IGF 2018 First Open Consultations and MAG Meeting Day 2 Afternoon

 >>CHENGETAI MASANGO: Afternoon, Ladies and Gentlemen.  Just checking that the transcription is working.  Great.  Thank you.  Yes, I think we could start now.  So I hand it over to Lynn to ...

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Chengetai.  And we check that had the online participation is all set.  Heads nodding yes, so it is all set.  So we will resume the queue that we left just before lunch.  I'd like to go through those sort of six or seven speakers.  And if there's anybody else who is sort of dying to take the floor at this particular point, if you could signal that quite quickly, and then I would like to close that queue and see if we can kind of draw a line under at least some things I think we're starting to agree so that we can start to put a little bit of shape to some of our future discussions and obviously to the -- to the program overall.  So, Wisdom, you have the floor.  Thank you.

 >> Wisdom Donkor:  Thank you, Madam Chair.  And looking at the discussions before we went on the break, I have some few submissions I want to make.  Now, I'm looking at Internet beyond this -- the forum, IGF.  A lot of work has been done, much work has been done in regards to the Internet governance taking into consideration capacity building, cybersecurity and all that comes with that.  But then we also have to take into consideration job creation.  We have to look into this year's IGF carefully and then let me say aligned our activities to job creation.  It's solving some of these cybersecurity issues that we have globally.  Taking into consideration Africa, it looks as if we are sliding a little bit away from the core functions of governance.  They have their policies they also follow, and then one set policy is creating jobs.  So going into this year's IGF I will be very grateful if members can look into the direction of creating jobs.  Let me cite an example.  Example in Kenya, they use the Internet a lot in creating jobs and all that, and precise one such example, they create jobs for the youth.  The youth gets meaningful work doing cybercrime and all that goes down because they have something they are doing, so they forget about attacking someone to steal or something online. 

 Also civil societies should also try to look into some of the activities of government, what government is doing, and then try to align what it do with government activities.  You know, we can't do our work with government and government in our various countries will always come up with policies one way or the other, so civil society will have to see government as partners and then work closely instead of maybe creating gaps between the two.  That is one.  So I think this is what I have, most especially aligning this year's activities towards job creating.  And we should also have to begin to show an impact.  I think with that much work, with the capacity building and all that, we have to begin to show some of this resource that is going on in our various countries in order to show they results that IGF is doing.  Thank you, Chair.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Wisdom.  It's certainly a very important topic and one that's getting a lot of play across the world.  Anja.

 >> Anja Gengo:  Thank you very much.  I was asked to ask a comment by the 2013 host country representative Mr. Donny Utoyo, government of Indonesia.  To develop more engagement from the government, first, of course, we must have a high-call invitation to them.  For example, we should regularly invite the Minister although we cannot be sure he/she will attend or not.  But at least it will be an awareness developed inside the office and, hopefully they will be able to manage delegation to go to the IGF meetings.  Again, of course, the proposition about may work if we can deliver the invitation with proper and sufficient time.

 Secondly, since the end of the year is always a busy year for the government for financial and administrative affairs and full of next year's planning meetings, then if IGF meeting is held on November and December, it will be a challenge for the government to decide whether to send delegation or not. 

 The third one, while please consider if we're still having the panelists instead of active participants when we want to invite government, because in some certain level, the formal letter with proper and clear roles written on the letter will be the key point as a reference to decide to go or not. 

 Thank you.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you.  And thank you, Donny.  That's actually very useful.  Very interesting.  The next on the list we have Concettina.

 >> Concettina Cassa:  Thanks, Chair.  I have just some few remarks, and one is about communication.  I think it's very important to improve communication about Internet governance for (indiscernible), also about the Internet governance definition because there are so many people, stakeholders, that actually are not aware about Internet governance definition.  And this factor prevent them to be part of the community, of the IGF community.  So I don't know what is the resolution, so maybe a sort of short educational program, short movies that explain better to people so they can participate more actively inside the IGF community.  So, And the second point I want to pinpoint is about NRIs.  I think it is important to have a more close relationship between NRI because often it's not so easy to get the information to -- about the outcomes of all the -- these initiatives.  So maybe a platform, a common platform could be used to share outcomes that coming from the initiative so that the -- the NRIs can interact in a more direct way.

 And then the third point I want to rise about artificial intelligence.  I think it's very important.  This is a topic very important also in our country, in Israel, because we have a permanent task force on artificial intelligence, and maybe it could be useful to run a best practice forum on this topic.  Okay.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you.  Thank you, Constantine. 

 I announced a few minutes ago if anybody wanted to get in the queue for this particular set of discussions, they should do so.  I'm going to call the queue closed after Renata, and then see if we can draw maybe a couple of conclusions from the discussion here and try and advance the discussions a little more specifically going forward.  So we'll stop this series discussions after Renata. 

 But right now Zeina, you have the floor.

 >> Zeina Bou Harb:  Thank you, Chair. 

 When thinking about engaging more stakeholders, I would -- I would prefer to think about how to best diversify within the same stakeholder.  I mean, when it's a government representative -- government representative, it's always from the ICT sector while everything in our lives now is being digitized more and more every day.  Now we are talking about smart agriculture, we are talking about smart parking, about smart utilities, about digital health care.  So why don't we see within the MAG, for example, someone from other than the technological or the scientific sector?  I mean, for example, in Lebanon, we manage to have a representative from the Ministry of Health within the Lebanese MAG.  We also have someone from the Ministry of Municipalities, from the banking sector.  All these people are involved.  They are all impacted by the international Internet policies. 

 I think we should try to invite or to organize sessions related to new technologies and how -- and the services that is -- the services that are being applied recently in our lives.  This may bring new views, engage more people, and maybe it will be enrich and refresh the whole IGF process. 

 Thank you.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Very interesting idea, Zeina.  And maybe the way [audio difficulty] to the IGF itself, so -- but thank you.  That is specific to the MAG.  Representatives of the MAG come through the U.N. process led by [audio difficulty], and there are differing processes and differing levels of formality in every one of those regions.  But maybe that's something that the secretariat may reach out to those regional processes; could, in fact, make it clear that in fact ministers from different ministries would actually be very welcome and, in fact, useful in terms of things [audio difficulty] as well.  So maybe this is [audio difficulty] we could do for that.

 I think the other point on diversity, I think the number of things we all could do and we should certainly look at later as we [audio difficulty] appropriate [audio difficulty] on the sessions and [audio difficulty].

 Next in the queue is Kenta.

 >> Kenta Mochizuki:  Thank you, Chair.  I'm Kenta Mochizuki, acting MAG member from the business community. 

 First of all, I appreciate Ambassador Schneider's presentation and the chair's initial remarks this morning.  I fully support most of the key take-aways, and, yes, my (indiscernible) appetite for the more (indiscernible) IGF is high because we have ever had IGF for more than ten years.  And everywhere we have to take a trial-and-error approach for more successful IGF, but under inclusive, transparent, and impartial procedures within our mandate. 

 Now I'm going to make comments on four points.  First, actually before coming here, I attend the Internet governance conference of Japan and listen to various opinions and impressions from Japanese participants in the last few years' IGF, and many participants say that there are so many sessions in parallel that they could not participate even in some interesting sessions. 

 At the same time, they say there are a lot of similar workshops or (indiscernible) whose content and discussion points were almost the same.  In addition, according to them, some of the discussions were very superficial, and it seems like they wanted to see more in-depth discussions on various issues including the timely and hot topics.  I understand that there is a concern that newcomers may not follow such in-depth discussions, but we have to think about who the newcomers are.  Nobody -- If someone participate in IGF, it means that he or she has some interest in Internet-related public-policy issues, and in most cases he or she has fundamental knowledge of such issues.  So I do not think that we should avoid in this discussion for the newcomers. 

 Further, Japanese stakeholders say there are too many (indiscernible) and they could not understand why.  (Indiscernible) NRIs and (indiscernible) support such initiatives, we have to reconsider the number of NRIs collaborative sessions and the main sessions there, and it might be better that both collaborative and the main sessions are subject to MAG (indiscernible) process.

 Regarding of the participation of governments and the private sectors, I completely support what Susan from the United States and others said that we have to think about how to increase the number of participants from both sectors.  In this regard, as Ben said in this morning, we have to think about how we can give them some incentives to attend the IGF, like speaking slots.  From the perspective, it might be a good idea to divide (indiscernible) forum into two and have a governmental forum and industrial group-led forum whose selection process is the same as that of the workshop.  But this is just my mere opinion, so please do not take seriously though.

 [ Laughter ]

 Third point regarding overarching theme and subtheme as well as the selection of workshops, I fully support what (saying name), Arnold, and the others said in order to reduce the number of sessions (indiscernible). 

 First and finally, with regard to Geneva messages, as Cristian from Canada and others said yesterday, I fully support and we should continue and even expand the method (indiscernible) will be necessary.  I took the lead on main session on digital economy in last year's IGF and got involved in the drafting of our messages.  It was quite useful, and as Maria said yesterday, I have been thinking about how I can bring our Geneva messages on digital economy to WGO member states which decided to initiate exploratory work on the rule-making of the trade aspect of e-commerce.  I have been working together closely with our government and hope I will have a chance to make a presentation in front of (indiscernible) negotiators.  I respectfully request each MAG member to think about bringing all or some of the previous Geneva messages each decision makers so the decision makers can effect the result of our previous IGF into their policy or rule-making.  Thank you.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Kenta.  That was a very rich set of suggestions.  Appreciate it.  Thank you.  We'll come back and see where we think we might have some kind of broader consensus in just a few minutes. 

 Next in the queue I have Jennifer.  Jennifer, you have the floor.

 >> Jennifer Chung:  Thank you, Madam Chair, for granting me the floor.  My name is Jennifer Chung for the record. 

 Speaking on your question this morning to the MAG, bold innovation is something that should be taken up by the MAG, not just in the IG process.  This was heard from the community input yesterday as well as the written input that we received. 

 Echoing the really apt metaphor that Rudolf used this morning, modern art is bold.  There could be many fresh ways to experience and enjoy Internet governance from newcomers to even very long-standing and seasoned members of the IG community. 

 So maybe just three brief points.  We heard a lot yesterday about themes and also this morning.  I think that there is a very good suggestions by colleague this morning to focus on themes.  Having this focus would really bring together a cohesive program going forward.  And also, the devil is always in the details.  How we can do it in the MAG in a very fair and balanced manner is something we have to pay very close attention to.  Perhaps there could be something done on the back-end by the secretariat to code this information when we receive it but, of course, I'm not going to go into this discussion now.  Just a very practical example.  In the Asia-Pacific regional IGF this year, they have introduced a webinar for the community on how to put together proposals from themes to ensuring a full range of balanced stakeholders as well as innovative workshop formats so we don't have workshops of panels with speeches and prepared slides for -- you know, that's not something valuable for participants.  Perhaps there could be something that could be considered.  This is very valuable to newcomers to the IG space because we want to be as welcoming as possible.

 So my second point is there is a lot of input as well this morning as well as yesterday on the value of the NRIs and the Internet governance ecosystem.  So the proliferation of these initiatives have really greatly enhanced and broadened the Internet governance dialogue.  Many of these initiatives have grown up in an organic, bottom-up multistakeholder and non-hierarchical way, and this linkage really greatly enhances the IG ecosystem as we know it.  And I think the MAG needs to be very cognizant of this fact, and I'm sure a lot of MAG members do echo this thought that I have as well.

 And I guess my third very brief point is the outputs.  I heard a lot of input yesterday about, you know, we have outputs from the IGF.  We have outputs that are in the form of intersessionals, we have outputs in the forms of workshop reports.  How we can package and analyze this is the most important.  I think Ben said this morning, if we can make this easily searchable and useful for further dissemination, we can make this even better.  How and by whom this can be done can be discussed by the MAG. 

 In addition, the Geneva messages is a very welcome innovation and addition.  There is a really rich trove of data and output from the IGF and all the intersessional work, so it is how we can pick it up and use it in a valuable manner which is most important. 

 Thank you.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Jennifer.  I think the last one that talks to kind of the trove of in terms of past information is a project that's worthy in and of itself in terms of how we can do that.  I think there are some very useful things we can learn from the Geneva messages -- I think Thomas wants the floor -- that we can absolutely apply going forward, and maybe even to some additional parts of 2017 without a lot of -- Thomas, you want the floor?

 >>THOMAS SCHNEIDER: Thank you, and sorry for stepping in.  I have to disappear in five minutes for an urgent meeting but I'll be back hopefully very soon.  About the Geneva messages, they are something that we produced as an officer.  Use it whenever you want, whenever you think it's useful.  And also, see how people react, how we can maybe improve them, make them even more precise. 

 Just one comment about the merging of the workshops.  As you have just said, the devil is in the details.  Everybody is complaining that there are too many workshops at the same time, too many parallel meetings.  On the other hand, something that we hear that we need to take in mind by many people is that those who need to get funding to come, they somehow need to be able to say they have a role.  So this is a reason for many to say if I'm the organizer of the workshop or if I'm a panelist on a workshop, that gives me a reason to apply for funding.  But I mean, this is a problem that can be overcome.  So instead of saying I'm a panelist, if you say I'm a speaker, that doesn't mean you're sitting on the panel but nevertheless you have a very important role to speak, or if you say I'm a co-organizer instead of I'm organizing my own workshop, and so on and so forth.  So we can merge and maybe have less things in parallel.  But we need to keep in mind what the reasons are, why we always end up with having too many workshops and too many things in parallel, and then maybe find solutions for these reasons that help us to merge.  Thank you very much.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Thomas.  You are free to jump in at any point in time. 

 Thomas says he has to step out at 3:30 for roughly a half hour, but then he'll come back. 

 Next in the queue was Israel.

 >> Israel Rosas:  Yes, thank you, Chair.  Israel Rosas for the record. 

 Just to build on my past intervention, I have a (indiscernible) from (indiscernible) about the (indiscernible) general proceedings of the IGF.  Perhaps this is the first step towards a more friendly publication, more friendly format; I don't know.  On the other side, thinking about the newcomers' involvement, perhaps -- and I'm thinking just out loud -- we could try and promote a newcomers' session during the day zero, aided, perhaps, by the secretariat and MAG members; some kind of introductory session like the orientation session for new MAG members.  Perhaps it could be a good option to try to involve the newcomers to every meeting.  Thank you.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: I think your last point in particular is important, and we should take that up as a separate subject because there have been a couple of different forays to try and support newcomers as they come in, and we should maybe do some postmortems on those experiences over the last few years and maybe see what we do going forward, but it's a very critical piece. 

 I think there's a similar discussion, by the way, on youth.  And I know Anja and some of the folks are in the process of some consultations that actually look at youth and what's the right way to bring in and engage youth deeply and.  I think in maybe a few more weeks or a month they'll be ready for that. 

 Just when we're talking about communications, and because I remember, I haven't had a chance to read yet but I saw it pop up in my email, some -- there was a workshop and there were some surveys and polls down which is how do you talk about Internet governance to family and friends.  And they've actually just published a report, and I'm dying to read it because I'm sure we've all had discussions where we're talking to people and their eyes glaze over within like 30 seconds or something.  So I think that could also be very, very helpful with the work, having seen the surveys.  And I think that that's useful and something we can build off of going forward as well. 

 Next we have Renata and then Timea.  Renata is remote or online.  So, Ji, I'll put you in at the queue at the end.  But we were trying to close this and move to the next session.  Renata.

 >> On behalf of Renata, she sent a message.  She wants us to read it. 

 I'd like to address the blocks that seem intersessional and increasing participation from various stakeholders.  Perhaps intersessionals could consider having a standing committee of subject experts with geo stakeholders and gender balance.  This would be good for outreach to several SGs.  The public digital economy is an important pervasive one and could be transferred also in presence and information of those expert panels.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Thank you, Renata.  That's a very interesting idea.

 Timea, you have the floor.

 >>TIMEA SUTO:  Thank you.  Chair.  This is Timea Suto speaking.  I'll try to be very brief. 

 Just to highlight a few ideas that I heard from colleagues today and yesterday.  One, better communication and marketing; two, less parallel sessions; and, three, better and low engagement from government and private sector. 

 Just a few ideas how to implement these suggestions. 

 One would be to continue to build on what has been done before.  Create a searchable repository, if you will, of existing outputs of IGF and policy work, by the BPF, and CMV and also intersessional reports and main session reports.  And perhaps finding ways to highlight unwritten outputs of the IGF like case studies of success stories of cooperative projects that occurred at the IGF as well. 

 Another thing I would like to highlight.  Perhaps having topical sessions would be better.  I find it easier to explain Internet governance and the IGF to those who are not yet part of this community to topics that are already on their agenda.  So we have to make sure we have something to offer for every community that we would like to see at the IGF, so they have something to discuss and engage on. 

 And I'd like to get behind the idea, as we said before, to have well-defined teams, three or four maybe -- that can be gathered from workshop tags, for example, that we analyze every year and see how sessions and workshops around those teams.  And perhaps we can have a fifth one to allow issues and hot topics.  So these would be a couple ideas I'd like to highlight.  Thank you.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Thank you, Timea.  Sorry.  Very helpful.  Ji, you have the floor. 

 >>JI HAOJUN:  Thank you, Madam Chair.  I want to share a little bit best practice in terms of interaction between different stakeholders in China. 

 In the past different stakeholders from China, from Asia, we are very much divided and separated.  People don't know each other and talk to each other.  But, since the Geneva IGF at the end of last year, some of our colleagues take initiative to set up WeChat chatting groups on the phone.  And  officials from different government ministries, from different institutions, universities, they're going to the same group.  So people are in constant contact with each other.  They share new ideas and latest development and coordinate on joint projects.  So we are -- indeed, we are really taking advantage of the latest development of science and technology for such efforts.  And I don't know how -- if we can use, you know, the other countries.  They can use such kind of system of Facebook or other networks to establish this kind of mechanism.  But WeChat is really good.  And I advise colleagues from other countries to download WeChat app.  And it works in Apple system or Android system, both systems.  And it's really a good networking platform.  It is much user friendly than WebEx.  Thank you.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Thank you.  I actually wonder if there's a small case study where you might outline what you actually just talked about with respect to that project so we understand what some of the parameters are of it.  The platform is not so important.  I think what's so important or more important is how the idea came about, what is encouraging people to do that, and what's the benefits you're actually getting from that project.  So that's something which would be -- try one of Timea's earlier points and really pull in some learnings from other parts of the world as well.  It would be useful.

 Let me -- I want to move in a moment to sort of discussion of prioritization and focus and main themes.  Hopefully, those all come together. 

 I do want to underline a few things I think there's sort of some emerging agreement on, although I think we don't need -- not really necessary at this point in the process to dive into a lot more detail on them.

 So, for instance, there's certainly a lot we've heard about communications and marketing.  That's actually very broad.  I think we should come back to that at another point and figure out what we can all do.  Maybe we can go through the transcript.  And I've taken my own notes.  I'm sure we kind of pulled together the set of suggestions we've had so far so we can have a coherent discussion around the cons and marketing components. 

 I did hear support for carrying the Geneva messaging concept forward.  I guess they're probably called IGF messages or something. 

 I think from those of us that participated in that process last time, there's probably some things we can do to continue to evolve them appropriately.  But I also think the idea that would apply them to more sessions than just the main sessions is also an interesting idea.  I think those are some of the things we could talk about going forward. But it seemed like as one of the major innovations, if you will, last year that there's support for continuing that and evolving it appropriately as we go forward. 

 Let me just see if there's anybody that wants to object to that kind of call for my reading of the agreement I think we have in the room.  Does that seem fair?  Online I will look in the chatroom as well and ask for Anja's help in staying on top of that too.  Is that a fair summary of some of the Geneva messages conversation?

 >> Thank you, Chair. 

 Can I just offer a very minor modification, which is the Geneva messages, yes, like you said, extending from the main session to the other sessions.  But perhaps later, if we do agree on this thematic area or thematic focus, maybe messages by team also might be useful because people often search by theme.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  I think that's very useful.  I think every one of these are big discussions.  Because we can also say that if we were -- one of the working groups for improvement suggestions was that each one of the sessions should be very specific about the policy questions they're meant to address.

 If we actually did that a little more consistently and a little more specifically and drove our sessions to address those, that would make a nice segue into the message as well. 

 There's a whole thread of discussion we can have around what can we do to immediately make what's happening in the IGF and probably, hopefully, even national IGF and some of the other activities, more immediately useful and also that, obviously supports, output in marketing communication, too.  There's lots of things we've touched on there and, obviously, a key area. 

 The other one we've heard is we heard it said differently lots of requests for prioritization, focus.  Some people say lesser sessions, lesser parallel tracks, which to me is the same thing as prioritization or focus. 

 We've had a number of suggestions over all of the processes, stock taking from IGF.  Compilation, open mics, consultations here, et cetera, which, actually, I think would suggest different approach to at least some parts of the IGF program which might be we could use words like a little more thoughtful.  Some people use the word "curated."  Some people talk about coming inside ways while we also do the bottom-up.  But my takeaway from that is that people are saying the MAG should be even more thoughtful about the program we're putting together, how it's streamed, how it fits, what the intent is.  Make sure there's both an appropriate mix of themes and also not too many.  That wasn't said all that elegantly.  But I think there's a whole series of one day streams by topic.  And we had suggestions we might actually have a theme but spread it across several days.  This is the same thing.  That implies the MAG has to step in more and really kind of nurture or curate the overall program a little bit more. 

 Maybe the next thing to do would be to talk about main themes.  If we think that the main themes have some alignment to the areas of phoning focus, smaller number of topics, if we could have a session on the main themes, we could see how -- the sort of things we come up with.  And then that might actually lead us into determining how we might actually tie some of the other pieces of the program work to those main themes, which might be a way to kind of back in, if you will, to a structural discussion but do it around specific topics. 

 So I see we have Raquel and Liesyl, and Ji just put his flag up here as well.  So I'll stop there and let me get some comments.  Next steps. 

 Raquel, you had the floor?

 >>RAQUEL GATTO: Yes, Madam Chair. I apologize that I had to drop off.  That's the pitfall of having the WSIS.  I had the panel to cover.  I raised my hand before, but you gave the perfect scenario to make my comments, which is based on the topic or thematic approach that is needed for IGF.  And it comes together with the idea of having less sessions and less repetitive discussions and not having the same speakers all over.  I do agree that we need to have this -- and in my experience, it's much better.  And to me I think I tackle on this.  If you put out a team and people are intending to participate and the idea of merging them all together -- so say, work day one, morning, we're going to tackle cyber security.  And then all the workshops, all main sessions are going to feed into the processional work.  This would make, one, people attending the sessions and not being all over the place. 

 It also helps on preparing for the IGF  and bringing the high-level attendance we spoke about yesterday as well. 

 We could do two parallel sessions, if needed.  But the thematic approach, if needed.  But I think that's more than that, we are going to spread the audience.  We are going to dilute the discussions of the IGF.  And then we can combine with other ideas regarding the Geneva message.  So the IGF messages, as we make them happen.  And, by now, that's my main point.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Thank you, Raquel. 

 Liesyl, you have the floor.  Maybe just for a moment -- you weren't here this morning.  We went through introductions.

 >>LIESYL FRANZ:  I know. Apologize for that.  I was going to go ahead and do that.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  You were at the WSIS forum, and you were in and out.  Maybe, if you say the name, country, affiliation.  And we've also asked people if they can to say a few words about why the IGF is important and why it matters to them.  If that's putting you on the spot, you can come back to that later.

 >>LIESYL  FRANZ:  First of all, apologies for not being here during the introductions, I don't mean to take time to do that.  My name is Liesyl Franz, and I'm with the United States Department of State. 

 This is my third year on the MAG, but my 13th IGF.  I participated in a lot of planning processes as a non-MAG member and observer as well.  I think that the cumulative conversation we've had over the course of the past couple days as to why the IGF is important to me, certainly, but also to the U.S. as the premiere global multistakeholder forum for global dialogue on --

 and I put policy issues as my colleague, Susan, said yesterday.  I think the richness of the dialogue that happens there, as other people said, inform other processes.  And in government but also in other stakeholder endeavors as well.

 So for us it's a very rich platform.

 I think that's it on interest side.  And apologies for taking the mic. 

 You've done a nice summary, Lynn.  But perhaps I could touch on a couple things.  One is I tend to get a little bit mechanical, I suppose, in how things are going to work.  And I think that with the fantastic ideas and thoughts about being a little bit voracious, I suppose, in having appetite for innovation as we look toward the next IGF or boldness, I think that there are tools that we can use to do that. 

 One may be reducing the number of parallel sessions.  I won't say workshops.  But sessions that are happening at any one time so that each of the ones that are happening are as robust as they can be, both in content and in participation and interaction.  That may be an interesting way to provide that.  It would require discipline on our part as MAG and communication with the community.  But I think those aren't insurmountable.  We have a great tool that's gotten better and better each year in the workshop proposal forum and the workshop proposal process that we can continue to improve and curate or utilize as a tool for trying to integrate the various aspects of the IGF life, whether it's the intersessional work, the NRIs, messages. However, we want to, we can use that tool.  But then we have to actually utilize the output of that tool in our own deliberations.  And on -- I guess I just have a question.

 How are people are feeling about it.  So I would just like to table that as we go forward to think about how best to do something like that for looking ahead.  Thank you.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  And maybe at an appropriate point we could -- I don't know if Thomas or Chengetai or something could talk a little bit about what the process was last year just so we had that as a consistent understanding.  If we do that before we leave and go home tomorrow, I think would be good because we have the benefit of everybody's attention while we're here.  Thank you, Liesyl.  Those are good. 

 Rasha, you have the floor.

 >>RASHA ABDULLA:  Thank you, Lynn. 

 >>RASHA ABDULLA:  Just on the main sessions I think maybe we need to clarify amongst ourselves what are the objectives of the main sessions.  What do we suppose are the differences between the main sessions and a regular session? I suppose one thing is they're supposed to be more high profile.  The obvious difference for me is there are three hours long, and I think that's way too long.

 I suggest that we shorten them to two hours.  I would actually think that that brings up the likelihood of high-level government officials to participate.  Because to ask them to give up a 3-hour chunk of their time is just a bit too much to ask.

 So it's either that they'll come in, say the words, and leave, which means they're not going to listen to what the other stakeholders have to say, or they might not come at all.

 And I think just everybody including -- everybody in the audience gets really tired by the end of two hours.  I think three hours is way too long.

 So I suggest making the main session two hours long.  And that would actually give more time to other sessions which we, hopefully, would then cut the number of speakers on.  So it should balance itself out.  Or if we consider the idea of cutting out day zero, that would also help.  Thank you.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Thank you, everybody.

 Let me just suggest -- we'll go to Ji in a moment and come back and finish the queue.  Maybe afterwards we can move to either start with a quick high-level overview and main sessions and guidelines, if we can get prepared to put those on screen or put them in the reference documents so people can pull them up and look at them as a basis.  But talk about the purpose of them.  Not -- at this point, the duration.  The purpose what we want to intend what we mean when we say we have a main session.  And then I think quickly morph into what would some potential themes or topics be for those main sessions.  I think that would start to get us to, hopefully, a discussion on prioritization and focus.  Because, if we're having discussion around main themes, the -- to me, that is coincident with they must be topics that we feel are important and really topical and worthy of the attention. 

 So maybe we can sort of get 2 for 1 at that point.

 Is there anybody in the room -- normally, I would have looked to -- I don't know, maybe, Susan or Liesyl on the guideline having done some work on some of those guidelines. 

 Is somebody willing to do that if we pulled that up in 10 minutes, 15 minutes?  Maybe I'll just let you and Susan -- we'll pull it up on the screen, and we'll make sure it's in the reference document or easy to find.  And you and Susan can confirm amongst yourselves and determine just real quick high-level introduction in terms of the mainly the purpose.

 Not the logistic and mechanics and specifics, just going to the high-level purpose.  Again, I'm kind of conscious, as we do this, we -- if you think about it, we have -- over half the MAG members are new and another third are only within their first year.  And I know the first year is a little overwhelming.  So I think taking some time to familiarize ourselves with some of the pieces of the process will be helpful.

 Chengetai is just saying that they are, in fact, in the reference documents which are on the home page for this particular meeting, so you can find the main session guidelines there.  Ji, you have the floor.

 >>JI HAOJUN: Thank you, Madam Chair.  My name is Ji Haojun from China.  I'm a bit lost because colleagues are jumping from different topics to topics.  So I don't know what should I touch on. 

 First, I would like to say a few words about main sessions.  It is good that we make -- you know, arrange the main sessions in an interactive manner, but interaction also have its problems.  You know, ministers from different countries have different characters, they speak different language, and to always -- and some of them are particularly appointed.  They are not supposed to be engaging in very technical discussions.  So I'm having a rethinking about this, whether we should go back -- go a little bit back to our traditional format.  But we give enough time to the ministers, the high-level or the main session, let them to deliver their -- their statement in a ceremonial manner.  Although that may be not so effective, but this would encourage, you know, ministers from all countries -- more ministers to come to our annual meeting.  Otherwise, you know, if -- if we show the -- the last year's videos to our ministers, many ministers will be discouraged to come.  Oh, this is scaring them.  They ask so many difficult questions, and it -- it's -- it's a problem.  You know, sometimes really try to be better would be the enemy of good.  And we need to think about that.

 Regarding the theme of the -- of the whole meeting or the main -- the main -- the theme of the main sessions, we -- it's always about peace and development and about protection of, you know, human rights, et cetera, and we are -- all our job is focused or goes around the 2030 sustainable development goal.  But in the past we tend to focus on the always -- most of the time we tend to focus on the opportunities provided by new technologies.  And how do we make sure that we people in different countries, you know, are not left behind.  But now technology is developing so fast.  Some technologies have disruptive effects in terms of security, employment, and even future of the whole human race.  So my view is that maybe next year or in -- in the years to come we do better focusing more on the challenging side of the new technologies.  The disruptive effects.  And we -- as our Swiss colleague said, that really we need to go into the technical details, difficult things.  People may not understand and also the policy and legal issues.  For example, the blockchain technology, and this is good but criminals and proliferators are using this technology to bypass security council resolutions and they're using this technology to do money laundering, et cetera, or transfer money among different members of the transnational criminal syndicates.  All these things, we have to think about these things.  This is the main thing.

 Regarding the workshops, I found that in some workshops they may have eight or ten panels, panelists, and people really don't have chance to interact with them.  You ask a short question, you make a little bit comments, but such chance is very limited.  I -- on several occasions I want to make a little bit of my own comments, but I was denied the chance or simply would be stopped when I was speaking.  So my suggestion that we better limit the number of panelists for each workshop or open forum so that we can make the -- the workshops more interactive.  And another thing is about gender balance.  We all know that in the cyber or Internet world males are more involved.  That's a reality.  And to have -- to have a better gender balance in our workshops is good.  But we have to be realistic.  And I don't make that, you know, the enemy of good.  And that's my -- my impression.  Thank you.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: I'm not too sure what Chengetai was saying but gender balance, just to come to the last point and work backwards, is obviously very important in the world at large and certainly within the U.N. system as well.  There's a goal of parity that's 50/50 by 2030 or so.  And, in fact, this year one of the things that delayed the MAG appointment announcement was a review of the percentage of women on the -- I think last year -- these numbers are roughly right but not 100% -- I think last year we might have had 41 or 42% or something, 43.  Because a number of MAG -- female MAG members rotated off and because the secretariat was trying to get to 50 members, we went to 39% women, which is obviously not parity, parity, but it's not parity this year.  It's not horrible, frankly, for this space, but the -- the U.N. and the secretariat general is so insistent upon really paying attention to gender balance and improving that -- was actually insistent that we go back and -- I say "we" only because I was involved in trying to explain the process.  When you work for community processes and four of them, the output you get at the top is not -- is something you can just go back and change quickly.  But the secretariat and the secretariat's office actually worked to see what can do to drive the balance difference.  That was one of the reasons Chengetai said the other day we were back up to 55 MAG members and that 46% women here.  So I think it's clear that it can be done.  And only underline that because I don't think we ever want to look for excuses to walk away from things that people are saying is important and (indiscernible).

 >>CHENGETAI MASANGO: I was just going to say that as far as the attendees were concerned, it was 43%.  So I think we can translate those into the panelists.  We should be able to if 43% of attendees were female.  So yeah.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Very good point as well.  Some of your other points I think we'll actually come to, Ji, as we actually move forward with the various, you know, main theme or -- one other point, though.  In the beginning I think there was a conflation between the opening ceremony and main sessions.  Typically within an IGF program, assuming three-hour slots, there have been eight main blocks.  One of those is used for the official opening ceremony, when the premises are turned over to the U.N., and there's been a high-level -- that's where the high-level speeches came in.  And then there's been a closing ceremony on the last day which we have six sessions in the middle that are called main sessions.  Those were actually determined by the MAG, who previously would say we think we need a main session on this important theme or this important topic.  And the MAG actually takes responsibility for defining that theme, defining the topic, driving the session and staffing it.  When we say main theme, we're talking about that section in the middle. 

 There is still another discussion to be had on the opening ceremony because the point you make is one that's made very often which is if you (audio problem) VIPs, really high-level people to attend, they tend to insist on speaking slots.  So what the Swiss did this year was try to find a way -- similar to what WSIS forum is experimenting with across the way there -- to allow these individuals to have senior roles but in a way that actually is of interest to -- to the participants.  Like I said, the funny thing about it is nobody wants to sit through 40 speeches of five minutes long but everybody wants one.  You know, I was over there yesterday because, you know, trying to do some outreach for the IGF.  There were less than 100 people in the room of an event that has 2,000 or so. 

 So I think we've got some -- another set of discussions to have on both the opening ceremony, plus the VIP and how do we both get more VIPs in and what's the right level of engagement with them.  But I think we should just keep the main session, small number of themes separate for the moment from the opening ceremony, how do we attract VIPs.  But maybe before you leave today, if there's anything that we want to come back on in that last session, we'll do that while Thomas is here with us.

 Right now in the queue, I think we had quite a queue growing.  Rasha has already spoke.  Sylvia.

 >> Sylvia Cadena.  Thank you, Madam Chair. 

 I have four points that I want to make.  I'm a new MAG member, but I've been involved in supporting the IGF since WSIS, since before IGF.  And one of the things that I've been hearing a lot about is tagging, cataloging, and collecting, and analyzing sessions outcomes, trying to track outcomes that are produced after the IGF.  And with the -- the due respect of the secretariat, I -- I don't really know the latest status of this initiative, but maybe some of you remember the Friends of the IGF Web site that was done back in 2015 as an effort -- as a community effort to be given to the IGF to track, tag and catalog and organize the resources that were available at the time.  And there was plenty of ideas about other things to add to them.  So like block articles, books, things that other speakers and different IGFs were able to put together, and it had a simple search engine, and it evolved into -- into a very interesting project.  And if I remember, my memory doesn't fail me, the reason why it was not possible to adopt it or embed it somehow into the proceedings of the IGF were some set of U.N. rules that didn't allow that to happen, if I don't remember correctly.

 So I think it would be interesting to remember that there are efforts done by the community in the past, but there are also restrictions on how we can participate in that process.  And maybe the enthusiasm of the community sometimes doesn't -- there is no way to translate it into something that works in this space.  So it would be good to know, like what can be done and what cannot so that this -- so the suggestions we make and the work that we put up to -- as volunteers to help this out is not going to waste.  It is a really interesting tool that I think if I -- maybe Susan Chalmers mentioned something like that because she was the leading force behind it, can talk a little bit more about it.  But it was a very good way of marketing and packaging resource of the IGF that actually helped to raise money for the IGF.  And as we go into a conversation around funding, packaging results is one of the things that sponsors and donors would like to see to be able to contribute.

 My second point is about the Geneva messages and the role of rapporteurs.  I think that the role of rapporteurs in the U.N. system, it is very, very important.  Probably not the way it is applied to the workshop sessions, but the rapporteur is basically doing a summary of the workshop that it is -- it could be like the -- the ones out on the Geneva platform, for example, that you go and you -- you read them and you know maybe their summary is better than the rapporteur of the session you can come back with.  But my suggestion would be that what if we consider to structure the role of rapporteur around the themes that the MAG decides.  So if there are themes for the conference and there is a rapporteur that is voted in or elected or assigned as a group, I don't know, by the community, by the MAG, I don't know exactly what the mechanism might be, then this role of figuring out, okay, what's going on with cybersecurity or with artificial intelligence, then there is someone that can actually take all those summaries and make some -- a contribution from the NRIs, from the dynamic coalitions, from the working groups, from wherever that contribution comes from.  So it is a summary that actually is a rapporteur on the subject for the conference.

 Then my third point, coming back to our colleague from China, is twofold.  He highlighted how important it is to focus on the challenges that the Internet technologies face.  And although I agree that there are many challenges, I have spent half of my life working to connect people onto Internet, and I don't want to spend the other half before I retire not scaring the hell out of people so that they actually do get connected.  So, yes, I value and I appreciate the Internet.  Apologies for the language, but that gets me worked out.  It is -- it is -- it is very important that we always highlight the positive impact that the Internet has in the lives of people.  No government, no donor, no private company wants to be involved in pornography ring or credit card cloning system.  No one wants to go those ways.  If we only focus on all the bad things that happen on the Internet, we will not save it, let's say.  We will only restrict it.  So I -- I really hope that, yes, challenges are discussed and all the bad things that happen on the Internet are discussed, and on the cybersecurity aspect we focus on how to manage those, but that we always keep track that we are here to try to connect the unconnected.  We are here to try to connect the next billion.  We are using the Internet as a tool to achieve all of those (indiscernible).  So it is mentioned across.  So it will -- it will be like shooting ourselves in the foot if we just go on the direction of only talking the bad stuff or the challenges only.  It is important to highlight the positive contributions that the Internet makes (indiscernible).

 And the final one on the gender balance, I think that, yes, diversity can be expressed in the many different ways:  geography, points of view, intergenerational, different abled.  And you can -- you can build a whole panel based on that and have men that represent the different abled, different nationalities, different cultures.  But women are half of the world population anyway.  So we -- you can have us or you cannot have us in different spaces, and that doesn't mean that we are not supposed to be there.  So it is an effort, it is a conscious effort that we all need to make to make sure that the capable, talented, skilled CEOs and presidents and wonderful women that are leading the industry are part of this process.  There are many out there.  Also Parliamentarians that can be participating in this.  We just need to find them and invite them and entice them to be here, and they will.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Sylvia.  To your first comment, the Friends of the IGF, my understanding is that the Friends of the IGF, which had been a project led by Susan Chalmers with funding from various places, is now with CGIWR and it continues to be a useful tool.  There are some points of kind of collaboration between the two.  I think it's actually linked from the IGF Web site still.  But that was the current status.  It wasn't possible at that point in time to pull it into the IGF for a couple of reasons.  I think part of it was funding and resource and caretaking of it in terms of resource skills.  And then also, of course, doing that, you need to be sure that it follows U.N. rules with respect to language and things like that.  So that was -- I do think it is a very useful tool and we should make sure that we're doing as much with it as possible. 

 Ji, I don't think Sylvia was really responding directly in a way that really requires a response back.  I think it was more kind of talking to the kind of environment we're actually for generally here on a number of topics and things. 

 Okay.  Ji, you have the floor exceptionally.  Thank you, Madam.  When I talk about we focused on challenges, I don't mean that we are not encouraging people to make -- make more use of the new technologies.  What I mean that, like, for example, (indiscernible) try to open shops without attendants and you can, you know -- all the outcomes to bear, nobody is (indiscernible) that means if such kind of shops proliferate and in the future all the shops without attendants, many people lose their jobs.  That's what I mean.  You know, the (indiscernible) or disruptive side of the technologies.  When I say that we should be realistic about gender balance, I don't want to make myself enemy of the females in this room.  But, you know, we should -- we try our best to -- to strike a better balance among, you know, different genders.  But sometimes it happens that on certain topics it is simply very difficult to find a female or other gender experts to talk.  And we have to respect the reality.  That's it.  Thank you. 

 >>LYNN ST. AMOUR:  Well, I do appreciate the attention given to it and the effort, you know, as we work to address all the diversity boundaries.  So thank you.  Thank you, Ji. 

 Next in the queue was Omar.  Omar, you have the floor.

 >>OMAR MANSOOR ANSARI:  Thank you, Madam Chair.

 It's also difficult sometimes to find a male expert to talk about a certain topic.  So yeah.

 [ Applause ]

 You're welcome. 

 My name is Omar Ansari.  I'm a MAG member from Afghanistan.

 Madam Chair, initially, it would happen that the MAG members would propose workshops.  And there would be speakers in too many workshops.  And also the organizers of too many workshops.  So that was kind of like kind of blocking others, the non-MAG members to organize workshops and the speakers. 

 So the MAG decided to limit the MAG member activities to organizing main sessions only and some other sessions which you might want to share with the MAG because there's a new crowd who might want to know some details about that. 

 So limiting the number of speeches to three was for MAG members.  It wasn't for others, right?  So I just want to build a clarity on that.  If it's only for MAG members to be speakers at maximum three sessions, then that's fine.  If for others I would not support that.  Because if you have an expert from traveling thousands of miles and he's only there for a week, why shouldn't he or she be utilized more?  That's number one issue.  Number two is there was a comment about having sessions on same topic at the same time.   You know, like an example was given if all cyber security sessions could be in the morning of day one. 

 That would be a problem.  Because many people would want to attend different -- or follow one track on, let's say, cyber security.  It would be a little bit challenging for them to attend multiple sessions on the same topic to follow the track.  And also for the speakers, experts who wouldn't be speaking there.  They would be interested to contribute to different sessions at different times.  If you put them in the same time or same day, it's going to be a little bit of a challenge. 

 Let me share with you, which would support my previous comment about not having male experts on certain topics.  By 2019, there will be about six million job openings in cyber information security, but only 4.5 million security professionals will be available by then. 

 So there would be  and there are certain areas where we don't have any experts.

 So, if we have one expert and not giving them opportunity to speak in different sessions, that would be quite a challenge for the IGF.

 On number of the duration of the main session, I was the organizer of main session on trade agreements in 2016, IGF.  And we were assigned two or three hours, which wasn't sufficient, to complete the topic.  Because the complexity of the topic and the diversity of the speakers and the attendees in the discussion, it was quite a new topic.  And we weren't able to cover it -- give it full coverage.  I think three hours for certain sessions, when we call it a main session, there should be a difference between a main session and a workshop.  Workshop is 90 minutes.

 And, if we make the main session, like, 120 minutes, there wouldn't be a big difference.

 Another example is -- in IGF 2017 we had the main session on NRIs where we had 23 NRIs to speak. 

 So now you divide the 90 minutes on 23, how much time do you get to cover a topic?  So it's going to be a challenge to reduce the time from three hours.  But I would also support keep it -- keeping it open to the proposal. Because only MAG members are eligible to propose, organize a main session.  Based on previous analysis, there hasn't been any change on that. 

 And then the MAG could look at the complexity of the topic, how much time -- what each -- you know, main session required.  And then we can decide on whether three hours should be sufficient or would we reduce it to two hours or, you know, make another decision.  Thank you --

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Thank you, Omar. 

 Let me just clarify one thing.  The workshops are not necessarily 90 minutes long.  They could have been 30 minutes long.  Following the new session formats, they could have done two hours.  Really the way -- doesn't mean we need to do this going forward.  But the main sessions were differentiated because they were themes that the MAG said were important, were worthy of MAG attention, MAG oversight, MAG definition. And therefore -- thank you -- the assumption was they required a longer slot.  They were in the bigger rooms and they get interpretation. 

 Workshops were everything else.  Every other type of format.  We're trying to introduce other types of formats and session formats and things. 

 Right now we want to talk about is not so much whether it's three hours or two hours, but really get to the purpose of main sessions and some possible themes. 

 So I'd like to come back to what we said a few moments ago, which is complete going through the queue.  Susan or Liesyl volunteered to talk to the main sessions in terms of what their purpose is so we have the same high-level overview of how we historically have thought about these main sessions.  We're talking about 5-ish slots over the course of the IGF historically. 

 And then quickly I'd like to come to some themes so we get some idea of whether or not we're able to come down to a prioritized list, which is what I would assume would be kind of equated to the main themes.  Or whether or not we've got 20 in front of us, and we need to figure out a different process and try to bring these things back to closure.

 So not so much on some of the logistics of the admin pieces quite yet.  But more purpose and intent and then possible themes is where I think we're heading with this session. 

 Julian, you had the floor.

 >>JULIAN CASASBUENAS:  Thank you, Madam Chair.  My name is Julian Casasbuenas, MAG member.

 I would like to refer to -- for content and themes.

 And we would like to see the IGF focus on the Internet in relation to poverty and discrimination.  The Internet has the potential to reduce poverty and discrimination, but it can also increase them.  The emerging technologies increase and not always transpiring use of algorithms can facilitate more effective management of that.  But it can also consolidate discrimination.  Access is growing.  But to ensure that it is inclusive, we need to focus on those people who are still left behind.  Therefore, we propose as a team and drawing on one of the core principles of the sustainable development goals, leave no one behind.  Internet governance for access, inclusion, diversity, and equality.  We see these things as including the following topical challenges.  Addressing exclusion in access and in policy making processes.  As a community, we need to address discrimination based on gender, class, race, ability, age, and where one lives.  Multistakeholder partnership in increasing access.  Network shutdowns.  Linguistic diversity.  Inclusive and participative decision making.  Equal access as in not having different Internet for different people.  Locally owned and control access including community network infrastructure.  Discrimination. Risks in impacts of new technologies such as artificial intelligence, algorithms, Internet of things.  Thank you.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:Thank you, Julian.

 That was very clear and comes from your posting as well from the other day.

 Speaking cue.  Jeremy Malcolm has the floor.  Jeremy is participating remotely as well.

 >>ANJA GENGO:  Jeremy asked me to read the comment on his behalf, because he had some problems with Internet connection. 

 So this is coming from Jeremy Malcolm.  I support are remarks others have made about the need to to be bold and innovative as a way to reinvigorate the IGF and improve its value.  But deriving message from sessions and traditional formats is not a good way to do that.  Because panel discussions are not intended to develop clear and precise messages.  This requires some more actively facilitated format that is designed for deliberation upon specific questions from the outset.  The working group and multi-year strategic work program is considering some suggestions about methodologies that would do that and some suitable topics for such a session.  But we don't have the material before us yet. 

 So, for now, I would just suggest that we set aside some time for such a main session, at least as a pilot for 2018. 

 Also the importance of not having too many duplicative sessions in parallel, I would like to suggest that any such deliberative main sessions should not be scheduled in parallel with workshops so that the entire IGF community can come together and participate in it.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Thank you.  Thank you, Jeremy.  Very thoughtful comments as well.  And there is work ongoing in one of the working groups.

 Mamadou, you have the floor.

 >>MAMADOU LO:  Thank you, Chair, for giving me the floor.  On the main theme and sub theme I echo the position (indiscernible) on issues govern the sustainability of the Internet such as geo politic impacting strongly the Internet.

 Also artificial intelligence with the emerging innovation, Internet and (indiscernible) issues.  Online protection and fake news relating to cyber terrorism. 

 For me the Internet is living right now in bad periods, and we do need to protect it. 

 Theme and sub theme have to be aligned to keep the Internet from predator.  Thank you, Chair.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Taking some notes.  There's a very interesting possible theme. 

 Next in the queue we have Mary.

 >>MARY UDUMA:  Thank you, Chair.  My name is Mary Uduma, for the record.

 My first intervention is the way we are going where we're -- I thought we would take one aspect of the process and deal with that and get done.  And each person starts.  And we mix between the structure and order intervention through -- if we're looking at the theme, because we have only one day more to go.  That will be tomorrow.  But notwithstanding, I want to support the fact that the new technologies would be one of the main focuses of our -- of one of the focus we'll have as theme.

 So that we will look at how it impacts on the future of our children.  The job future like the artificial intelligence taking over, the jobs available.  Although Omar has announced about six million jobs in security.  While we hope that we'll have capacity building to retrain people to be able to take those jobs that would be available. 

 Second, I want to look at the main session.  I want to say that I've worked in government.  And I know that the government wants to come to or go to specials or programs or events or conferences, that they're allowed to come make political statements. 

 I would like us to (indiscernible) what we -- whether 0 or 1 or 2 or whatever date it is, they should be that high level.  We will not chart what will be missing in the IGF.  That is the high-level people.  So we want even if it's two or three minutes to make their statement.

 apart from that, there will still be the interactive session that was introduced last year.

 So you could say minister roundtable or whatever look at it.  But the first attraction, what will you identify government as the highest level is to have those statements made.  Why do we have -- aside from ministers here, we still need to figure out how we are going to do that so that we create that opportunity for the high level.

 For -- I don't want to flood the panelists in that I said workshop proposals or proposals -- come up with their proposals.  Some of them don't have the wherewithal to fund their panelists.  But, if you limit it to three for everybody, at the end of the day, they will see anybody that is around, if people don't have money to come, anybody that is around could ask the person to be one of the panelists. 

 When I was nominated to be a panel -- asked to be a panelist, I was looking for funding.

 So that it was only when I got funding that I was able to accept.  And, because I got funding, I was able to accept to be panelist.  There are cost constraints related to the number of people that were panel in some of the sessions.  If we had the goodness of the MAG members, I can understand.  But other people will come with an opportunity to safeguard and just be part of the panelists.

 What would the nice people want?  Bottom line, they want anything that will increase the bottom line relationship.  Any discussion we're doing, any discussion where any topic we're looking at, a business person can only be impacted if that discussion would help increase the balance sheet. 

 And so when we are looking at topics, we're looking at long session or workshop session, we should be looking at attracting the -- the business community to IGF by giving them opportunity to come, talk about what we do, and see government.  Because in my -- realizing in my country, when I went to the business people or business communities to come to my IGF, one of the topics is are you taking a topic that will include regulatory issues?  Because they do not affect us.

 So they can sit side by side with government, not an organization.  But something, when they get back, one way or the other, they will be satisfied that the government has had them.  So those are things that we should also talk about. 

 I don't have proposed theme first.  But digital economy, to share the new technologies and then how it affects the common man on the streets.

 So -- and I also want to support what Julian has said.  Thank you.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Thank you, Mary.  Those are very helpful points.

 Next in the queue we have -- and I'm going to close the queue in a moment and see if we can again draw any kind of conclusions for what we've done here and then move on.

 Luis, could you add Ji in the queue.  Thank you.

 Next in the queue -- and I'm going to close the queue in a moment and see if we can, again, draw any kind of conclusions for what we've done here and then move on.  Luis, could you add Ji in the queue?  Thank you.  Next we have Rudolf.  Rudolf, you have the floor.

 >>RUDOLF GRIDL:  Thank you, Chair.  First on the organizational or structural point, I think Raquel made an excellent point in saying, we should not so much focus on the different formats that we are meeting in but more about the theme.  And if we -- if we can identify those themes and have like, you know, one theme a day or half a day two themes or whatever, then we can find the good structures that we deal with this issue.  We can have a dynamic coalition session on it and a main session and a workshop.  Actually, in my view, it does not really matter how we call it at the end, it is important that we center it around a theme and we have the right people together around these themes.  So that -- that's the first point.

 The second point about it has been said two or three times that we need some kind of a ceremonial setting for ministers, for politicians to speak.  I would see -- I mean, I would see that point, but I would see it really on day zero as an -- as a kind of a interministerial session or whatever where ministers can, you know, discuss and talk and address the audience but not so much within the IGF.  Within the IGF I think we found quite a good format with the Swiss opening (indiscernible) that we had.  That was the second point.

 The third point on businesses, yes, I think the balance sheet is what the businesses is moving and we have to -- I mentioned it before.  We have to think about ways how we can improve their appetite. 

 And on the themes, I just wanted to echo what some of us have said.  I think in our view I think artificial intelligence, Internet of Things/Industry 4.0, I would call it digital development.  What has been said also around the table cybersecurity and data.  That's the -- that's the issues that I would like to introduce.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Rudolf.  The one thing I've been trying to get to and every time I close the queue two more names pop up and then I close the queue and two more names pop up.  What I've been trying to get to is Leisyl and Susan to actually walk us through the purpose of the main sessions in the hope that that would actually help direct the theme discussion that we're starting to kind of morph into now a little bit more.  If there's nobody who's dying to speak right now but could wait and we could just go to the main session guidelines and principles at the high level, I think that would actually help inform the discussions.  So if Susan or Leisyl are ready to talk to that, and we can put the -- if there's a particular section you want us to display, if we can do that, and as we said, the document is actually in the references tab of the meeting page.

 >>LIESYL FRANZ:  Honestly, I think if you are going to display, then really the first page or couple of paragraphs is probably the best place to start.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Now you know how the secretariat is just so effective and efficient.  First of all, Chengetai jumps in and then everybody else jumps in.  It's always a group effort.  Thank you, Chengetai and Eleonora.

 >>LIESYL FRANZ:  And while that's bringing up, I -- you know, while I participated in the sort of revision of the main session guidelines in the last -- you know, in preparation for the last IGF, it really was the hard work of Virat Bhatia and Flavio, former MAG members, that did the heavy lifting in the beginning.  So we really just updated based on additional feedback over the course of the last couple of years, I guess.  And in the spirit of, you know, continuously learning from our processes, we can always take additional input into this, but I do think that this reflects a lot of the work done and the experiences to date.  But it may well -- so I hope it does inform the discussion that you're looking for, Lynn, but it can also can take into account innovations as well, if the MAG members agree.

 The bottom line, at the beginning here, is the background of sort of what the main session type of workshop or session is at the IGF, and I think you've said it, basically it is they are typically for longer periods of time, they are organized in larger rooms, and they provide for translation in six U.N. languages, which is not the case for the 100 other workshops, open forums, and other sessions at the IGF.  And so they -- and I think historically as well they have been really a way to capture high -- the high-level or most general type of topics in the traditional IGF themes.  So whether it was -- I remember one year we had privacy, openness, and security in one main session together and then access and diversity were in another main session.  Critical Internet resources, so those traditional themes of the IGF have been captured in some way, and then the -- as the youth of progressive have gotten more topical within those general -- within those general frames.  So -- but because they -- you know, my understanding at the time was that because they were a little bit all over the place, organized with different groups of us in the MAG and observers, that there was a desire to make them a little bit more synergistic or similar in construct and organization but more importantly, make them open for input from the community about what they would want to see in main sessions, topics that they would like to see in main sections, as well as having some input into the main session participants, discussions, directions, and all of that.  So that was, I think, a major impetus for putting together main session guidelines.

 So you'll see here it talks a little bit about the organization of it being meaningful and timely, to deliver value to the community.  I think I alluded to harmonized approaches and create a structured approach for developing the main sessions.  And the ability to intake input from the community.

 Then there were -- there was a desire to reflect a set of principles for the themes and the topics and how those were developed, how the organization of the main session would go, and requirement for main session organization. 

 So the first requirement, of course, is to adhere by the principles which cover such issues as being contemporary and relevant, being topical subject matter, align with the theme or reflect a new theme.  There was a desire to reflect concern for a relevance to developing countries as well as developed countries on topics, engendering a wide range of interest.  So the kind of things that even though it's not a hierarchical sense of main sessions versus the workshops or other sessions at the IGF but to be as inclusive and have wide ranging interests because the nature of the main session was bigger rooms, it has the translation, so to have more relevance to a broader group.

 This section -- I don't know if you want to go through or people can reference the requirements for the main session organization.  And again, this was informed by, you know, several years of -- of volunteers in the MAG and others putting them together that reflected the idea -- the goals of harmonization, structure and organization, and importantly inclusiveness with the community.  So it includes things like that would be a MAG member, MAG members that are co-organizers but there are MAG members and members of the community that can participate and provide input and that there is a process of providing that input in an open -- in an open way.  And then some structure on, of course, reflecting the diversity requirements of the -- of the IGF from stakeholder group, gender, geography, and perspective.  Actually we capture perspective if there as well.  I think someone made a comment about that earlier today.  And also including youth and elderly and persons with disabilities.  So really the whole -- the whole gamut of being inclusive.  And then some description of role of MAG members as co-organizers and facilitators, perhaps, but not in the spirit of not having MAG members speak on every session, that was reflected here as well.

 And then finally a report for the -- for -- a summary report that would contribute to the products of the IGF.  The chair summary, the taking stock and main session reporting, and things like that.

 Then the part II, I'll just touch on this briefly.  There were several MAG members that had a lot of input -- a lot of experience with organizing main sessions and wanted to put forward some of the -- of the value of their experience and challenges that they may have had and how to address some of those.  So there is a section in part II on recommendations for consideration for those that -- as they want to be involved in the main session organization and planning.

 Happy to answer any questions or I certainly -- others have been very involved in planning and organizing main sessions or were involved in the development of the guidelines.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Leisyl.  Last year we kicked the call for workshops off with basically relying on tag.  Real focus on being community-led, community-driven, bottom-up, and we basically had one overarching main theme and the subthemes were subsequently determined by looking at the workshops that had been selected by the MAG.  The main sessions, we sort of left a little bit later in the process to determine.  I'm not sure that was by intent or just by sort of scheduling, but ultimately there was a proposal that said -- and I don't want to have them kind of enter our DC discussion now but ultimately there were sort of four slots that were left.  We ought to have one from sort of a private sector topic, one maybe from technical, one from kind of a geopolitical or something which is a cybersecurity or -- and people were fairly unhappy with that process last year, for a whole host of reasons.  So coming out of last year's process, the MAG said this year we should get an earlier start on it and we should be really thoughtful about what are the -- the themes, the topics we think are really important for this IGF going forward, and let's have a discussion on what those are.  Let's choose those, structure those, you know, really well and do that in a really thoughtful way, if you will, with the MAG.  And it just -- just one second, Leisyl.  And then, you know, we had thought a few minutes ago it was maybe we've had -- heard lots of discussions on prioritization and focus and we talked about what some of the things -- we have, I think, good consensus on less parallel sessions, less repetitive sessions.  I took a bunch of notes.  There were some other things that we had great on.  But nobody -- we weren't quite certain how to process through the prioritization of the focused discussion.  We said maybe we could do that if we start of have a discussion on what are a couple of the main themes and the main topics that we think it's really important to have in the IGF, to have in next year's program.  And then we can start to figure out how we might structure the program around them.  That was where we started this discussion on.  That was some of the feedback we started to get through this process.  I'm hoping that that's what we still want to do in terms of moving forward here, is continue to focus on, you know, what is a relatively small number of areas, topics that we feel are so important they should be sort of front and center in the IGF, and that may mean a main theme.  It may mean there's a different treatment somewhere in the workshop program, but we were hoping to get some topics out.  We've had probably seven or eight that have come out over the course -- suggestions that have come out over the course of the discussion in the last hour or so. 

 I want to know if the room is still, you know, supportive of that process and still interested in trying to get to some list of possible themes or topics, and then we can see how much alignment we have on them and begin structuring the rest of the program around that.  Leisyl, I'll let you come in. I'll go back to the queue in a moment if we need to.

 >>LEISYL FRANZ:  Thanks, Lynn, and your comments there about sort of how to pick the topics and things like that reminded me that in fact the main session guidelines, while they have some general principles for selecting the topics, it's not very prescriptive in that sense and I think that's because over the course of years you see that there are different ways to try to discern them, being topical and timely, that kind of thing is the principle of the thing, but it doesn't give you the exact topic.

 We did try a -- tried to put in place a structured approach a couple of years ago to take the input from the community based on the tags that they indicated on their workshop proposals to determine what might be the most popular topics of the -- of interest to the community that year.  So that's what I recall being -- tried to operationalize that a little bit more than the way you described it with regard to sort of stakeholder focuses or type of proposals.  But it probably is -- was a little bit of both or evolved from one to the other.  But I just wanted to reflect that desire at the time to utilize the tags and perhaps that also delayed some of the process.  But it was intended that way.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: No, very clearly, we did want to use the tags.

 >>LEISYL FRANZ:  Yeah.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: We're in complete agreement.  I think what happened was then we had a number of individual proposals for main session that came from MAG members, we had far too many proposals for main sessions for the slots that were actually available, and we started a discussion where everybody was trying to, you know, sort of pitch for their proposal.  And that's when the discussion reverted to okay, if we've got so many more proposals, it makes sense to have one which is of interest to the private sector, another one that makes it -- so it wasn't that we set out to drive the process that way.  It was more a kind of a combination after we found that we had more proposals than slots.  And that's what we were trying to fix.  Totally agree that we were trying to build it up from the tags.  And, you know, that's certainly another option, but if -- for all the discussions we've been having the MAG wants to be a little more prescriptive around the things that are really visible or we want to try and prioritize or focus on a set of critical topics, which is what has come through a lot of the input we've had, again through all of the channels, then I think we need to have a conversation up front where the MAG actually expresses an opinion on what some number, three, four, five of those critical themes are.  And I'm kind of making the correlation that says we think topic X is a critical enough theme that we ought to have that theme through the IGF, and I'm sort of assuming that this probably would be a main session or some at least main activity of work that's associated with it, which is the correlation I'm making.  I see lots of heads in the room here.  Can't see that online obviously, but saying that that was yes. 

 So let me go back to the queue that's up there and again, I think what we're -- if I can find it here.  Is the queue there?  Okay, excellent.  Thank you, Luis.  Again, so if we can have specific comments to the prioritization focused discussion which we were trying to have through some specific suggestions on themes or topics, and next in the queue we have Michael.

 >>MICHAEL ILISHEBO:  Good afternoon, Chair.  For the record, Michael Ilishebo government stakeholder group.  I'm looking at the themes based on current events.  Ever since I think in the last six months there's been too much talk on data, and I think Europe has come up with a General Data Protection Regulation, the GDPR, which is so punitive that by the time the IGF would have taken place at the end of the year many of the people have actually felt the impact because it goes beyond Europe.  Just yesterday I was watching BBC where Facebook was summoned because of the data that they give to one of their analytic companies which is like they gave that -- the data of  their users to third-party users which is against the law.

 So, basically, I was trying to look at we put that as one of the innovative main themes or public -- data has become a very hot topic.  Thank you.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Thank you. Thank you, Michael. 

 Next in the queue is Omar.

 >>OMAR MANSOOR ANSARI:  Thank you, Chair.  My comment is in response to what Mary Uduma said.  She said that businesses are only looking to increase their balance sheet.  Believe me, it's not a balance sheet they're looking to increase.  It's actually the income statement.

 But that's a little old perception of the business.  If you see, it is also called entrepreneurship.  And entrepreneurship is about creating jobs.  It's about creating wealth.  It's about making a difference. 

 If you see the number of laptops in this room which is helping us all, are all created and invented by the private sector.  That's the kind of difference businesses are making.  So the businesses are connecting people in remote areas.  And you know about the impact that the business are making.  This is the reason we want to engage more businesses in the IG process, at the IGF.  You know, to do sessions, to help others, to enhance the learning and knowledge sharing and contribute to, you know, the development we all are working on you.  Thank you.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:Thank you, Omar. 

 I was going to say that just because the date is thrown doesn't mean anybody needs to bite.  But your comment was very, very good and very helpful.  So thank you. 

 Zeina, you have the floor.

 >>ZEINA BOU HARB:  Thank you, Chair.  In line with what I said earlier, I'd like to see a session discussing the new technologies for development.  Maybe someone who can speak about the Precision Agriculture -- I don't want to repeat the same.  But it's something in this direction. 

 The precision agriculture, digital healthcare.  And it -- it can be a focused main session.  We all know that VIPs and the high-level speakers, they can speak for hours, without getting tired.  So, if we can just focus the main session on two or three topics -- and it will give flexibility to all the speakers and the attendants to move around and change the sessions and attend as much as they can.  Thank you. 

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Thank you, Zeina.   

 Timea, you have the floor.

 >>TIMEA SUTO:  Thank you, Chair.  I don't have a particular suggestion for main themes.  But I actually -- my friend Liesyl made a presentation about the main session.  I want to make sure the point she is discussing (indiscernible) about the tags and how to make workshop tags to teams, subteams of the IGF.  And, if we can perhaps use those tags as well to see a couple of the main issues that are coming from the community, that would be good to discuss. Certain teams -- 3, 4, 5, it was discussed.  And perhaps orient the main sessions to reflect those main themes in a way.  You don't have to be word for word. The same main sessions are the subteams.  So try and pull out an aspect of that subteam or create a way to approach it.  It will have a much better framework and a more coherent program for what we're trying to do here.  Thank you.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Thank you, Timea.

 I think it's important to make that linkage.  I think it's also important that it's in the collective wisdom of the MAG.  We believe we need to be more focus, and we need to set priorities.  And we want to see something specifically discussed or specifically highlighted at the IGF. 

 We need to determine that now, because we need to make sure that that's clear in the call for workshop proposals that eventually goes out. 

 So I think we still keep coming back to, you know, maybe the best way to say is Michael Nelson's sideways as well as bottom-up.

 Are there some things that the MAG feels strongly we should be looking for to ensure that the IGF is relevant and topical and cohesive, some of those things.  If we want that, then we need to have that discussion now so we can determine if there are some areas which we think are more important, and we want to call and look for specific proposals so we can make that determination in the call for workshop proposals, which, by the way, according to our schedule, would need to go out in something like three or four weeks.  That's the time frame we're talking about.  We all know that it's not nearly so easy to get work done when we all go back and try to do this through virtual calls and email lists.  This is why we're pushing a little bit on a couple of those.  And certainly apologize if the pace isn't that comfortable.  But it's the pace we're on given the big announcement of MAG and things.  So we just need to buckle down and do it. We have Makane, who I think I haven't seen in the room so it must be online.

 You have the floor?  Are we going to be able to hear Makane? If not --

 >>ANJA GENGO:  There is a comment.  Maybe I can read it out.

 The digital economy and emerging technologies, inclusion for all, diversity and equality, security in the digital economy acts as an infrastructure for the digital economic growth and Internet of things implementing the SDG in relation to policy reduction, digital economy, and block chain.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Thank you, Anja. 

 Ji, I think this is your time in the queue.  Difficult to slot you when you're coming from in different mechanisms.

 >>JI HAOJUN:  Thank you, Madam Chair.  Actually, I'm not because I would like to give the opportunity to colleagues online. 

 Just briefly on the themes of our future emphasis, I would like to echo what had been said by many of our previous -- colleagues said previously that digital gap among different countries, regions, and gender should be our focus in the future. 

 In this regard access and low cost and affordable access for all is very important.  But to enable people enrich themselves, by making good use of the access to Internet.  It goes much -- it goes beyond the access to Internet only.

 For example, whether countries or underserved regions, do they have a logistic systems? Do they have good online payment system, et cetera?

 So that people in the rural areas can send their produce or handicrafts to the cities or even foreign countries?  This is what most other countries need the most.  They need the express plus enabled environment. 

 In addition to that, in some countries they already have very high ratio of Internet access.  But the national government may not have enough capacity to make use of the new technologies.  For example, the big data technology.  Some countries may lack the means to make use of collecting or analyzing big data for macroeconomic planning, for traffic control, and road, buildings, (indiscernible) et cetera.  So we should continuously work on international cooperation and technical and financial (indiscernible) and sharing of best practice in this regard.

 Thank you.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Thank you, Ji.

 Liesyl, you're in the queue.

 >>LIESYL FRANZ:  I think that was from before when I was coming back in on the guidelines.  Sorry about that.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  No, that's great.  Returning time.

 Jutta, you have the floor.

 >>JUTTA CROLL:  Thank you, Chair.  As said before, I really like to put the focus on the benefits of the Internet for society.

 Nonetheless, since World Summit Information Society 1 and 2,  when a charter on human rights and information society was deliberated, it has been a challenge to balance the risks emerging from new technologies with the benefits that bring to the people. 

 As an advocate, I'd like to strongly emphasize the need to have this balance taken into consideration as a main theme for the IGF 2018.

 I know human rights are not a new topic, but I think it gets its innovative nature from the new innovative technologies that we have to take in mind which is artificial intelligence, Internet of things, and so on.  I think that makes it necessary to discuss human rights continuously.

 Thank you.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Thank you, Jutta.  I'm actually, with Chengetai's support and agreement sliding him into the queue.  Samuel. 

 So just now we have Anja.

 >>ANJA GENGO:  There's some comments from MAG member Jianne Soriano.  It reads, "Three main points that were mentioned in the main session -- (indiscernible) Day Zero how to involve young people in the IGF.  I do agree that we should keep Day Zero.  It serves as an icebreaker for new and young participants.  In the year at IGF, there's a specific Day Zero that serves as an introductory date that have less formal structure, for example, icebreaking games, expecting settings simulation, et cetera.  Consider as an orientation date, kind of like the newcomers day.  Of course, sending organizations do have the responsibility to ensure that they have had at least some capacity building sessions beforehand.  But knowing the (indiscernible) -- is still different from actually being there.  Developing information materials is a suggestion raised in IGF 2017.  It could provide information in how to join existing activities in the IGF.  Developing a resource session.  It would be easier for collaborative sessions between young people to organize and also to be integrated into the main panel sessions.  It would also be easier to connect session organizers and potential youth speakers and vice versa.  I don't agree with having separate youth session.  I think young people would want to be part of the IGF, instead of being isolated on their own.  Formal structures can be intimidating, and I do suggest trying to have informal structures, for example, the breakout groups.

 (Indiscernible)

 Membership programs:  Digital grassroots follows as part of this.

 As newcomers, youth have expressed that it would be good to have someone explaining the ropes or someone they can direct --

 >>OPERATOR: You are now unmuted.

 >> Thank you.

 >>OPERATOR: You are muted by the host. 

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  ISOC fellows I think would be -- some of them are gone.  But that's probably one worth trusting.

 Next in the queue was Zeina.

 >>ZEINA BOU HARB:  The same remark.  I noticed that the transcript is not accurate.  Can we at least revise what we said?

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  If there's a question in the transcript.

 >>ZEINA BOU HARB:  I said without getting tired.  It was taken as like getting fired.

 [ Laughter ]

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  I mean, yeah.  If it really changes the meaning, then we should please do that.  I don't know if this is -- could be --

 >>CHENGETAI MASANGO:  If you could, just send it to Eleonora.  But then she must know where to insert it.  So you have to send her also the wrong test or at least the first four or five words of the wrong test so she can get it replaced.

 >>ZEINA BOU HARB:  That could have happened with other speakers.

 >>CHENGETAI MASANGO:  When the transcript is up, you can send us both the wrong one and then we'll just change it.  I think that might be the easiest.  We'll just post it.  And then immediately  give us the correction.  Yeah.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  And, of course, the slower we speak, the more accurate the transcription is as well.

 That was your comment, Zeina?  Samuel, you have the floor and then Chengetai.

 >>SAMUEL NDICHO BAMBO:  Thank you for giving me the floor.  IGF 2018 should be a platform where we can get governments to come exercise their bragging rights.  And how can we get them to do this?  If we can ask governments to talk more of -- or we look at best -- or we look at government best practices.  And we ask these government officials to come talk about issues such as smart cities, cyber security, and artificial intelligence as well as block chain, I think.  Most of them will be interested to come talk to us about those things.

 Coming to Julia, I think Julia reads minds.  Talked about leaving nobody behind.  And I was also thinking about something that has to do with leaving nobody behind.  And I'd like to say the fourth generational revolution or the fourth industrial revolution, leaving nobody behind.  Thank you.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Thank you, Samuel. 

 Chengetai was in the queue just because he was reminding me that a number of people have suggested linkages to the SDG. And there was a couple comments in the straw taking processes which reminded us that, in fact, the high level political flaw that takes place in the U.N. actually does have, for the next several years, a high-level theme and a subset of the SDGs that they're actually focusing on.

 So we're simply putting that into the discussion point.  In 2018, it's transformation towards sustainable and resilient societies.

 So that's -- so Chengetai is saying that that's in July.     I don't know that that actually matters, I suppose.  But that's the 2018 one, with the sixth SDGs associated with it.  And you can get that on the sustainabledevelopmentun.org site. 

 For 2019 one is empowering people and ensuring inclusiveness and equality.

 It corresponds nicely with a couple of the last comments that Samuel was in.

 Chengetai is pointing out that for the last one the SDG that it's tying to is, 4, equality education, 8,  decent work and economic growth and reduce inequalities; number 13, climate actions; number 16, peace, justice, and strong institutions; and 17 partnerships for the goals.

 Again, this is not advocating. That's not our role.  It's simply that there have been a number of calls from people in this room to start taking process, just be aware of those as we move forward.

 Rasha, you were next in the queue.

 >>RASHA ABDULLA:  Thank you, Lynn.  And, speaking of transcription -- and a big thank you, of course, for the effort. But I think this morning while Michael was introducing himself, his name appeared as Manal Ismail, my Egyptian colleague.  We now know that Manal moonlights as a peace officer in Zambia.  Good to know.  I took a picture, and I sent it to her in What's App.  She got a good laugh out of it.  But it was maybe something for the record to clear as well. 

 I would also like to see a main session on human rights particularly as it pertains to privacy.  The recent Facebook case, of course, is a hot topic. And I think that would bring a lot of interest to the table.

 There have also been efforts about some governments allegedly mining crypto currency using their data.

 So I think, if we sort of gather  a few issues related to privacy as a human right and maybe put these in a main session, that might be interesting and would be quite current.  Thank you.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Thank you, Rasha. 

 I am so pleased to welcome a new MAG member to comment.  I really would encourage any other new MAG members to comment as well.  But, Heiki, you have the floor.

 >> Heiki Sibul:  Thank you, Chair.  I would like to inform MAG members that our national IGF will be next week.  And one of the items is in this IGF what is the currency of the time of the information society?  Is it fame on Internet or "likes" in social media?  And why we choose these kind of items is one of research in Estonia that there is a lot of information.  But one shocking information was that 25% of youngsters upload voluntary naked pictures to the Internet. 

 And even more we have even the video stream where the youngsters are killing people and nobody don't tell anything.  Their friends and so on.  That's why it might be one of the  items to be discussed more broadly.  Thank you.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Thank you.  Those certainly are a lot of societal issues.  And much of what we're seeing on the Internet and even in a lot of the topics that have come up so far it's possible. 

 There's nobody else in the queue at the moment.  So with some trepidation I'll go through quickly the themes that I've heard and tried to put them together.  There was some sort of overlap. 

 And then I think we need to -- I think the question really in front of us at this point in time is does the MAG want to identify a small number of areas that they feel are so important that they want to have a more active role in shaping a part of the program that's associated with some of those themes.  This would be the sideways comment that we were hearing yesterday.  You know, just the reason why I think that's important is if the answer is no, then we just talk about what the overall theme is and do a call for workshop proposals and tinker with it a little bit like we did last year, but I don't think that's where everybody's kind of heart is.  If it's not, and we want a program that is a little more -- I'm really searching for better words, so, please, if anybody can help -- but a little more curated or a little more -- a piece of a -- directed by the MAG, because I think these issues are critically important.  I think they will be important to the community, and, therefore, we should spend some cycles thinking about how we maximize those topics within the IGF.  Then we need to come to what those topics are, the two or three, because, again, that will influence the call we ultimately put out for the workshops.  That would mean that we take this list that I will go through in a minute and get it down to something probably less than four.  And maybe there's even an opportunity to do a quick poll again with the timetables I think people have seen.  It really would need to be a relatively quick and sort of informal poll.  But we do have some options to get some -- you know, some more input in. 

 Ji, do you have a comment before I go through the list or -- Go ahead.

 >>JI HAOJUN: Thank you, Madam Chair. 

 In addition to what I've said earlier, I just wanted to echo what I've said that protection of the young generation is really important.  And China as is concerned, I don't want to be discriminating against our female colleagues, but in China, protection of our boys is really a big problem because nowadays, in high schools or even primary schools, the boys are achieving the worst, and the girls, the top graders are all girls.  Because the boys, you know, there's a phenomenon in China that seems like that the whole generation of boys are being destroyed by addiction to online gaming.  And we don't know what should we do.  And I don't know if it's a global phenomenon, but we really need to focus on such issues.  Maybe in other countries girls are more tend to be, you know, addicted to online gaming, but I don't know. 

 At least we need to have one session, main -- main session focused on youth protection or advise them to make better good use of the Internet. 

 Thank you.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Ji. 

 Just sort of added that under kind of societal challenges.  I don't know if that's gender specific, per se, but I think, you know -- Let me go back to the top of the list and then come through.  I'm sure I, in listening very carefully and trying to aggregate them, so I wasn't picking up a whole list of individual ones.  I'm sure some of you probably won't recognize your comments, in which case please put them back forward again.  And the more succinct you can be, the easier it will be to capture those. 

 I think one of the very first ones we had concretely put forward here when we opened this topic up was poverty and discrimination, which came from the APC and was supported by Samuel as well.  That included things such as the Leave No One Behind tag, Internet governance for access for inclusion, diversity, and equality.  I think there were a number of similar references that would fit somewhere under either an inclusion title or going for the poverty and discrimination, but that was a specific submission from APC. 

 There was another one which is -- I captured as sort of the governing stability given geo politics.  There were a lot of other words put behind that, but I think that was talking about some of the cybersecurity issues.  I think some of the societal ones as well.  And I think that was more about governance in a more traditional sense of government roles, is what I took away from the -- from the discussion.  So again, please help make that more clear if that's -- It was artificial intelligence, Internet of Things stated very clearly, there was digital 4.0.  Those all came from Rudolf.  Cybersecurity in a couple of different forms.  Data.  Big data later was mentioned.  Zeina's, you know, talk about kind of the Internet -- the impact of new digital technologies on other sorts of industries like agriculture and digital health care and those sorts of things.  So think about some of the implications of the digital development in some of these other industries was what I was taking away from that. 

 There was another one on digital gaps specifically focusing on economy and gender.  So a couple of people had something similar. 

 There was a couple of requests for human rights.  One of that was being framed in a sort of new technologies and understand the risks versus benefits, but one or two of the folks mentioned human rights as well.  There was another one over here which sort of focused on -- and I have to admit, I was still tracking a different conversation.  Caught the end.  It was one that was talking about governments, smart cities, artificial intelligence, and cybersecurity.  Much of that was Samuel or Michael, I think, that put that forward, and I think that was more about how we increase government participation, but the suggestion that we might consider a main session which really spoke to the concerns of governments and that those were some of the topics that might be of most interest to them. 

 And then laterally, (indiscernible) sort of what is today's currency and the Information Society?  Is it, you know, likes on your social media or is it certain (indiscernible) of fame or -- Some of that might actually even be put under societal challenges, which is some of what Ji was bringing up at the end, whether it's, you know, addiction or gaming or -- And then I think youth is certainly a main component of many of the topics that we've just hit.  I don't -- if there's a main session on youth, I think we would need to think about what that main session on youth actually covered, and I can think of some things that should be kind of interesting to do with that topic, but I'm not sure that's where you were going with that, Ji.

 So, I mean, it's hard to get a sense of them, I think, when you only have two or three words for some of them, but I think at this point my first question is, are there any -- any that I missed?  Any you could help clarify?  Help me clarify?  Jutta, you have the floor.

 >>JUTTA CROLL:  It just occurred to me that we never mentioned education, and I think it would be necessary as well.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Education as a main session?  (Indiscernible).

 >>JUTTA CROLL:  No as part of the other session.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Obviously a key piece.  Is there any that you -- I'm sure they could -- well, they certainly all could use more detail behind them in terms of what we would actually, you know, want to accomplish with them.  You know, for instance, I'm sure if we said cybersecurity, as an example, or even artificial intelligence, there are so many different vectors you can come in and have that conversation.  You know, that in itself might be an indication that it's worthwhile thinking about that and thinking about what the IGF community could do with respect to helping to inform a broad discussion on artificial intelligence, for example.  Let me go -- Raquel is looking for the floor.  And then --

 >>RAQUEL GATTO: Thank you.  You want to go to someone first?

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Sumon?  Thank you, Raquel.

 >>SUMON AHMED SABIR:  Thank you.  Actually (indiscernible) announced from the floor but I think what you are planning already I have been told, but lately (indiscernible) the things are coming repeatedly.  There's artificial intelligence, secondly big data.  We've already mentioned already that.  Big data and artificial is together what can do, even can influence election, (indiscernible) election, and we have noticed that the security council with that and the way artificial intelligence is developing may in future determine who should do what, even how long should leave (indiscernible) is coming up.  So I think that things should (indiscernible) humility actually.  So humility and education. 

 So to my point of view, to add everything together, the humility first can we maintain actually for maybe for future IGFs.  Thank you.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Sumon.  And just recall that the one specific request you did have yesterday was the SDG and the focus for 2019, so I should add that in in a moment as well.  Raquel, you have the floor.

 >>RAQUEL GATTO: Yes.  Thank you, Lynn.  I have two comments.  One on a topic that I didn't heard yet which is access that can be tackled.  While we need to remind that 40% of populations is do not connected.  It is still a challenge that we have.  And it's not only for developing countries.  I mean, we've been working with several developed countries that has underserved and indigenous communities and where you still need to bring the Internet.  But also on the digital divide and the new digital divide that we are seeing in terms of its widening, the difference between those that are connected and those that are completely off the Information Society, digital economy, et cetera. 

 And my second point was related to what you started proposing, that is, I see a lot of aggregation on those topics when we are tackling new technologies and its challenges or perhaps security and its challenges, we can merge and, again, be more focused into our discussions.  We can make it more merged sessions and bring those angles in instead of repeating the same things.  So thank you very much.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Raquel.  Adama.

 >>ADAMA JALLOW:  Good afternoon.  My name is Adama Jallow.  I am a new member.  Okay.  Sorry about that.  I have a suggestion also regarding the things that we can bring on board.  I just wanted to elaborate on the fact that as much as we want to attract the government high-level officials to speak on the panel, we should not only just attract them towards the positive impacts the Internet is giving but also to elaborate and highlight on the negative aspect of it that is affecting so many people in our community, especially the young people.  We have example -- we have issues like cyberbully and cyberpredators that have been affecting a lot of them.  And really, this has been issues that we especially in my area, my region of the Gambia, we have a lot of -- encountered a lot of issues that young people are victims of and then these are issues that we can bring on board and then try to tap the government to come up with a consensus where we can all work together to make sure that we can quick policies that can bring in Internet laws and then showcase the -- the policies can also, I mean, showcase the effects and the repercussions that these predators or cyberbullies can have or can be affected on to the -- the acts they are doing online.  So I think it is also a good thing to bring on board and talk about.  Thank you.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Adama.  Those are very important as well.  Rudolf, you have the floor.

 >>RUDOLF GRIDL:  Thank you, Chair.  Two -- two comments.  One, I also do think that we have now tables -- issues on the table that we can easily aggregate under four to five main themes, I would say.  No matter how you want to call them, one is development inclusion, one is government security, another one I would identify as business models, industrial challenges, something like that, and one -- one issue I would see as societal or shaping society or something like that.  And I -- I think most of -- perhaps even all of the issues that you mentioned could be -- could be somehow -- be put under these headings, however you want to call them.

 And then just again to make the point, and I understood and thank you very much to Leisyl for explaining how -- how the thinking about the main -- the main session has developed and where we are, but still, and I understand it and you said it, Chair, that we are now looking for issues for the main -- themes for the main session.  Still I would like to have this in a sense that it is not only for the main sessions but for a thematic cluster around the main session.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: And actually, Rudolf, that's very well said because I was trying to back into the latter by having the main sessions discussion.  Because I wanted to have it around some concrete (audio problems) and really we were sort of falling into how do we structure it discussion that was a little premature.  So I think that's exactly what we're trying to do.  And I don't think we need to close on the main themes now.  I think we could leave some room for the workshop selection process is still a tag process and that sort of thing. 

 I think the question we really need to decide is, are there -- does the MAG want to be more proactive in helping to kind of shape or curate a piece of the program because we think there are topics that actually require -- because we think that doing so would actually help advance these topics in a significant way for the world.  And if so, what are those small number of topics.  Again, because we should begin some planning work for them, but we should also be right up front in the call for workshop proposals in terms of what we're doing with the program overall.  So that's exactly what I was trying to do is to find a way to back into the thematic topics through themes.  I hope that's clear.  Leisyl, you have the floor.

 >>LEISYL FRANZ:  Thank you, Chair.  I just wanted to -- well, your description just now of sort of a hybrid process I suppose of trying to come up with themes for the IGF program is helpful because I think it might liberate some of our thinking as to how those themes might be used, if I'm understanding you correctly, with regard to main sessions and the workshops that may somehow -- I'm recalling that we've had a conversation and some comments that the main sessions and the workshops seem -- have in some cases at the IGF seem to be detached.  There wasn't a lot of -- despite years where we tried to have feeder workshops or -- that go into the main session, you know, there's been lots of sort of ways of trying to connect the dots between the main sessions and the -- and the workshops.  So I think, if I'm hearing you correctly, this process of identifying some themes is -- is a little bit more liberal than saying okay, we're going to have four main sessions on these four themes, if I'm reading -- if I'm hearing you correctly.  So that's helpful, I think, for our process going forward.

 But I would -- I would like to say just regardless of how the themes are being used, we have some new topics that have been posed or -- and some that are sort of traditional and historical for the IGF, and security is one, privacy is another, sort of the human -- the buckets that we've had over the course of the years.  And if we're going to address them, things that aren't new, per se, then I think your comment earlier about drilling down on what exactly we might cover in those veins this year as opposed to what we've covered in the past or progressing from where -- from what we've covered in the past may be helpful as we -- whenever we're getting to a -- more of a determination that will inform the workshop proposal process and things like that.

 I'm not sure I can completely agree with the way that the conversation's captured in the trying to get to four narrow -- I'm sorry, four, you know, discrete themes, so I think we'd want to revisit that.  I'm happy to discuss further, but I'm just not sure we're quite there.  Thank you.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Leisyl.  And for those who couldn't hear, the first part of your question is, yes, that's what we're trying to do.  Hopefully, we're aligned.  I think Rudolf put out an aggregation of four themes which is sort of his take at it.  I'm sure he would welcome friendly amendments or other takes as well.  We should continue going through the discussion here. 

 So next in the queue is Israel.

 >>ISRAEL ROSAS:  Thank you, Chair.  Israel Rosas, for the record. 

 I'm in favor of a more guided definition by the MAG for the meeting.  And I build on the suggested clusters or areas of things.  Perhaps we could take space for emerging issues.  We could also take into account some discussion on emerging issues with some lightning talks or some interactive sessions hosted by (indiscernible) Estrada.  So thank you.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Thank you, Israel.

 I think we can implement all sorts of formats in the work with the program broadly.

 Arnold, you have the floor.

 >>ARNOLD VAN RHIJN:  Thank you.  Lynn.  Arnold van Rhijn.  Netherlands Government. 

 Thank you for recapturing or trying to grab together the useful suggestions which have been brought forward by several MAG members and myself looking at this list.

 There's difficulty to see how we'll end up with four or five topics which could be used as a main theme.

 And then I looked again at the program how it was developed within the European dialogue on Internet governance.  And I really like that.  I mean, they started by capturing eight categories.  And from there on, they dig into the details and came up with some interesting issues for many sessions of the workshops. 

 I'll name them shortly.  First category or tags is called access and literacy. Then media and content.

 Work one is development of Internet governance ecosystem.

 Fourth deals with security and cybercrime. 

 Fifth one is dealing with human rights. 

 The sixth one is technical and operations issues. 

 The seventh one deals with innovation and economic issues.  The last one, the eighth category is crosscutting and other issues. 

 If we look at those categories, we can have a clear picture what the landscape is, where we should pick and choose the four or five main themes.  It shouldn't have been all the  categories, which I just mentioned.  But I think it's up to the MAG to decide which one, looking at those eight categories could fall on the  heading of "main theme." 

 And, last but not least, what EuroDIG is doing meeting the 4th and 5th of June in Georgia, in Eastern Europe. 

 What they're doing will feed into the global IGF.  I won't say that we should copy those eight categories.  But at least we should look at it and have a clear picture, as I said, the total landscape.  And then come up with the four and five main issues to tackle.

 Thank you.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Thank you.  Those are very interesting as well, which kind of reminds me the media and content really didn't come up all that much here despite fake news and disinformation, which is kind of interesting.  But Thomas you had  asked for the floor. 

 >>THOMAS SCHNEIDER:  If it lets me.  One point that I was going to make is, actually, that I had missed the issue of, let's say, impact of media, social media, new media, on public opinion shaping and democracy and also abuse and use of social media and data use. 

 You just have to read the news in the last few days. 

 Probably more of this is going to come in the second half of the year. 

 I'm sure the discussion that we had for the first time in this direction in Geneva will not stop.  On the contrary, we will have more and more information and more events and more occurrences to discuss.  And the political pressures about these issues will continue to rise.  I think that should also somehow be visible in the program, if you have the claim to be relevant on all key issues.

 With regard to baskets and clustering, I happen to also have been involved in EuroDIG in the core teams and since the beginning. 

 It is actually -- basically EuroDIG started from what the IGF was after two or three years.  The main sessions also used to have and still have the clusters.  And we were discussing in the early years should we discuss security for our main session and then have another main session about human rights?  That was the very early discussion. 

 And then people felt that it actually makes more sense to combine these two things so that people realize that it doesn't make sense to discuss security without thinking about human rights or discussing security without openness and the other way around.  So these clusters have already more or less formally or informally existed at the global IGF as well as also in EuroDIG.  In EuroDIG we realized over the years is in the beginning, when we switched from asking for workshop proposals to issues, in order to get the issues to group them, you somehow need to have a concept.  And you're, basically, taking -- building on the concept of the IGF with these clusters.  We expanded it, adapted a little bit to the European, let's say, priorities.  And then first we ask the people where they would -- no, we put the baskets.  And then we asked the people:  Do you see your theme or your issue as part of the openness basket or security basket?  Because sometimes that is also a challenge for the MAG or the EuroDIG for those who don't develop the program.  What do they actually mean? 

 So you give a chance to those that come up with an issue or with an idea what they want to discuss to also frame it in a way that you better understand what it is actually that they want to discuss.

 So we ended up with six or seven categories.  And we always left a space open for things that people consider that, well, I don't -- my theme doesn't really fit into one of these baskets.  It's something new.  So this is why it's important, if you have predefined baskets, that you always leave room for -- call it emerging issues or whatever for something that doesn't really fit into these things or something that haven't even been there when you discussed it.  But I think to somehow use these clusters in a general way that trying to avoid that they're restricting people or just helping people to places things on a matrix is something that has proven very useful.  Thank you.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Thank you. That's very useful.  Are there any other kind of guidance points in terms of how one might evolve?  I'm sure we're all very happy to hear them. 

 Mary, you have the floor.

 >>MARY UDUMA:  Thank you, Chair.  Mary Uduma is my name, for the record.  I'm from Nigeria, technical community. 

 First I want to read Makane's submission that I read.  But I want to highlight some of the things that he said about digital economy and emerging technology. 

 Inclusion of all, diversity and equality.  Digital economy.  Access and infrastructure for digital economic growth.  Internet of things. 

 The SSDGs in relation to poverty reduction. digital economy and block chain. 

 Those are -- now I also want to read out some of the things in our own national program. 

 We've looked at data access, some of the things that we're looking at. 

 Technology and regulation.  Developing -- we're looking at developing a national strategy, but we could be a global strategy.

 Go through (indiscernible) -- Internet knowledge beyond human imagination for sustainable development.

 Internet navigating from a word of who you knew and what you know.

 then application of Internet of everything in solving day-to-day challenges.  Those are some ideas at the national level.  So probably we could also consider this.  Thank you. 

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Interesting thoughts there as well.  Thank you, Mary.

 Zeina, you have the floor.

 >>ZEINA BOU HARB:  Thank you, Chair.  I would like to propose highlighting the partnership between the private and the public.  I think this kind of partnership can advance the use of ICT.  Can advance development.  And also it can -- it shouldn't be like a specific session on the partnership between private, public partnership.  It can be included in the access, let's say.  But we have to highlight this issue in order to encourage private sector and engage them and bring them to the IGF.  If you give them the -- the facility to describe what they are doing, how they are helping the public in advancing the development, it would be good.  And they will be happy to participate.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Thank you, Zeina. 

 Omar, you have the floor.

 >>OMAR MANSOOR ANSARI:  Thank you, Chair.

 In IGF Afghanistan we're working for this year on certain issues which are of interest to the Afghan population and the people who are living in the Central Asia, South Asia.

 These include access in security and diversity, which has already been discussed.  But on education what we think is -- one is education is on broader level.  And then, when it comes to the industry, the skills are kind of more important.  Because a lot of people or some people who have education but they don't -- they don't have the skills that are needed by the industry.  So that gap needs to be bridged. 

 And our proposal would be to highlight skills when we talk about education.

 Local Internet economy -- that's another issue. 

 Online safety.  That has become, you know, a major issue, especially in our part of the world.  People are cyber victimized, especially women and children.  So that kind of a discussion would really help raise awareness as well as share experiences and knowledge.  Cyber security and data protection.  Youth and gender. These have been always on our list on the top.  But one of the issues is trusted IDs.  You know, in some of -- some countries technologies do not go because they don't have the electronic IDs.  And that includes Afghanistan.  We are working on the eTazkira, which is the electronic national ID card.  And that will help reduce after so many of our social problems, including corruption and insecurity. 

 And another topic which is very important for countries like Afghanistan and other countries in the region is introduction to the Internet governance. 

 We need more -- you know, knowledge sharing awareness so that people really understand what Internet governance is and how they can participate in the Internet governance -- you know, platforms that are on national level, regional, and global level.

 So these are some of my suggestions.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Thank you, Omar. 

 There's two more people in the queue.  And I'd like to close the queue and then see if we can determine a way forward so we have things to think about tonight and come back tomorrow.

 We have Raquel in the queue and Jennifer. 

 Raquel, you have the floor.

 >>RAQUEL GATTO:  Thank you.  I have two points to make.  The first one is regarding the experience we have with the regional Latin-America Caribbean IGF, the LAC IGF in which we are also having a new approach this year. 

 We used to have open consultations with the community for the topics.  And then the program community did the clustering and then organized the sessions. 

 This year with this next approach in which we are still going consult the community.  But we are going to have at least four sessions that are curated by the program committee ensuring we have this focused approach but leaving some room for the community and for those that are not in there for the community or elsewhere to also send (indiscernible) and then we can work the program in a more agile way.  That's one. 

 And the second one is regarding -- and I don't want to be struggling with this.  But, when we talked about having those topics and kind of connected with the main sessions, that a lot of what has been said is also intersessional work.  So, again, not only clustering main sessions workshops but -- sorry.  My Latin way of talking.  But also clustering and thinking about the intersessional work.  In particular, on the SDGs and what has been said on the importance for the SDG17 on partnerships or even consuming the work with SDG9 and then to 8 with the future of jobs and skills, which is also, in the importance of streamlining the discussions there, that are in other places regarding the digital economy.  For example, G7, G20 are tackling those. 

 So, just to point out the importance of having this -- keeping that in mind that we might be clustering also other components of the IGF.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Good reminder.  Thank you, Raquel, Jennifer, you have the floor.

 >>JENNIFER CHUNG:  Thank you, Madam Chair, for giving me the floor.  I'll be very brief here.  I just wanted to echo some points that my colleagues have raised earlier.  I think Raquel did mention the access and digital divide.  Coming from the Asia Pacific region this is still really a very big issue that we talk about every year at the Asia Pacific regional IGF as well as the NRIs in the region.  So I do want to echo that. 

 I do see points that were made also previously.  I think Liesyl did point out this point and also Zeina. 

 If we do see buckets that traditionally have appeared in past IGFs, we need to make sure the conversation is moved forward in a way that's still interesting and fruitful for people participating. 

 So not just a stale conversation about the same topics, but how it moves forward. 

 And, lastly, regarding emerging technologies -- thank you, Israel, for bringing forward that point, as well as other colleagues. 

 The speed of the innovation that the Internet enables is very, very quick.  And I just wanted to highlight the fact that MAG membership also had the flexibility to not just have -- cluster these main topics, but also, when we receive workshop proposals, to also use the information that we can gain from there.  To use that and be flexible with the clustering as well.  So emerging technologies can not only be a main session subject, for example.  It could be crosscutting across the entire program.  Thank you.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Thank you very much, Jennifer. 

 I'm giving Thomas just a little bit of a heads up.  Because I want to ask him a couple questions specifically. 

 What we're -- this is a very useful exercise.  Also want to get to what should be in the main theme. 

 I think the big question in front of us again is:  Are there pieces of the program that the MAG feels strongly ought to be a little more directed or curated or nurtured or managed or -- word of your choice since they're all such sensitive words.

 And, if so, then I think we need to identify those now so we can figure out how we want to structure those and manage those in the program.

 We clearly have room to fine tune that over the next few months. 

 Point of pressure right now is so that we're as clear as we can possibly be on the program aspects when we go out for a call for workshop proposals and we engage the community. 

 The worst thing in the world would be to set the community on one path, and the MAG two months from now decides something different.  And we haven't provided them the right direction, and they've gone off and invested time and work into something that is now working differently.  So that's what I'm trying to avoid and what I'm pushing a little bit for. 

 This makes it a little hard to come to what are the small number of topics or themes that the MAG might want to -- I hear and sense that the MAG does want to do that for some things.  What they are when everything we have is so high level.  It's AI. It's media and content.  It can be any number of topics behind that. 

 My question for Thomas was:  Is there some magic in the process somewhere that takes this -- there are 55 people in this process with a vote.  And 28 of them are brand new to the process and another 15 or so -- So, when we say a word or a title, we all have different perspectives of what that particular topic or theme would mean. 

 So how can we quickly come to a small number of themes that we might want the MAG to be a little more engaged in and curate this?  What's the process in EuroDIG or any other thoughts you have?

 >>THOMAS SCHNEIDER:  Thank you.  Well, the thing is are we not talking only about the main sessions, or are we talking about the IGF in general?  Or, just to be clear, is the workshop discussion completely separated from the main session discussion on the curation element?

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  At this point, yes and no.  If we say we want to have a curated track on topic A or a curated focus, then we need to determine is it a track?  Is it a main session?  Do we want to pull in some of the NRI work?  We don't know what the structure looks like around it. 

 What are the few areas we'd like to say clearly again to our communities -- and MAG is actually going to be a little more hands-on in these particular topics.  And we're going to be looking for -- also I think we're going to be looking for topics or projects or programs or workshops or something to feed into this small thing.  So we're actually looking for a small number of high-level themes.  And then we'll figure out how we structure that.  I think we need to figure out which piece of intersessional work we can try to pull in.  And for other organizations.

 >>THOMAS SCHNEIDER:  Okay.  Well, I haven't been that involved in the program discussion at the IGF last year, because we've been more busy with organizing it. 

 But, from what I remember also from the past years is that, basically, you already have on the main sessions you have the curated discussions.  The MAG is defining the number of main sessions and then somehow distributing the big lines of the themes that then organizing the themes.  That has already happened.

 There's no reinventing the wheel magic thing behind what the EuroDIG does.  We do it the other way around.  It's not that the clusters are there in the beginning predefined.  It's really the call for issues that is the start.  At the IGF and then until the end of the year, normally like two months, people can give their -- present or announce the topics they want to discuss.  And they are more concrete than just access and literacy.  They are maybe geoblocking in -- on content services, I don't know, in the region or something.  And then they indicate to which of the bigger blocks they would like to see this attached to, and then you get a cloud of maybe 20 or 50 or only 5 specialized issues that you then somehow need to combine, to the extent possible, into a main session on an issue.  But you first have the -- you have the -- the issues, the more concrete issues that people want to discusses first, and then you group them into the baskets, and whatever doesn't fit into the baskets -- and you also, depending on the number of -- of inputs that you get for a particular topic, you then decide between this is going to be a main session or this is going to be a workshop with other things in parallel, which is -- so it's done from the other way around.  But, I mean, what the MAG -- what the MAG can do now is if the MAG thinks it would like to identify now some key priority themes, you can define it as a draft and maybe send it out for consultation.  But if the themes are too broad, (indiscernible) look at, yes, security is important or access is more important than security, so this doesn't really make sense.  So either you go with what you have, you have the basket and you just distribute them on the number of main sessions.  Maybe you create more main sessions with dividing 180 minutes into 2 times 90, or you wait for this and somehow make consultations like EuroDIG does on asking for things and you see what you get from themes and you then define how do you cluster this into main sessions, once you get the feedback.  To some extent an either/or.  Thank you.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you.  That was helpful, Thomas.  Of course, each year we've sought community engagement, that is the call for workshop proposals, and then they're selected and aggregated.  You know, we are, yet again, up against a tight timetable because theoretically we need to have the significant portion, maybe still all of the MAG program is going to be workshops selected through a workshop selection process, having asked the community for proposals.  The MAG needs to evaluate those. 

 Typically we've always said that work has to be done by mid-July because the end of July and August is such a huge holiday period in North America.  If we wait until after that period, it's too late in terms of getting the work done, the people notified and that sort of thing for the MAG later in the year.  If you want to allow a period of time for the workshop -- for the community to be able to submit workshop proposals, you basically back in to the fact that the call needs to go out in the next three to four weeks.

 We could do, you know -- we could still default to some, you know, generic guidance to the community, ask for workshop proposals, choose them, aggregate them, and then try and still do a lot of work to stream them differently, to nurture them, to ensure the panels are -- the sessions are different formats and, you know, we can do -- we can do some things.  And I think that's going to be, you know, what I would say kind of tinker around the edges a little bit. 

 If we -- if we believe that we want to give the -- move more towards focus on a couple of themes and something which is streamed, I mean, there's a few people here that continue coming to that, Rudolf with a lot of his work with some of the Dutch organizations and various organizations said it would really help if we could find a way to make sure that the sessions kind of built on each other and actually advance topics significantly over the course of the IGF.  And I see lots of heads nodding yes, now.  If that's what we want to do, I guess my assumption was we had to identify what a couple of those themes were now so that we can begin our own work progress on them and make that clear to the community so that when the workshop proposals come in as well, we can make sure we're getting the maximum integration there.  Please.

 >>THOMAS SCHNEIDER: If I can maybe comment that there's also something that the IGF used to have that hasn't been discussed very -- today at least not when I was here is the notion of the relationship between the main sessions and the workshop.  You had this notion of feeder workshops so that if you identify classes you may say okay, this is the big main session about a bigger area of an issue and you have more special -- specially-focused workshops.  Then you have the problem that if they're supposed to be feeding into the main session they have to take place before the main session which is not always possible.  You could also say we have follow-up workshops on a more specialized theme.  But the connections between the workshops and the main sessions is something that we need to think about.  And that the other thing is, you're not talking again about proposals -- asking for proposals for workshop.  Maybe there's no time to do a switch from going from workshop proposals to issue proposals this year, but maybe you can do like a hybrid approach.  That you -- you split the proposals in two and you basically ask for an issue.  What do you wanted to discuss, and then link to this how could a workshop about this issue look like.  But you try to start separating or try to get people used to the fact that it's -- it's not necessarily only about their workshop, their people they're proposing.  It's also about the issue that gets you all ready for this year, maybe a little bit more freedom to move things around, to cluster things, and to -- so that maybe you don't fully abolish the call for workshop proposals but you do it like (saying name) say, what is the issue that you'd like to discuss, and if this gets turned into a workshop, how would you do it.  So you start tearing this a little bit apart for this year.  And, of course, this needs to be communicated and explained.  So to give some room and maybe also gain some experience with if you put more focus on the issues.  And then while we would need to see when the IGF take place, it will take place and then we can calculate the timeline back to when, what needs to be done. 

 In the early years we used to have three MAG meetings, one normally around March, then somewhere between May and July, and then one in September.  But that, of course, depends on when the IGF will take place.  Because if you -- if you have the list of issues and/or workshops, again that may help you with actually shaping the bigger clusters and the main sessions.  If you start to do this now, I will think it is probably more difficult.  It would definitely be more top-down.  You may also miss some developments that come up later.  But it all depends also a little bit on the timeline.  So if maybe by tomorrow we already know a little bit more about the timelines.  You never know.  Time is progress.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: That's true.  I don't think we're looking for more difficulty because I feel like we have a fair amount of it in front of us at the moment.  Israel, you had the floor, and then we'll try and kind of wrap this up because we're a little bit over time and figure out how we go forward.  Oh, and Miguel as well because he's (indiscernible).

 >>ISRAEL ROSAS:  Thank you, Chair.  Israel Rosas, for the record.  Just for further thought perhaps we could also define some baskets, clusters, or whatever, around the -- following the idea suggested by Thomas.  And I don't know, making a call to the people to suggest a specific topics inside those baskets in order to also know -- for the MAG to know -- which basket or which cluster has the more attention or the most issues.  And in that sense we can -- we could also know which basket we have more time or more sessions or more -- I don't know.  Even we could also take that into account in order to publicize the intersessional work, in order to say okay, are you interested in emerging technologies?  Well, there are name collision and blockchain.  You are interested in, I don't know, cybersecurity.  We have a BPF on cybersecurity, dynamic coalition, and shared online protection and so on.  In order to make a mix among the -- the work that is carried out by the MAG but also taking into account this -- this hybrid approach.  Thank you.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Israel.  Ji's put his flag up, Miguel is in, I have a few comments.  We're over time, so we need to be really quite brief because otherwise we're keeping some staff here.  Not secretariat staff but other support staff.  Miguel, you have the floor.

 >>MIGUEL IGNACIO ESTRADA:  Can you hear me?

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Yes.

 >>MIGUEL IGNACIO ESTRADA:  I would like to fully support Thomas' proposal.  I think -- I believe we are (indiscernible) about issues, not about people's work.  So I think this basketing of the topics would help the IGF to reduce the proposals number and reduce the sessions.  And I think it -- it is really useful to order to bring back relevance to the IGF. 

 I also believe that we could use intersessional work on that topic.  Maybe creating BPFs or (indiscernible) on most topics right now or maybe in the next meeting but as soon as we can would help us to gather all those people, all those interested people on those topics and help (indiscernible) the work through the year in the IGF and not just to continue like some similar piece of work that -- so maybe we could define those topics with the BPFs we received and announce that those topics will not be able to be addressed at workshops at the IGF.  Thank you.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Miguel.  Those are very helpful comments, as was Israel's as well.  Ji, you have the floor.

 >>JI HAOJUN: Thank you, Chair.  I will be brief.  It is always difficult to agree on the -- the main themes or the name of the main themes.  So my -- my preference is that we just give a generic name to each basket or category and we, you know, give, you know, under the theme can have a notation -- you can have some, you know, certain kind of a notation listing all of the focus or priorities, the preference mentioned by the MAG member and maybe outsiders so that it -- it could be -- you can update the annotation (audio problems) until we have the meeting.  So all the -- all the concerns can be reflected and we don't need to fight all of the three or five words of each theme.  Thank you.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: I think that's some good -- good advice as well.  And actually, I mean, I think there's maybe crystallized in my mind a way forward, largely based on the comments here of the last three or four speakers.

 Maybe what we could do is if we decided that there were, you know, a small number of themes, just thematic baskets or something that we wanted to pursue, maybe in line or in parallel with the more traditional call for workshop proposals, we outline the fact that we're going to, you know, possibly experiment with a portion of the MAG program.  We're looking at some of these themes.  We want -- here's what we're thinking about, and we ask people to submit.  Because in that case, if the MAG is going to be a little more active in terms of constructing the supporting, whether it's a workshop or a panel or a new session format or a piece of intersessional work, if the MAG is going to have a bigger role in participating in that over the course of this period, we could just call for issues along the lines of what Thomas was outlining and then continue to develop those going forward and in parallel have our more traditional workshop and then figure out how we manage that across the two.  So maybe that's a way to begin developing a thematic kind of focus, a notion, get community engagement in that, have more MAG interaction or ownership or nurturing for a few of those tracks, and at the same time support the traditional.  We've all said we don't -- you know, there's some very key things we don't want to lose around the program and its openness and its breadth and that sort of thing as well.  So I think it's a matter of trying to merge those things.

 I don't know how clear that was.  I'll see if I can write that up and get something out that we can start with tomorrow, but I think at this point I'm feeling more comfortable.  I don't feel even like we need to choose the two or three now.  Even if we had a few more buckets to go out with, we let the community help us figure out what the issues are within those buckets and we simply say, this part of the program is going to be developed in a -- in a manner that's actually going to engage the MAG and the community more directly over the next four or five months, just to ensure that we have, you know, a more cohesive theme or set of presentations in this particular theme.  And, of course, we'd still have the open call which would help with the tags and some of the other activities as well.

 So if people can hopefully understand that a little bit, think about it a little bit, sleep -- sleep on it overnight, and we'll come back tomorrow.  And then tomorrow we should -- you know, to Miguel's last point, we really should think about particularly the BPFs which are chartered by the MAG.  If we think we want a couple of best practice forums, and I think we have some thoughts from some MAG members and some of the past people on them, we need to decide what those are so we can get them chartered.  The same thing with MAG working groups, and probably some view of the timetable are sort of at least three of the most critical things I think we need to get through tomorrow, along with this one.

 Thank you all very much.  Thank you for putting up with this.  I mean, it's always such a mad crush when you're trying to build relationships, get some common viewpoint, change literally -- you know, be able to change the plane here in mid flight, but I really appreciate everybody hanging with it and all of the, you know, contributions and thoughts.  So thank you.  Tomorrow morning 10:00, but not in this room.  We're actually in room A, I think.

 >> Yes.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Room A, which is literally just across the hall there.  Oh, are there any other comments?  And if I could thank the ITU staff for staying late and the transcribers as well and thank you for all of your support today.  Thank you.