting on proposal of what we have before then we have the next MAG meeting in Geneva, hopefully, to finalize everything.

So I would like to pass the discussion to chair the discussions to Mr. Markus Kummer, please.  Thank you.

>>CHAIR KUMMER:  Thank you.  Maybe let's start with a couple of housekeeping issues. 

Today we don't have interpretation, and people have asked whether we could maybe reduce the lunch hour to one hour and then stop one hour earlier, as many people have planes to catch.

So unless I see violent objection, then I would assume that we have an agreement that we work till 12:30, have one hour lunch break, and resume at half past 1:00 and we conclude at 4:30 so we have plenty of time to go to the airport.

There is one issue which I mentioned briefly yesterday.  That is the dates of the May consultation which in principle have been agreed on, but many MAG members pointed out that hotels in Geneva are -- hotel rooms are difficult to get, and those who actually managed to get them, they can be very, very expensive, because there are other meetings there.

Now, however, some people have already made arrangements. 

So I wonder whether we can agree whether we either -- it's a binary choice.  Either we keep the dates or we go for new dates and the new dates would have to be, I think, in June.  Giacomo from the European Broadcasting Union has said he would check availability of the rooms in the EBU, but I wonder could we have maybe a show of hands who would be violently opposed -- understandably, I -- some people have already made arrangements and cancelling/changing arrangements is usually not cost-neutral and can also be an annoyance.

Who would be violently opposed to changing the dates, just to have an idea?

>> (Speaker is off microphone.)

>>CHAIR KUMMER:  Well, we would have to look at -- do we have tentative dates for June?  I think it would be back-to-back with the CSTD or --

We have this discussion some months ago, I think, because there's plenty of meetings in May, and some people said, "No, this doesn't work because it's back-to-back with that and we cannot have that." 

Yes, Raul, please.

>>RAUL ECHEBERRIA:  I have already my arrangements for attending the meeting in May.  I have no problems for booking in the hotel.  In fact, I know that some people have booked today without any problem.  But -- so I'm open to change the date, but depending on the date.  Yes.

So it's -- if you have a concrete alternative, but June is -- there are other commitments in June, so if it is the first week of June, it is okay, or the last week of May.  If we delay the meeting one or two weeks, it's okay.  More, I'm --

>>CHAIR KUMMER:  Okay.  And let's wait until Giacomo gets back to us with proposals of concrete dates and let's revisit that.  Hopefully before the end of the day we will have a decision.  And thank you very much for that.

Now, what is the -- that's also actually linked to when we have the date.  It's basically what we ought to have at the end of the day is a clear time line of how to move forward.  That is, deadlines for submitting workshops and so on, deadlines --

Yes.  Also, we have the IGF village, then, presumably again we had the past.  That sort of deadline ought to be fixed also in relation to the meeting.  They have to be well ahead of the next meeting.

We don't need to agree on anything today.  I think with ought to agree on the time line, but I think we had a very good discussion yesterday.  Many interesting proposals were mentioned for main themes, overall themes of the meeting.

There was a strong notion of themes that should be addressed by the meeting. 

I think science and technology for development was supported by several people. 

Human rights had strong support. 

Internet principles. 

Enhanced cooperation. 

Multistakeholder principles as well. 

And best practices.

Also Internet as engine for growth and advancement. 

One proposal -- I think it was Mervi -- had strong support from several delegations, enhancing multistakeholder collaboration for growth, development, and human rights. 

Internet cooperation was mentioned. 

Building bridges. 

And a lot of support for focus on cybersecurity, also for linking security and human rights. 

Support for dealing with young people, children.

The point was made that should be a horizontal issue that should be brought into all sessions. 

Spam was mentioned by various -- many people as an important issue also, in light of the discussions in Dubai in December.

Internet exchange points.  It has been with us in the IGF, I think, since the very beginning.

Public access was also mentioned.

As I said, I don't think we need to agree on that, but I think it would be helpful if we convey that these are possible themes that have some strong support or that would guide those who are thinking of workshops, but of course the call for workshops should not preclude any other themes some workshop proponents may wish to address.

And there was a lot of discussion, I think, on the format of the main session, a strong notion that past formats is maybe not the right way forward, as people many found it, at current, stale.

The three-hour slots could be shortened into two 90-minute slots, for instance, as three-hour panels are long panels.

Clearly there was, I think, strong support for more interactive sessions and for maybe also experimenting with new formats. 

Roundtables were mentioned, like the roundtable we had last year which brought together workshops on one given issue, and that proposal was made that maybe the last sessions could deal in a roundtable format with workshops that have been proposed -- had been held in the previous days.

And there was a lot of support for being brave and experimenting with new formats like poster sessions, bird-of-feather sessions, while at the same time I think maintaining formats that governments find a little bit easier to engage in. 

Very strong support was for a better integration of regional IGFs.  That, I think, has been a common theme for the past few years but we haven't found yet the right format for doing so. 

And I think in terms of organizing the meeting, I think more or less everybody agreed that it is important to have a newcomer session to introduce newcomers to the IGF, and I think also kind of a taking stock session at the end of the meeting.

There was -- I think proposals were made for keeping open a session for really emerging issues.  That is, issues that have emerged either during the IGF itself or the weeks before, so that we have a slot where we can address burning issues, so to speak.

And, yeah, that's, I think, as far as I recall, the discussions on the main sessions.

On the workshops, I think at the end of the discussion, there was agreement that we should keep the slots at 90 minutes, as you need some time to get started and some time to clear up, and 90 minutes, to most, seemed to be the appropriate time.

There was no agreement on the number of workshops.  Some were in favor of making really strong -- placing a strong cap on the numbers, whereas others pointed out that it is workshops that bring in participants, as many people might find it difficult to have their superiors sign onto a travel request if they don't get a speaking slot.

But there was, I think, a strong sense that maybe the MAG should have a tighter control with the selection of workshops, but not only at the front end, also at the back end.

The feedback, quality of control of workshops that we have to find, may be a formula that we really have a score sheet, how many people participate in the workshop, was it really interactive, were the panels indeed diverse, so that we have a little bit of an idea of how it went.

In the past, we don't -- we haven't had that.

Now, to integrate the workshops with the main session, I think there was considerable discussion on that, and I think also general agreement that in the past whatever we tried, it didn't really work that well, so the -- I think the roundtable idea of bringing people together who organized a similar workshop, that could indeed be the way to generate discussions.  And yes, of course, we had also a discussion on implementing the CSTD working group on improvements and I think there was a general agreement that the MAG -- that we have to take this very seriously, and this would, in many ways, be a horizontal issue guiding our preparations for the Bali meeting.

This is my reading of yesterday's discussions. 

Before opening the floor, maybe we also need to agree on the rules of the game, on the rules of engagement, at today's meeting. 

We said it would be an open meeting, but I think, as far as I understand, the MAG has developed last year a way to proceed that MAG members are given precedence and then the nonmembers can come in at the end of an agenda item.

Is that correct, Chengetai?

>>CHENGETAI MASANGO: (Speaker is off microphone.)

>>CHAIR KUMMER:  Okay.  So that seems to be a correct interpretation of last year's rules of engagement, and I suggest keeping those.  I think it's important to be open and inclusive, but at the same time the MAG members have a clear responsibility and they should be given the preference -- precedence.

I wonder, should we -- if the Bali -- the Indonesian presentation, would you be ready or should we start with that?

>>ASHWIN SASONGKO:  Yes.

>>CHAIR KUMMER:  Shall we start with that?  Okay.  Why don't we start with the show, please.

>>MOEDJIONO SARDOJOENI: Good morning.  First of all, thank you, chair, for giving us the opportunity to present our preparations as hosts of the eighth meeting for the IGF 2013 in Bali, Indonesia.

Excellencies, distinguished delegates, ladies and gentlemen, in this opportunity, I am -- and my team would like to present the preparation process and the logistical aspects for the eighth meeting of the IGF 2013 in Bali, Indonesia.

First of all, I'd like also to extend my appreciation for the letter of confidence from the UNDESA for accepting Indonesia as the hosts of the eighth IGF meeting in 2013 in Bali, Indonesia.

There are three main sections in these presentation.  First of all is the process of the IGF preparation which leads to the (indiscernible) Internet Governance Forum of we call it IDIGF.

The second thing is the information concerning the venue of the IGF 2013. 

And then the third one is the welcoming address.

First of all, reflecting the multistakeholderism principles, we will do the (indiscernible) multistakeholder principle in these presentations.  It will be done by three speakers.  The first one is I -- me, myself, Moedjiono, representative of the governments, MAG members, and the second presentation will be represented by Mr. Semmy Pangerapan from the ISP -- Indonesian Internet Service Provider Association. 

And the third presentation is by the private sector, i.e.,

Ms. Shita Laksmi from the ID Config.

This is the structure of the Indonesian Internet Governance Forum known as IDIGF and associated with the IGF.

As you can see, the structure of the IDIGF consists of government side, ICT ministry, and then also Ministry of Foreign Affairs and National ICT Council, and then the business or private sector from Indonesian Internet Service Provider Association and Indonesian ICT Federation, (saying name) association, the (saying name) association, et cetera.  And then third one from the civil society ID Config, and its related organization. 

Before we made a commitment to propose as a host of the eighth IGF meeting 2013, we have made several public consultations process as an implementation of the multistakeholderism principles.

The public consultations were starting in 2010 with discussions between stakeholders.

In early 2011, Freedom House came to Indonesia to share experience in Internet Governance Forums when we made the translation of the IGF book authored by Mr. Jovan Kurbalija, to Indonesian language in 2011, and (indiscernible) for the stakeholders.

After that, many discussions had been made including in November 2012 when we declare the establishment of Indonesian Internet Governance Forum, or known as IDIGF.

In the follow-up after that, a series of meetings to propose IGF 2013, the preparation include the (indiscernible) from UNDESA, Mr.  Slava, and IGF secretariat, Mr. Chengetai, on January 30 to February 4th, 2013, and Mr. Slava and Mr. Chengetai had met with our preparation team. 

Officials from Ministry of ICT, Minister of Foreign Affairs, National ICT Council, police department, hospitals, immigration, (indiscernible), et cetera, in Jakarta and also in Bali.

And after that, we have just received the concurrent letter from the USG Director-General, UNDESA, stating that based on our offer and the assessment (indiscernible) report, the UNDESA has accepted our offer as the host of the eighth meeting of IGF in 2013.

The venue of the IGF 2013 meeting is in Bali, Indonesia, and the tentative schedule for the IGF 2013 is 21st to 25th October 2013, where on the 21st -- that is a Monday -- we prepare for preparation process for 30 sessions and also plus another side event, high-level meeting, and the 22nd to 25th is the real IGF meeting. 

And because of the October 24th is the U.N. day, so we try to use that day to become the (indiscernible).

And the next presenter of information of the venue, I'd like to give the floor to Mr. Semmy Pangerapan, please.

>>SEMMY PANGERAPAN: Thank you, Mr. Moedjiono. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, ladies and gentlemen. 

Before I am starting my presentation about the venue, I'd like to express my gratitude specifically to Mr. Robert Guerra, who has been helping us on the capacity-building in 2011, how to open-dialogue on the multistakeholder.  This has really, really helped us.  And this will open the understanding the multistakeholder outlook, how to conduct an open dialogue on the multistakeholder. 

And also, I'd like to express my gratitude to Mr. Jovan Kurbalija, who allow us to translate the book.  This book extremely help us in understanding what is the Internet Governance Forum -- Internet governance itself.

Okay.  Now I'm starting with my presentation on the venue.

So the venue will be taking place in Nusa Dua.  Surrounding the venue, as we see, there is 42 hotels starting from the 5-star hotel and to the 2-star hotel, and the range of the hotel to the venue is from the walking distance to 15 minutes by taxi. 

Next.

So this is the -- the venue we located.  We have 20 more rooms that can be capable of whatever agenda that we are going to decide on this MAG meeting, and you can see we also can -- yesterday we discussed what -- how the format connected with the roundtable discussion.  We can also form the venue into the roundtable discussion.

Next.

This is the facility, and then we also on the facility, we have a very large corridor that can be used for the booth for the -- from the organizations that we will use.

Next.

This is the form -- the layout of the venue.  Can -- if you all can see that we have -- the venue is very close by, so the movement from one classroom to other classroom will be very easy.

Next.

And then this is the -- so from the big one for the plenary and then we -- and then the -- and the five other large rooms for the bigger class.

Next. 

This is also -- this is the smallest class. 

Next.

This is another -- medium classes that can be used also. 

Beside the total classes that the venue has, they also have many rooms for the office that can also be used for the UNDESA and all of the IGF delegation.

Next. 

This is the -- how we can set the room.

Next. 

So this facility function will be meeting rooms and 50 VIP rooms and we also have VIP rooms if some of the -- maybe the president or the secretary of the United Nations will come, we also can handle that.

Next.

Next, the presentation is -- will be done by civil society through the video, so I'd like you to enjoy this.

[ Video starts ]

>> The discussion of the Internet Governance Forum started in 2010.  The (indiscernible) was the submission of the Indonesia Internet Governance Forum, or known as IDIGF, in November 2012.  It was based on the submissions of the stakeholders, the governments, the (indiscernible) ID, the private sectors, that many think the Internet is not just technical matters but also other issues like law, security, human rights, freedom of expression, (indiscernible).  It also requires active participation from all the stakeholders. 

With that notion as our background, we are, therefore, uniting a truly multistakeholder forum in hosting the IGF 2013.  The initiative is also intended to (indiscernible) the IDIGF and also to showcase the good practices that has been happening in these emerging countries. 

The new model for hosting the global IGF also requires a new approach of the event.  Therefore, the IDIGF members are looking for assistance, support from the government, an international organization, private sectors to support the IGF 2013.  We welcome your support, and we also welcome you to Bali in October 2013.  We hope and made sure in your very busy discussion on Internet governance, you are still able to enjoy the beautiful island of Bali.  See you there.

>> Okay.  That concludes or presentation.  Thank you very much for your attention.

>>CHAIR KUMMER: Thank you very much for this presentation.  I wonder whether there are any questions, comments, from the floor?  I see Bill Drake, please, and Judy.

>>BILL DRAKE: I was just wondering if the workshop rooms are separate rooms with walls between them or if it will again be a situation where you've got a large space that's been split up by sort of thin dividers and people have to listen with headphones in order to hear each other?

>>CHAIR KUMMER: I'm told they are separate rooms.

Judy?  Judy?

>> JUDY OKITE:  Thank you, thank you, Markus.  I'm worried about the accessibility of the venue.  I didn't see any accessibility issues being addressed.

>> Thank you, the accessibility for the handicapped, we have it also on the venue.  The venue also provide that.

>>CHENGETAI MASANGO: When we went there, we check accessibility of the venue and also hotel rooms.  There are hotel rooms available with accessibility features in them so we got that covered.

>>ZAHID JAMIL: That was faster than usual.  Thank you.  I just wanted to ask.  There was an incident in Baku where I was told there was some documentation that was made available for the status of the Internet in Baku. 

And what I wondered was apparently some U.N. rule had been violated.  I would like to get some more clarity about what it was that went wrong to make sure so participants didn't repeat that if there was a rule that was violated.

Secondly, what would be the impact of similar publications being made available at the next IGF?

>>CHAIR KUMMER: Thank you.  This is a complex question.  The host country agreement the U.N. concludes with the host country guarantees diplomatic immunity to all participants for words spoken or written in the conference.  But it does not guarantee that you can take in whatever you would like into the conference facilities.  And U.N. has the ultimate authority what documents -- written documentation is being distributed.

Now, the rules -- that's what the rules say.  And there is established practice and tradition, but there is no written rules. 

The incident you're referring to was dealt with based on past practices as handled in U.N. premises in Geneva.

We have also evolved a bit in the IGF context.  You were in Athens, I remember that.

[ Laughter ]

And in Athens, we did have some, shall we put it, vigorous discussions.  And there was quite a bit of naming and shaming both with regard to countries but also companies.  We did have reactions to that, and there was the general feeling expressed that it might be better for the IGF to refrain from singling out individual countries or companies.

And we have a member we have refused, for instance, contribution that singled out one (indiscernible) that were provided.  We said, sorry, no we cannot accept that.  There was a lot of shouting going on with the offer. 

But then we agreed it and the author reworded it.  Instead of naming the company, addressed the problem in a more generic way.

I think we also encouraged in past sessions not to single out countries pointing fingers at companies but rather discussing issues.

And we also -- there was, you will recall, one incident are in Sharm El-Sheikh.  We had also, I think, in the past because we precisely did not want to be censors, said don't put up posters all together.  Remember in Rio, for instance, we told the private company that had organized the pre-event in the premises -- (audio dropped out) -- banners, you are not allowed to make commercial publicity for your company.  You are allowed, of course, to have the meeting.  The meeting was not a commercial for the company concern, but it was a meeting on open standards.

Okay.  We can discuss whether this is a good way to proceed or not.  But, again, we have to bear in mind that we are meeting in an U.N. context and ultimately it will be member-states that will decide whether the IGF is an experiment worth continuing.

And the question is -- I mean, there are various other issues.  We have established a practice of an IGF village.  But the booths are distributed on a first-come, first-served basis.  So it is not so that every organization has an automatic right to get a booth.  And there are also limitations to the number of booths.  And that is the host country that will see how many booths will be made available.

I think that's all I have to say on this particular issue.  You would like to come back, Zahid?

>>ZAHID JAMIL: Just wanted to get -- maybe not now, maybe separately, I don't know.  But it may be helpful for people to know what the sort of -- as an example for this to avoid because I don't know exactly.  I personally don't know what was in that document.  And that may be helpful either to avoid it, or they can discuss whether or not that's a good thing.  But it will at least inform people as to what to do or not.

I'm trying to be helpful.

>>CHAIR KUMMER: Yes, thank you.  I haven't seen it myself.  But, apparently, it was on the practices in the host country.  It was uniquely on the host country.  Now, if you have -- for instance, I think Google has an annual thing of some state of censorship of the Internet globally on a map.  I think that would -- there would be no objection based on U.N. practices on something that addresses the more generic issues.

But just to focus on one country or one company, no, why this company is evil, I think, we will consider this as not appropriate.

Now, I do know there are passionate views held about this.  But then again, I would like to recall that in the end in 2015, there will be member-states who will take a decision whether the mandate should be renewed or not.  And if we go against the practices that are normally used in the U.N. context, we may have to bear the consequences.  It's open for discussion.

Mervi, you were the first to put up the flag.

>> MERVI KULTAMAA:  Thank you very much, and good morning to everybody.  I would also like to thank our Indonesian hosts for the briefing and for the very inspiring video.

I think we can trust Indonesia as a very experienced host of big international meetings, and I look forward to coming to Bali.

I was especially encouraged to see that even the biggest rooms permit more innovative arrangements than what we have had before in the main sessions such as roundtable formats.

But my question is about the high-level event, which is forcing to take place one day before the actual opening of the IGF.  I know it has been the tradition that the host country is in charge of arranging the event.  But I hope it will be arranged at a truly multistakeholder format on equal footing.  And, hopefully, there will be much attention given to what kind of topic will be discussed there and that it will be well-defined beforehand because it is really the selection of the topic which is very much linked to what kind of high-level representatives we get to Bali and what kind of attention it attracts.

Personally, I hope that we could bring more parliamentarians this year than perhaps in the recent years.  And, hopefully, the International Parliamentarian Union, the IPU, could help us in this manner.

I know before they have organized some kind of briefings in Geneva for parliamentarians.  I attended one of them which was very good.

So once we know the focus of the high-level event and we know a little bit more about the substance, I hope that we could attract parliamentarians as well.  Thank you.

>>CHAIR KUMMER: Thank you.  I wonder whether you or a member of your delegation would like to comment on the high-level event.

>>ASHWIN SASONGKO: Yeah.  We do also plan to make the so-called roundtable.  Plan it on the 21st because IGF will be on 22, 23.  We will do it one day in advance.  Okay.  That's the way we plan today. 

I ask (saying name) if you can say more about the plan.  It is understood this is not an IGF event, but it was arranged by the delegation group.

Please.

>> Thank you.  The actual IGF meeting is on the 22nd through 25th as I told you before.  And the 21st is we added for high-level meeting.  We just try to plan that the high-level meeting would be an Asia-Pacific high-level ministerial meeting, but it is not decided yet. 

For the question about the rooms, the first question, I think there is no problem for the rooms because it is a conference center company.  Right now they are still building another venue the same thing as right now, the venue right now.  So the rooms will be developed -- will be ready in August because it will be used by APIC (phonetic) meeting on the first week of August.  It will receive about 20,000 attendees for the APIC meeting.  So we are going to use it again on the third week, like the 21st.  Thank you.

>>CHAIR KUMMER: I also noted, as Mervi did, in the presentation the big roundtable setting.  It is obviously attractive if you have roundtable workshops.  The question will be if it is able to change the configuration in short time.  That's a detail Chengetai and the host country will sort out.

There are other people.  Anriette, Andrei, Izumi, and I think we have remote participants.

>>ANRIETTE ESTERHUYSEN: Thank you, Markus.  I just wanted to echo Mervi's comments about the pre-event.  I think it's challenging.  But on the one hand, it is really good to get high-level representation from governments because it does add to the stature of the IGF.  But it is also important to get people from governments who actually stay for the entire event and were not so senior that they have to rush home immediately after the high-level event because we really do need more, particularly developing country participation in the IGF.

So I think the selection of topics and maybe the selection of -- or the planning of more sort of practical problem-solving events either inside the IGF or also as pre-events that can attract and be useful to governments.

I think on the issue of the distribution of material, I think, Markus, your points about the future of the IGF and risks to that are really relevant.  But I think those risks run both ways.  I think, one, it is important not to alienate governments in the U.N. decision-making system.  It is also important not to alienate the global community and the Internet community which does value the free flow of information very highly.

And I think the world has changed as well.  What happens in the Internet universe, or the world post-Internet, and we have seen that with WikiLeaks and other instances like that, that information is restricted in one place, its dissemination explodes in another.  I'm not sure how effective those protocols which have polite intentions, how effective those protocols are and they might actually create more tension and more feelings of being persecuted than just letting things be.

And I do think that while you've explained to us the context, what we found in Baku was that for newcomers to the process, that subtlety is actually really difficult to use as guidelines.  I do think we need something that is going to have to be -- either you have to be a little bit more open and let things be -- (audio buffering) -- more guidelines.  I think we find it difficult at the time to not have any written guidelines available to refer to.  So it is still a little bit unresolved.

>>CHAIR KUMMER: I agree.  And I think in the past, that was maybe not communicated well enough.  And I think it was Chairman Malcolm who made the point in Baku that if the MAG was actually doing that, discussed the basic framework.

But, as I said, it has a certain history and no naming/shaming was the result of the first session.  There was a clear feeling if you go down that way, we end up in a (indiscernible).

(saying name).  Sanja and then we have a remote participant.

>> SANJA KELLY:  This is Sanja Kelly from Freedom House.  First, I would like to congratulate Indonesia on that wonderful presentation and for truly embracing the spirit of multistakeholderism.  I was quite encouraged by the presentation, and I look forward to working with Indonesia in the coming several months.

I would like to echo a couple points that were made before and one has to do with some of these written rules.  As Anriette mentioned particularly for newcomers and newcomers from civil society, it is very important that they feel that they can participate on equal footing with some of the other members.  So having the situation where they felt one stakeholder had decision-making power over what other stakeholders can distribute was kind of a weird dynamic at the time.  Of course, we acknowledge that the rules exist and I'm also, like my colleagues, trying to be helpful in trying to figure out how to best go about it.  I would also like to stress the importance of making these rules transparent and clear and putting them on the Web site if that's also helpful.

I will tell you from the experience of Freedom House which has been involved with the U.N. process since the very beginning, considering that Eleanor Roosevelt is one of our founders, even for us it was confusing at times because when it came to that particular literature that was mentioned, at certain points, even Freedom House put on our table and then we were told not to hold it there.  So even for an experienced organization, it was a bit difficult to really truly navigate in terms of what's permitted or not.

For example, for us, you know, since we have worked with the U.N. for a number of decades, we notice that even within the U.N. there are different rules, for example, whether something is permitted within a particular session or whether something is permitted to be distributed in the hallways or in the village and so forth.  So having that clarity is very important.

My second point has to do with the participation of local organizations and local stakeholders.  One thing that was very apparent in Baku was that, for example, no single civil society organization from Azerbaijan was given a booth in the village.  I understand that the number of booths is limited and there is a preference given to international stakeholders and organizations.  But not having that local presence was truly missed.  And I think it was also a bit of a missed opportunity to allow that voice.

And just finally in terms of logistics, my third question has to do about the current site in Indonesia and whether there are going to be enough rooms for bilateral meetings because I know in the past that has sometimes -- sometimes been challenging to navigate the side meetings that a lot of different stakeholders like to organize.  Thank you.

>>CHAIR KUMMER: Thank you.  Just one correction, it is not that one stakeholder group has control over the document.  It is the U.N.  It is U.N. staff that basically under the U.N. rules has the responsibility.

The problem is these rules are rather vague.  So it is based on past practices and I think you pointed out rightly that there are different practices in different parts of the organization.

As far as I know, I was not involved there at all.  But the staff member who took the decision took this decision based on his experience in the U.N. in Geneva.

But I would like to ask Chengetai to comment because there is under the "frequently asked questions," there are some notions on the Web site of what documentation is allowed.

Please, Chengetai.

>>CHENGETAI MASANGO: Yes.  We do have something under the "frequently asked questions."  This can be expanded and also -- I don't know if you have got any ideas how to make it more prominent.  One of the other problems is that we've got so many things that we would like to make prominent, we don't know exactly where to put everything.

On the Web site under the "frequently asked questions," we have just a short question on the distribution of materials and written materials and documentation can be distributed at the designated areas of the IGF venue.

We found out that in most venues, we have materials being distributed, let's say, at the lunch area, et cetera.  We would like to stop that and only confine it -- not for censorship purposes, just for tidiness and neatness purposes -- to designated areas.

Documentation related to the workshops subject matters can be distributed in the workshop rooms and should be removed by the workshop organizer at the end of the workshop session.  I think that's fairly clear why we say that.

Organizations that are holding a booth in the IGF village can also distribute materials at their booth.  Materials found in non-designated areas will be removed immediately.

Their distribution of materials should be Internet governance related of noncommercial nature.  The documents should follow U.N. guidelines on suitability and should be blatantly -- should not be blatantly inflammatory or potential libelous and actions and arguments should be criticized based on their merit and not their source.

Of course, we can't really set very precise rules because some of these things are a matter of judgment as well.  But we'll try and expand it and do something that's better.

>>CHAIR KUMMER: Thank you for that.

Farzaneh, you have a remote participant, I think?

>>REMOTE INTERVENTION: I received this remote e-mail intervention from Jeremy Malcolm which is related to the distribution of material.  At the Baku IGF meeting, concerns were expressed by a number of participants about constraints on freedom of expression at the meeting following from the seizure of certain civil society publications by U.N. staff.  This recalled a similar incident at the previous IGF meeting when U.N. staff removed a poster at a civil society book lunch event.

As a measure toward preventing similar incidents in the future, Chengetai Masango accepted my suggestion in Baku that a written set of guidelines be provided for discussion by the IGF community that would clearly delineate the U.N.'s view of the acceptable bounds of both written and oral communications at IGF events.

I would like to know what is the current status of the preparation of these written guidelines.  Thank you.

>>CHAIR KUMMER: Thank you.  Whether or not you can hang up a poster has nothing to do with freedom of expression, that it has something to do with whether or not you allow people to put posters all over the place or not.  And there are certain rules like the U.N. says.  Drinks are not allowed in the room.  And I see a bottle of water.  I don't know whether that's allowed in UNESCO or not.  But in Geneva they say no drinks, no coffees, are allowed in the room or sandwiches.  There are certain rules the host is allowed, I think, to impose and enforce.  Thus Chengetai said, it is a question also of tidiness of the facilities.

But, yes, okay.  I think we're working on these rules and expanding.

Yes, Jeff?

>>JEFF BRUEGGEMAN: I think a suggestion might be to issue clear guidelines in this particular case with this facility, what will be the designated area so there is no confusion ahead of time.  That might help.

And then, Chengetai, the guidelines you read, you have a substantive component.  So it might also help to clarify what is the process for getting content reviewed so that -- my impression from not being directly involved, the word gets out about the arbitrary decision about the material not fitting the guidelines.  It might help to reassure people if they knew what the process was, if something is going to be removed on substantive grounds as opposed to being posted in the wrong place which should be very clear if you give the information.

>>CHAIR KUMMER:  Thank you.  Yeah, I mean, I certainly agree with Anriette, that these practices were established well ahead of WikiLeaks, and times they are a changin', and quite often, actually, by imposing these rules, it has the opposite effect.  It actually amplifies the issue which nobody would have noticed.

I do remember in the WSIS one in Geneva, there was the cohost, Tunisia.  They went around picking up documents they saw in the exhibition part.  I mean, that was the old government that did not have a stellar record on freedom of expression.

But as I said, I think the times they are a changin', and we have to see how we can adapt our practices, I think, to this evolving situation.

But, you know, the action of naming and shaming -- and I'm sure the business community would agree to that, that you would, for instance, not consider it helpful if single companies are -- individual companies are singled out for practices.  However, if there is a report on business practices that addresses a global issue, then it's slightly different than an inflammatory leaflet singling out one particular company.

Izumi?

>>IZUMI AIZU:  Thank you, chair.  Yes, I'd like to echo what Jeremy and Jeff pointed out.  I'm not talking about the substance of the rules, but procedure.

I think IGF is a place for innovation from the very beginning, even under the U.N. framework, and also we are a sort of multistakeholder setup, that the rule-making process itself is very important.  And I also suggest that are the secretary will prepare a document well before the next May consultation meeting, not only to the MAG but for the world, and so that we don't have to repeat the same argument, you know, again and again.

That's my one thing.

My second thing is about this -- first of all, I'd like to really commend Indonesia to kindly offer a very pragmatic and great opportunity in Bali. 

Being familiar with the geography and the area, to some extent the participation from the southeast -- or south and east Asia to IGF hasn't been really as much as what we wanted to, with the exception of perhaps Hyderabad where we had more than 30% from Asia.

So -- and we have a lot of LDCs and Pacific Islands near Indonesia, so it would offer a very good opportunity for them to sort of participate into the multistakeholder IGF, so --

And I also really see Indonesia is most exceptionally well exercising the multistakeholder thing -- NGOs, ISP associations, businesses and the governments together working -- so I really would like to see it to be recognized by the other regional folks as well.

As for the high-level meeting which was also discussed, I share the concern that although I understand it very well, it's the sort of host country's prerogative, if not the host government's.  Although it is called as a ministerial and it may be that the devil might be in the details, not in the other areas, but I'd like to suggest if -- as much as possible to try to stick to the multistakeholder principle, if they carry IGF as a title of the meeting, and so sometimes I think it's better to have a little bit more transparency, openness. 

We don't know who is -- if it is -- in my understanding, it's by invitation only.  This is the past practice.  Some of the civil society members and the business people outside the government are invited, while others are not, and we don't know how it happens.

Of course you have the freedom to select, but if you could make some way to share this process or as well as the substance or result to all IGF participants -- not a secret meeting, but a well architected meeting output -- that would be very helpful for continuing the discussions.

Finally, also I'd like to encourage some of the high-level officials, they come to the high-level meeting, they may come to the open ceremony.  That's it.

I experienced that with my delegation last year.  Well, previous years.  And we tried very hard to get them to come to our sessions, main session, and they said, "Sorry, you know, my schedule is -- I have to fly out in the afternoon of the opening ceremony, can't really stay."

So in the spirit of the multistakeholder openness, I'd like to really encourage the next high-level meeting to try to come up with some of the ways -- maybe the details -- so that they can engage longer and deeper with us.

Thank you.

>>CHAIR KUMMER:  Thank you for that.

I think there is a strong message coming from the room encouraging you to make the opening session -- the pre-event ministerial as multistakeholder as possible. 

And there's also -- I think we had a good discussion, and Chengetai has some homework for the May meeting to elaborate a little bit more on the rules for documentation in -- at the IGF in Bali.

Would you like to comment?  I think we have concluded the discussion on your presentation and I think you saw everybody is remember happy and excited and looking forward to coming to Bali.

>> ASHWIN SASONGKO:  Yeah.  Thank you. 

First of all, as was mentioned, the IGF meeting will be held just after the APIC meeting, so we have -- we'll host the APIC first, then we host the IGF, so hopefully, well, the organizers will have better facilities and so on to do the APIC meeting, which hosts something like 20,000 or so people with so many (indiscernible) are coming.

Now, secondly, all the inputs are well taken and of course we have to consult how we will arrange the high-level meetings or if it looks like it's still in the preparations so all your notes, all your inputs are well taken as to how to have better high-level meetings that we will have Monday before the IGF.

Now, secondly, we will of course as you proposed how to hold the high-level government officials to stay and involve -- and getting more involved in the -- what's it called -- IGF meetings and so on.  Well, we will do our best about that.  I mean, I cannot promise you that one minister will stay for three days or so.  I mean, that's, of course, beyond my capabilities.  But what we will do is that we will propose -- we will promote the IGF meeting as well as the ministerial meeting and high-level meeting and so on, and on all occasions.  We'll have the Asian Pan-partners meeting in a few months' time.  We will have the APIC meeting also.  We have APIC some mean -- similar meeting in Jakarta, and last month during the APIC some meeting for electric commerce, we already propose that the high-level government officer can stay after the meeting for the rest of the IGF.

So that's what we'll do our best to make sure that most of the high-level government representatives also stay during the IGF

And perhaps IGF can also provide them with when -- when they stay, they can also give inputs during the meetings.  Some giving -- they have to make some sort of short presentation of what happened in the -- in the ICT field in their country, for example, or, you know, things like that. 

Bearing in mind that in that part of the world, in Southeast Asia or even south Asia, the development of the Internet is so -- so fast, and the problem faced by the government as well as the community is perhaps important to be more understood compared with the other more developed countries, like in the U.S. or more advanced countries like Europe and so on.  How most of the area thinks about Budapest Convention, for example.  How the Budapest -- how we see the Budapest Convention from the local legal system. 

I think that is the kind of things that can be dissented and discussed in many discussions during the IGF meetings.  Not only the social sides, perhaps, but also the legal sides. 

As perhaps as you might be aware, some of the Asian countries has just -- like Japan just adopted the Budapest Convention, after so many years, but so does the United Kingdom.

Indonesia is revisiting again the Budapest Convention, not yet adopted it, so there are differences in adopting that.  And it is also important to see how this part of the world's countries see the development of ITR.  Different in Asian countries.  The discussion on ITR is -- well, what I should say? -- very hot?  Very warm?  I do not know.  Sorry about my English.  But even in Southeast Asia, you have countries like Singapore but you have also countries like Indonesia, you have countries like Myanmar and so on, which is -- where there are some differences.  And yet the similarities is that the ICT is developing so fast, but the community, the readiness of the community, the readiness of the legal system, might be different from one to another.

So this is -- this should be very important topics, interesting topics to be discussed later.  And I'm sure that the government representative will be more than happy to share with all the stakeholders the problems that they may -- they have, because we -- those countries have their own problems and they also need to discuss with all the stakeholders this issue, you know, rather than in a more official meetings and more bilateral countries-to-countries agreement and so on, and probably discuss it with multistakeholders in nice Bali environment will be very useful for the development of ICT globally or regionally, as well as not only ICT sectors but also the other sectors, because we would like to see also how ICT can support the other sectors' development. 

Just for one -- one -- just for one -- can I give you one small example, for example?

One of the trends in -- in some different countries is that if you have a health problem, if you are a doctor, you want to make a practice, open practice, then you have to apply for application to open a doctor consultations.

Now, with ICT, for example, a doctor in another part of the world can open the consultations in that area through the ICT tools.  Even doing operations, if you like.  Now, there is also -- this is very interesting.  It's how the presence of the doctor is there because of physical presence.  That's the kind of things that was interesting to be discussed as the -- as what -- as one of the ICT applications.

Another one is the property -- as you mentioned, property -- how you call it -- intellectual property right, which also has importance, bearing in mind that in this part of north and south Asia, for example, the -- the business, entertainment business and so on, is growing so fast, while there are so many cases regarding intellectual property rights, as well as online piracy and so on.

(indiscernible) for the government official, for example, who receive -- who have problems and to solve that kind of problems, while on the other hand, we get complaints from the property owners, on the other hand, we will have complaint from the freedom of getting more and more informations.  How to balance all of this are perhaps interesting things to be discussed in -- in the meeting rooms. 

So ladies and gentlemen, I think -- well, we can have more and more topics to be discussed, of course, and I think with the -- if we can keep all this government representative longer, it will be more and more -- it will be better, and I will do my best in all -- in all occasions to ask them to be -- to stay and discuss with each the problem with the global multistakeholders.  Thank you.

>>CHAIR KUMMER:  Thank you very much for that, and I think with that, we conclude this segment, and would like to give the Indonesian delegation a big applause for their presentations.

[ Applause ]

>>CHAIR KUMMER:  Thank you very much, and I think we all look forward to coming to Bali.

Can we go back to our own planning exercise?

I think the next issue I would like to discuss is basically how to launch the call for workshop proposals and in more concrete ways to look at the selection criteria.

Looking at the criteria we had for 2012, I want --

Could we put them up on the screen?

Well, you'll find them on the IGF Web site, if you look under the --

>>CHENGETAI MASANGO:  Under Baku, if you go to the right, you see Baku, and selection -- I mean-- (speaker is off microphone.)

>>CHAIR KUMMER:  Anyway, the criteria, they're a little bit difficult to find, maybe, but you have to go on the left and then scroll to the Baku meeting and then there's the preparatory paper and it is on Page 18, and you'll find the selection criteria, and there are a number of bullet points.

And I think they are, on the whole, good and relevant, these criteria, and maybe we don't really need to invent new ones but that is something I would like to discuss.

The question in my mind was maybe more where they actually really applied.

Bullet Point Number 1, the requirement of having submitted a substantive report on workshops organized in previous IGF meetings.

Number 2, degree of multistakeholder support and participation.

Number 3, developing country support. 

4, gender balance. 

5, youth participation.

6, balance of speakers to participant discussion and the design of the workshop.  That is, the degree of interaction planned.

Then relevance to overall theme or one of the key themes, including the area of emerging issues.

Relevance to the attendees, both physical and remote, at an IGF meeting.

And last, suitability for remote participation.  For example, linkages to a hub event.

So they're quite comprehensive criteria and I'm not sure whether they were actually applied to all the proposals, but there were several statements made yesterday that maybe we should also tighten the criteria, so this is a -- they are up on the screen.  These are the selection criteria for the 2012 workshops.

Izumi, please.

>>IZUMI AIZU:  Thank you. 

On the first -- I cannot read from my eyesight, but the point I found is that the requirement for submitting in the past report or something -- right? -- that what if you are very new and you might be dis-encouraged, unless you have somebody that you can a report put together, so I'd like to see some kind of measures to help the newcomers to welcome, encourage, or support them added somewhere.  Thank you.

>>CHAIR KUMMER: Yes.  That can be misconstrued.  Actually, it's true.  The requirement is not that you have held workshops in the past but if those who have held workshops in the past, have you indeed submitted reports.  And I think that has helped a little bit, because in the past, reporting was very slack and I think --

>>IZUMI AIZU:  If I may.

>>CHAIR KUMMER:  Yes.

>>IZUMI AIZU:  And putting it in the first bullet point, it really sounds like, you know, unless you did that, even that you meet these other criteria, you're out.  So just kind of modification for the details.  Thank you.

>>CHAIR KUMMER:  Point well taken.

Ayesha and then Lucinda.

>>AYESHA HASSAN:  Thank you.  Ayesha Hassan speaking.

I agree that the criteria are pretty comprehensive.  I'm supportive of moving the first bullet lower down or -- but I would also say I think that it was really a matter of the MAG not implementing these criteria, so I think we need to be much more stringent about this and brave to say no, or if you haven't really ameliorated the things that were identified by the MAG in May, when we did the assessments, if you really don't ameliorate, you get cancelled, and I think that's just going to have to be a set-in-stone approach this year.

The other thing I would say is maybe we can explore if there's some kind of -- where somebody would submit a workshop proposal, if there's a way to put something on the Web site that says "Do you need help?"

I know it's a burden on the IGF secretariat, but hopefully some of the resourcing can be built up so that there is help for people to understand, you know, what they really need to do.

>>CHAIR KUMMER:  Well, that was -- we discussed that yesterday, and I think we agreed that we, for instance, would hold a Webinar for newbies to explain a little bit how it works.

So a kind of workshop help desk, yes.  Lucinda and then Constance.

>>LUCINDA FELL: Thank you.  I think it's very helpful to have criteria.  I think they can show the seriousness, if you like, of candidates, so I think it would -- Ayesha was saying yesterday it's a lot of work to produce a successful workshop, and maybe by someone adhering to all of those, it can show that for a new person, they're prepared to do that, and they will have a successful workshop.

As I mentioned yesterday, I think it's really important to understand the context of the workshop and also if there are going to be constraining factors, and so that those applying can't necessarily meet all of your criteria, and perhaps you should make an option for that.  So for if it was a sole youth focus, there may not be young people attending from across the whole geographic spectrum, so give people an opportunity to say why, perhaps, they can't meet all of those, but what their specific reason for their workshop is.

>>CHAIR KUMMER:  Thank you.  Who was next?  Constance?  Constance?

>>CONSTANCE BOMMELAER:  Thank you very much, chair.

We had mentioned perhaps requesting that individuals commit to preparing, very well in advance, their workshops through conference calls or even informal meetings on-site during the IGF.  I think that that would help. 

And also limiting the number of workshops -- workshop proposals from -- from individuals and various organizations.  Thank you.

>>CHAIR KUMMER:  Thank you.  Nurani?

>>NURANI NIMPUNO:  Thank you.  Nurani Nimpuno, Netnod. 

I just -- I would simply like to echo Ayesha's comments.  I don't think the challenge in the past has necessarily been the selection criteria.  The challenge has been that we haven't actually implemented them, so let's do that this time.

Let's follow up on workshops, and if they -- if we get back to them and they, in the second round, simply don't improve their workshop proposals and don't meet the criteria, then they get cancelled.  Thank you.

>>CHAIR KUMMER:  Thank you.  But I think we should also -- Lucinda made a valid point that they may not apply to all workshop proposals.  So I mean it's an "to the extent possible" clause. 

Bill?

>>BILL DRAKE:  Thank you.  Last year, we -- when we did the ranking, the criteria we ranked against was actually only five of these:  Relevance to the particular issue; geographical representation; completeness of the proposal; gender balance; and multistakeholder representation and representation of diverse views.

And I had a number of conversations with people who were asking exactly how the ranking was working, given the fact that there was this long list -- excuse me -- of criteria, but we aren't actually applying them.

So I think we need to be a lot clearer in our communication about exactly what we're doing.

It is very much the case that not all of these are going to be really applicable in each case.  I mean, it's great to say we should have youth participation.  If Somebody's organizing a workshop on some technical details of IXPs or something, you may not find youth who can do it.

Developing country support, a lot of people ask me "What does that really mean?  Do you have to get a government, a developing country government to endorse your workshop?" 

Now, I've been able to do that sometimes in the past, but some people might not have the connections to be able to do that.

So we put these things up there and they're not entirely clear to everybody exactly how much weight we're really attaching to them.

It doesn't do us any good to set standards that -- not only that we don't, you know, precisely follow but which can't easily be followed. 

So I think if we're going to have these standards, we need to have more explanation for the community that logs on, saying "No, there's a -- we're talking about an overall balance among these factors and that in particular, when it comes to ranking the workshops, we have this particular emphasis on XYZ." 

To me, the biggest concern has always been diversity of views.  Too may workshops, in my view, have a lack of diversity of view.  When I look at them, their particular triads from the Internet governance community that are all sort of on the same page about something and they get together and talk about something.  That's great and interesting, but it doesn't make for a lot of dramatic tension or representation of the rest of the views in the larger environment.

So if I was going to emphasize anything in particular, for me the multistakeholder representation, the diversity representation, gender balance, these things -- and completeness of the proposal.  We just -- in my view, we let way too many go through that just were so incomplete.  I was astonished, frankly, at the end of the day, how many -- how the bar kind of changed.

We did all this elaborate ranking, we spent all this time doing this, and so many of the proposals were in such an early stage of development that I thought, "My God, I mean, the deadline's been clear for months, you know, and you're sending us something with no names on it and three sentences, and that gets -- that ends up getting approved."

So I really hope that we can be a little bit firmer on the completeness of proposal requirements and be clearer about exactly how people should read these things.

Thank you.

>>CHAIR KUMMER:  Thank you.  Judy.  And Anriette, yeah.  Oh, sorry.  Vlad, first.

>>VLADIMIR RADUNOVIC:  Thank you.  Vladimir Radunovic from DiploFoundation. 

So on criteria, I think in general it is okay, and I agree we haven't been implementing that.  The question is, if we want to limit the number of workshops -- for Azerbaijan, we decided not to because we had enough rooms.  As I understood the Indonesian host this time, we can also have enough rooms.  It's a matter if we are going to select the workshops based on this criteria, and even limit the number in spite of the number of rooms. 

But my bigger problem in this is the practice.  If you go through the criteria and in practice when people are putting up the list of speakers at some point, to have a multistakeholder balance, a geographical balance, a gender balance, a youth involvement, and so on and so forth, you have to have 10 participants and it was absolutely impossible.

I think the greatest mistake was insisting on names.  I don't care about names.  You can give me anyone on the panel as long as they address these different perspectives.

So I think one of the biggest problems is asking the names.  Instead, what I would ask for when we are asking for the application is what is the format?  Is it a roundtable?  Is it an open discussion?  Is it a panel?  Are you presenting?  Are you discussing?  Are you coming to results?

So what is the stage?  It is the level of interaction and maybe the names of the moderators.  This is much more important for interaction than the names of the panelists. 

And also we don't know the panelists up until the last moment, who is going to show up.

It is the names of the organizations and organizers, so the -- even the persons that are taking the role to organize this, and based on that, we can say "Okay, we know these persons are reliable, we can check, we can talk to them after all, so this is something firm." 

And finally, the topics that are going to be addressed, not only the thematic correspondence with the teams we set up but also specific topics you're going to address, and how are you going to address the youth angle, the multistakeholder angle, the development world angle, and so on and so forth. 

So not who, but how you are going to address it.  Thank you.

>>JUDY OKITE: Thank you, Markus.  I would like to speak before Vladimir because he has taken away all of my words.

[ Laughter ]

>>CHAIR KUMMER: Olga?

>>OLGA CAVALLI: Thank you, Chair.  Some things have already been said.  This is Olga Cavalli from Argentina.  The gender issue, it is sometimes a problem.  There are a few women from Latin America, so some of us are invited to ten workshops at the same time.  And that's challenging.

The ages, youth, I mean, I like young people and mixing ages, are we going to ask how old are you to put them in the correct workshop?  And also diversity does not apply to all the issues that are addressed in a workshop.  For example, we organize a workshop each year about Latin and Native American languages in the Internet.  Honestly, inviting a speaker from Asia to talk about Latin American and Native American languages is strange.

I think the challenge is how we do the revision.  If we don't have enough information to decide and if we can somehow have a tool to divide all the information in a more selective way, I agree with Bill about the relevant issues of diversity of views and I also agree with Vladimir that the names of the moderators is perhaps more relevant than the panelist. 

And perhaps we could think about other formats for presenting the workshops.  Maybe an open space moderated by someone focusing on some issues or roundtables.  We stick to this format of panelists and these rules.  Sometimes these rules, in my modest opinion, are somehow restrictive and makes us repeating some of the panelists because of the lack of people available in some IGFs.  Thank you very much.

>>CHAIR KUMMER: Thank you, Wendy and Theresa.

>>WENDY SELTZER: Thank you.  Wendy Seltzer here.  I wanted to recommend that we take a more holistic view of our project, that our project is to put on a multi-day event and we should ensure over the multi-day event there is diversity of genders of ages, of geographic regions, of topics.  We shouldn't require it at the micro-level of every panelist or every panel encompass the entire spectrum. 

I think we can then make sure that we're looking at those criteria while allowing a little bit more leeway in the individual events.

I'll also say quickly recognizing the attention between giving lots of people opportunities to do something and justify their attendance and impressed in keeping the numbers of parallel events down, I think that's another reason to support lots of alternative formats so that we could have poster sessions and lightning talks that give many people an opportunity to be presenting, be engaged in dialogue without stacking up dozens of events at the same time.

I would suggest even if we're unconstrained by the number of rooms, we should impose that constraint on ourselves so that we're not forcing people to look at a grid of dozens of boxes in a row to figure out where to go next but rather a smaller number of magnet events.  Thank you.

>>CHAIR KUMMER: Thank you.  Theresa.

>>THERESA SWINEHART: I think in relation to a couple of comments made, one on the issue of the number of workshops, we don't need to fill all the rooms necessarily.  But also, too, an observation that Constance had made about the importance of adequate preparations and really forcing that part of the preparation at the early stage.

And while I would hate to get into a situation of, what do you call, micromanagement, I wonder whether as part of the workshop proposals, we should ask the proposers to provide just a brief description on how they intend to approach the workshop, how they intend to have an interactive and creative dialogue and if they could touch on how they will be preparing for that given the diversity of participants.

It might also encourage workshop proposers to think a little bit about the amount of work and preparations that need to go into it rather than just the submission of a list of panelists with "to be confirmed" next to it.  It is just a thought.  A small sentence, one or two, to do that.

>>CHAIR KUMMER: Thank you.

Jeff?

>>JEFF BRUEGGEMAN: Having been on both sides of this last year, organizing a workshop and trying to review this, we had a lot of the same discussion last year about being tougher.  And I think we need to adjust the process as others are suggesting, if we have any inkling of doing this. 

I wanted to start with Anriette's suggestion yesterday about a thematic roundtable approach which I thought worked extremely well.  I know there were a number of open forum.  That's the kind of innovative, new thing that, I think, helps. 

Maybe what we could do is take a much more active role in the thematic priorities that we decide and say, There is going to be a track of workshops.  And it is not just that there will be 20 workshops and we will identify five as feeders.  But we are actually going to demand early in the process what is the substantive issue you are taking on, what's the format.

I think we should give people more time to fill in the names.  But I think ultimately it is important to have a balanced set of views, and we should reserve the right maybe to suggest additional participants or help get a better range of views, if need be.

I think having that early in the process, I was pretty (indiscernible) in May that you really didn't know what was going to happen later.  If we could force the focus first on the substance, and I would say -- I know merging workshops with two other people fairly -- summer, when I think we should try to force those combinations as early as possible. 

Maybe the first step would be to identify issues and say:  Does anyone else have an interest in this issue?  Let's make it very easy to connect people together on those.

And if we fill up -- I guess the other suggestion I was going to make was to identify innovative topics or other issues that we think should be prioritized.  It is hard to reject things.  But if we start by affirmatively filling this priority, this priority, we make it to the point where it is easier to say, Well, your workshop just didn't meet any of the other priority criteria so you're down here and, you know, kind of on the margins.

But I feel like we should focus on what we want to be affirmatively worked -- let's have as many good workshops as we can instead of focusing on trying to weed out the bad ones.  That might be a better way to address this problem.  I feel like last year we ended up struggling finding ways to deal with that.

>>CHAIR KUMMER: Now there are many speakers on the next.  Ricardo next and Mark.

>> RICARDO PEDRAZA:  Thank you, Ricardo Pedraza.  I wanted to echo my colleague's suggestion to focus more on the methodology and the content of workshops and the panelist focus.  Let me share just an experience at the Baku IGF

I had the chance to participate at the new delegates briefing session, introducing the IG4D main theme.  Given the interactive format said by Vlada which I applaud, by the way, we had the chance to spend some time in groups with the newcomers according to their interest.

Let me say that I got really impressed by the newcomers' concrete expectations.  And in that sense, I believe we should focus and we should value workshops that intend to submit best practices, global models or submit a set of rigid options about specific topics.

So, in brief, I just want to support the idea of including in the criteria aspects related to how the workshops are going to set up methodologies of -- innovative methodologies of participation and how they are going to address topics of especially newcomers from developing countries.  Thank you.

>>CHAIR KUMMER: Thank you. 

Mark?

>> MARK CARVELL:  Thank you, Markus.  I just wanted to come back very much on that theme of identifying the hot topics, for want of a better phrase, I think, where we are looking for concrete and a sort of distillation of options certainly by the end of the forum itself and perhaps by the end of the session. 

So I'm coming back to what I said yesterday about maybe on some of these topics, maybe four or five, we have a format which is a bit extended so we have time for the experts to contribute their views from different aspects, different angles, different positions maybe.  Some engagement with those stakeholders, including government policymakers who are looking for guidance for expert distillation in one place and be able to go away with a set of options. 

So at the point of inviting proposals, I think we make this subjective pretty clear so that if it is not relevant to what the stakeholders are intending to propose, they go ahead and submit a workshop proposal or some other format, flash or roundtable or BOF or whatever for their issue.

I think related to this hot topic, we invite them to contribute their perspectives, ideas, maybe volunteering to take part in that extended workshop.  We have already pre-identified the issue.  And that, I think, deters perhaps a plethora of workshop proposals which are similar to that theme, overlap and duplicate and so on.

So we introduce some very instrumental management of this process right at the beginning, driven by our sense that there are -- following Dubai, there are some key topics that we really hope and look for the IGF to make contribution to and to empower stakeholders and hopefully there will be plenty of government people from -- certainly from south Asia and southeast Asia still there in the forum to be able to pick up on this, to empower and to allow them to take away a set of options, a set of "this is what might work for us."  We'll try that or maybe, you know, combine or draw from particular options.  But you can't to capture that as a result of the workshop.  And I think that process starts with the invitations out.

And I also really welcome the point that was made two or three speakers ago -- sorry, I didn't quite catch the name -- about the ease of navigation, that we don't construct a complex grid of workshops which is just frightening for, I think, everybody.  How the hell am I going to handle that?  Oh, I want to be in that maybe from a particular constituency sole representative, sole representative of a government.  Was the word used, "magnetic"?  I thought that was a good term, focal points within the program and then an enriched environment of different formats.  I think that's a very good approach.  Really endorse that.  Thank you.

>>CHAIR KUMMER: Thank you.  Who was next?  Mervi and then Baher.

>>MERVI KULTAMAA: Thank you.  I wanted to actually come back to the list of criteria, which we have, which seems quite ambitious to me. 

It is clear it is very tough to fulfill all the points of the criteria and it's really difficult for the proponents of the workshops to know what are the criteria that are the most important and against which we actually assess the workshop proposals and what are the less important ones where it's nice if the workshop proposal fulfills the criteria but it's not an absolute necessity.

So perhaps my suggestion is to modify the listing of criteria by introducing two categories.  First, those criteria which the proposals have to absolutely fulfill and among them the diversity of different points of views and perhaps another list of softer criteria. 

For example, in addition preference is given to those proposals which fulfill these criteria and among them, I would suggest to have a new criteria that preference is given to proposals from those entities which have not suggested workshops before.  Thank you.

>>CHAIR KUMMER: Thank you.  Baher?  By the way, please always introduce yourself when you speak for the benefit of the scribes.  I tend to forget to give the whole name sometimes.  So it is good that you have say who you are.  Okay. Baher Esmat.

>>BAHER ESMAT: Baher Esmat from ICANN.  I wanted to echo the views on the criteria regarding the number of workshops.  Certainly, the number is not the criteria nor is it the number of rooms.  We should not try to fill in the rooms if we have plenty of them available.  I think completeness of the proposal is key and to add to -- and also support what others have said about, you know, having clear description of the workshop and what it tries to achieve, I think it would also be useful to include a clear list of topics or questions the workshop is intended to address.

The other thing about the criteria that is important is the multistakeholder representation of the participant.  That's another key issue.  I find it a bit challenging in some cases to maintain the geographical balance, and I think if we were to encourage participants from developing regions to come and organize their own workshops, we should not expect them to be able to attract speakers from other regions.  Some workshops may only include speakers from one or two regions.  I think that should be acceptable.

We may also want to think about how to encourage or how to -- if a group wants to have a workshop with their own language, how we could possibly provide interpretation at least to English.  In this particular workshop, this would certainly encourage those communities to come and participate.

The last thing I want to say -- and it is more of a question.  I'm not sure whether some heard that the other format like roundtables and so forth, and I'm not sure whether the criteria we are discussing right now is only limited to workshops and for other formats we're going to have other criteria.  I'm just questioning this.  Thank you.

>>CHAIR KUMMER: Thank you.  Well, as far as I understand the discussion goes, there are many in the room who think also the workshops should be encouraged to come up with innovative formats and is a rather interactive roundtable than sort of standard panel discussions.  But this is something we are discussing now.

Igor, at one point, you put up your flag?  Yes, please.

>> IGOR OSTROWSKI:  Thank you very much.  Igor Ostrowski.  Just also wanted to echo the discussions earlier about the ability to cooperate.  We have had a problem, I think, in May last year when we were looking at revising different workshops.  Since we have seen a number of almost identical workshops or similar workshops, we felt that we do not have the ability or the right to intervene or to merge the workshops into one.

So perhaps the way out of that would be to introduce a separate category, the ability to cooperate with other candidates, so that we actually can then ask them to work together and limit the amount of space by exactly or almost exactly the same issues.

>>CHAIR KUMMER: Raul and then remote participation.

>>RAUL ECHEBERRIA: Thank you.  Raul Echeberria.  I think about the format of the workshops, I think that we can have two different kind of workshops.  One format that is very highly interactive, and another format that is more speaker oriented.  Sometimes there are good speakers that deserve -- it is good to hear what they have to say.  I think the organizers should be very clear in saying what kind of workshops they are proposing to have.

So when people attend the workshop, they know if there will be something like a conference with two or three speakers or some high interactive workshop like a roundtable.  So we can at the time we are evaluating the workshop, we can find the right balance between -- or trying to prioritize the interactive workshop.  But not all the workshops necessarily have to be roundtables or these kinds of things.

I was thinking that one criteria thing could be to ask for geographic, gender diversity in the speakers and panelists if we want to have interactive workshops because for achieving all the balance and the diversity in the panels, we -- it is necessary to have at least four, five, six speakers.

And so by definition, those workshops will not be very interactive because there would be plenty of speakers.  So I think it is more important to see the diversity in the engagement in the organization of the workshops.  So it is important to see the diversity in the organizers, that the workshop is supported by different kind of organizations that represent a broader range of views.

Regarding the number, my last comment was the number of workshops.  I agree with the people that say even the fact that we have enough rooms, we don't need necessarily to fill all the rooms.

I would be in favor of limiting the number of simultaneous workshops because I think the quality is more important than quantity.  I think that's also a possibility.  But we have not taken the position yet to move in that direction.  So I will favor that.  Thank you.

>>CHAIR KUMMER: Thank you.  Yes, it is clear we cannot have more workshops than available slots.  But we don't need to fill all available slots or available rooms.

Remote participation?

>> ANRIETTE ESTERHUYSEN:  I will start with a comment from Jimson Olufuye, MAG member, who actually tried to make an intervention earlier to congratulate and thank the host country.  Perhaps we can look at that later. 

One very specific question from him on that and that is about visa and facilitation of visa procedures, particularly for people coming from Africa and countries like Nigeria where it can different.

I'm now on workshops.  I have got Paul Wilson from APNIC, I've got Nick Ashton-Hart and then Veronica Cretu and Jimson as well.  I will try to give Paul the mic.  If it doesn't work, then I will read out the comment.

>>PAUL WILSON: Hello, thanks, Anriette.  It is Paul Wilson.

>>ANRIETTE ESTERHUYSEN: We can hear you.

>>PAUL WILSON: Excellent.  Nice to be there.  I'm stuck in Singapore.  I will try to follow the discussion.  It is obviously not possible to contribute too interactively.  So I've got a few comments.

I really do agree with (audio dropped out), I think there is a possibility for some sort of creative competition between formats and approaches to learn and improve as time goes on.  I agree at the same time to balance that reducing complexity and not to have a huge matrix of different styles and topics and approaches in many, many parallel sessions.

So I think that can be achieved with some quality control exercise more diligently probably with clearer criteria upfront. 

I would suggest to make the call for proposals with an earlier deadline.  I think we should be prepared to make a short list and really encourage or go to the developing good proposals which come to an earlier deadline and which can then be further developed down a longer track.  I think the longer deadline encourages people to wait to the end, and then we don't have enough time to further develop.

So I think in that first round, we would not demand full exhaustive details under every sort of field of information but we would look at good concept-type proposals which have sort of the quality of the idea and the proposal without the completeness in all the details.  Of course, all the details need to be provided for some sort of final deadline.  But I think a couple of rounds could help us to sort the poor from the better ones.

I would like to see some priority given to proposals that show some linkages with previous IGF themes for workshops and which sort of -- which propose to really develop those previous outputs, if you would like, or the previous results and follow them up in sort of specific ways because I think what we lack is a continuity or a connectiveness between events.

There is some thoughts -- a set of similar thoughts.  On another topic which I guess Raul has just raised, interested to discuss or to think about how we could accommodate some really higher profile speakers, almost like celebrity sort of key notes, sort of an individual of a particular type caliber.

And I'm really talking about sort of someone who can draw interest and credibility to the event and how we could have sessions that build a workshop or build something around an individual.

And I know that has to be reconciled with our tendency to have sort of flat sessions, but I think there are some overpopulated panels where speakers don't have much to say, kind of needs to be balanced with the idea that -- I think as Raul was trying to say, there is a possibility and it would be very good participation and I'm afraid sort of the credibility of the event.  I say that knowing that it may be not be to everyone's taste.  But I think -- I mean, I'm thinking of people like, for want of a better example, people like Tim Berners-Lee.  I'm also not trying to suggest purely technical kind of stars, but I'm really after -- thinking about the high profile of that kind of degree of recognition.

I think that's all for me.  Thanks a lot for the mic.

>>CHAIR KUMMER: Thanks a lot, Paul.

You have more?  Can we have the non-MAG members at the end?  That's what we said.

>>ANRIETTE ESTERHUYSEN: Nick, if you can wait a little bit.  I have you on mic, but I'm going to read out Veronica's input.  Unfortunately, Veronica cannot join us in audio, but she has sent her written input.

All workshop proposals should provide a description of the methodology of the workshop, whether it is a roundtable, open space, more groups, et cetera, or a mix of approaches; secondly, the name of the moderator; thirdly, key expected results of the workshop; fourthly, key issues to be addressed by the workshop and the link of the main issues with other emerging issues on the global development agenda.  It is important that workshop themes come in synergy with those emerging issues such as cloud computing, open government, ICT for engagement, et cetera.

In principle all workshops should be based on participant-centered approaches and methodology and speakers use up to 40% of the time for presentations while 60% is dedicated to interactive discussions.

Next we have some comments from another MAG member, and that is Jimson from Nigeria.  I will try to give him the audio, but it might be difficult.  Let's just see, Jimson, I'm trying to give you audio.  Just let us know if it works.  I don't think so.

Okay.  No.  I don't think that is working.  Okay.  I will come back to Jimson later.

Before we go to Nick, my own comments were -- that's Anriette, APC.  I just want to go back to the suggestion made in the CSTD working group on IGF improvements, that the call for workshop proposals be made before the first open consultation.  Now, we can't do that now but we can still make the call earlier.  And I think that's consistent with what other speakers have said.

And then I think it could be useful to ask the workshops which policy questions they are addressing.  And in the sense that the working group on IGF improvements report, a suggestion we use policy questions as a framing device for planning the event.  So it might be useful to add that as a question.

And then I want to reinforce what Baher from ICANN was saying.  I think we need to be flexible about how we use the multistakeholder and diversity format in the same way that perhaps it could be appropriate for a workshop to have speakers primarily from one region.

I think a workshop could also have speakers primarily from one sector.  For example, with the Chair from Indonesia's proposals to look at something like the Budapest Cyber Convention and having a panel that may be made up of governments that have been part of that process.  It could be very useful.  And then have people in the audience among the participants from other stakeholder groups who can engage them.

Remember, multistakeholder participation is our goal.  It has to be contentional, just form.

And then I think three-hour workshops should remain something that's an option, particularly for workshops that have a capacity-building orientation.

But I just want to make a general point before I go back to the remote participants, and that is that it feels to me as if we are discussing workshops before we've actually looked at the overall flow and logic of the event and how the different components of the event will feed into a final outcome.

And now we have Nick Ashton-Hart that's asked --

>>CHAIR KUMMER:  Can you wait, Nick?  We have many mics in the room.

>>ANRIETTE ESTERHUYSEN:  Okay.  In the room.

>>CHAIR KUMMER:  Yes.

>>ANRIETTE ESTERHUYSEN:  Okay.

>>CHAIR KUMMER:  A brief comment on why we are discussing this, because basically we have to conclude on having out a call for workshop proposals. 

So the question is how do we do that, and you make the point we cannot do it ahead of the first consultation, that's too late, but it -- your suggestion also to ask which policy question they would like to address reminds me that some years back, I think, somebody had proposed why don't we have a kind of preliminary call for workshops because once people have done their elaborate proposals, they usually are married to their proposal and not keen anymore to merge.  Whereas if you would have a kind of preliminary call, what issue would you like to be involved in a workshop -- and I think the policy question could very much frame that -- then we would get a list of names and we would be able to put them together, "Okay, you guys, now you work on the more elaborate proposal," and I think there is -- and that came across yesterday as well.  There's no one-size-fits-all format.  But I think, again, many people say we should be a little bit more open, more -- to experimentation, have more roundtables, more interactive sessions.  I think Vlad made the point with the Diplo experience do away completely with panelists but what is important is to have a good proposal and a good moderator and then be as interactive as possible.

So -- but on the other hand, there are workshops where a more classical approach with a presentation, somebody explaining an issue, makes sense.

So I think there we need to be flexible, but I do remember, I think at the very first IGF, we always said "We want interactive sessions and want as much discussion as possible," and well, up to a point, I think collectively we managed that compared to other international meetings but the stated aim was always to be as interactive as possible, and I think if we push this even a little bit further, there will be no harm.

But I would be interested in your reaction about maybe a kind of preliminary -- asking for a preliminary proposal, indication of interest on what key policy question are you interested in, and then take it from there.  And obviously that doesn't take long to react to that, so you could have a relatively short deadline and have an online process in assessing the people and then asking them to present a more elaborate proposal in time for the May or June meeting.  We don't know yet when it will be.

So this is just for discussion, and back to our list of speakers.  Ana, you have very patient, but then Jennifer, Franklin, Nurani, Qusai.  Ana?

>>ANA NEVES: Thank you, and good morning.  So my point is not exactly about the themes.  It is more about the -- the format and the substance, because -- well, I'm going to echo what some colleagues already said.  I think it's important to underscore some of these comments.

So I think that depending on the theme and on the topic that we are going to discuss, we as MAG, we should think whether it better fits in a roundtable format or in a -- in a workshop format. 

And besides that, the -- the layout of the room and the seating is very important to trigger a good discussion.

And I'm sorry about my ignorance, but what happened to the dynamic coalitions?  Because I don't know so much about that -- those, and I didn't hear anything about those. 

Thank you.

>>CHAIR KUMMER:  We have not touched on the other formats except workshops, but the dynamic conclusions, yes, we have them, and I think in the past they were given a slot for a meeting if they could prove that they had some intersessional activity.  Because the dynamic coalition should not -- the aim should not just to be have a meeting, and some actually looked as if their only reason to exist was to hold a workshop-type meeting at the annual IGF, and that is definitely not the idea behind the dynamic coalitions.

Jennifer?

>>JENNIFER WARREN: Yes.  Thank you.  I thought I'd first respond to your request for feedback on the preliminary call for proposals for workshops. 

I think that is a very good idea, because one, it would allow for exchange between the MAG and the workshop proponents early on and identify where there could be possible collaboration among proponents, because we'd get to see at least where there's some potential for overlap. 

Secondly, I wanted to endorse -- and I apologize, I don't remember whose proposal it was -- but the flexibility of the workshops.  Just as Anriette I think mentioned, we should have respect with what diversity means for topics of workshops, I think we should recognize that different topics may be more susceptible to certain formats, whether it's roundtables, more interactive, less interactive, and so I think that's another area where we should maintain some flexibility. 

The reason I originally asked for the floor was to focus on speakers for workshops.  I agree with those who have said the substance of the workshops is probably the most important thing to get us started early on, but -- and it's most likely to be able to help to maintain and secure the commitment of speakers.  There's been a lot of fluidity in speakers and participants in workshops and I think if we have nailed down earlier the actual goals and focus of the workshops, maybe we'll -- we'll be able to obtain speakers and keep them committed, but I also think it's important to have the speakers identified early enough so we can respond to one of the open consultations feedbacks, which is ensuring new faces, new participants, and not the same people.  And if we don't see who the targeted speakers are for the workshops, we're not going to be able to respond to that suggestion which we heard, I think, repeatedly.

So I -- we need for find a balance in timing, and perhaps your preliminary call for proposal idea will help kind of sequence that.  Thank you.

>>CHAIR KUMMER:  Thank you.  Yes.  Franklin, you're next.

>>FRANKLIN SILVA NETTO: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.  I'm sorry, I'm without my -- my nametag here, but anyway, thank you for the information.  I'm from Franklin Netto from Brazil, a MAG member. 

I would just like to raise a point to concur with some of the colleagues that spoke before me on the issue of criteria for the workshops.  I mean, there are some criteria that are pretty, I would say, logical, like the multistakeholder approach and the balance as -- even as a goal, and their relationship to the main topics chosen for the -- for the -- for the IGF.  But my point would be specifically on the diversity and on the quest of participation of developing countries.

We have heard some comments on the question of geographical balance and why geographical diversity in the workshops is highly desirable.  It's also evidently impossible to have this all the times in all the themes, have participants from all the regions. 

But on the other hand, I think that it's very important and absolutely possible to have in all the workshops the participation, the vision from the developing world.  And I'm not mentioning developing governments; it can be from any of the stakeholders, from the civil society, from the private sector.  And I think this is important because they cannot see any -- any issue or any theme or any workshop proposal that would deal with issues that did not have an impact on the developing world.

Then my point here, my case here, is that I think this criteria "have developing world participations" highly -- highly desirable.

I see that there was a criteria last year about this, meaning developing country support, and I read that very much as developing country participation because participation is also support for the -- for the -- for the workshop, and then I understand that this would be a very important, and more than an essential criteria for any workshop would be the opportunity for the developing world to have a voice and have an opportunity to share their views.

And more than that, Mr. Chairman, I see that we have in effect here a two-level assessment that should be made.  I mean, not only the assessment on the workshops themselves but also on a higher level after the workshop starts to appear and the proposals starts to appear, we should have on this other -- from this higher perspective also a view on trying to achieve a framework where we have -- where we have in all the opportunities possible the participation from developing countries and also workshops that dealt with the quest and the question of development.  Thank you very much.

>>CHAIR KUMMER:  Thank you for that, and I think it is a very important point and I think changing the bullet point to "developing country support," which was confusing to some last year, to "developing country participation" makes it easier to understand what is required.

I agree, I think it is an important point we don't lose out of sight the development dimension, which is very much what's at the heart of the U.N.

Nurani?

>>NURANI NIMPUNO:  Thank you.  Excuse me.  Nurani Nimpuno from Netnod.

I'd like to propose a way of working between now and -- and the meeting, and I'd also like to address the -- your idea about a preliminary workshop.

I think there's a risk of falling into this very bureaucratic way of working where we create a long list of impossible criteria to meet where -- which discourages workshop proposals, because it takes a lot of work to put together these proposals and then a lot of people spend a lot of time trying to meet these criteria, and then we spend a lot of time as the MAG evaluating these criteria.

Excuse me.

So I think we need to work in a more dynamic way.

I agree with -- with Mervi that we need to clarify, maybe rewrite this document with the criteria, clarify what are hard criteria and what are so-called desirable criteria.

I'm happy to do work there together with other MAG members, if need be.

I think we should have more of a dialogue with workshop organizers.  I actually had a similar idea about having a preliminary call for workshops, so we avoid creating this long list of criteria, but to have some initial criteria where people in their proposals, in the lightweight proposals, put forward ideas.

Like you say, if you've put -- if you've spent a lot of time organizing a workshop and putting together a proposal, you're already set in your mind-set then.

Recognize that not one-size-fits-all.  Some workshops might need to be workshops, some panels, some might need to be roundtables, some more interactive discussions.

Maybe some don't even have to be 90 minutes.  Maybe some could be 60 minutes.  Why do we need to impose those limitations on the -- that early on in the process?

So I think we should have some initial criteria, which makes it easy for people to put in their ideas; all the MAG members evaluate that -- those workshop proposals like we've done in the past, that we simply divide the list among our MAG members, and so we each get a set of workshop proposals that we need to -- to -- to communicate with; so all of the MAG members go back to those workshop proposers and ask them -- ask them questions according to these criteria that we've set.

We can report back.  We don't need a separate MAG meeting for that.  We could do that on the list. 

And based on that, I think we could do some initial pruning, mergers of workshops where appropriate, et cetera, and then we look at the next step as a second phase, instead, where we ask questions like "How do you plan to do this?  Have you confirmed these speakers?  What format do you need?  Are you going to have a panel, an interactive discussion, a roundtable, et cetera?"

So we work a bit more continuously between now and the meeting to secure good quality workshops.

I think it is -- it's unrealistic to ask for a workshop proposal from the start that meets all the criteria and that ensures good quality.  If we want good-quality workshops, we need to continue to discuss this with the workshop proposers between now and the -- until the very end of the period leading up to the meeting.  Thank you.

>>CHAIR KUMMER: Qusai.

>>QUSAI AL SHATTI: Thank you, Mr. Chair, and let me start my comments with wishing the Indonesian host all the best in organizing the eighth IGF meeting.

I would -- most of what I was trying to say has been said by Nurani, really.  We are complicating the process.  Workshop proposals, sometimes there are issues that you cannot control.  For example, when you suggest a list of speakers, sometimes comes a month before the IGF, or two, and for one reason or another they could not participate.  When you put a description and you attend the workshop, one of the speakers may take about an issue in a different manner or of different relevance.  There are certain things that we cannot control when we put forward the proposal and then we see that a workshop might be -- there was a difference between what the proposal was and what happened in the workshop.

Not all of that is really in the control of the organizer.

This is one.

The criteria that we have used previously looked -- I look at this positively.  It's increased the number of workshops, it's encouraged more participation, more workshops organization within each topic. 

So I think a light criteria that is flexible but yet linked to the themes and the activities of the IGF is really the best way to go, and I'm afraid that if we complicated the process and start with establishing rules rather than a criteria, it may discourage people from participation or discourage people from submitting workshop proposals, and this way we will lose audience.  Thank you.

>>CHAIR KUMMER:  Thank you.  Chris Disspain.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN:  Good morning.  I just wanted to agree with your suggestion about a first round of workshop proposals, a lightweight round, and also to endorse what Nurani said about how that could -- how that could work.  Thanks.

>>CHAIR KUMMER:  Thank you.  Theresa?

>>THERESA SWINEHART:  I think it goes to this point.  We do have a bit of a chicken-and-egg -- if I can use that expression -- situation because we're looking at making the call for workshops but we I think also need to be clearer on what some of the themes are and topics are that we're discussing, and I think if we were able to come out with an announcement that said, you know, "Here's one of the key overarching themes" -- during the public consultations we heard the core topics around spam or principles or, you know, we heard various topics being discussed.  Really put those out there, say "In this regard, we'd like to make a first call for things.  Creative proposals on workshops.  Fill these criteria.  Please identify how you plan to fulfill these criteria."  Do a first sifting, and then do a second call.  Instead of very -- very sort of concrete time line for this, so there's also the opportunity to ensure that we can identify a wide range of speakers who can participate, get this on their schedule, and make sure that they're able to attend.

But I think we do need to make the call in the context of the substantive themes that will be discussed and perhaps we can move toward that discussion as well.

>>CHAIR KUMMER:  Thank you.  A question.  Should we limit a call for workshop proposals to the themes we have to be discussed or should we also not also be open to other proposals that might come up to capture issues the community may be concerned about?

>>THERESA SWINEHART:  I would say leave it open but identify that there's some themes that have come up through the consultation process, as both the documents that came in prior and yesterday, but leave it open.

>>CHAIR KUMMER:  That is basically the intention that we at the end of this meeting have a summary report which would list these themes we have been discussing. 

Olga has been waiting very patiently.

>>OLGA CAVALLI:  Thank you.  Thank you, chair. 

I would like to support what Baher said about the possibility of having workshops in other languages.  We had some workshops in Spanish, but then there's no transcribing, and you would not imagine how people called me and said "Why there is no transcript for this workshop?"  So people do read transcribing.

I have a comment.  I think we have to be open about the themes.  We should not limit when we make the call, and we should not limit the number of workshops just because the number is an issue.  We should limit because of relevance and because the proposals are good or not good.  If we have the space and we have a willing host that has this venue, we should use that space.  And if it's a challenging schedule, well, this is a different event.  It's a challenging event.  I think it's good to have diversity also in workshops.

>>CHAIR KUMMER:  Thank you.  Vlad?

>>VLADIMIR RADUNOVIC: Now Judy is going to complain again that I take all her words. 

Vladimir Radunovic from DiploFoundation.

Two short remarks.

One is, based on what we discussed of different possible formats of sessions for the dear friends from Indonesia, that to have in mind possibilities for different setups of the rooms, which means from session to session maybe changing the layout of tables or chairs and so on, avoiding high-level panels with all the seats but rather just having the seats for panelists in front on the same level, enough microphones because there was -- there's always been a problem with roaming microphones and persons to assist with that and bring the microphones and so on.  So have that in mind when you're preparing for the IGF.

And the second one is a suggestion for MAG, which is reflecting on a couple of previous thoughts, is that in this process -- and, by the way, I also agree with this preliminary call and this is something we can learn from the EuroDIG, which is working quite, quite well with the preliminary call.

The other thing that also works quite well with EuroDIG, whenever there are proposals, there are certain persons which are usually on a voluntary basis just applying to assist the workshop proposer organizers to do it better.

So this is the invitation for MAG.  Maybe we can make again kind of small groups, thematic groups and volunteers from MAG that can help the applicants to decide on a form, to decide on a focus, to get connected with the other workshop proposers, and -- as Igor and the others mentioned, and also to bring people from the region where we can communicate with the Indonesians and other networks that we have in the region to bring -- involve other locals in the preparation and organization of all the sessions.  That's the point.  I mean, the circus is coming into that part of the world and we should mobilize that part of the world.  Thank you.

>>CHAIR KUMMER:  Thank you.  And I take it we are the circus, yes?

[ Laughter ]

(Speaker is off microphone.)

>>CHAIR KUMMER:  Well, why don't we get straight to Judy.

>>JUDY OKITE:  Thank you, Markus.  Just two quick remarks.  I support what Nurani says, that we need to communicate more with the organizers for the workshops.

I would just like to add if we could avoid the general remarks that we normally send to the -- to the organizers.

When we do evaluate the workshops, there's always a reason why we feel that this and this workshop needs to be merged.  I believe it would be important if we shared that particular reason as to why we feel that this and this workshop should be merged.  And secondly, if there's something that they're meant to do in their workshops, if that can be shared.

Because from time and time again, the workshop organizers have to come back to you like "I've received this e-mail but I don't understand it because it meets the multistakeholder request, there's the gender balance in it, there's the youth in it, and all that."

And then secondly, if we could -- as the MAG, we could take off that task from the secretariat, that if the particular people dealing with the thematic issues can be the one to communicate with the organizers and tell them "Okay, we evaluated this particular workshop and one, two, and three are our remarks," as opposed to the general remarks that are sent from the secretariat.  Thank you.

>>CHAIR KUMMER:  Thank you.  Sonia?

>>SANJA KELLY:  Thank you.  This is Sanja Kelly from Freedom House.  I would like to support what Nurani and a couple other colleagues have mentioned about setting some sort of minimum criteria and then desirable criteria for workshops.

One thing that was clear during the previous MAG meeting when we were selecting workshops was that we spent a lot of time going through each workshop and looking whether, for example, there is the right gender balance or whether there is appropriate regional representation, without really paying too much attention to the quality of the idea and the content of the workshop.

And I would really encourage us to avoid that this time. 

So for example, if we were to set up clear minimum criteria in our call for proposals, we could say each workshop, even to be further considered, needs to have X number of participants from developing countries, or this, you know, gender representation as the minimum.

I think that that would, at the outset, weed out some of the workshops that just should not be considered to begin with, and then from that point on we can then focus on the actual quality, and I personally support this approach where part of the call for proposals could be focused on a specific policy question.  Thank you.

>>CHAIR KUMMER:  Thank you.  Baher.

>>BAHER ESMAT:  Thank you, Markus.  Baher Esmat with ICANN.

I just want to support the proposal from Brazil emphasizing the developing countries participation in workshop, and I guess your suggestion, Markus, to tweak the language from "developing country support" to "developing country participation" is excellent.

To the question of whether to keep the call for workshops restricted to the themes or make it open, I certainly would say just keep it -- keep it open and, you know, do not suggest any themes.  Thank you.

>>CHAIR KUMMER:  Thank you.  Mark?

>>MARK CARVELL:  Yes, thank you, chair.  I wanted to pick up, in particular, on your exchange with Theresa Swinehart --

Sorry.  Mark Carvell, United Kingdom government.

-- with regard to the issuing of requests for proposals covering both themed topics and being an open process. 

I was trying to sort of convey that earlier on, that we -- I'm not at all suggesting that we cut off this avenue of connection to new stuff, new emerging issues, but we've for the these important issues that are on the table now, and I'd like to propose that the five be the following:  Spam; secondly, Internet exchange points; thirdly, IPv4 legacy and IPv6 transition; fourthly, implementing multistakeholder principles at the national and international level of Internet governance; and fifthly, enhanced cooperation.

So I put those on the table as topics we say "We want proposals now on those, but also we invite proposals for other issues to be addressed in varying formats."  You know, bots through to the -- through to the established medium of 90-minute workshops.  Thank you.

>>CHAIR KUMMER:  Thank you very much.

Yuliya?  Where is she?  Oh, over there.

>>YULIYA MORENETS: Thank you, Mr. Chair.  Just -- Yuliya Morenets from TaC.  Just briefly a number of points. 

Concerning the remote participation, which is very important, I think we should pay attention to the fact that people who will be moderator for -- remote moderator and people who will intervene as remote participants follow the information briefing session.  I don't know how to ensure that they follow already what was done, but I do think it will be very important.  I know that there is a number of information sessions organized already and the information was on the Web site.  Maybe we should increase the number of these sessions in order to be sure they know how to -- where to press a button and just from technical perspective, because I remember a number of workshops where the remote participants wanted to participate and they were unable practically, from a technical perspective, to deal with the tool.

Afterwards, concerning the microphones, from a very practical perspectives, I do think it will be useful to have in the rooms microphones on the table but also microphones with -- that we can just move around, you know, in order to have more interactive sessions.  And I remember during a number of workshops, it was very hard to find these microphones just to be able to move around and to make it a more interactive session.

Concerning the issue of the open goal, I do think we should leave this open, should there may be the emerging core ideas, innovative topics as well. 

So I think what was underlined concerning the Budapest Convention and the role in the region, it would be very interesting and the cybersecurity topic could allow to have high-level participants because if it is a hot topic practically for the region, if I take into account the (indiscernible), the cybersecurity bill that was quite controversial and the initiative going on in the Asia-Pacific continent, especially in the field of the harmonization of legislation.  So I do believe as it was suggested by Mark to add cybersecurity as one of the topics.

What was said by Vladimir Radunovic concerning the format of the workshops, I think it is really a very good idea to look at the formats of how and not focused on names because if we do have names from the beginning, it is one of the major points for assessment.  I think in this case, we assess the experts and the names and not the format or maybe the innovative idea then could appear.  So roundtables or just classical workshops for a number of subjects, I think it will be a great idea.

And it was said yesterday, maybe we should pay attention concerning the open forums in order not to have the duplication of the workshops and really to be sure that the open forums, it is the space where concrete organizations will present the initiatives and not to have a kind of workshops which will give an added value to this format of the open forums, once again.

And at the end, I would like to say that we should encourage the new topics to come here in order to be able to appear and to support the new topics.  And maybe during the assessment process, we can have a look at is it a new topic?  Because if it is a topic that came from the same organization that organized this same topic during the last three years with the same panelists, maybe we can just ask ourselves and take a point of assessment, what is the new angle or what is the added value of this concrete workshop proposal?  Thanks so much.

>>CHAIR KUMMER: Thank you.  I would like to close the list.  I think we have discussed, I think, in great detail now the workshops.  I think there is a general sense that we do want to work more closely and have more of a guiding role, shall we put it, with the workshop organizers.  There is a general feeling that quality matters, matters more than just a number of workshops.

There is not a general agreement on how we want to limit it.  Some would like to really limit it radically, but I think we all agree that we need to focus more on the quality of the proposals.  The criteria used last year I think may be a little bit too rigid.  And I notice also there seems also to be a general sense that there are two kinds of criteria.  There are those that it really should apply as a minimum threshold and then there are others that are desirable, if possible.  Among the minimum criteria, I think you said diversity of views.  We had that from the very beginning.  And I think that remains important, that we don't have capture in a single workshop, that workshops really allow for diversity of views to be expressed.

Developing country participation I think remains important, and we should insist -- we can help organizers who may not have contacts with developing countries to get speakers from developing countries.  We had in the past the resource list, list of resource persons posted on the IGF secretariat.  That can be helpful.  But it can also be more proactive in suggesting speakers to achieve the diversity.

The point Wendy made is, of course, very relevant.  Important is the overall diversity of the event.  However, this is much more difficult to achieve when you look at each individual event, that I think we all recognize this is almost impossible to achieve in a single workshop unless you have gained the time of ten people or so.

But the completeness, I think, of the proposal, I think, is a relevant criteria.  And I think there is also, I would say, an emerging consensus that we issue a call for preliminary proposals that don't need to be concrete but where we do get a feeling of what people are interested in.

In terms of substance, we will revisit that in the afternoon.  But I will give the floor to observers as well at the end of the MAG members.

But we had a lengthy list, and I mentioned the issues at the beginning of the meeting.  But we will revisit that in the afternoon.  But I think -- and also the idea to group the workshops.  I would assume that we have agreement on that kind of format, that we will then look at a group, a cluster of workshops and organize a roundtable. 

Would be nice if it can be done in the big round table we saw in the main hall to make it as interactive as possible.  That's a logistical detail we will leave to the secretariat and the host country to sort out.

This is my sort of preliminary reading of the discussion.  I think also the new faces criteria is something we have to take very seriously, not just the usual old suspects.  And I think we're all guilty of that.  We appear too often in workshops, that we should maybe think when people approach us, yes, would be nice but, actually, I know somebody else who would fit your bill equally well, if not better, and just bring a new face to the floor.

Okay.  Sorry, I have talked for too long.  Izumi and then Anriette and then (saying name) and then we go to the observers.

>> IZUMI AIZU:  While listening to some of the suggestions, I think last year we had broken into a few groups, the MAG members, to evaluate the proposals by tracks or themes or subthemes.  And while we are very busy inside the group to evaluate, last year's notion was, as many pointed out, I recall we encourage as many proposal to meet -- if they seemingly meet the criteria to accommodate, not to restrict too much.  Although my group, we did relatively more rigorous evaluation than others.  I'm not so sure.  And we didn't know how the other groups were selecting until the very end.

And we didn't have the time to see the overall balance or completion as a whole.

I'm still hesitant to say whether we should really see that overall balance after selecting each groups -- I mean, each proposal and also each thematic group or kind of thing in relation to if, for some suggestions are saying, we don't have to really apply so strictly of the criteria of the gender balance or representation of the regions but that may locally accept it for evaluating the proposal in terms quality.

But if you take back one step or two and see the balance, I think it will be a very difficult exercise.  But I think we need to at least keep in mind that viewpoint as well.  Thank you.

>>CHAIR KUMMER: Thank you.  Anriette?

>>ANRIETTE ESTERHUYSEN: Just trying to figure out why Izumi is trying to sacrifice gender balance amongst all the others that could potentially be sacrificed.  Not sure I agree.

Thank you, Markus, for giving me the floor again.  I'm not happy taking space from the observers.  I just want to make a suggestion for process for the afternoon.  At previous MAG meetings in the last two years, we broke up into smaller subsets of MAG members where we addressed a subset of questions or planned in a smaller space.

And I would really recommend that.  This room is full of people with very good ideas, and this morning we've heard a whole sequence of those ideas.  I don't actually see how we can possibly process out that and synthesize them into concrete suggestions if we don't actually change how we work.

So I would propose that we spend some time after lunch breaking up into groups where we look at the overall format and flow and shape of the event and, secondly, how we ask for proposals, what type of themes and questions we want to use to invite proposals?  And then -- and also looking at how we would do selection and criteria -- a set criteria for selection of those proposals.  There might be other issues the secretariat would like us to discuss.

I just think that we'll use our resources and our time more effectively if we do not speak in just a sequential one person after another.

>>CHAIR KUMMER: Thank you.  Yes, and the setting of the room is not very helpful either.  It is in a sort of classical U.N. setting.  A roundtable setting is more helpful for interactive discussions.

We turn to -- (saying name).  Sorry.

>> Thank you, Mr. Chairman.  (saying name), IGF Azerbaijan.  I will try to be very short.  First of all, I would like to talk to (saying name)'s comments and then I have own proposal for the next host countries regarding the preparational issues. 

I think it will be better to involve the preparation of previous host country staff in order to eliminate any kind of shortcuts since, let me say, I have experience to receive so-called (indiscernible) regarding the preparational issues.  And I'm ready to test this as calm as I could.

The second issue I would like to bring, we have noted that we have all of the prepared event summary as a report.  And in a short time, you will receive them.  Disregard, please, from your stakeholders as well. 

The last issue I would like to inform that during the last lesson learned since IGF, we gained many things.  And now we are ready to start up the new two big projects with DESA including the IGF secretariat related to Internet governance.  In this regard, all interested parties are most welcome to join this.

And the last thing I would like to add that these two projects remain funded by the government of Azerbaijan with the support of United Nations development program in Azerbaijan.  Thank you, Chairman.

>>CHAIR KUMMER: Thank you.  Start with Nick, is he still online?  He was waiting patiently.  Okay.  We give maybe the floor to Adam and you try and get him online.

Adam, please.

>> ADAM PEAKE:  It would be helpful if the MAG were to better define "Internet governance" and how it should be used and considered in workshop proposals.  There are plenty of other spaces in the WSIS follow-up for non-IG events.  And focusing on governments would be a good idea.  It seems the MAG is going to take on the unenviable task of rejecting workshops or being more stringent.  That being the case, I think we should consider conflict of interest, i.e., don't assess your own workshops.  That would be a bit unfair.

I wondered if there is any discussion in the MAG about your assessment methods and how you're consistent within scoring.  I've not seen anything so far.  I think that's going to be important because, otherwise, it is rather random. 

How many MAG members completed assessments last year?  Again, if there is going to be this new stringency in assessing workshops, then I think the MAG should take this very seriously.  I know they do, and it is hard work.  I don't mean to suggest anything negative about that.  But it does need a very significant number of MAG members completing all assessments and that is not an enviable task, but it is important.

The May meeting is also important for the assessment process.  We've seen that before.  The MAG plus other members have been able to make good progress together.  Moving the meeting to June might mean MAG only which might make your assessment tasks much harder and not involve as many observers which is going to be difficult.

A quick comment for Olga and transcription.  And this isn't that helpful, but actually transcription costs are quite low.  And I know you still have to find the money yourself but they really are quite cheap to do transcription.  So Spanish transcription, you could probably find online.  It is really quite an affordable service.  Thank you.

>>CHAIR KUMMER: Thank you.  Is Nick ready now?

>>REMOTE INTERVENTION: If this IGF could be a positive challenge to the Internet community (audio dropped out) raise the bar on the content.  Of course, I understand that decisions are self-organized.  But creating some basic evaluation criteria that make clear to people that they have to do something more than a repeat of the past to get through is a challenge that many would choose to meet.

This could also help solve the issue where there are too many sessions submitted for the available time slot and people are encouraged to simply combine multiple sessions together.  It would be nice to see everyone who wants to organize a session get a slot, but that's not realistic and simply combining sessions doesn't really upgrade the content much.  It just offers results in a session in which there are really large number of panels who speak one after another with little audience interaction.  Thank you.

>>CHAIR KUMMER: Andrea Becalli and then Robert Guerra.

>>ANDREA BECCALLI: Thank you, Mr. Chair.  Andrea Becalli from IFLA.  I will try to be brief.  A lot of the points have been covered. 

Speaking on the workshop, is there another format for new criteria?  It is important to know if that will be further organized, if proposing an innovative format was going to be a new criteria for the workshop selection.

And then, also, it is important to know in advance if there is a merging process that workshop proposers we have to engage into. 

Having prepared several workshops, I know it is a lengthy process.  It is a useful one.  It creates a lot of interesting synergies.  It takes time.  If something has to happen, it is important that the workshop proposers are aware of that in the early stage.

And then I think Theresa mentioned before, yesterday in the open consultation, we saw there was a call for moving to new themes.  And the new themes means also the workshop has to be in a way looking to the new themes.  That could be part of the selection process, so asking for new workshops to look into new themes and come with innovative thematic discussion there.

I think it was important to remind the proposal that UNESCO mentioned yesterday, that we actually report back to the IGF on the activities and actions that happen after the IGF that happen after the IGF.  Often these activities are actually discussed during the workshops.  I think it is important to promote that around the other workshop organization stakeholders that are proposing workshops so they know that from the IGF, they can go back and show us what has been done.  That's also an implementation of the multistakeholder process.

I also am wondering if a good criteria for new workshops would be how many new stakeholders and how many new faces you bring on the panel. 

That's something you mention before, Mr. Chair.  And I think it is a good approach to bring in new life, new stakeholders.

One last thing, as has been mentioned before, flying panelists from one part to the other part of the globe, it costs a lot of money and doing remote participation is a resolution.  So making it clear it would be important to look from stakeholders from the region.  Many of the stakeholders involved in the IGF have a global reach.  So if they want, they can do that.  I think that's something that can be part of the suggestion for the new workshop.  Thank you.

>>CHAIR KUMMER: Thank you, Andrea.  Robert Guerra?

>>ROBERT GUERRA: This is Robert Guerra from the Citizen Lab.  First, I would like to thank the Indonesian delegation for what is a very multistakeholder approach in putting together the IGF.  It really differs to some of the other organizations of the IGF and really shows a progression in how the host country themselves are taking it on.

In accordance to some of the comments made earlier today, I will just go through a couple of things. 

I would echo some of Adam's comments in regards that if the MAG is going to be taking on more of a task and looking at a more innovative approach at reviewing proposals such as a call for topics or a call from interests, taking a look at them and then selecting a short list and then having that go out for further proposals, definitely issues of conflict are going to be important.  But it is also going to shift to the MAG more work to do over the next few months.  And so it will be important for the MAG to recognize that.  But I think it is an important kind of innovation.

Going to some of the comments that Vlada mentioned yesterday, in submitting the preliminary proposals or statements of interest, that should be light.  Perhaps that could include tagging or a couple of other things so the MAG and others could more easily cluster the proposals and take a look at them but also take a look at issues that are similar and panels that could be merged.

An issue of concern might be something that was flagged yesterday and today as emerging issues.  Some of the emerging issues raised may not be something that the MAG knows particularly a lot about.  I would ask those maybe submitting proposals or something around emerging issues to put in an explanation as to why they think this is an emerging issues and the MAG may want to have a slightly different deadline for emerging issues or a longer window.

In terms of other innovative approaches for proposals, might I suggest that a small number of proposals be up for competition and that they openly compete.  A conference that's done that is highly successful is the South by Southwest Conference that takes place every where a variety of proposals get submitted, open to the public, and people can vote. 

And that might be a way to engage some of the other stakeholders in that.  You might want to do that for a small number to see how it works.

But an innovative approach in helping a MAG select some proposals and bring the community onboard could be particularly helpful.

One last comment in regards to new participants, I think that's a great idea, but I think new participants that have no idea how the IGF works might be a recipe for disaster, so it might be useful for them to explain why they think they can actually contribute and maybe some experience that they bring in organizing events elsewhere. 

So that would be something that would be useful and perhaps if there are others that want to encourage them, if that be there as well, too.  So I think it would be good to maybe include that.  But for the new participants, it's key but I think it's also careful that they also be good at it.  And I would like to echo an earlier comment in regards to having high-level speakers participate that's going to draw everyone to the meeting.  And the sooner some high-level topics can be mentioned, it will be easier to recruit them as well as high-level corporate officials that usually require several months' advance notice as well as heads of state.

>>CHAIR KUMMER: Thank you.  I have closed the list.  I saw two flags going up.  I presume it was in reaction to one of the statements.  Chris first and then Bill.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Simply just say we have actually done this thing with workshops before.  This is not new.  Last year we split the workshops up into the -- sorry -- the five pillars.  A subgroup of us went away and worked on looking at the workshops.  I shared the critical Internet resources subgroup.  And we did actually say no to some workshops and we did require additional work so on and so on.  It is not new and we have dealt with it before and we have managed it and we have dealt with conflict.

>>CHAIR KUMMER: Thank you for that.

Bill?

>>BILL DRAKE: I'm going to -- since people want to go eat, I'm going to resist the temptation to do my 47 points and make one.  And this is something that some of us have been crabby about for years around the IGF, but I'm going to raise it again because Adam raised it and I'm just going to echo him.

Could we not perhaps build into the list of criteria that must be met by workshop proposals that they be on global -- that they be on Internet governance?  As "Internet governance" was defined through the WSIS process and understood, I thought, in setting up the IGF, the definition of "Internet governance" was very much linked to the proposal to create the IGF we all know in the WGIG and subsequently.

There are still, every year, many, many proposals that are basically information society, ICT for development, all kinds of -- anything related to I.T. and communication, information in any way.

From the standpoint of having criteria that are clear to use as a threshold seems to me asking people to submit proposals about the nominal focus of the forum.  It shouldn't be that complicated.

So I would like to propose that.

>>CHAIR KUMMER: Okay.  Point well-taken.

And with that, we adjourn for lunch.  Let's be back here at 1:30 so that we can -- and let's start at 1:30 sharp.  Enjoy your lunch.  Talk about the various proposals and come back with new ideas.

(Lunch break.)

>>CHENGETAI MASANGO:  Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen.  Can we please take our seats and we're about to begin.  Thank you.

>>CHAIR KUMMER:  Yes.  Good afternoon.  The suggestion was made that we break into groups, but I'm not sure, actually, whether we have that much time.  We have a little bit less than three hours, and we would also like to go as far as possible with what we discussed this morning.  That is, the issue of the call for workshop proposals.  And I take it that there is a general agreement that we should maybe try a little bit differently an issue of a preliminary call for workshop proposals and work on that.

Some colleagues mentioned the example of EuroDIG, where they have found that quite successfully to shape the whole program, and that I think is also quite in line with the report on the IGF improvements, the CSTD report, except we are running a little bit late because the report suggests doing so before the first consultation, so we can only do that next year that we have that from.

The secretariat has prepared a draft summary of the meeting.  We don't need to go paragraph and line by line, which says, first paragraph, just (indiscernible). 

Can you scroll down? 

Yes, the Government of Indonesia gave a presentation.  These are the more formal...

And then yes, okay, can you scroll up a little bit?

Yes.  Okay.  That was a distribution of idea.

Then Paragraph 6 -- the formatting is not brilliant, is it, Brian? -- "The following key words were included in the proposals for the overarching themes and other main themes," and that is basically just a list of what was mentioned.  There's no hierarchy there because it was not always clear whether these were supposed to be overarching themes or just themes.

Science and technology for development was mentioned more than once.

Human rights.

Internet principles.

Enhanced cooperation.

Multistakeholder principles and practices.

Internet as an engine for growth and advancements.

Enhancing multistakeholder collaboration for growth, development, and human rights.

Spam. 

Cybersecurity. 

Internet cooperation.

Building bridges.

Enhanced -- or enhanced cooperation is twice. 

Farzi, can you maybe take out the second one?

Transforming Internet to equinet. 

How to achieve an equal multistakeholder model. 

Youth. 

Internet for kids. 

Child safety, et cetera. 

Cooperation for growth, development, and human rights. 

Best practices for sustainable knowledge societies. 

Internet exchange points. 

Cybercrime. 

Public access.

This is what we heard as -- in yesterday's discussion as themes that were mentioned more than once.

Today we didn't have a discussion on substance, so maybe we want to spend some time on this.

Also the question, do we want to bring more of a hierarchy into this list.

As I said, this was deliberately written down in a flat hierarchy without having any distinction between potential overarching themes.

And also, we don't mention -- we did not, I think, conclude the discussion with what to do with the themes we have developed over the past years.  Some people want to keep them.  Some people want to get rid of them altogether, as it was not -- I think the point was made they were not always helpful as categories for grouping the workshops.

Obviously this will need further discussion, and I think we would also get feedback on that to lead us to the May meeting.

And then --

Shall we put that aside?

And then the next paragraph -- no.  Kind of go scroll -- scroll up a bit so we can read the whole Paragraph 7.

Yes.  The workshop selection criteria.  These were what we thought were the generally agreed criteria:  That diversity of use was seen as a -- I think maybe the most important criterion; and then the completeness and quality of the proposals.

The developing country participation, we have reworded it a little bit:  "Inclusion of developing country voice or voices," as the views could also in theory be presented -- an American or a European can present a view held by developing countries, but here we want to be clear that it is actually the voice coming from a developing country.

New faces, in quotes, as we discussed at length.  That was also reflected in many of the proposals, that there's a general desire to see more new faces. 

And also that we would like to see in the proposals a clear understanding of what kind of format the workshop would have and what the expected outcomes would be. 

And again, we said these criteria would be explained in a flexible manner. 

And also, the point that was made that first-time organizers should be organized and prioritized, and the secretariat will help newcomers with Webinars.

Then the next paragraph refers to the last year's criteria and there was, I think, yeah, a generally held view that they should be maybe less stringent and also the point that they should be applied at the macro level over the entire duration of the IGF, rather than at each individual workshop.  That is, geographical diversity, youth participation, and so on and so on.

The next paragraph refers to the -- I think again the generally held view that the MAG wants to work closer with the organizer and also the -- exert some influence on the quality of the preparation and the quality control of the workshop itself.

Now, 10 is what we sort of understood the general thread of the discussion on the preliminary call for workshop proposals.  They should include a concise description of what the thematic area of interest, and they could either focus on the priority themes as they were identified and contained in the Paragraph -- I think it was 6 -- above or could also introduce other themes, and then we have to think forward, and this may also need some further discussion.

We thought it doesn't need that much time to write a para or two on the workshop you would be interested in, but it still may require some discussion with colleagues, so we thought we'd give a deadline three weeks from now, and also bearing in mind it will not be immediately up on the IGF Web site.

And also add that we encourage the national and regional IGFs to submit their themes for consideration.

And then the MAG will have a role.  We'll have to assess the proposals and collate them and ask the proponents to further develop and complete their workshop proposals.

Now, the question is how much time can we give them, and also bearing in mind that they should be in time for the May meeting, and the secretariat and the MAG would also need some time, then, to assess what is coming in.

So I wondered, Chengetai, would maybe end of April be a realistic deadline to give -- that we have 30th of April to submit the complete proposals which, I think, you will need some time to -- to process it.

>>CHENGETAI MASANGO:  Yeah.

>>CHAIR KUMMER:  I think at least a week, if not two, yeah?  And then the MAG will also need some time to apply the -- fill in the scorecards, but that should be possible in time for the following meeting of the MAG.

And that, I think, is about it.

We have not filled in the following deadline, but maybe, Brian, you can work on an April 30 deadline for the filing workshop proposals and, yes, I open the floor for comments. 

I see Bill Drake.  Bill.

>>BILL DRAKE:  Could -- Chengetai, could we scroll back up to the criteria?  Because I understood the conversation a little differently, so I must have misunderstood something.

The criteria -- "Some of the criteria should be." 

I don't think anybody was suggesting, unless I misunderstood, that gender diversity or geographical diversity would not be included in the sort of mandatory bit, but they're not listed there.

>>CHAIR KUMMER:  My understanding was that the point was made that you cannot always include all of them, and I think -- well, Wendy made a very eloquent argument that, you know, the geographic diversity should be reflected in the overall structure of the meeting, and -- but I mean we can add that. 

The idea was you -- if you had each workshop needs to have gender diversity, youth participation, geographical diversity, it gets extremely difficult.

>>BILL DRAKE:  I agree with that general premise but there was some specific things that I think we do want --

>>CHAIR KUMMER:  Okay, okay.

>>BILL DRAKE: -- and I would have thought that gender and geographical diversity should be retained as sort of requirements.

Certainly it's something that people should be strongly encouraged to do.

Now, I also suggested that we could perhaps add relevance to Internet governance, and that is not listed in here.

>>CHAIR KUMMER:  Okay.

>>BILL DRAKE:  Internet governance.

>>CHAIR KUMMER:  We can also add. 

Wendy, Judy, and Mervi and -- yeah.

>>WENDY SELZER: Thank you, chair.  And thank you for picking up on the point.  I think we might, in between, include them in these diversity criteria as things we will look for but not tell people that it's strict criteria that they must meet every one of them. 

So just as an applicant can come into a position with very strong marks in some areas and compensating for less good marks in other areas, we tell people "All of these things will add to your score," and then we as program committee look over the entirety of the submissions and choose ones that meet gender and geographic and regional diversity, along these other criteria.

>>CHAIR KUMMER:  Judy, then Vlad.

>>JUDY OKITE:  Thank you, Markus.  I second the proposal for 30th of April.  The deadline.

>>CHAIR KUMMER:  Thank you.  Franklin, then Raul, then Tero.

>>FRANKLIN SILVA NETTO: Thank you, Markus.  I just want to seek a clarification, because I was the one who made the point on geographic participation in the morning.  What I meant is that I thought it was highly desirable, and so I would like -- I would not like to downsize the importance of geographic diversity in the various workshops, although we know that it's probably impossible to have all the regions represented in all the workshops.

And on the other hand, also just to confirm my view that on the other hand, developing countries' participations from whatever stakeholders is possible in every -- in every workshop, unless one of the organizers of the workshop considers that the thing has nothing to do with any developing country, which I don't think would be possible because all the themes impact developing countries. 

Thank you very much.

>>CHAIR KUMMER:  And my apology, Vlad.  I glossed over you.  Please.

>>VLADIMIR RADUNOVIC:  Thank you.  No problem. 

I guess in the first round of the call, it is enough to encourage people to follow the criteria, not to -- not to be strict on that, on diversity and so on, because the only thing they can show it if we agree that we are not -- that they are not going to put up their names, and I hope not, then the only way to show the diversity in the criteria is basically explaining various aspects of diversity -- gender, multistakeholderism and so on, geographical diversity -- coverage to the topics. 

So it will be more narrative and it's important to show that they think about covering these issues, not, rather, who is going to do that.

So in the first instance, I think it should be just guidelines and probably people do not have to come up with the format.  They can suggest the level of interactivity and maybe the need if they think that there should be panelists or not. 

But then in the meantime, after they submit the first proposal, the MAG groups can help them facilitate or decide together, if they want, on the format, which one would be the most convenient, bring them in contact with regional groups, maybe help them link with IG more and so on, help them link among each other different proposals and so on, and in the last stage only, which is before the May meeting or something like that, would basically come up with a more or less solid proposal.

And I'm reflecting briefly on what -- what others mentioned in the previous session.  It's quite important.  I don't think that the MAG should decide on what's good or what's bad proposal.  I think as long as we can --

There is a procedure that should be completed, which is like what is the level of development of the proposal up until a certain date.  You need to have the format, you need to have the main questions answered, the expectations, whatever we agree on, and that's what MAG can say.  "This application has not fulfilled the format, this has, the deadline has passed itself."  But I don't think we should decide whether a certain work should go or not, especially if we do enough space.  We should encourage merging but we can't decide.

>>CHAIR KUMMER:  Thank you.  Raul?

>>RAUL ECHEBERRIA:  More or less the same, that we can put that as a principle diversity -- geographic, gender, et cetera -- is desirable, but it should be clear that what does it -- what it means, because as you say and others said, if we have a workshop with one moderator and very interactive, so the -- it will be impossible to have diversity in the speakers and it will be impossible for the organizers to ensure that there will be diversity in the participants because the participation is open.

>>CHAIR KUMMER:  Okay.  So we will re-tweak that. 

Zahid and --

>>ZAHID JAMIL:  I came from a developing country, as I keep repeating, and, you know, when we first started the MAG and et cetera, it was at IGF as you mentioned also.

We were supposed to sort of keep our -- you know, keep the gloves on.  There was another space, as it's called in Britain, where you talk about the other house.  There's another space where issues related to Internet -- we were trying -- that they shouldn't be discussed, they should be discussed here at the IGF.

Now, we saw in the last year certain -- that that plan, that strategy, didn't necessarily work.  That other place did discuss Internet-related issues.  That other place did try to do some things that actually came to a decision which is going to impact all of us in developing countries.

Now, I come to the Internet Governance Forum and I hear exactly the same thing, the same rehash of most of the same topics, and I hear that the most important thing that we want to deal with today is spam.

I'm a little surprised, because where I come from -- and many people who come from my sort of countries -- are dealing with what we describe as terrorism of ICT, oppression of those who use ICT, the democratization of ICT space.

I'll give you some examples of that.  And I completely appreciate we need to be careful, and you made this point absolutely clear, chair, this morning that we have a review coming up in a couple of years.

But, you know, we also have to be relevant and of interest to people who want to come here, because they will be interested in how this impacts them back home. 

So in my country, YouTube is blocked.  Now, I know we've had a blocking workshop, but the general idea of how you have Internet repression and denial of information to users of the Internet doesn't seem to function as a -- or be there as a main theme.  It's never been discussed.

And if I go to Dubai, I can't use Skype.  If I'm in Pakistan and many other countries in that region, I'm actually not -- not only am I not allowed to use Skype, it's illegal.

I spent the last one month getting at least six people out of jail because they were using voice over IP.  And that was because of these sort of regulations around the use of the Internet VoIP.  But that is not a discussion that takes place here at the IGF.

There is a process where VPNs, both by regional conventions that have been proposed as well as certain treaties that already happened and then local laws, are going to make it illegal for us to use encryption without government approval. 

How am I going to use a VPN?

So it's all great to have TOR and other things, but I'm a criminal even using them, having them on my laptop.

There's another thing that recently happened.  Telecom operators -- and I'm sorry, I'm going into the sort of forbidden space but ICTs is what we talk about constantly, so let's talk about telecom, where on the one side people are concerned about spam and accounting and those sort of things.  Well, let's talk about the issues of the telecom a little bit. 

Now, in my country, one telecom operator, (saying name), has walked in and said "We want no other company in the entire country to actually terminate international calls.

You won't have to have overheads, you don't have to have staff.  What we will do is take all your operations, put them under one roof, and we will do everything for you so everything goes through us.  All we will do is send you a bank transfer every month.  Are you happy?" 

They said "Of course."

The government approved it. 

And this is not having an impact on an eight times increase in traffic.  So my lap- -- my phone when I call home costs eight times more now than it did three months ago.

That is not just going to impact telecom, it's also going to impact the Internet space.

But all of these relevant issues, which actually -- for which people -- I can tell you those six guys who are in jail, they will come to the IGF if they hear this issue being discussed here. 

The Syrian blogger, when he hears about these sort of issues about oppression, et cetera, will come to the IGF

But for spam?  I'm sorry.  That's a red herring that certain people wanted us to go after. 

So I would suggest that we -- keeping in mind appropriateness and all these other things, fantastic, we need to be careful -- I think it's time that we did not be -- we are not so important about upsetting people.  I think it's time that we started focusing on what actually matters to users in developing countries and others. 

Otherwise -- you know, my friend here, Izumi said, "Well, how many people came from Asia?"  Well, why would anybody come to a spam meeting?  That's the problem, for my company.  They don't care about spam.  Yeah, you want to talk about how it's -- you want to discuss the criminalization of VoIP?  Absolutely.  Why can't I use Skype?  Absolutely.

So I would say, you know, things like Internet repression, information denial, the government being a security threat to its own people, cross-border anticompetitive behavior, and de-liberalization of the ICT space, which is what's happening now in many companies, the complete reversal of the 1990s, these are the sort of things which may be relevant.  Just food for thought and I hope that helps.  Thank you.

>>CHAIR KUMMER:  Thank you.  Tero.

[ Applause ]

>>TERO MUSTALA: Okay.  Tero Mustala from Nokia Finland.  Just coming back to the issue of the criteria we discussed a while ago, I just would not like to start the discussion which ends that we put back all the -- all the old criteria.  So let's keep it more simple and I think we should concentrate on the essentials and I think somebody already said that it might be good, and I think it would be good, to have a guidance for the applicants describing more broadly what we are actually after in a way -- not in a decisive form, but in a written form what are the general principles in these workshops and how they are created and so on, but not too many mandatory criteria.

And then finally, kind of the issue -- thing about we have been talking about the workshops.  Should we actually change the term so to be more allowing other types of sessions, not just directing toward the -- let's say the classical workshop style.

>>CHAIR KUMMER:  Yes.  Thank you. 

Well, I think the discussion showed that everybody's in favor of experimenting with different formats in any case.  By bringing in new words we might actually maybe confused people.  Yes, please, Tero.

>>TERO MUSTALA: Just "session."  Not describing anymore whether it's roundtable, workshop, panel, whatever.

>>CHAIR KUMMER:  "Session," yeah.  Why not. 

Mervi?

>>MERVI KULTAMAA:  Yes.  I also wanted to come back to the question of criteria for the selection of workshops, and on the need of the geographical diversity.

I feel that the diversity of use is much more important than the fact that panelists come from different regions of the world.  I mean, many of us come from different regions, anyway.  We live in a different country than where we come from, and so on.

So I don't think that it should be an absolute criteria for -- for selection.

And on the gender aspect, perhaps that would need some clarification as well.

The way that I feel the gender issue is that a given theme should include a gender -- some gender consideration instead of having panelists as men or women.  I think that's much more important.

But we could have a lengthy discussion on the criteria, and perhaps it would be more useful to establish a small open-ended working group that would work for, I don't know, one week or so to sort of polish the criteria list.

And finally, I'm grateful that my suggestion for a theme of the overall IGF was picked up to the list.  Just a small correction.  It was "enhancing cooperation" and not "collaboration," because I wanted to make a direct link to the working group on enhanced cooperation.  Thank you.

>>CHAIR KUMMER:  Thank you for the correction, and Brian has picked it up.

And your suggestion as a way forward may actually -- it's not urgent that we have the final list of criteria now, if we issue a preliminary call for workshops, so that can be developed in parallel. 

And I also like the idea of having -- working on guidelines for workshop organizers.

So maybe the report could reflect that, that the MAG as a working group will develop guidelines for workshop organizers and develop selection criteria, and we could mention the ones we have as "preliminary selection criteria based on past practices are the following," but to make it clear that it will be further developed.

We have UNESCO right at the back.  You asked for the floor?  Yes.

>>UNESCO:  Thank you. 

I am Rachel Pollock from UNESCO.  I work in the Division for Freedom of Expression and Media Development. 

I would like to thank Mr. Jamil for his comments about Internet freedom and the safety of journalists.

UNESCO strongly supports the multistakeholder model of the IGF and looks forward to continued engagement this year.  Freedom of expression, access to information and knowledge, education for all, and cultural diversity are the pillars of knowledge societies, and they emerged as key issues at this week's WSIS+10 review event.

We would like to suggest that this year's IGF include freedom of expression and media development as a strong component of the main theme.  Yesterday we heard about the importance of human rights and principles from several speakers.

Freedom of expression is central among these rights.  It is necessary for building strong democracies, contributing to good governance, promoting civic participation and the rule of law, and encouraging human development and security.

Questions of freedom of expression, freedom of information, digital safety, new and social media development have crucial relevance to Internet governance.

The principle of freedom of expression must apply both offline and online.  It must be defended not only by governments but also by civil society and the private sector.

Internet intermediaries play an increasing role as gatekeepers of content, and we must develop guidelines and principles for their defense of freedom of expression.

The IGF is a major forum for enhanced multistakeholder cooperation and defense of freedom of expression and we hope that this fundamental right will be given prominent attention.  Thank you.

>>CHAIR KUMMER:  Thank you.  Constance?

>>CONSTANCE BOMMELAER:  Thank you, chair.

Before we close the discussion on the criteria for the workshops and before we launch a call for workshop proposals, I would suggest that perhaps we talk about possible outcomes of the workshops.

There are several models possible, but I think that what UNESCO organized this week's -- this week in terms of having findings, we don't need necessarily recommendations but multistakeholder findings feeding a one- or two-pager that would be some sort of final statement of the IGF, that could probably help raise the profile overall of the IGF and also help making it even more useful.  Thank you.

>>CHAIR KUMMER:  Thank you.  This is something that many people clearly reflected on or commented on, can we learn from this experience.

Yes, Bill, you are on my list.  But there are others ahead of you.  You are in the queue.  Jeff and then (saying name).

>>JEFF BRUEGGEMAN: Markus, I just wanted to support your idea of issuing clear guidelines for the workshop organizers.  I thought what we talked about this morning really resonated with me, that maybe there is two tracks of guidelines.  One is for the hot topics where we can lay the expectation that the process will be much more engagement by the MAG to help shape the content so there is a track of substance where there is going to be perhaps merging and other criteria.  We want to -- your idea of getting something out earlier where we can connect people who may have similar interests as soon as possible, to start that process going.

And then for other workshops, leave the process open to any ideas to set guidelines for criteria that we would be looking for (audio interference-please mute) not necessarily as mandates but that would help and encourage.  I think the hot topics as we've talked about leading to some kind of roundtable that could produce some written outcome.  Instead of having a hundred short reports from workshops that may not capture the issues, we would at least have a more focused effort on the outcomes to pick up (audio interference) on what Constance said. 

Let's realistically try to manage a smaller subset while leaving room for experimentation and innovation in the workshops elsewhere.

And then on the main theme, I've just -- we've really been reflected on Mervi's excellent suggestion yesterday.  Maybe we could take that another step to multistakeholder solutions.  So something like "building multistakeholder solutions for Internet development" so that we're not just looking at cooperating or discussing the issues.  We're actually here to start talking about what solutions are and get everyone thinking in that kind of a mind-set.  Thanks.

>>CHAIR KUMMER: Thank you.  Cecil also wanted to speak.

>> CECIL MCCAIN:  Thank you very much, Markus.  Cecil McCain Jamaica.  I support the idea of having the general guidelines developed for the (beep) prepared workshops.  In that context, of course, the difficult work on the face is what if all the applicants for workshops, so to speak, need the criteria?  How do we then do selection?  It is going to be a very difficult task because there are various groups here who will attempt to justify this information is more important.

May I suggest, however, that we may want to look at a mix of methodologies in order to do the selection.  One, we group the workshops into various themes, subthemes.  And given the availability of rooms, we draw straws.  I think it is one more of the objectively to select anything if you just simply draw straws.  It takes away from the biases that we all share and we all have for the various topics that we have.

On the issue regarding -- Jamil raised, I should have raised it yesterday, I think as a general theme, we ought to consider addressing the issue of security versus personal rights and freedoms.  And this is in the context whereby, you know, governments themselves and civil society may have different objectives and different concepts of what needs to be done in that Internet space.

At the end of the day, how do we balance these various needs by various stakeholders, I believe need to be addressed.  And as we look at maybe the thematic areas, we may want to suggest that we consider this as one of the main themes or thematic areas that we address for the common IGF.

>>CHAIR KUMMER: I think it was mentioned yesterday, security in relation to human rights.  Thank you very much.  It is also what you suggest.

Yes, Bill in the back of the room, please.  Bill Smith.

>>BILL SMITH:  Thank you, Markus.  Bill Smith, PayPal.  I wanted to quickly intervene and support Zahid's plea for themes of relevance.  Freedom of expression is clearly something that -- UNESCO said the same thing.

We've heard things around Council of Europe, Budapest Convention.  As an example, I would offer then something like legal framework and crime perhaps as a main theme.  If this event had, say, four to six main themes and attempted to attract workshops in those areas, that would be a good thing and then leave one or two tracks to be wide open on anything. 

You would get a -- sort of a focused event where you might be able to attract some really interesting topics and discussion and high-level speakers and also have the flexibility to be very inclusive and diverse in the workshops that are presented themselves.

But I do want to echo again Zahid's comment that it's time that we begin addressing some of the issues that have been sacred ground.

>>CHAIR KUMMER: Thank you.  On this, I sense Zahid made a clear point, spam is not relevant.  But there were many statements that said we need to address this issue.  It was an issue in Dubai.

Bill, yes?

>>BILL SMITH: Absolutely.  I'm with Zahid.  I don't believe it is issue.  I heard it is an issue.  I'm willing to spend days talking about spam with others I know and show real ways to have an impact on it.

I think spam would fit into potentially a major theme of legal frameworks and crime, for example.  You could talk about spam in practical ways of dealing with it in such a track.  I don't think we need a track on spam.  At least I hope not.  That would be a very boring track, in my mind.

>>CHAIR KUMMER: Who was first?  I think it was Theresa.  Sorry, it was Chris.  You have waiting patiently.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: I haven't been patient, Markus, but I have been waiting.

I want to support Zahid's suggestion and pick up on what Bill has just said.  I think there is a tendency -- tendency for us to shy away from anything that might be politically challenging, and I think we -- I get a sense in this room that we might just about be ready to take this on. 

I think freedom of expression as a main session title would work.  If you want to put it under one of the five or six -- I've lost count of the number of pillars we have.  If you want to put it under one of the pillars, it could go under "access" I would think quite easily for various reasons.

I don't think -- we can talk about spam as well.  The two things are not mutually exclusive.  I think his point was more this matters as much to me if not more to me than spam.

We can and should do both.  And let's not lose (audio feedback) -- and let's not lose the passion of what he said.  Let's remember that.  That tells us why it is important that we talk about it. 

>>CHAIR KUMMER: Mark Carvell.

>> MARK CARVELL:  A lot of this discussion is going the way I was thinking about it, so I appreciate it very much. 

The thing about spam was, as you underlined several times Markus, it did crop up as an issue.  It became a highly contentious issue in Dubai.  We have the ability to knock this on the head, if you'd like. I think we have to do it, and the IGF is the right place to do it.  (Multiple conversations in audio).

I'm very much open to including digital safety of analysts, media activists, bloggers, and so on.  I think that is a very important critical issue now.  It was a very good workshop on it here at UNESCO this week.  The Council of Europe are addressing this with an informal group, looking at practice with a view to defining ways of implementing the U.N. action plan.  So that's a very -- I do support that inclusion of that issue.

I really want to get a sense now from this meeting that we are gravitating towards identifying issues where the IGF can act, bring stakeholders together, invite the right people to take part in the sessions as well as -- to attend the sessions, I mean, as well as the key experts and that we construct a program that's really going to have impact on these critical issues.

I'm not sure we're quite there yet.  I'm really encouraged by the recent exchanges on this.  Thanks.

>>CHAIR KUMMER: Thank you very much.  Theresa and then Ayesha.

>>THERESA SWINEHART: I will speak at the risk of repeating something here.  I'm just cognizant of the light of time and also ensuring that our discussions reflect that we're being very responsive to what we've heard in the input and the consultations yesterday and the dialogue today.  And so I'm wondering how we might best move forward to maybe start identifying some overarching themes that address these.

I would agree while spam is in some places not important, it certainly was the crux of what was behind some key issues that were important.  Some of it, though, was also because of -- how does one configure a network, how does one do this or that.  So I think there is a key element in the spam dialogue that does need to be addressed, and it is obviously critically important to a lot of participants.

But the points that Zahid and the points that others have made are equally important.  So let's find a way to make these things overarching and make this an event that people feel they must come to because it is the place to discuss some core issues that have been on their radar for quite some time. 

So if there is any way we can move to identifying how we can get to these overarching areas to move the document out for people's proposals.  Thanks.

>>CHAIR KUMMER: Thank you.  Ayesha.

>>AYESHA HASSAN: Thank you.  I would like to support Chris and Mark Carvell's comments, in particular, around what Zahid has proposed as well as Theresa's input.  And just to put in an idea of perhaps one way to address some of these issues like spam would be to have a track that is focused on practical information and exchange on ways to address or solve problems and another track of discussion that's more on the governance issues and challenges.  That might help to define what we're really going to be talking about there.

And that's it.  Thank you.

>>CHAIR KUMMER: Thank you.  Before lunch, the suggestion was made to break up into groups.  But I'm not sure -- I mean, we could do that.  I feel the discussion on the substantive priorities is something everybody wants to be part of is my feeling.

Maybe we could move further in smaller groups, but then we would have to correlate them anyway or consult them.  So my feeling is it might be better if we continue the discussion in a plenary mode and see how far we can go this afternoon.

But that would echo the many voices who said they were encouraged by the way we are moving.  I think it is a very constructive discussion.  And while we don't necessarily need to come to closure on everything today, I think we have made a big step forward.

Raul, please?

>>RAUL ECHEBERRIA: So coming back to some of the things that have been said in the last few minutes, I think really that there is -- I guess there is a consensus of having a permanent place for freedom of expression in the program.  So I think that's a main session of freedom of expression would be really very good.  And it is really an evolution of IGF because this is a topic that has been increasing in the attention that we are giving it.

So I think that's taking -- trying to think about some of the things that Zahid said probably we should not just say "freedom of expression" but, for example, create some opportunities on freedom of expression, give it a bit more content to the expression, to have a session that could permit us to analyze those things that are currently happening in the world that are really challenging the exercise of the human rights.  Thank you.

>>CHAIR KUMMER: Thank you.  I wondered, can we actually have the list of substantive items up on the screen again?  We can only have one screen, yeah?  I think it might be more conducive to our discussion if we have the list up.  No?  Or send it out?  Okay.  It will be put up.  Question, first question, human rights were mentioned yesterday in a consultation.  Now we seem to focus on freedom of expression, which is an important human right, Article 19.  But there is freedom of assembly, the right of assembly is also an important human right.  We're quite often quoted in connection with the Internet.

So I basically look back to the resident expert on these issues; that is, the representative of UNESCO.  You voted for freedom of expression, whereas yesterday we heard more mentions to the more overarching theme of human rights which, of course, also includes privacy as an important issue, right to assembly, freedom of expression.

I don't know whether you would like to comment?  Sorry for putting you on the spot.  You are our expert.

>>UNESCO: Well, I'm not sure that I am really the expert in this room.  I'm probably the youngest, newest face.  But I would just comment that I think from UNESCO's perspective, we're interested in freedom of expression as part of our constitution and I think the basis of our view of the development of knowledge societies but also we are aware of other freedoms and other rights. 

At the last IGF, we had a workshop on the new publication "Global Survey on internet Privacy and Freedom of Expression" and the ways that those two rights interact with each other and sometimes conflict.

And so I think that other rights could be explored within the framework of freedom of expression, not limiting to it but exploring how they interact with each other.

We would just like to make sure that freedom of expression in media development are particularly given attention without dismissing, of course, very important rights.  Thank you.

>>CHAIR KUMMER: Thank you.  And the concrete proposal was made to have a main session on freedom of expression and maybe with the addition of threats and opportunities.

Raul and then Anriette, please.

>>RAUL ECHEBERRIA: Yes, about the overarching theme, I said yesterday that really the exchange in the point yesterday was very fruitful.  And you collected all the good ideas that came -- that were proposed in the discussion.

And I liked very much one idea that was presented yesterday that combined human rights development and enhanced the cooperation in the same sentence.  I think those are really the most important.  I think we have been talking about.  Development on human rights, those are things that have been present every year in the IGF.  Enhanced cooperation has the importance of these -- to be the topic that seems to be most sexy this year.  So I think we could combine those -- if we could combine those concepts in a single sentence, I think that would be great.

But I think other people could have good ideas about how to do it.

>>CHAIR KUMMER: Thank you.  And, Brian, can you correct the bullet point "enhancing multistakeholder cooperation, not collaboration."  Cooperation as in enhanced cooperation.  That was the point, I think, Mervi made.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Markus, can I ask a question?  Just a question for you.  I'm a little confused.  Are we now moving away from discussing whether we can put freedom of expression on or are we playing with the words or what are we actually doing?

>>CHAIR KUMMER: We're looking at this list and freedom of expression is -- it should not be in brackets.  I think it should be more human rights/freedom of expression.  I said, these are written down randomly and hopefully they were in the process of structuring this a little bit more in a reasoned way.

Anriette.

>>ANRIETTE ESTERHUYSEN: Thank you, Markus.  I want to support the words of Raul.  I'm sorry I came late so I clearly missed some inspiring input.

To focus on freedom of expression, there are definitely other human rights.  And in APC's assessment of Baku, we actually felt that there was quite a lot of emphasis on certain -- on civil and political rights, particularly on freedom of expression. 

But that does not mean that that's not very significant.  And I think if we can look at IGF 2013 having a very in-depth focus on freedom of expression and approaching it from a diversity of issues, both from the rights and the people that are entitled to those rights from that perspective as well as from the perspective of the Internet, of how the challenges could interact with or provide threats or opportunities.  And I think maybe that's where security becomes linked to freedom of expression, privacy, anonymity, and so on.

So I would support the idea that we have an in-depth focus on freedom of expression.  But I think it should come with a commitment that the IGF explores other facets of human rights every year, that it's not just that we address freedom of expression and that's it.  Because I think if we really are to explore the in-depth implications of the human rights-oriented Internet, we have to look at other rights as was mentioned, freedom of assembly.  And that's significant on the Internet.  We have to look at cultural and social and economical rights, rights around language and identity and expression -- knowledge as well, indigenous knowledge as well.

I would like to see a commitment from the MAG to focus on freedom of expression, that's good, but that we continue this every year which, I think, means that we look at human rights as a cross-cut which I think we actually did try to do last year.

>>CHAIR KUMMER: There are quite a number of speakers on the list.  Nurani, I think was --

>>NURANI NIMPUNO: I took down my flag after Anriette's intervention.  I was trying to find some good wording and I wasn't sure about the wording I put together.  But let me just say, I think human rights, I'm really in support of having human rights in the main theme of the IGF.  I think certainly the last two IGFs have shown that this is an issue that we need to put at the center of discussions at the IGF.  And maybe freedom of expression could be in one of the main sessions of the IGF.  Thank you.

>>CHAIR KUMMER: Thank you.  Yeah, just listening, I think it makes very much sense.  It could be communicated, human rights is one of the priority areas and this season we intend to focus on one of them, that is freedom of expression as contained in Article 19, implying that next year there will be right to assembly or another one, another focus, or privacy.

Yes, Constance.

>> CONSTANCE BOMMELAER:  Thank you, Chair.  Still trying to, as Nurani, to find the right wording.  But I would like to tweak my initial proposal into multistakeholder cooperation for growth, development in human rights, best practices for sustainable knowledge society.  So just a proposal to consider.  Thank you.

>>CHAIR KUMMER: Thank you.  Is it on the list?  If it is not, can you give it to Brian in writing to help?

European Commission, please.

>>EUROPEAN COMMISSION: Thank you, Chair.  I just had a couple of comments, maybe suggestions to the MAG, for your work.  The first is that on the selection of workshop, there is clearly a lot of different ideas around the room.  But we would really urge you to pick a method for yourself, whatever is best, but then make choices. 

The IGF in Baku had a certain amount of repetitions, overlap of topics.  It is obvious when you are attending these events.  It is really your responsibility to make sure that whatever you choose has some kind of coherence to it.

The other -- on the discussion that I'm going now, on the freedom of expression, again, whatever you may choose, have it under a greater human rights theme, but the Commission obviously very much supports the theme of freedom of expression.  Vice President Cruze engaged herself on a personal basis at the last IGF.

I think from that side, if you do choose one way or another to focus on this, we would be happy to support you one way or the other.

>>CHAIR KUMMER: Thank you very much.  Council of Europe?

>>COUNCIL OF EUROPE: Thank you, Mr. Chair.  I can concur with much of what has been said.  Thanks to Zahid for his comments and Anriette and, of course, the Commission.  Human rights are the Council of Europe's business.  It is day-to-day basis.  We very much support all of that too. 

I would pick up on your point, Mr. Chair, of the assembly association.  I think that's where expression is moving.  When you think about tracking and surveillance, you think about data mining, thinking about predicting trends which certain companies are doing now, when you think about prediction behaviors, that's also predicting people's movements and what they want to do next and that also means assembly and association.  So it is something which I think is very much linked with freedom of expression and more and more so the case.

So I think for the Council of Europe's work which is happening now, it is freedom of expression and freedom of assembly and association together.  I like freedom of expression and right to privacy, for example.  So these are things becoming much more banned up together.

One final point regarding the events and moving towards -- coming of outcomes and outcomes of workshops, et cetera, I recently moderated quite a big event session, and it was on freedom of expression and it was -- wasn't very well-defined.  And I was a moderator having several panelists in a big room trying to come out in very clear -- I was trying to define the end goal of the session.  It was very difficult because when you start talking about things as generally as freedom of expression or hate speech or insult or defamation, et cetera, it spreads very quickly.  And then people take different angles, which is very good, but it is very hard to come back and to have a clear goal towards the end.  It is very hard to moderate unless you have a very clear purpose at the very beginning.  So some clarity about what you put in, what you want to get out of those sessions is very important.  Thank you.

>>CHAIR KUMMER: Thank you very much.  Zahid, you started it all.

[ Laughter ]

>>ZAHID JAMIL: Wow.  Thank you.  I just wanted to sort of say, first of all, I think the idea of having a freedom of expression theme is good.  I would support that.  While I say that, I would also say that it is important to keep in mind that freedom of expression is one aspect and then there is the freedom to access.  So some governments may say, you can say what you want as long as you don't get to YouTube, things of that nature.

I want to make sure when we do say that, we are mindful that encompasses these sort of issues as well.  And I can access Skype, et cetera.  Maybe as workshops, subthemes, et cetera.  I just wanted to clarify.  I do support that.  Thank you to everybody who has pitched in.  Very appreciative.  Thank you.

>>CHAIR KUMMER: Thank you.  Sanja.

>>SANJA KELLY: I would also like to support what several of my colleagues have said here about importance of freedom of expression when it comes to Internet governance and human rights more generally.  So I agree with the colleague from the Council of Europe that in addition to freedom of expression, what we are seeing in our research is this growing issue when it comes to surveillance, privacy issues, freedom of assembly as well.  I think it is very important to include human rights.  It is a broader theme that would encompass all these emerging problems as well (audio interference).

As my colleague Zahid has mentioned earlier, here we are talking about real life problems that are impacting everyday users, that are impacting businesses.  And I think it is very important that we capture that as one of the main themes this year.  Thank you.

>>CHAIR KUMMER: Thank you.  Izumi?

>>IZUMI AIZU: Thank you.  (Audio interference).  Although it was only proposed perhaps yesterday at the open consultation, the theme of the ICT for disaster management and recovery, but it was also suggested in the context that it was very pertinent to the region of Indonesia where they received the huge tsunami in 2004 but they continue to work around.

And given New York had the flood or snow these days and it is coming anyway (audio interference), I don't want to make it too big a main theme or anything but if you could somewhere in a subtheme, that would be highly appreciated.  We can offer more details later.  (Audio interference-please mute).

>>CHAIR KUMMER: Thank you.  Mark.

>> MARK CARVELL:  Thank you, Markus.  Mark Carvell, U.K. government.  I want to make sure I understand what we are doing.  We are talking about themes and also main sessions and specific subjects where we want focused dialogue leading to a set of outputs or options.

Are we doing that now?  I mean, in terms of freedom of expression.  We've highlighted some issues like digital safety.  Would we -- as I hope we are contemplating, would we be identifying these as particular kinds of sessions that are going to produce something in terms of a record of options (audio interference) for stakeholders including policymakers to take away, having heard from the experts, having had the chance to engage with the experts, having turned up at the right session.

I wasn't quite clear.  I mean, there's reference to themes and so on.  I just want clarification on that.

Secondly, could we keep the transcription up in parallel with the list because even for me as a native speaker as we are intensely brainstorming here, thinking through things, and then needing to check back on what something -- somebody has just said, I find it incredibly valuable.  I'm sure others are probably in the same situation, especially non-native speakers with people like me talking way too fast.  Thank you.

>>CHAIR KUMMER:  Okay.  The transcript is actually on the Web site of the IGF, so you can -- oh.  Now, here, they've managed to put it in split screen.

[ Applause ]

>>MARK CARVELL:  For some of us that are making notes --

>>CHAIR KUMMER:  And thank you for asking the question, asking for clarity of what we are doing.  That is basically my job, but you're perfectly right to ask.

The starting point was can we rationalize this list and maybe not add new Christmas balls to the Christmas tree, but rather to see whether we can close some things, and I think the discussion we had on human rights and freedom of expression did that.  I think it led us to agreement, I think, yes, it will make sense to have a focus on freedom of expression, have human rights as a theme across the IGF which would also be a theme for workshops, and that includes other human rights such as freedom -- the right to assembly, but we at the main session would this year focus rather on freedom of expression.  That was my understanding. 

But now I think we have to go further, so okay, we have done human rights and freedom of expression.

There was also very strong -- when we look at the -- back in our minds, on yesterday's discussion, there was a very, very strong advocacy for having a discussion on Internet principles, and that's -- could be maybe Internet principles and, slash, multistakeholder principles, as these are very closely linked, so this is also something we could discuss, how to articulate it. 

Then there were clearly a cluster of issues linked to cybersecurity, security, but again the point was made yesterday that this is also in relation with human rights, security and human rights. 

Spam, we touched on that, and I think at least I sensed while we feel it may not be a burning issue, that there would be merit to address this issue at the IGF in Bali. 

There was a proposal made by Bill to maybe not have it "spam," but what was it we call it?  "Legal" -- do you have --

>> (Speaker is off microphone.)

>>CHAIR KUMMER:  "Legal frameworks and crime" or what was it?

I mean, just to deal with it under a different heading as some people might think "spam" is a little bit -- well, boring or I think Zahid made the point that nobody from Asia will go to a session if it's just called "spam." 

But nevertheless -- well, maybe we should --

>> (Speaker is off microphone.)

>> If it's about keeping YouTube open, I'm sure everybody will turn out.

>> (Speaker is off microphone.)

>>CHAIR KUMMER:  So okay.  Let's -- why don't we walk through the week.

We arrive Saturday or Sunday maybe the week before and have a lovely time on the beaches of Bali.  Okay.

Then Monday there are all sorts of pre-events.  There will be high-level events, but there will be other pre-events.  I think that's well-established practice.

And the pre-events could also be used to address hands-on technical issues, such as spam, but there are other issues mentioned.  Routing, for instance, figured big in the Dubai discussions and they were not always inspired by technological knowledge of how it actually worked.

So there may be merit in having technical sessions on how does routing actually work.  Why doesn't routing know national borders, you know, and why is it better that way, for instance.

Okay.  That's Monday.

Presumably there will be a reception or whatever.  Then we all have a good mood to enter into the first day of the IGF.

One of the questions -- Chengetai maybe has already discussed this.  We started at one point having the opening session in the afternoon for the very simple reason the representative of the Secretary-General could not be there in the morning.  That was in Hyderabad.  But as it happened, I thought that was actually a good way of getting started.  You had the morning, it's very good for the newcomer session.  There's less stress because the high-level people involves all sorts of protocol and then you have that in the morning.  Usually there are details to sort out, and in the afternoon that works better.

So my suggestion -- but that's obviously something the host country will have to decide. 

It depends also on the availability of whoever will be there, the high-level speaker, but my preferred scenario would be to again have the opening ceremony in the afternoon rather than the morning and we could have the newcomer session in the morning and get started with all sorts of other meetings.  First workshops, that could then also feed into other sessions.

Second day then, we would start with main session and if we follow some of the suggestions that was made, I think Martin, I think, was the first one who made it to have then the latter end of the week having the sort of wrap-up roundtables of the cluster of workshops.  That will be the real innovation for this year's IGF.

So we would have Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday.  That would give us six three-hour slots.  We could use three of these three-hour slots to have sessions we collectively organize and then the last three sessions where we could have roundtables of clusters of workshops and closing --

Well, no, one session that was mentioned that people thought was helpful was the taking stock session, and I think that definitely makes sense. 

Taking stock, we can look at recent events but we can also look at what happens during the IGF, having -- we did that in the first few IGFs, had a kind of open microphone, and especially if we innovate in terms of format, I think it will be good to have some kind of immediate feedback. 

So we would have three main sessions to fill, and three other main sessions -- or two or three -- to feed with workshops.

Based on the discussion of what I heard, we filled one session already and that would be freedom of expression.  It certain is an important issue.  What do we do with the other two?  Do we find -- I think we also have to look that we have a little bit of a mix. 

I think economic growth/innovation, for instance, was mentioned.  I see OECD has their flag up.  Maybe you have something to add to that theme.  But I'm just trying to look at the overall picture of what -- how the meeting could unfold, so -- and then back to the list and how can we use these words.  I mean, we did not invent them.  They were taken from the discussions we had yesterday.

Okay.  So I see -- well, let's give the floor to those who have spoken a little bit less.

Mai, you asked for the floor?  And OECD, Switzerland.

>>MAIMUNA DIOP: Thank you, chair.  I am Maimuna Diop from Senegal. 

I really want to support the main theme for human rights and freedom of expression, but I wonder if you can add another main session about broadband access. 

We were here at the beginning of this week and we saw that at the WSIS+10 we talk about access.  We are always talking about access, and I think important for us to talk about broadband access for all.  Thank you.

>>CHAIR KUMMER:  Thank you.  Just looking at the list of issues, there's nothing similar.  We have public access but we don't have any on --

Well, not -- I would not -- it's a different concept, but I mean just write "broadband access" and we can discuss that.

But I would basically suggest not adding new issues; rather, trying to regroup and reorder and reorganize.

OECD.  Sorry.  Your name?

>>VERENA WEBER: Verena Weber from the OECD.  Thank you, chair.

We can certainly support the idea of the Internet for economic growth, because I mean we have a lot to contribute to this issue, obviously, but we would also like to support the idea of having a main session on Internet principles.  We have contributed to the main session last year here at the WSIS, and we think that the IGF is a very, very good forum to bring, you know, different Internet principles from different organizations together, and we would also think that it's a very good idea to have a compendium of those principles available at the beginning of the IGF, so that at the end, maybe we have an outcome of a global view on Internet policy principles.

>>CHAIR KUMMER:  Thank you. 

And in conjunction with that, the proposal was made to create a sort of open-ended working group that would prepare the session.  I think that would also give us a definite kind of input into the sessions.

Thomas, Switzerland.

>>THOMAS SCHNEIDER: Thank you.  Just when listening to the discussion of today, I'm wondering to what extent it might be useful to use the IGF, depending on the development of the -- of this course that will happen until then, to see how to -- to build new bridges in the deadlock as it has occurred at and after the WCIT of last year, and it also links to issues like -- like Zahid's, like the -- how do we relate telecom regulation to the functioning of the Internet?  What are the -- the right fora to -- to discuss and to take decisions on telecom and/or on the Internet.  How do we link or separate issues that should be linked or should be separated? 

I see there are some elements that go in that direction.  These proposals about multistakeholder cooperation, about enhanced cooperation, depending on how we define it, but also the discussion on Internet or Internet governance principles, the collection and rework of -- of such principles.

But I wonder whether maybe that would -- it would be useful to refer a little bit more explicitly to the links or effects of telecom regulation and the Internet as one of the themes or one of the subthemes that should have a space somewhere.

>>CHAIR KUMMER: Maybe, Brian, can you write down as a placeholder the telecom regulation and the Internet.  Maybe one of our specialists -- and I'm looking at Bill who knows all the history of telecom regulation -- can come up with a better title.  I don't know.  And I think broadband access could also be linked to that.

Olga?

>>OLGA CAVALLI:  Thank you, chair.

I would like to support Maimouna, including broadband and mobile broadband.  That's exactly what I wanted to -- you just mentioned I wanted to add. 

And I also support Thomas' suggestion about media and regulation.  Thank you.

>>CHAIR KUMMER:  Yes.  Theresa and Anriette?

>>THERESA SWINEHART:  So I'm wondering, this actually had come up in another conversation and I can't claim credit for the topic, but if we take something of a theme of building an Internet economy and see whether several of the items that are listed here that really go towards that might not be captured under that kind of theme or overarching theme.

There are several things about broadband access and various other things that might be captured around a topic of building an Internet economy or something to that sort.

>>CHAIR KUMMER:  Thank you.  That's very helpful.  That helps us to structure a little bit a list of words, yeah.

And I think it may also be more forward-looking than just listing building an Internet economy.  That basically involves the regulatory framework, that involves the infrastructure necessary, and Verena, maybe with your experience, maybe you can help us with the formulation but the idea would be to have an economic objective and looking at all that is needed to build the economic objective.  That includes regulatory framework, that includes infrastructure, that includes technology.

But okay.  No, that sounds -- could we sort of find agreement on that?

Yes.  Olga.  Hang on.  There are other people.  Ayesha has been very patient, and Vlad. 

Ayesha first.

>>AYESHA HASSAN:  Thank you, chair.  I would support the overarching title that Theresa has put forward and I think it would be helpful if we did start moving some things underneath that.

One point that I had brought up in the open consultation that I just wanted to put under that heading would be local content development, because I think that is part of economic growth through the Internet as well as a key development issue and an innovation issue.

So I would ask that that be put in under there.

Just because a lot of people will read this list without having been in the room, it might be helpful to put human rights, slash, freedom of expression on the Internet, so that we're very clear that this is still focused very much on the Internet.

And thirdly, I think that again I -- once we reorganize this a bit, or the secretariat does, the -- some of these themes will be main session themes, but we also want to give people an idea of some of the themes they could be looking at for the workshops, and so I like the suggestion of Bill Smith to do "legal frameworks in crime" and then maybe under that put "spam," so it starts to become more clear what is the -- you know, what's going to be the focus.  Thank you.

>>CHAIR KUMMER:  Thank you.  And, yes, on the Internet economy, then underneath will go telecom regulation and the Internet and broadband access and so on.  But we can sort that out also afterwards.

But it's good if we can do it now.  Then it's up on the -- the more that is done is done and put it higher up in the higher level of hierarchy as well.

All right.  Next, Anriette, please.

>>ANRIETTE ESTERHUYSEN:  Thank you, Markus.  I'd actually like to propose that we -- that we don't decide on main sessions now, that we try and synthesize those topics into some policy questions and that we then put out a call for workshops, we ask workshop applicants to say if they want to link their workshop to one of these policy questions.  If not, that's also fine.

And then in May, based on the interest that there is from the workshops and the content, then we can aggregate and then decide how to synthesize a main session or two.

I don't think we should lose the fact that yesterday there was a very, very strong expression in the open consultation that we need to change the main sessions format and we need to change the number of main sessions.

And just looking at that list, my attempt at sort of trying to synthesize them -- and I'm not wordsmithing which I really don't think we should do in a forum like this -- is there's a whole cluster around enhanced cooperation and multistakeholder participation. 

Secondly, there's a cluster around security, spam, and crime, solutions, legal frameworks.  That could be solutions versus legal frameworks.  You know, we can play with that.

Then there's the freedom of expression track.

Then fourthly, there's access.  There's public access there.  We've just heard broadband.  We've had Internet exchange points up on the screen.

Then there's one that actually somehow fell off the screen, but it was raised yesterday, and that's network neutrality, and that could possibly go with principles or it could go with access.  You know, we could maybe cluster even further.

And then there's the topic there of principles for Internet governance. 

And then the seventh one I've got is use, and I'm not quite sure what the policy question is there.

And then there's eight, which is Internet for economic development.  That would be the economy track. 

And nine, science and technology for development.  That could be a science and technology track.

And again, I'm not sure that those are policy questions because they -- dealing with those would have multiple policy questions, but we could put it out as a theme or topic area and use this classification, almost, as a -- as a -- of types of policy questions or areas where there are questions as a basis for the call for workshops and then we finalize overall themes and main sessions in May.  That's my proposal.

>>CHAIR KUMMER:  Thank you.  We can do that.  No problem. 

Vlad?

>>VLADIMIR RADUNOVIC:  Thank you.  Well, basically going back to what Mark said, and again still trying to clarify, after listing these issues -- and there are quite some and they're relevant all of them -- we can say these are kind of policy questions or we're going towards policy questions.  Procedurally what are we going to do with them? 

The overarching theme, I think there was a general agreement yesterday that we don't do it today but or we leave it for May.  If we change it, it's okay, but we need to be clear that we are doing the overarching theme.  Otherwise we are not discussing that.

If we're not doing that, are we talking about main themes, meaning are we keeping the ones that we had last year?  Openness, security, privacy?  And there were some thoughts, that we might, for instance, split security, privacy, openness, and so on?  Are we discussing the main themes now or not?  Otherwise, are we skipping the old ones?  Otherwise, this is important for the applications for the workshops. 

The third option is, as we also did, when discussing main sessions, I think your outline, Markus, was quite good when it comes to the days.  Yes, when a couple of us were chatting about this, we had an idea that we might really reduce the main sessions to the minimum, between the opening session, the last one which is the takeaways and one central main session, be it freedom of expression or principles or whatever, and that should be the main sessions.  That's all.  Everything else can be workshop or what do we say?  Sessions?

And the roundtables on summarizing the workshop outputs based on the main topics.

So I think this format we should discuss also today. 

And finally, I think these -- this list of topics is very useful that were listed.  It's very useful as guidelines on hot topics for the workshop application.  So we should encourage people to try to address these particular issues and this can be also used as kind of key words or tags for the proposals.

So clarification in what direction we are going now.  Thank you.

>>CHAIR KUMMER:  Well, the usual joke is confusion at a higher level, but I'm not going down that path.

[ Laughter ]

>>CHAIR KUMMER:  No, I think we're having a very good discussion, and it's -- my understanding is that we don't want to use the themes of previous years for the main session, that we want to use new themes, and this is the potential list of candidates for populating our main sessions.

Now, whatever we call -- we can call them slots, but we will have slots to fill.  There will be one room that is bigger than the others where we have interpretation, and these slots we will have to fill and we have interpretation for all of these slots and they'll be more than just one slot in the middle of the week, and this basically is the list of the titles for these slots.

The overarching themes are also listed here, the proposals that were made, and, yes, it's the idea to discuss them in the main session.

We were not sure whether we captured them all, as it was not always that clear in the discussion, for instance, whether science and technology for development was supposed to be a main theme or more a -- one of the subthemes of the meeting.

Clearly a theme that had a lot of support was enhancing multistakeholder -- the Finnish proposal, Mervi's proposal, enhancing multistakeholder stakeholder cooperation for growth, development, and human rights, but there was also the European Commission, building bridges, which I think sounds very nice as a main theme, and the Finnish proposal could be a subtheme for this building bridges. 

But building bridges was echoed by various speakers in the post-WCIT environment, that the IGF could be a good place to build these bridges.

And while we have still an hour and a quarter left, I think we have made great progress.  We already have a very good list, I think, of ideas that will help workshop organizers.

Now, where is -- is this the list -- no, that's not the latest.

>>CHENGETAI MASANGO:  Yeah. 

>>CHAIR KUMMER: This is the latest list, okay.  Okay.

Well, we have a remote -- is it a MAG member or a -- okay.  Remote participation.  We always give them preference.

>>REMOTE INTERVENTION:  Question by Paul Wilson.  Do we have the option of (indiscernible) the proposals in the call for workshop proposals or another approach to determine running the theme or themes through an open process.

>>CHAIR KUMMER:  I think this was also one of the suggestions made prior to the consultation, that we actually wait and have a real bottom-up process, that we have themes -- main themes, themes for main sessions, whatever, suggested to the -- through the call. 

I mean, this is basically what we are going to reflect to the outside world as the result of two days of discussion.

They may say "This is rubbish, we don't like it, want something completely different."  Fine.  But I think -- looking at the list, I think it is -- reflects something the community cares about.

We have -- who is next?  Anriette, you want to come back or no?  Qusai, yes.

>>QUSAI AL SHATTI: As I look at the list of topics, Mr. Chair, I think there's -- if we talked about the Internet ecosystem, maybe we would include in it many of the topics listed here.

So -- and the term "Internet ecosystem" is becoming -- is emerging right now and becoming the topic of discussion.

So I would like to introduce this term as a main topic, "Internet ecosystem," and just include some of the long list under it.

>>CHAIR KUMMER:  Yeah.  I would then suggest, say, Internet cooperation, slash, Internet ecosystem as that is closely linked.

Internet cooperation, slash, Internet ecosystem.

Okay.  Chris, you wanted to come back?  No?

Mark?

>>MARK CARVELL:  Yes.  Thank you.  Mark Carvell, U.K. government.

Just taking forward the "building the Internet economy" theme and the kind of productive sessions that could be held under it, I'm very -- feeling very positive about this.

And I think under that, you could bring in the concepts that have been tabled about multistakeholder cooperation, because first of all, it's a forward-looking theme and the session would look at realizing a new Internet economy in such a way that you identify what is happening on the technology front and what is coming along.  That's going to be transformative, especially for developing countries, but also for developed countries.

So what do you need in terms of understanding all of that?

Who do you need to involve in building that strategy for the Internet economy, so who are the stakeholders?

Why -- you can set out why they need to be involved. 

And how.  I mean, we've heard examples this week about the Brazilian steering committee and Uruguay as well and there are other models of governments' engagement with stakeholders in a way that constructs a real strategy and a forward look and the transformation of the economy. 

So bringing in elements of the impact on -- on the economy, on growth, job creation, on opportunity and diversity, cultural/local content, opportunity.  So you bring all that in within the structure. 

So a session could look at what is happening, what you need to involve -- governments alone can't do this; we all know that -- and why you need to involve the stakeholders and how you actually construct the means of engaging all those stakeholders in a cooperative manner.

So a session like that is going to, I think, produce some real results and impact, and the stakeholders will go away, you know, "We need to talk to them, we need to talk to the government," the government policymakers will be saying "This will be -- will be sure noise.  We need to know who to talk to about that technology.  That could be for us, that could be a great leap forward for us in our country or in our region."

So I find this very encouraging.  So multistakeholder cooperation on our list, you can bring that under the building the Internet economy theme.  Thank you.

>>CHAIR KUMMER: Thank you.  Yes, could you maybe add multistakeholder cooperation underneath and you could also add Internet cooperation, Internet ecosystem in the same cluster because it does relate, part of the same parcel.  And I would even add open interoperable standards because it is the open standards that allow for innovation and economic growth.

But let's turn to our colleague from the OECD.  They are the experts on the Internet economy.  I would agree, this is a very self-contained cluster and it is an important cluster, a cluster that speaks also to governments.  I have often said governments are not interested.  But once we talk about economic growth, then that is an issue governments do get interested in.

Okay.  Tulika has been waiting patiently.

>> TULIKA:  Thank you, Chair.  This is the first time I have taken the floor since morning.  (audio buffered).  First of all, I would like to thank and everybody here for considering the proposal of transforming Internet equinet.  I see it listed there. 

Secondly, I would like to qualify it further to say it was a proposal for an overarching theme. 

And then I would like to say that after I see the proposal from Europe regarding building bridges, which comes out very well, I was wondering if you could say building bridges-transforming Internet equinet as an overarching theme.  Just one suggestion that came to my mind after seeing this would qualify the building bridges, if it is accepted by everybody.

Thirdly, just to try and converge a lot of sessions, so we have a session for the newcomers and if we could include the reporting of regional and national IGFs and merge these two sessions together, it would -- I'm not sure how much, but I suppose it would be very -- it could become more useful for many newcomers there.  And we could merge these two sessions together.

The last point that I wanted to make was there are certain themes here which are totally public policy issues, and then there are certain themes which could be taken as technology and standards issue.  And further there is a possibility for us to see, we could pull out some themes from there and we put them in the (indiscernible) sessions or on a roundtable around technology issues related to Internet.  Thank you.

>>CHAIR KUMMER: Thank you.  The list does not necessarily indicate the format.  These are food for thought and it will be our job then to turn it into the best possible format.  Thank you.

Cecil.

>> CECIL MCCAIN:  Thank you again, Markus.  For main themes, again, I want to again reiterate my proposal for the (interference).  I think Mark from the U.K. suggested digital and cybersecurity, personal freedoms.  And this in the context of crime where there is need to prevent (indiscernible) -- protection children online, the exploitation of the age, culture and (indiscernible) norms whereby one part of the world it is a norm and in another part it is criminal activity.  And how do you balance these things?

The idea would be to have -- facilitate this type of public/private partnership that addressed the framework that worked that ensure at the end of the day, personal freedoms are maintained while recognizing and put in place the necessary mechanisms to mitigate against crime.

The other thing I want to support is related to the Internet economy.  You know, the focus, of course, in this context would be, you know, for there to be again thought of inclusive situation whereby wider public will have access to being a part of that Internet economy and what policies and so on and frameworks which support that type of ecosystem.  Again, share an exchange of the ideas which -- where do these work.

>>CHAIR KUMMER: Thank you.  Olga?

>>OLGA CAVALLI: Thank you, Chair.  I think we mentioned it, but I don't see it reflected in the text about mobile broadband access.  If we could add that.

And also in relation with content, I think we may add local content and local languages because in some countries there may be one main language and the content is produced in that language but there are other languages which are also spoken in the country and they should be also reflected in the Internet and perhaps preserved in the Internet.

And, also, I would like to add some, perhaps not as a main session but under some of the umbrella so overarching themes, equal gender access, equal access for disabled people and equal access for aging population.  I don't know if aging is the right word.  I'm not a native English speaker.  Maybe some other colleagues can correct.  The idea is that older people or people that are getting older also have equal access to the Internet.

>>CHAIR KUMMER: Thank you.

>>OLGA CAVALLI: Thank you.

>>CHAIR KUMMER: I would also suggest the very last line, change that in regulatory framework and broadband, mobile broadband access and put it under the Internet economy then.

Thomas?

>> THOMAS SPILLER:  I want to come back briefly to the point Anriette made about local content.  I think it is very important but I would also like to link it to education.  This was very much one of the themes we were interested in.  And I think it is important for our friends in Indonesia given the very young population and growing of this country.  Thank you.

>>CHAIR KUMMER: Thank you.  Mervi?

>>MERVI KULTAMAA: Thank you.  I lifted my flag first to support what Anriette said.  It is useful to have the listing here, but we should not carve in stone the topics of the main sessions.  And following this, I would like to suggest something.  And that is to leave room for those who suggest workshops under these themes and if there is a proposal, which is so good that it merits to be upgraded into a main session, we could decide to do that in the May meeting.

So instead of the MAG members automatically developing the main sessions, we could give that possibility to someone else who comes up with a very good suggestion.

And I'd like to add something to this list of important items and that is the IGF as one-stop shop for Internet governance.  This links to the recommendation of the working group for the improvements to strengthen IGF's role in capacity-building on Internet governance for the newcomers to the IGF and for those who are not that familiar on Internet governance.  And this is also something that we heard this week in Paris.

I think it was Tulika in particular who mentioned that it is very difficult to get information on Internet governance issues as they are so widely dispersed across organizations.  And it will be especially useful to hear from the organizations that are specialized in capacity-building to hear what they could come up under this theme.

And, finally, I thought that the Commission's proposal for building bridges as an overarching theme was good as well.  So I would be happy if that would be accepted.  Thanks.

>>CHAIR KUMMER: Thank you.

A question or comment, on the IGF as one-stop shop, I see this more as an aspirational objective for the IGF rather than as a theme for the session.  I mean, the open forums which we hope we will bring back to their original intention, that various organizations represent their activities would be one of the contributions to that and that we use this as a horizontal theme for virtually all the sessions.  We bear this in mind. 

People may go to one meeting a year and this is the IGF, so they really should get the information they need.  And that's, I think, more than just one session.  But that's open for discussion.

Council of Europe, Lee?

>>COUNCIL OF EUROPE: Thank you, Mr. Chair.  Council of Europe, Lee Hibbard.  There are two topics I don't see on the list.  Maybe I am mistaken.  One is protection of personal data online, which is a very big topic, particularly in the U.S. and Europe.  The second one is network neutrality which again is very, very hot and being debated quite widely.

So I think these two talks cannot really not included in this list in my point of view.

>>CHAIR KUMMER: Yes.  Network neutrality I thought was more part of the Internet principles, I think, yeah?  As a top item.  Could you repeat the other issue you mentioned.

>>COUNCIL OF EUROPE: Protection of personal data, privacy.

>>CHAIR KUMMER: Privacy obviously is a big issue.

>>COUNCIL OF EUROPE: Yeah.

>>CHAIR KUMMER: But would you agree that Internet principles is the right place to deal with net neutrality?

>>COUNCIL OF EUROPE: I think net neutrality has its own space.  I think it would be eaten up by Internet principles.  There are several principles.  And it is far too important to just be one -- a part of a broader discussion.  It is too debated to be left -- to put into a mix like that, I think.

>>CHAIR KUMMER: Okay.

>>RAUL ECHEBERRIA: Thank you, Mr. Chair.  I have a question.  Where are we now?

[ Laughter ]

What do we want to achieve in the next 60 minutes?  Because -- it seems that the list became very long and we tried to do something different from last year and we are putting many things in the basket now.  So it seems to me that we are going toward the past rather than the future.

>>CHAIR KUMMER: Instead of going forward, we're going backwards, yes.  And basically using the Christmas tree syndrome, adding more decorations to the tree.

I'm not sure whether there's much point in continuing for too long with this discussion.  But there are still a number of speakers on the list.

A, I would urge them rather to go the opposite way, that is forward rather than backwards; and, B, at the same time to be short.

China, Tang, you asked for the floor?

>>  TANG ZICAI:  Thank you.  Really I was speaking on behalf of the current MAG member of the Chinese government.  I just want to remind you that yesterday in the open consultation, Chinese delegation supported including the themes of the previous three years.  That is:  (indiscernible), Access and diversity and security, openness and privacy.  So I think if we -- if I am not misunderstanding, that we are collecting the views expressed at yesterday's open consultation and today's MAG meeting.

So if my understanding is right, I think the previous years' three meetings themes should be added in this list.  Thank you.

>>CHAIR KUMMER: Thank you.  This is the question that was open.  How do we deal with the previous years' themes, and there were diverging opposed.  There were those who wanted to get rid of them all together, while the Chinese delegation was the only one who said we should keep them as they are.

Now, this is a procedural issue.  Basically, we work on a consensus basis.  But at the same time, this is an Internet Governance Forum so the procedures are maybe somewhat different from consensus in an intergovernmental organization.  We are certainly not going to vote.  We are not going to take the room's temperature.

I would rather go for an Internet approach based on rough consensus.  But I will not ask the room to start humming. 

My sense was that there was a clear desire to innovate and find new themes for the main sessions without necessarily getting rid of the old headings that is access, diversity, security, openness, privacy, critical Internet resources and so on.

But I'm in your hands obviously.  I'm not a dictator.  I'm listening to what you have to say.

Hang on.  There are lots of speakers.  Tero, Ricardo, Wendy and then some new flags went up.

>>TERO MUSTALA: Thank you, Chair.  Actually, I need to leave fairly soon.  So I may jump a bit in another subject.  But, anyway, it is linked.  And to start with, I more or less agree very much with the length of the list of different issues that have been written down and nothing wrong with that.  It's certainly useful and it will cover many, many different aspects of the Internet governance, which is good.

But somehow what I am missing is a kind of angle or point of view, a general approach how we would like to tackle all these issues because I think for the meeting, it would be beneficial that we would have one somehow limited angle or specific angle, how we approach all these issues.

And I would like to make a proposal for a title for the whole IGF meeting next fall, which certainly then needs more clarification and below it.  But that can be done and we have a lot of material for that.

And the reason for what I have been thinking about this, it is very much inspired by what Zahid mentioned and what has been said in some other interventions here. 

And for a snappy title that the Chair yesterday wanted, my proposal is "Internet for the next 2 billion."  This is an old title, but I still think we have 2 billion people left without Internet so we can reuse it.

As we go closer to everybody on the earth having it, we can move it to, let's say, the last 500 million after a few years.  But I think this kind of title would bring up the approach to have the development countries' view on all those issues which we have listed because I think it can be applied to most of the questions which we have now on the screen.  And I think that's the right one in a sense that we -- at least I'm European and I could claim that we can manage with the current Internet, with all the spam and all the problems and all the cost and regulations.

But I have the fear that many people in the developing nations can't.  So that's the reason why we should have the focus and especially this focus and somehow that should be reflected also in the themes and in the title of the upcoming meeting.

And if that wouldn't be a kind of guiding hint for everybody who is then preparing for that, I think it would serve its purpose besides being a snappy title.

>>CHAIR KUMMER: My question would be more the mathematics.  Isn't it more 5 billion?

>>TERO MUSTALA: If the number is wrong, I'm happy to change that, whatever we agree.

>>CHAIR KUMMER: Okay.  Ricardo.

>> RICARDO PEDRAZA:  Thank you, Chair.  I would like to mention some linkage to the current keywords.  The first one would say cyber crime and cybersecurity, we could add to that idea the cyber war and the cybersecurity legal frameworks.  So it would be an opportunity to educate people around what are these notions and to have a debate also around the new cybersecurity legal frameworks that have been developing in different regions.  So that's one idea.

The other one is associated with the youth.  We have right now Internet for kids, child safety, and we can include on that group also the digital citizenship that has been a topic that has been reviewed in a couple of the last IGFs and has been really interesting.

And my third will be to also complete the local content, just the idea of local content and local languages.  We can maybe, precisely, if we are going to talk about local content development and under the guide idea, we can include the development of apps as a way to develop local content and to build capacity-building in a country.  I know of some success stories of some developing countries that has embraced the idea of developing its human resource towards the development of public policies that we put -- that respond to local needs.

So I believe we would be relevant to developing countries, and it is part of the trend I have been seeing in some of the Latin America countries, in fact.  Thank you.

>>CHAIR KUMMER: Thank you.  Can I make a point of order at this late hour?  Please don't add anything to this list.  This list is not complete.  This list is not complete, and you can ask anybody, you can send in your suggestions and flesh out some of the proposals.  We just don't have the time.  There are many speakers who still want to talk.

It is different if you can regroup or take something off, then you are welcome.  But by adding, it actually makes our task more difficult and not easier.  You will have the opportunity, of course, also to add your individual comments.

Wendy, please.

>>WENDY SELTZER: Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.  I will refrain from adding to the list.  And, indeed, I wanted to suggest that we return to what I thought was an excellent early concise proposal which was to put out a very spare description of the planned work to the community and invite their input on what the topics should be.

What I think I might add to our initial call is a description of the opportunity that the IGF provides asking them how would they like to engage with the community of policymakers from government, technical, business and civil society communities.  How would their proposal engage some or all of these groups?  And what would they like to discuss?

I think from that call, we will then get more topics and more interesting topics than even all of us can put our heads together thinking about.  And then at our next meeting, we'll have the exciting task of reviewing those and grouping them into themes and finding what the community wants to talk about in Bali.

>>CHAIR KUMMER: Thank you.

Yes, that's the original idea.  But the original idea was also to communicate what we have been discussing here.  And the list reflected, in essence, the discussion of the past two days.

Chris, you asked for the floor.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Thank you.  Just some -- a few comments.  I want to speak in support of "building bridges" as an overarching statement, perhaps taken together with the enhancing multistakeholder cooperation thing that we talked about.

I have an issue with using words people don't understand even, though, they might actual be quite clever.  But I think using the term "equinet" will confuse everybody because most people don't have the faintest idea what we are talking about.  And I wanted to respond to the -- your point about how we deal with the previous themes or pillars or whatever it is we call them.

And I agree with you, that I got the very clear sense that we wanted to move on from them.  Just to remind you, that I did make a suggestion if we wanted to retain some stability around it, we could use them as guidance for the workshops and suggest that people might want to slip workshops underneath those original titles.  But I am very clear that I think the time has come to move on.  Thank you.

>>CHAIR KUMMER: Thank you.  There was the comment also made that they found the basket not helpful.  Sometimes they could fall into separate ones.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: I agree.  I'm not say we should do that.  I am saying we could do that if we have an issue with banning them completely.

>>CHAIR KUMMER: Theresa.

>>THERESA SWINEHART: Thank you.  Just one clarification.  I think there is a reference to Internet principles.  I think we were referring to Internet governance principles, just to avoid any confusion or misinterpretation.

And then I wonder whether we might -- I appreciate cyber crime and cybersecurity might be seen as two different things.  I wonder if there is a term we can use.  And maybe just "cybersecurity" that captures that so we can shorten the list a little bit. 

And I would support the idea that while we had overarching themes, creating a sort of new kind of dialogue would be helpful and we don't need to keep all of them.  So thank you.

>>CHAIR KUMMER: Thank you.  Yuliya?

>> YULIYA MORENETS:  Thank you, Mr. Chair.  I would like to go to the direction of your suggestion to regroup.  I wanted to say the same that was just said by Theresa regarding cybersecurity and cybercrime. 

Our suggestion would be to put cybercrime and data protection under cybersecurity which by number of legal documents, it is viewed as a part of the cybersecurity topic.

And, also, I can't see all the details and the points that were added, but maybe I would like to suggest to have somewhere the inclusive -- the role of the Internet and the inclusive development.  Actually, it was one of the subjects that was raised in the during IG World in 2012, the number of high-level representatives from developing countries.  So I believe it would be one of the important points under one of the sections that were already proposed.

And just something concerning Olga's comments and proposal concerning the equal access for aging population, maybe we could make it more open and to say vulnerable people, equal access for vulnerable people.  Thank you.

>>CHAIR KUMMER: Thank you.  Ayesha.

>>AYESHA HASSAN: Thank you.  Briefly, I just want to support what Chris put in in terms of the use of the old -- the previous headings.  I think we need to remember, we're not losing them.  They're not going away.  All of the issues in that list fall under one or two or three of those categories.  I think what we're trying to do is make this a more interesting program that will attract the participants that we're looking for and to move forward.

I think that there are many ways, too, in which when we do a final program, you could put something like "access security," whatever.  A lot of these topics fall under a number of those categories.  There could be a way to graphically put that in.  Thanks.

>>CHAIR KUMMER: Thank you.

OECD?

>> OECD:  Thank you, Chair.  Coming back to Theresa's proposal for building an Internet economy, maybe to attract a policy maker we could name that category "building an Internet economy for economic growth and social development" or "inclusive development." 

And as a second overarching category, I would like to propose the principles, either Internet governance principles or Internet policy principles.  And I think some of the issues on the list could be cooperation, multistakeholder principles, and maybe also the human rights angle.  Thank you.

>>CHAIR KUMMER: Thank you.  Mark.

>>MARK CARVELL: Mark Carvell, U.K. government.  It is not on the list, but that's because I think it is not recorded from our exchanges earlier about digital safety of journalists and media activists.  I can't --

>>CHAIR KUMMER: That was part of the freedom of expression cluster.  It is not listed separately but understood it was proposed from UNESCO.  

Maybe you can give us the wording of your proposal.

>>MARK CARVELL:  Yeah.  But just also briefly to underline it, you know, it's something where I think we don't just want a dialogue.  It's something to -- for the IGF to achieve some kind of outcome on, in terms of guidance and how to implement the U.N. action plans as regards the digital world.  Thank you.

>>CHAIR KUMMER:  Thank you.  Anriette again.

>>ANRIETTE ESTERHUYSEN:  Thanks, Markus.  If I didn't feel strongly about wanting to speak, I wouldn't speak because I know I have.  I have had a lot of opportunity.

I think just to -- to reiterate that the role of the MAG is to synthesize the input from the open consultation and the prior online consultation, so I think our chair's already reminded us not to add new topics, but that's not just a question of time, it's also a question of accountability.

I also think that we -- we agreed yesterday that we want fewer workshops, and so please remember that when new topics are being added -- and they have been added this afternoon -- then we kind of are going to have more workshop topics and more workshop proposals.

So it's sort of counterproductive.

Just to support -- I think Theresa made the point that we are talking about Internet governance principles, not Internet principles.

I think for MAG members who are proposing overall themes, try to look at previously used themes before you do so, and several of the previously used themes have been repeated almost verbatim this afternoon. 

It might also be useful for us to -- to have access on the Web site of previous themes in one place, so that we can make sure we don't repeat them.

And I think then finally, I think as China pointed out -- but I think Ayesha has already said that -- if you look at those themes up there now, you can still link them to the traditional themes of access and diversity, security, and so on.  So I think that if there are people who feel that that's still important, we can cluster them together, but still have new themes as being a starting point.  So I don't think there's a contradiction.  I think there's an easy-to-find compromise there.

And then just finally on a different topic because we're nearing the end of the meeting, just to propose that -- that we have set up some kind of volunteer implementing group to help the secretariat in implementing the recommendations of the CSTD working group on IGF improvements.

I -- we talked about that yesterday and this morning, but maybe we should come back to that.

And I think that would be very helpful because the secretariat is going into a very intense period of work now, and I know that there are members of the working group and members of the MAG and other people in the room who would be willing to support the implementation of those recommendations.

>>CHAIR KUMMER:  Thank you.  Yes, we'll come to that, on how to organize ourselves, but now can we close the list of -- yeah, yeah.  I know still some speakers, but please don't put up new flags. 

Olga is on my list.

I have the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, Mkane Faye.  You asked for the floor?

>>MKANE FAYE: Yes.  Thank you, Mr. Chair.  Mine is a procedural one in the process.  I think I support what Ayesha said that we should have the themes and subjects and others, because if you look at clearly what (indiscernible) what is possible, but my worry is that we are going to leave this room without having working group coordinators or team coordinators like what we did last year in Geneva at the same time, and we may be going to Geneva in May with the same discussion going on.  So I really suggest that we get some volunteers from the MAG as we did in February last year in Geneva to look at some of the key themes and work online with MAG members to come up with clear ideas.  Thank you.

>>CHAIR KUMMER:  Thank you.  I have also China would like to -- Tang, please.

>>TANG ZICAI: Thank you. 

Actually, I think this is not a procedural issue because we are not opposing the new themes proposed by this meeting, and as the previous speaker said, this meeting has not decide which one should be new themes or should be overarching themes. 

This meeting is to collect the views expressed in the open consultation, so at least I think the three -- three core issues, three common themes, should be included in the list.  Thank you.

>>CHAIR KUMMER:  Thank you.  Bill, you've been waiting patiently. 

Bill?  Sir, you have the floor.

>> (Speaker is off microphone.)

>>BILL DRAKE: Thank you.  Hold on. 

After lunch, Thomas from Switzerland made a comment about telecommunications, and you followed up and suggested I say something, so I put my flag up.

I think it would be nice if we could have that element brought into the program more, convergence of telecommunications and the Internet and the difficulties in -- the difficulties, both at the global level and at the national level, of dealing with the correct policy and regulatory frameworks.

I think that goes to some of the issues that Zahid raised earlier. 

Not all of the restrictions that are going on in the Internet that users face around the world are solely based on desires to limit speech or so on.  They often have to do with telecommunications reg- -- industry references, et cetera, revenue, and things like that.  I think this is a big looming issue that has been out there and will become more and more of an issue for us to deal with going forward.  It also ties together the net neutrality question, et cetera.

So I -- I would support the Swiss proposal that that should be in there more firmly.

I -- I am personally, I guess, not in total -- I don't totally agree with my friends from civil society who suggest that we should wait and gather more input from people.  I just think it's going to -- this is infinitely expandable and the menu will grow larger and larger and I'm not sure it helps.

I mean, personally I would -- you know, I think we could just do a Doodle poll amongst people, if we want, and take stock and see how many people favor some of these different topics.

But I think it would be better to move more quickly.

We have -- we have four main sessions, basically, right?  Because we want to keep taking stock and we want to keep -- what's the other one?  I can't remember.  The introductory one.  Emerging issues. 

So my suggestion -- since we're doing suggestions, my suggestion would have been just to have an encompassing theme that sort of ties together a number of points, like freedom of expression -- freedom of connection and expression, and then under that do four main sessions that reflect what -- the preferences that have already been expressed in this meeting by virtue of the number of people who came together in different groups and said "We want to work on stuff."

There's a big cluster of people -- and we talked yesterday about doing MAG plus planning groups for these people.  There's a big cluster of people who want to do stuff on enhanced cooperation and this is an issue that's been out there forever. 

There's a cluster of people who want to do principles. 

There's a cluster of people who care a lot about human rights. 

And I think the telecom part would be good.

So for me, the -- that would be four good panel -- main sessions and we could get groups organized around each of those that would start to collaborate together and perhaps that collaboration would go beyond planning a main session at some point.  You would start to institutionalize relationships and dialogue around some big-ticket themes that have been out there forever and which people have been saying forever that they want to talk about more.  So that would have been my suggestion.

>>CHAIR KUMMER:  Thank you.  Olga?

>>OLGA CAVALLI:  Thank you, chair.

About my proposal of equal access, I would like to add "to all genders," because it disappeared.  I can live with vulnerable people in relation with aging and disabilities, but equal access to all genders and vulnerable people, because having a gender doesn't make you vulnerable.  Thank you.

>>CHAIR KUMMER:  Yes.  Thank you.

Can we give Indonesia the last word?

>>MOEDJIONO SARDOJOENI: Okay.  Thank you, chair.  Excuse me.  I would like to propose the discussion concerning how to empower local languages in the Internet.  We call it multilingualism in the Internet.

Because like Indonesia, we have around 746 local languages, but most of them becomes extinct languages, and we only have around 12 local languages that have around more than 1 million speakers.

So we'd like to propose that there are some discussions concerning how to implement the multilingualism in the Internet.  Thank you.

>>CHAIR KUMMER:  Thank you.  Okay.  So where do we take it from here?  We have to revisit the question of the date for the next meeting.  Chengetai, do you have news on the availability of meeting facilities?

>>CHENGETAI MASANGO:  The --

>>CHAIR KUMMER:  Microphone.

>>CHENGETAI MASANGO:  Sorry.  May is not available.  The WBU has kindly suggested that the -- another alternative date is 10th to 12th June.  So that would entail people coming -- going back home and then coming back during the -- this is straight after the CSTD meeting that's going to be held until the 7th of June.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN:  So hang on.  Can I just check?  Did you say 10, 11 June.

>> (Speaker is off microphone.)

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN:  So a Monday -- a Monday -- starting on a Monday.  Okay.  Thanks.

>>CHAIR KUMMER:  Will these dates work or --

Raul.  Olga.

>>RAUL ECHEBERRIA:  I violently opposed to meet on Sunday in Geneva.

>>CHENGETAI MASANGO:  No.  It would be Monday.

>>RAUL ECHEBERRIA:  Oh, sorry.  Okay.  It was --

[ Laughter ]

>>RAUL ECHEBERRIA:  It was my mistake.  Sorry.

But anyway, Sundays -- Monday's not very good because it means to travel over a weekend.

>>CHAIR KUMMER:  Okay.  So it's not possible to have other dates except Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday for meeting facilities.

Chris?

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN:  I -- I would probably be okay with it, but I just wanted to actually echo what Raul said earlier on today, which is that I -- I have secured a hotel for the time that we're supposed to be there.

For me, this means I have to make two trips.  Now I'm not suggesting that I'm entitled to any special treatment at all, but I mean people make long trips to come to these things and two trips -- it's more expensive for me to make two trips than it is to pay slightly more for a hotel when I've got to be there anyway.

So I'm just making the point that we have stuff around in May that is going to take people to Geneva, in any event, so maybe we should leave things as they are.

>>CHAIR KUMMER:  I presume people would like to take the floor on this particular issue.  Yes.  Olga.

>>OLGA CAVALLI:  Thank you.  Maybe I was mistaken, but for the exchange of e-mails we had in our list, I understood that the May dates were set, so I did my hotel booking and everything, so for me, it would be difficult to move it just that --

>>CHAIR KUMMER:  Olga, it's clear it was set.  It was a request to go back to this earlier decision because of the difficulty of securing hotel rooms, but if it is difficulty for those who already made the arrangements, then we stay with the original arrangements.

Do I see several nodding in the room, then, that we stick with the original arrangements?  Yes.  Robert.

>>ROBERT GUERRA:  Thank you.  This is Robert Guerra.

Just in terms of the original dates in May, for those of us that follow issues of freedom of expression, the dates -- I think it's the 21st through the 23rd of May, or the -- exactly coincides with a high-level meeting that's being organized by the government of Sweden in Stockholm, the Swedish Internet Forum, and so that, for a lot of the people from developing countries that Sweden is bringing to the event, it exactly coincides.

The events that you've mentioned in June happen to be just before, a week before, the Freedom Online Coalition, so the dates actually work better. 

So for those that follow some of the issues of freedom of expression online and a lot of NGOs that are coming, the dates in June work a bit better.

>>CHAIR KUMMER:  There was a lengthy discussion, I think, on this list on the dates.  There are many reasons pro and con, but the decision was finally taken for these dates.

So in order to change these dates, we really need a consensus to reverse the earlier decision and I sense this consensus is not here, so we have to stick to the earlier decision.

Marilyn?

>>MARILYN CADE:  Thank you, Markus, for giving me the microphone. 

My name is Marilyn Cade.  I'm not a MAG meeting but this is a MAG meeting and I really appreciate the fact that the MAG does make it possible for us to be in the room and to have an opportunity to speak.

I understand that the discussion -- from what I hear, the discussion about the dates has gone on in the MAG list, which is, of course, not able to take input from the broader set of stakeholders who are working to contribute to and support the planning.

And I do know that for many of those of us from the broader stakeholder base, we do not have reservations in Geneva and it is extremely difficult to find rooms in Geneva. 

Also, people will have other reasons to be at CSTD

I just would like for the MAG to be able to take into account fully not only the decisions that they've -- they've had to already consider, but also the impact on other stakeholders to be able to find affordable rooms.

>>CHAIR KUMMER:  Thank you. 

It is basically the duty of the MAG members to consult with their constituency groups of colleagues and stakeholder groups.  Now, I don't know who has not consulted broadly or not, but I mean this is not -- these decisions are not taken in a vacuum.

But I fully understand the difficulty, but at the same time, to reverse an earlier decision which has financial and other implications for some of the MAG members, you need their agreement.  That's --

Would you like to comment on this issue, Tang?

>>TANG ZICAI: Thank you.  Really, I repeat that I was speaking on behalf of the current MAG member of Chinese government.

I'm a little confused that we haven't finished the last item because I have raised the question that at least to add the three core issues, core main themes into the current list of the options.

>>CHAIR KUMMER:  We will complete the report, send it out for comment.  That -- you will have the opportunity to comment on that.

>>TANG ZICAI: But this comment, we have already made our comment in yesterday's meeting and the report I think should reflect yesterday's consultation.

>>CHAIR KUMMER:  Okay.  Brian, can you add the old themes to this list?

Okay.  Do we have -- is everybody equally unhappy to stick to the original dates?  Yes.

>>MOEDJIONO SARDOJOENI: We understand that the decision is made, the choice in the 22nd and 23rd May is coming from our (indiscernible), right?  How about the first choice, i.e., the week before the WSIS meeting (indiscernible).  Is that also unavailable?

>> (Speaker is off microphone.)

>>MOEDJIONO SARDOJOENI: Okay.  That's okay.

>>CHAIR KUMMER:  Okay.  Can we now look at how to move forward? 

The issue has been mentioned that we should have maybe a small group developing guidelines for workshops, and I wonder whether our Finnish contingent could take the lead on that.  Tero and Mervi?

I mean, it's not a -- we said we would have a MAG group developing guidelines for the workshops, and I think both Tero and you were in favor of doing that so I just wondered whether I could ask you to volunteer to take the lead on that.  And I see you nodding, so those who want to be involved then in developing guidelines for the workshops based on our discussions, please send an e-mail to Mervi and will you set us up a separate list?

>>CHENGETAI MASANGO:  Yes.

>>CHAIR KUMMER: Yes.  And the secretariat will create a mailing list.

There were -- the other issue was on the implementation of the working group on IGF improvements.  That obviously seems to me to be Peter.  Would you be willing to take on this task? 

I see Peter nodding, so may I suggest that those willing to be part of this working group, that you get in touch with Peter, and again, Chengetai will set up a mailing list.

Are there other suggestions for this kind of working group?  There was -- we have not reached closure on that, but there was a very strong push in favor of working forward on Internet principles or Internet governance principles, also support by the OECD on developing a compendium.

We have not yet decided whether we will have a main session on that, but my feeling is that in one way or another this issue will be dealt with at the IGF, and obviously I think it could make sense that we have a group preparing the session of whatever form it will take.

Would anybody be interested in taking the lead on this issue?

Raul?  Yes, please.

>>RAUL ECHEBERRIA:  Not for volunteering.  It is not for volunteering.  No, I want to be -- a clarification.  What exactly will be the purpose of the -- of this working group?

>>CHAIR KUMMER:  Oh.  The -- basically it will be an open-ended group working towards preparing a session on Internet governance principles, building on the discussions we had in Baku which I think was essentially about putting together a compendium of existing principles.

So that would need some work collating existing material and so on.  But it will not have the mandate to go wild and develop a new Declaration of Principles or whatever.  It would be more preparatory work.

Parminder?

>>PARMINDER SINGH:  Thank you, chair, for giving me the opportunity.  I just wanted to remind the room that yesterday the Dynamic Coalition on Internet Rights and Principles had offered to help doing this work, and also at the last IGF in the session on looking forward, they had made the proposal that they would like to help in any work which is done on -- on this subject, and as a fact they already have -- have done a compendium of Internet principles.  Some work is already ongoing, so if any open-ended working group is needed, the coalition offers to join it.  Thank you.

>>CHAIR KUMMER:  Thank you for the reminder. 

Theresa, are you on -- on this issue?

>>THERESA SWINEHART:  I don't know if Wolfgang is here today, but I suggest that he may be somebody to take the lead or a combination -- happy to help out -- and that we create just an open-ended group so it's moving forward.

>>CHAIR KUMMER:  I would have more a procedural question.  Do we -- these groups, do we want them to be led by MAG members or can they be led by a non-MAG member?  I have no --

>>THERESA SWINEHART:  I have no --

>>CHAIR KUMMER:  -- strong feelings on that, but maybe could you take at least a nominal lead and let Wolfgang do all the work?

>>THERESA SWINEHART: What if I follow up and then we get a final resolution on that.

>>CHAIR KUMMER:  Anriette.

>>THERESA SWINEHART:  Thanks.

>>ANRIETTE ESTERHUYSEN:  As a MAG member and a member of the Internet Rights and Principles Coalition, I'm happy to -- to volunteer to be the MAG lead, working with members of the coalition and other interested persons.

>>CHAIR KUMMER:  Okay.  No, that makes very much sense.  Okay.  Then Anriette is the MAG lead.  Whoever is interested on this issue, please get in touch with Anriette.  And again, Chengetai will set up the working list.

Tang, would you like to comment on that?

>>TANG ZICAI: Not really.  I still want to comment on the previous questions. 

I know that the -- in the practice of this meeting, the report should reflect what we have discussed --

>>CHAIR KUMMER:  Yes.

>>TANG ZICAI: -- in yesterday's meeting and also in today's meeting.  So how are we providing with text concerning how to solve this problem of this meeting to the secretariat?  By secure agreement?

>>CHAIR KUMMER:  We will -- the secretariat will prepare a report and that will be circulated to all MAG members for comments and corrections.

>>TANG ZICAI: Then -- then I -- I'm -- you know, I'm speaking on behalf of the current MAG member of Chinese government, so I suggest to add there three core main sessions' names on the list.  Thank you.  Critical Internet resources and access and diversity, and also security, openness, and privacy.

>>CHAIR KUMMER:  I see the line "Traditional Main Themes," but Chris, you wanted to --

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Yeah.  I just -- I'm sorry, but this is a list of -- this is a summation of what was said.  It is not -- the transcript shows exactly what was said.  This is not intended to be a verbatim list of what everybody said.  It is a summation of that. 

I -- I'm more than happy to accept that -- that the -- the fact that the traditional main themes were mentioned and should go on the list as having been mentioned, but I don't believe that it's fair for someone to be sitting here saying "I want to say exactly what words should be put on this list" because that means that every single line has to be precisely what was actually said by the individual who said it at the time, and frankly, that's not acceptable.  That's what the transcript is for.  This is a summation.

>>CHAIR KUMMER:  Well, it's definitely not my intention to go into a line-by-line negotiation.  We can have a paragraph saying that one delegation expressed clear preference for maintaining the traditional main themes while the general feeling of the room was to find new names for the main sessions and maintaining the main themes as categories for the workshops.

That would reflect fairly the discussion of this meeting.

But can we please not go into a negotiation of a summary record of a meeting?  The discussions are available online.  I mean, you can read it word for word in any case.

Is there any other -- yes, please.

>> CHINA:  Actually, this meeting is not a negotiating meeting.  And yesterday this was the proposal of the government delegation.  And we suggest to maintain the three core issues discussed in previous years.  This list should be added in the option list.  This meeting, we will not discuss -- we will not decide which one should be main themes.  But this opinion has been expressed in yesterday's meeting.  It is not scribed.  It is not script.  It is not exactly what is up.

>>CHAIR KUMMER: We will finalize the report.  You will have opportunity to comment, but we will not negotiate it, in essence -- these are not agreed conclusions.  This is a summary record of a wide range of discussion. 

The discussion is available verbatim on the Web site of the IGF and this will be reflected in the report.

My question was:  Is there any other need for any other group to do intersessional work?  We have a group led by Mervi on the guidelines for workshops.  We have the group led by Anriette on Internet governance principles.  We have the group led by Peter on the implementation of the CSTD working group on IGF improvement.

Is there any need for any -- Jeff?  Please.

>>JEFF BRUEGGEMAN: I don't want to create more working groups, but I think the working group on the workshops should affirmatively take on Anriette's suggestion about the roundtable format and maybe put some thoughts on what that could look like.  Or I put this out as a suggestion that they could not just look at traditional guidelines for workshops but try and think about how we could operationalize that process as well.

>>CHAIR KUMMER: This notion is already in the draft report on the question of formats.  But to have this fleshed out a bit more, I think, is an excellent suggestion.

Is there anything else?  Yes, Theresa.

>>THERESA SWINEHART: I'm sorry.  I know we really would like to get out of here.  I think through some of the workshops and also the Chair's report from last year, there was an indication on interest on some preparatory work on the enhanced cooperation dialogue.  So maybe an open-ended group for that.  And I'm happy to help take the lead with others who would like to be involved.

>>CHAIR KUMMER: Okay.  One more group on enhanced cooperation.  This is an issue that has also been with us, and it will gain in prominence in the context of the new created CSTD working group.

Okay.  Plenty of work waiting for us.  So whoever is interested in being involved in a suggestion on enhanced cooperation -- oh, I see Andrea.  I have forgotten to give you the floor.  You have asked for the floor.  Is there anything urgent you have to add?  Please don't add any new theme.

>>ANDREA BECCALLI: Thank you, thank you.  No, I will not add a new theme.  Just wanted to affirm that as IFLA, we do strongly feel at this time for the IGF to move to new themes.  And my understanding was that there was a consensus reached yesterday in the open consultation.  So we just trust that.  And I would like to avoid seeing the MAG -- or the IGF prepare a meeting falling back into discussion that was already, I think, two or three years ago.  I think it is time to move ahead, and we just trust the importance.

Even the WSIS that just ended actually moved quite a lot from the previous forms of what WSIS has been.  And the IGF was usually always the lead in finding out cutting-edge themes and models.  Thank you.

>>CHAIR KUMMER: Thank you.  Jeff, you want to add?

Izumi, you would like to add something?

Adam wanted to add something?

>>ADAM PEAKE: Question.  Is there a target date for when the call for workshop proposals will be sent out?

(Discussion off microphone).

>>CHENGETAI MASANGO: Next week.

>>CHAIR KUMMER: Hopefully, yeah.  I mean, it has to be put -- but, basically, you can already refer to your respective interlocutors and your respective stakeholder groups that from three weeks from now is the deadline for the preliminary proposals.  And then we have end of April for the fully-fledged workshop proposals.  That is the concrete outcome of this meeting.

So if there are no -- Izumi.

>>IZUMI AIZU: Thank you.  One is a clarification question.  I agree with Jeff, that some kind of work to be done for the structure of the May session be linked to the workshops and any other new format unless the secretariat will do all the work.  I'm not taking the lead per se, but I think -- I would like to know what the conclusion is of that.

And, also, maybe it is a procedural question that is it the case that if -- for the preliminary submission and the full submission, what if you miss the preliminary one but still you are entitled to send the full proposal without going into the preliminary ones?  Am I right?

>>CHAIR KUMMER: Not really, no.  I thought the whole idea was precisely asking for a preliminary declaration of interest.  If you miss that one, okay, it is one workshop less.  We have achieved our game of reducing the number of workshops.  Honestly, we have three weeks.  We ask for a few sentences on an issue you are interested in.  That is doable.  And if you are interested in the IGF, you will watch the outcome of this meeting and this is the concrete outcome.  Please spread the news to your various lists and colleagues.

>>IZUMI AIZU: How about my previous question?

>>CHAIR KUMMER: What was your previous question?

>>IZUMI AIZU: Are you going to form a working group or not sort of the structure on the new ways as Jeff suggested?  I'm not clear enough.

>>CHAIR KUMMER: Up to a point, this will be taken into account by Mervi's working group.  The report of the MAG meeting will reflect that but my feeling is that it would be premature to define the structure before you have the content.  I think that will be the next phase then once we have the proposals in to see how best to link them.

Yes, Robert?

>>ROBERT GUERRA: Just a quick question, clarification.  So if the deadline is three weeks, does that mean that March 22nd is the deadline?  I think it just should be available a link put on the page soon enough so people can be directed.

>>CHAIR KUMMER: Yes, that's the idea.  Three weeks from now is March 22nd.  And the deadline for the workshop proposals is 30th of April.

Can I hand back to our Chairman to conclude the meeting?  And in doing so, I would like to thank you all for very constructive work.  I think we have, more or less, achieved what we set out to achieve.  I think I was not that ambitious that we could conclude on many of these issues, but I really think we made great progress.  Thank you, all.

And, please, Mr. Chairman, I will hand it over to you.

>>ASHWIN SASONGKO: Thank you, Mr. Kummer.  Distinguished delegates, ladies and gentlemen, it is as we planned, we finished the discussion.  Of course, we will continue the discussion through the e-mails and so on before we finalize everything.

I just want to add something beside the -- what you call it -- logistics and substance.  When the idea of the IGF was discussed in Indonesia, one thing where many people start to get excited is that they will meet all their friends all over the world.

And Indonesia is involved with all of you.  We have a strong civil society.  Domain name, for example, is also run by the community rather than the government, for example.  And they really want to see all their partners across the globe.  There is a set of operators who would like to see other operators.  They want to see how they look up.  The domain name operator also would like to see the address.  They would like the community that looks after the government (indiscernible).  They would like to see all their partners, too.

So, hopefully, the next IGF will be interesting not only in terms of the substance but also to get their partners all across the world to see them together.  So, hopefully, I can after we finalize all this substance and logistics and so on, hopefully we can come together to the Bali area and not only improve the Internet, not only improve the regulations, not only improve the governance but also improving friendships all across the group.  Thank you.

[ Applause ]

>>CHENGETAI MASANGO: Thank you very much.  See you in May and around, I suppose.  Thank you.