IGF 2016 - Day 0 - Room 6 - Newcomers Track

 

The following are the outputs of the real-time captioning taken during the Eleventh Annual Meeting of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) in Jalisco, Mexico, from 5 to 9 December 2016. Although it is largely accurate, in some cases it may be incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. It is posted as an aid to understanding the proceedings at the event, but should not be treated as an authoritative record. 

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>> Hi, everyone.  Hi, I'm seeing a lot of familiar faces, even though you are the first time here at IGF.  I work for the IGF Secretariat. This is my dear colleague, MAG member, Bianca. The ewcomers track's idea is to explain what is the IGF; that the IGF is not about  four days of meeting, but it's a whole process.  The process that started 10 years ago. 

I'm very happy today that today with us we have the key people, that were with the IGF from the very beginning.  I'm not going to present them, they have many titles, so I will kidnly ask them to later present themselves.  

>>  Thank you.  Hi, everyone, I'm ‑‑ so a newcomer idea was what we discussed, and eventually rolled out to what we have here today.  Super thankful.  There is the welcome, the ‑‑ I will do.  There's a history of IGF, key, structure, and ‑‑ modalities, he has been here since the is first, he is somebody who is very, very knowledgeable and you can definitely reach out him later, intersectional work and ‑‑ meeting that will be covered by ‑‑ and there's Diagnose multi stakeholder advisory group.  I'm from Asia, Hong Kong, specifically, and I'm in civil society.  So, there are a lot of people in the group which are super interesting.  So, you get to know them about a bit more later. 

The final one was intercessional work and ways of engagement, that would include B ‑‑ CNB ‑‑ I know these sound like acronyms now, you will know them by the end of day today, I promise.  And finally, it comes to Q and A, focusing on what you guys want.  I love the energy in the room, I know we have a small one, but this is what makes the ‑‑ it changes much more relevant.  So, other than today, which is a mentor session, there will be knowledge cafes daily, we will have posters all around the knowledge cafes are 1:30 to 2:15, in workshop four.  You can definitely get connected with us.  We have a mailing list, we have a Twitter and the website.  Do reach out to ‑‑ and I.  Finally, this is one pin that every newcomer can get, pin it here so they know you are newcomers and they can reach out to you, and we know that there are a lot of people from all over the world and language is obviously a an issue when it comes to communication.  So, of course it will be easier when you can communicate in your own natural language.  So I do watch out for people who will have a similar tag, but with the language.

>> Thank you for bringing us this cute gifts, which I will be, it will be very useful during these four days.  Let me announce that with maybe ‑‑ at the beginning because he has a meeting after this, he is the program and technology manager, which is based in Geneva, that is coordinating this huge event, and then the, he is basically the head of the Secretariat, what I want to ask, I think it will be very important for you to know, what is the IGF and why is it useful for all of us to be here?

>> Thank you very much.  Unfortunately, I can only be here for a few minutes, but first of all I would just like to welcome you all, to the IGF.  This is our 11th IGF, and how many of ‑‑ this is your first time here?  Wow, that's wonderful.  So, you might find that it's a little bit overwhelming with over 11 themes going on at the same time, but I am sure that they will take you through them and show you how to slowly get acquainted with the idea and also with the various acronyms and themes that we have here.

As you all know, with the ‑‑ what I don't want to say anything that Marcus is going to say, he is very knowledgeable and he knows how to explain the idea from its very beginnings until now.  It's a product of ‑‑ and we are here to discuss public policy issues dealing with the internet in a multi stakeholder manner where everybody has an equal footing, and it's further unique in the UN kind of processes that we let anyone speak in the world ‑‑ not order that they have the microphone or in the order that they put up their hands, it doesn't matter if you are a big country or a single individual or a big company, you all have a chance to have your say, and comment and be involved in the discourse of any of the various themes that are going on around the privacy, be it free basics, be it whatever.  So we are very proud of that.  And for the present day and the best practice forums and the dynamic coalitions that we have, going to go through that with you, and tell you where we stand now and to the future.

So, again, thank you very much for being here.  And I will give the floor back.

>> Thank you for coming.  And before you go, I'm going to ask you something to confirm here.  Colleagues are more than welcome to approach you whenever they see you at the venue and ask whatever they want.

>> Oh, yes, totally approachable.  If you see me walking, please ‑‑ feel free to stop me or walk with me if you can keep up, that's no problem.  Yes.  We can talk and discuss any issues that you want.  And yes, we fully encourage you to come.  We have various ways that you can be involved throughout the year, which mark yours and ‑‑ will and ‑‑ and they will go through with you.  Again, welcome.  Thank you.

>> Thank you so much.  In the meantime, there's one person that joined us that, even though you are ‑‑ I believe you know this, this is the person that everybody knows and she knows everyone.  Ice Marilyn, our member that has a lot of roles, I'm going to leave it to her to tell us what she is doing for the IGF.  If you now agree, I would go a bit through history to see how it was established and what did we do in the past 10 years and what are the goals for the next 10 years?  So, Mr. Marcus, I'm going to ask you just to introduce yourself, starting from the beginning, when IGF was created?

>> Thank you, it's my pleasure to be here, great to see so many newcomers, I was at the beginning, the first head of the Secretariat of the IGF.  Ending this meeting as a board member of I can, and I'm also the secretary of the internet governance for support association and excuse myself ‑‑ general a assembly, but I would like to make use of this opportunity to make a commercial for the IGF support association.  We have a booth in the village, please pass by and we will be more than delighted if you joined us to show your support to the IGF.  But they asked me to give a bit of the history of the IGF, how it came about, and let me take a look back at the beginning. 

We had the summit on the information society and that was ‑‑ dealing with the new issue on the agenda of international cooperation, that was the internet and the internet governance became a hotly debated issue.  Broadly speaking to ‑‑ those in support of the distributed ‑‑ arrangement related to the internet.  I can ‑‑ the registries, all of these technical bodies that make the internet work and also the internet engineering task force and on the other hand there are governments that felt was somewhat strange for every issue under the sun that was some UN agency responsible for, their argument was it would be only normal if the internet was better taken care of by the UN and in particular by the UN agency responsible for communications, that's the ITU, international telecommunications union. 

This was almost a religious argument, those who felt that the State ‑‑ grow with the technology groups responsible for running the internet felt putting the internet under control of the UN would stifle the technological development because the internet as fast moving technology and the UN with its processes would be too cumbersome to deal with such a fast moving technology.

The compromise, then, in the end was, yes, we agree, existing arrangements actually work well and there's room for improvement, one element was indeed we find that there's a need for finding a discussion in an open format on all the policy issues pertaining to the internet and that was okay, we asked the secretary general to set up a new ‑‑ to convene a new forum for internet policy and dialogue and that is the IGF.

And that was carefully chosen, compromise, because those who did not want the UN to take over the internet were afraid if the ITU was asked to convene the forum, that would be a first step towards UN takeover.  And there are those who did not want the UN having a say at all.  They wanted to argue that the internet society should convene the forum, but that would be too far away from governments for the other side.  And the compromise chosen was then, okay, we asked the secretary general of the UN to convene the forum, that gives a link to the UN through the secretary general, but it is not a UN body as such.  It is not a UN organization, it's not an organization, it's just a very loose forum and meeting where people come and ‑‑ go away.  That was also very clear that would have been a very strong operation against creating a new organization.

So, this careful compromise was negotiated in 2005, and in early 2006, we had to figure out how to make this work.  The language is very vague, but it is clear that it's not a government led organization, but it should be a multi stakeholder forum.  And we built on what we had done during the two phases of ‑‑ when we had the working group on internet governance.  In between these meetings we had open consultations and we continued on that.  We had the first consultation in 2006, on what we should do, and it sort of emerged ‑‑ people, folks to appear at ‑‑ a meeting of maybe a little bit less than a week, some people wanted it to be longer than that and we ended up, okay, four days might work. 

But now we end up, we have already a five-day meeting because day 0 as we call it now is not part of the official meeting, but it makes a week long meeting.  And I notice that some people started meeting on Sunday and that was day minus one.  The first meeting in Athens, we did not know what it was going to look like, but we knew from the secretary we would need to have guidance from multi stakeholders and we set up an advisory group in those days it was called advisory group, but it was composed of many, of all the stakeholders and they came up with the ideas for the program of the meeting, and well, we did not know whether it would work or not, but I did work.  Where the government or individual, they all had an equal say.  Governments are not used to that. 

Governments are used to sitting in front of the room and in the back of the other stakeholders, that was clear during ‑‑ and we had discussions that government spoke first, and right at the end, the last five minutes before breaking out for lunch there was time for the other stakeholders.  Clearly that was not what we wanted.  I do remember we had discussions with colleagues if the UN, how do we set up the room?  Be the UN colleagues who helped said it's clear, the governments sit in the front at the others sit behind.  We said no, that really doesn't work.  We cannot do that because this is a multi-stakeholder meeting and we have to give equal time, we thought maybe the government on the left like you do in weddings sometimes, the family of the bride is on the left and the family of the groom is on the right.  And that didn't work either because we were overrun with people.  So we were not able to organize it. 

We had to plan that maybe 600 people but it was less than a thousand for a room, can seat for 600, there was free seating for all.  And to my amazement, it worked, the government accepted there was a government representative sitting next to a civil society representative and people spoke whenever they felt like speaking.  So that was the first meeting.  Then and that leads us now back to where we are.  There are those right at the beginning who said well, we need to set up working group to take deeper in issues.  This was ‑‑ I would call them the IGF maximalists, and the IGF minimalists, that would be like setting up a new organization, this is just a meeting of once a year and then we will see.  But then somebody said well, you know, let there be dynamic coalitions if people want to sit together and work together, let's call them dynamic coalitions a and we had them from the beginning.  There was no sort of rules, we did not discuss rules of procedure.  And I do remember from ‑‑ we spent the very first meeting two weeks discussing rulings of procedure.

And there was one government representative who said clearly the first meeting in Athens should discuss the rule of procedure.  And I said to him, if you do that, then there won't be a second meeting because nobody will come to a second meeting.  Nothing more tedious than discussing rules of procedure.  So we went into it and had the meeting and that worked amazingly well.  And the procedures actually developed and evolved out of the discussion without having a top down discussion about how they should be.  So, clearly we all decided at the very first meeting, yes, we are not here to name and shame people, be that private companies or be that governments, but we talk about the principles of ‑‑ we can talk about the pros and cons of proprietary software or open software, but we will not mention companies.  Obviously we can talk about freedom of expression on‑line between the and not point at governments and say you are the bad guys.  So these are sort of a very general, generic rules of behavior and procedure.

And as I said, we did not know what to expect from the first meeting, but the meeting went well and people accepted each other.  There were a bit nervous and the special advisor to the secretary general internet is governance.  On the ‑‑ he compared it to Indian weddings arranged weddings, when first meeting, boy meets girl and a bit shy and that wasn't his take from the Athens meeting when 'governments had to sit next to civil society, or technology people that were a little bit shy that didn't know each other that well.  But that's over the years, and I think by the second meeting was in Rio, people were still a little bit nervous meeting each other, the third meeting was in ‑‑ there, and it was coincided with the terrorist attack in Mumbai and people canceled the ‑‑ they were afraid there would be a difficult situation and I think the European ‑‑ they canceled their attendance, and that gist a sense of solidity to those who why actually there.  They felt a sense of community of people who go to the IGF, feel a sense of community, where they actually are comfortable with each other being in the same room and having discussions without negotiating anything.

And that was also, I think, an important thing to remember that the IGF was not set up to negotiate an outcome, but it was here to have a discussion.  And the fact that there was no pressure to come to a negotiation, to have a result in the end, allowed people to speak more freely.  So many people said that's a weakness of the IGF, there's no negotiated outcome.  But I always argue it's actually the strength of the IGF, because people speak freer because they are not under any pressure of coming to an agreement. 

And also for governments, it may be more difficult to be in a freewheeling discussion, they usually used to go to a meeting where they have instructions, but they also learned how to adapt to that.  And by the time we concluded the first, we had a meeting in ‑‑ and at venues and the mandate got renewed and there was ‑‑ the second cycle, and it was also a working group on IGF improvement, where many proposals were made, how to essentially address the frustrations of those who said there should be more tangible outcomes to work towards those and be gradually also, those I would call the IGF minimalists become less concerned ‑‑ possible ways, and it would not necessarily need to negotiations and here ‑‑ and they talk about the best practice forums come in, these are essential activities that take place between the annual meetings and they lead then to the outcome of the best practice at the annual meeting. 

And also we took, tried to bring the dynamic coalitions together a bit to develop common standards of procedure.  We great sort of on minimal standards, that is the floor is open, open procedures, open archives, open membership, and to be open and inclusive in work and also agree to accept dissenting opinions.  We have a joint session the second time this year of the dynamic coalitions, where we present the work of the dynamic coalitions that asked for community feedback.  And in the same time, what happened very early on was at the national and regional level, there was a need to duplicate on having a similar kind of dialogue yet the in fact IGF's and they sprang up all over the place and we have them all over and Marilyn I am sure will talk more about that. 

I think that's was an important ‑‑ that was not planned.  That was an unintended consequences in a nice way, it just happened because people felt there was a need to discuss these issues at the national and regional level.  And this is a growth.  We see it growing every year, we have more and more often.  This is sort of something, a lot of internet governance happens at the national level ‑‑ begins at home, I like to quote him on that.

‑‑ may have talked to long, I would be happy to answer any questions is, I would have to step out by 1:00, but I will hand over the mic to you.

>> Thank you, so much, Marcus, for this history, it was an emotional story because there was a struggle to establish what we have today.  I have one brief question from my side before we move to Marilyn and open the floor for comments and then continue.  There's something that we call the IGF Secretariat, can you just briefly explain us those terms and what are the results of these entities?  Very briefly, I know it's almost impossible, we do not have a lot of time.

>> It may sound simple, but it's not.  It was, when the mandate came to the secretary general, I was working then, coordinator of the working group on internet governance, and it went to the offers of the secretary general and they analyzed with what it meant and they thought while it makes sense to establish a small Secretariat to support that process, they asked me to have ‑‑ Secretariat and that Secretariat is now headed by ‑‑ and it is based in Geneva.  To begin with, I reported to the secretary general's office, but then when the new secretary general came in, that was on the ‑‑ he delegated the responsibility for the IGF Secretariat to UN ‑‑ that's where we are now.  And the ‑‑ is what I said when we first started, we had an advisory group made up of people representing civil society, the internet technical community and governments and the private sector.  And there were, later, thing, sort of renamed essentially we took on the name they call themselves you multi stakeholder advisory group, and that's MAG.  Have I answered the question?

>> (inaudible).

>> That's what I said.  It was ‑‑ the responsibility was handed to you and ‑‑ UN ‑‑ is essentially the administrative basically stop of the IGF Secretariat and has the overall responsibility for the process.

>> Thank you so much, Marcus, Marilyn is one of our respectful MAG members, many.  Them are with us in this room, I hope you will stay with us, especially when the colleagues ask questions.  I'm going to ask Marilyn briefly to tell us about the role MAG, and then I'm going to ask you to move to something that is probably the closest to you within the MAG, which are the national and regional IGF's.

>> My name is Marilyn, that is the best tip as a role model that you will ever get from anybody.  When you go to the microphone, say your name clearly, slowly, and the same way every time.  Because the transcript software is intelligence software and if you get it right, every time you speak, your words will be attributed to you and not to woman speaking.

(Laughter.)

>> So, that's my tip.  Marcus left a little bit of the story out, that I'm going to cover very quickly before I talk about the role of the MAG.  I was privileged in 19897 and 1998 to lead the private sector Trans‑Atlantic cooperation of business and the technical community to work toward the creation of I can.  There were 371 million users on the internet.  And they came primarily from 11 countries.  I effective communication can name them all and so can you.

Think how far we have come.  We did work together in a quasi multi stakeholder way in the creation of the ICANN.  But it was different, we were focused on technical aspects.  And yet we did begin to learn about what working across the aisle, which is what we called it then, meant and how important it was.

I was privileged, then, to participate on behalf of my employer and the business coalition in the preparatory processes, the two, the four years.  Here is how it goes:  I work for AT&T.  Hi, I'm flying to the united nation in Geneva, Switzerland for three weeks, and they are talking about taking over the internet.  Okay, my boss says, what governments are you meeting with?  I said actually, I don't get to go to the meeting.  But you are going to Geneva for three weeks?  I'm going to hang out in the coffee shop and see who I can buttonhole.  That is literally where we started.  At one point three people from business crept into a balcony and observed the negotiations of the governments.  We sat on the floor.

After that, we moved to having three-minute speaking interventions, once a day, per stakeholder group, and then 15 minutes speaking interventions and when the negotiations went organization we got kicked out of the room.  When we got to the crunch, we worked very closely with governments, different groups, the civil society did, the technical group, the business community did.  When we got to the crunch, we were running out of time.  We were negotiating until 2 and 3 a.m. at the play, right?  We went to ‑‑ without a document and the heads of state were coming in two days.  All of a sudden, get out of the way, everybody get around the table, your civil society, I don't care, you have something smart to say?  We broke through the idea so that the agenda which is what we base our work on, is actually much more reflective of the input of all of us as different stakeholders, than it started out to be four years earlier.

And I think one of the things that I would say to everyone is, I really commend to all of us to read the paragraphs in the agendas, paragraph 72 through 80, you can look them on‑line, because it helps to be a guide and it is what we still base and rely on.

So, I'm going to talk about the MAG.  I have attended every MAG meeting since the MAG was first formed.  But it met in closed sessions up until just a couple of years ago.  And I was pleased to be one of the outsiders lobbying the members to open up their meetings to attendance.  There is a day of open consultation where the MAG members listened to everyone else and then there are two days of work.  But everyone else is in the room and at this point during the day, we go back and check in with others.  The MAG is advising the process, of planning the meeting and developing.  We are supposed to come with a community of contacts from whatever stakeholder group we come from and to reflect from that stakeholder group into the MAG process and from 245 process back to our stakeholder group.  We asked an individual capacity but we have a responsibility to reflect. 

I use that word purposely, because I think we do not have this hierarchy Al reporting idea, we have the idea that we work together and here is another phrase that Marcus didn't use nearly often enough:  We act in a multi stakeholder manner on an equal footing.  We have to keep reinforcing every time we talk about multi stakeholder engagement that we act on an equal footing.  And governments have struggled with this.  And I will say that that's because the culture, I used to work in a government, a state government, that's because the culture is very different than it is in the technical community or in civil society.  So we actually asking career appointed or elected officials and other can stakeholders to learn different modes of interaction.

And I think that is really important for us to keep thinking about.  Because in the MAG itself, we are also learning the MAG, in the past, really restricted itself just to the planning of the program.  And that is actually its official job.  But it is also increasingly trying to understand how to fully support the evolution of the IGF, to deepen it, to enhance the impact and to fulfill the rest of the job in paragraph 72, not just to hold an annual event, but to be a yearlong process.  We have 10 years and we have 10 years, we have renewed for 10 years, it was a huge, huge, huge outcome.  There were governments who thought this was the opportunity to, okay, boys and girls, we are going to go to the ‑‑ we are going to create a new UN organization, we are done here, we have got 10 years, we have governments who wanted perpetual renewal of the IGF, we had governments and others who wanted only five years. 

The fact that we got 10 years is because of the work, the success of the IGF, and frankly, it's because of the creation of the NRI's and the impact of the NRI's and the intercessional work and the engagement of governments in the UN, no matter how ‑‑ open it says it is, the ‑‑ there are side meetings with stakeholders.  You are not in the negotiation.  But governments listened to us, actively participating here, actively participating at ‑‑ and bringing in the stakeholders to ensure the 10 years.  So the MAG is going to have to evolve its own role.  The MAG is constituted roughly 150 percent governments and the past host countries have a permanent observer seat.

IGO's have a permanent observer seat, and the other 50 percent of the seats are divided roughly equally between the technical community, the business community, which we call the private sector for some reason, small businesses from development countries think of themselves as businesses, and the civil society.  We may have to start thinking about evolution of the concept of stakeholder groups because we have a huge population of young people who want to be actively involved and we are seeing with the addition on the focus of the goals that we need to be bring more and different government agencies in, the developments agencies in, the development representatives in.  So the MAG is going to face some growth and evolution opportunities.

We have, we work virtually, we meet three times a year, face to face, usually, anthropology at the annual meeting and we work virtually.  Marcus had talked a little bit about the evolution of the working approaches.  I'm just going to ask the other MAG members in the room to raise their hand so you recognize them.  We have got a number of MAG members here.

We are also responsible to be ambassadors with the community.  So I hope you as a newcomer are going to become a best friend with one of the MAG members and help to make them your coach.

I'm going to talk about.  NRI's.  For three years, in the United States, I held preparatory meetings, I convened preparatory meetings to prepare, we couldn't agree on how to launch a national IGF for three years, we had to educate people about what internet governance.  Everybody in the United States thought it was a takeover of ICANN.  That was such a small part of what we needed to be address goes, we launched the IGF in 2009, we were a late comer.  Many countries have stated.  The NRI's are very dynamically unique to the needs of their country, their sub region or their region.  And can I see a show of hands of anything who is involved in a national or regional IGF or one in formation?

We have a booth and I hope you will come and stop there, and we have a main session on day two in the afternoon, where we have 41NRI coordinators speaking.  I hope you will plan to come to that as well.  The NRI's are, you can talk about public policy at a global level.  You can talk about it at a regional level.  And you can talk about it at a sub-regional level, but you can only implement it at a national level.  And we have to remember that.  Because we can talk about codes of conduct, protecting children on‑line, improving cyber security, we have got to go ohm and update that law, we have to go home and make sure that the system engineers that are designing the systems are also using standards.  We have to work locally. 

And that is what the NRI's really are about, reflecting what is going on in their country, back into the IGF, and then reflecting from the IGF back into the NRI's.  We were very fortunate last year at the substantive, the chair then, appointed me as the coordinator.  I learned later that mostly meant cheap cheerleader.  We were very fortunate that at the substantive meeting of the NRI's, they called for a dedicated focal point and that is ‑‑ she has turned around the ability of new interested parties to launch an NRI because they have a dedicated point of contact.  I hope any of you who are interested in learning more about the MAG, you have got other MAG members here.  If you are interested in learning more about NRI's you have a great group of coordinators here as well as ‑‑

>> Thank you so much, Marilyn, as we have Marilyn and Marcus for less than 10 minutes here in this room, I'm going to give you an opportunity to ask whatever would you like to ask to Marilyn and Marcus and related to the IGF and to their presentations.

>> Maybe I should give you two minutes to think about it.  While you are thinking about it, Marilyn recognized, and thank you so much that you did, recognized many of the MAG members that are here in this room.  What I would like to ‑‑ Marilyn, just briefly tell us what I asked at the beginning and then I could also ask other colleagues, MAG members, to respond as well.  Concretely, what's the term of the MAG?

>> The MAG is nominated in a process ‑‑ a group of business community, there's no single focal point that coordinates who gets nominated.  But they have the business community, the civil society have processes by which they solicit names who want to be nominated and they go through a process of trying to generate support to put a group of names forward.  Roughly a third of the MAG rotates off, always newcomers coming in and more experienced folks going off.  Of the MAG benchmarks we do the outreach to the community to seek input on what should the subjects be?  Are we addressing emerging issues? 

For instance, need to, you have to deal with the internet of things, and start thinking about substantive development issues here.  We are the sort of overall perform committee.  We do the concrete work as well of encouraging the compliant to submit workshop proposals.  We have a limit on the number of MAG members themselves, three years ago, I will say again, I led the charge on this, mag members cannot submit workshop proposals.  I think that is an integrity issue because we rate the workshop proposals.  And we need to have, if we are going to run the program, we need to be opening the program up to the community.

The concrete work is, we debate what the issues should be, what the priorities should be.  We evaluate the workshops, we try to set standards and provide them ‑‑ for the workshops and the main ‑‑ we organize the main events.  And probably the main concrete output that you would see is trying to improve and developing the program but also organizing the main sessions.  And then while we are here, acting as sort of volunteer assistance within the community to reach out to the community, to staff, in addition to the great work of the Secretariat and the host, be in the room with setting up the microphone or running around with the mic and really extending the physical work.  We have a very small IGF Secretariat. 

It is hopefully going to expand in its numbers, but we are ‑‑ about we have moved from an annual meeting to an intercessional process that works all year long, and we haven't actually substantively increased ‑‑ you would also see that we are involved in an integrated way with members in the work that ‑‑ and are going to talk about.  You see the members in the dynamic coalition or in best practice forums, but they are there as equal participants.

>> Thank you so much, Marilyn, thank you, Marcus, we had one correction if you can stay for two minutes?

>> Will you just say your name?

>> I'm from ‑‑ my question is, do MAG members represent the countries?  We have 55 MAG members, so, one MAG member ‑‑ different countries?  Or doesn't work that way?

>> MAG members do not ‑‑ if you are represented as a country, if you are a country member, coming from a geographic region, we have to make sure there's geographic representation.  Countries don't have a dedicated seat, and there's a rotation.

Let's say, for instance, last year the Nigerian government was on the MAG, and this year the government of Ghana, so, it's a geographic representation.  But the overall, what they try to do is to have broad representation from all across the map of the world.  So if there's business from one country, there might not be government from that country, right?  Because there's only a limited number of seats

You are supposed to act in your individual capacity, which means you ‑‑

>> Just starting voice on ‑‑ governments are used to that in the UN system, there.  Regional groups are represented and they sort it out among themselves.  Let's say the African group has two seats in whatever body of the UN, then they sort it out among themselves, for governments, this is nothing new.  But as Marilyn said, they are not expected a push a national position but to work in a multi stakeholder setting.  But there was another question.

>> My name is ‑‑ from Ghana.  I'm just putting my shoes in ‑‑ newcomers, I want to ask, as a newcomer, can how can I get involved in the regional and national IGF, and how can I join some of the working groups?

>> Marilyn and Marcus, briefly, but we are to discuss this with ‑‑

>> So, he is cheating because he actually ‑‑ he is a coordinator of a national IGF, but it's an excellent question.  If there's no national IGF in your country, you can get involved by helping to launch one.  And central Asia has just held their first sub regional IGF this year and we will be building on that.  If you are not family with whether or not there's a national and renal natural IGF in your country, we do have an e‑mail lest, but I think it work best if you came to see me or ‑‑ and we will help connect you.  All of the national and regional IGF's are open and inclusive.  If they are not, they don't get listed on the IGF website.  So, I will just say, lots more information to come on that.  And I think that is a key question that all of you should ask yourself.  Because you cannot always participate on a global setting, but you can participate nationally.  And we do also have remote participation and remote hubs.  I think the working groups are going to be addressed by ‑‑

>> Yes, we are going to discuss in the next half an hour, the so‑called intercessional work of the IGF and how can you engage with the IGF?

>> Just a few words to follow up on Marilyn.  And my encouragement to knew newcomers, do ask questions, there's no such thing as a stupid question, only the answers can be stupid.  Stand up, don't be shy, and actually, people actually quite like it when you say, you have been showing people, MAG members, don't be shy, they will like it if they are asked for advice.  So, it's good to see new people around and we also have said we want more young people and that it's great to see y'all faces here, so, get involved, speak up, and ask questions and say what you think.  And please join in the fun.  You are more than welcome.  Thanks.  And please apologize, we have to move next door.

>> Thank you so much, we have one intervention from our MAG member.

>> Thank you so much.  I have a few comments since most of your new ‑‑ you are new, you are young.  And that reminds me of when I first ‑‑ in the world ‑‑ information society, there was, that was 2003, and I was young ‑‑ the youth caucus ‑‑ taking it global, I went to Geneva and that was my first international event related to technology, ICT and internet governments:  And that's how I got involved.  That was my first experienced, I was exposed to so many new ideas and I was lost at the beginning.

But I did not disconnect after I went back home.  Many times the newcomers make a mistake, and that's when they go to an IGF, ICANN, or another meeting on the IG issues, and they disconnect when they go back home.  That's wrong, you should not do that.  You have to be connected and be involved.

Number one, one of the local initiatives, as Marilyn said, that you would need to implement policies on national level.  You can discuss it at the global level, but you would need to implement it at the national level.  So, the first thing would be for you to get involved in one of the national initiatives that could be ‑‑ local chapter, it could be a local internet governance forum or it could be a national, initiative on internet governments, anything.  That way you would be involved.  And as Marilyn said and some of the other speakers, then you would need to get connected with a global initiative.  And that could be IGF global, you can become an ICANN fellow and you can get involved in some of the ‑‑ international meetings, and that way you will get involved on the global meetings.  The benefit of being involved at a global level is that you will learn so much, you know?  There's so much knowledge, hearing, experience hearing, people coming from different parts of the world and discussing some really hot topics, some really important and critical issues.

So that's how you will get involved on a global level.  My journey to the MAG was, this was 2003, and I got involved in the ‑‑ forums after the, what's this, 2003, and 2012, I participated in the first MAG that was in ‑‑ but IGF was born after the ‑‑ was 2050.  I had, like, the global disconnect for some time, but I reconnected in 2012, and then ‑‑ in 2013, then ‑‑ in 2015.  And in 2016, at the end of '15, they had this call for MAG membership, I nominated myself and I was appointed as a MAG number then.  Also I put ‑‑ into two ICANN's, in 2014, that was Los Angeles, and this year, in ‑‑ where I did not participate as an ICANN fellow, but it was a community on ‑‑ program for the fellows to get involved more and help I can bring other people, communities who are not involved in the ICANN process.

So, my advice to you would be to be present, get involved, local and regional initiatives.  Do not disconnect, disappear.  If you disappear, you will be forgotten.  So you have to be present and be involved.

>> Thank you very much.  We also have a ‑‑ here, our respective MAG member that is coordinating very important working group on communication and outreach.  Something that ‑‑ emphasized a couple of times.  Briefly before we give them the floor, can you just tell us what are the ways to engage with the IGF and how do we get new members and if you could make it a ‑‑ you come and ‑‑ it would be also good.

>> Thank you.  All I need to do is to recall ‑‑ IGF.  And the question on the how to bring you into the internet governance committee is quite ‑‑ one of the mandates that I have.  And what I probably would like to share with you is that as long as you are using internet for one thing or the other, it is a responsibility to know what is happening within the internet governance space, and apart fund raiser that, just like the ‑‑ one of the best ways to get connected and to be part of the system is to join the national initiative.  I also want to challenge you here.  When you look at the program that you have, you will discover that it program has virtually everything on the internet governance.  And you are a good part of this program for free.  And some of this program, the program when under any circumstances, sometimes you pay for it to get a ‑‑ (inaudible). 

I want to challenge the youths in the house and the first timer in the house, that the internet governance room is a ‑‑ space.  And it will be, for me, it would be disappointing engagement if you should leave internet governance forum without going about with something, something you can go about and impact your community.  I want to implore you, that you should get your vote and get it ‑‑ and then walk with your peers.  Just in case you have information or you have questions to ask, I'm available because one of my mandates is to ensure that I communicate internet governance activities, programs, and whatsoever, so that's you can be well aware have what we do and how it can be part of it.

Let me also talk on the issues of the youth engagement.  In my country, what we have done ‑‑ I'm sorry, I happen ‑‑ let me give you a little bit of my soul.  I find myself ‑‑ I'm the co‑founder of the Nigeria internet governance and then I got involved as MAG member and then also ‑‑ as their MAG member of their region and ‑‑ both ‑‑ it's not just about my engagement at the regional level.  The more I try to ‑‑ I find myself in a plane ‑‑ potential, so please for you, it's a new house, you have a lifetime privilege to lend something.  And I either wanted to go back.  What about you your land here?  You have government land, the community that has to do with internet governance.  Things that have to do with the internet.  We have a problem in communicate can the importance of internet governance. 

Mostly, when you talk to people when you go for a meeting for this, what they come to mind is they are ‑‑ so people seem not to have a better understanding of what internet governance is all about.  I want to challenge to you that, when you are going about, community with virtually everybody about what internets, governance is all about.  Something I am going to bringing ‑‑ check out the curiosity of the stakeholders.  What if you wake up one day and you discover the internet is totally shut down?  How would it affect you?  Because in my country, if the internet is shut down, I can tell you the whole system is shut down.  So if you know that the shutting off the internet is going to affect you, it is your responsibility to ask me ‑‑ internet space.  What about you ‑‑ please go back and communicate it. 

And we don't just want you to communicate, we want you to be part of the community.  Join the community, and let me tell you this:  You know, the beauty of multi stakeholder, the beauty.  Multi stakeholder is to ‑‑ like you and me to be part of the governance process.  I have looked at all the ‑‑ I have not found a single one that give ‑‑ to a man on the street ‑‑ to be part of the policy making.  Now the internet ‑‑ the multi stakeholders is the fantastic motor.  I won't ‑‑ maybe in the nearest future, from the democratic point of view, I'm not a stakeholder, it ‑‑ running national government.  Government is all about stakeholders, right?  And about bringing everybody to get out to do a ‑‑ agenda.  I want to leave that to you.  Do not lose what you have. 

What do you have?  You have an opportunity to be engaged in the process that governance and shape our future.  You don't have to have a reason to ‑‑ a ticket has been given to you free of charge, and you will also be held accountable, you know who?  By the people coming behind you and they ask you, you have learned about these things, up heard about it, and ‑‑ if they complain about things not going well, what do you do?  Since you are a part of it, so, you have got to be accountable.  If you are not taking part in the history ‑‑ not only your future, the future of your children, and the new ‑‑ that came in. 

So, let me stop here, maybe by ‑‑ have time to ask questions, we will be able to respond.  But please, this forum is about community.  If you look at all the workshops, I know that, they have ‑‑ the ability for you to ‑‑ if you use it ‑‑ you can go back to your country, more engaging, empowered.  And then you know what?  You have better connectivity in terms of networking ‑‑ most people ‑‑ maybe ‑‑ on the TV, they are here.  That's the beauty of internet governance forum, it's about you, me, and everybody before us.

>> Thank you for those encouraging words.  Let me give you clear concrete examples, there's something that Marcus mentioned, they are called the best practice forums, and they are called intercessional work.  It's being recommended to the IGF to work on producing some tangible outputs and this is something being done for the past couple of years.  We have the key persons on working at best practices forums, Andrea, if somebody is interested in gender and the abuse of women on‑line, how they can engage and what is the BPF produces?

>> Thanks.  I'm the ‑‑ for the best practice forum on gender, which this year is in the second year of running.  Last year it looked at abuse and violence, specifically with women in mind.  And this year we are looking at gender digital divide, the fact that women are most less likely to benefit from internet access.  In terms of how you can get involved, I think that's what she wanted.  We are at the point where we have already produced a draft outcome document.  So if you want, go and read it and comment on it, it's on the IGF review platform and the IGF review platform you can find on the website, there are links to all of the different reports on the website.

So you can comment on that.  Otherwise specifically for the BPF agenda, we looked at the barriers women face to access and the initiatives that are used to overcome the barriers, when I talk about barriers, it's the fact that devices are not affordable for women, lack of skills and education, un‑‑ abuse is a barrier and some of the initiatives we have started mapping.  So, especially people coming from diverse regions, we have had ‑‑ using a survey and that sort of thing, but we will always be welcoming more input on these initiatives.  We have partnered with the women on mapping this on a nice website and that will remain running which is a new outcome for the IGF.  So that's two ways in which you can contribute to the agenda.  Comment on the draft, on the be review platform and seeing the information about some of the initiatives that you are running in your countries.  Thanks.

>> Thank you.  I'm doing basically the same work, but for other best practice forums, the one on IPV6 employment, that the necessary for the internet to continue to grow.  How it's ‑‑ in countries and how that can be further promoted.  The other one I'm working on is the one on internet exchange points.  Focusing on the role that they have and how they can help to deploy their local internet communities.

The way you can get involved is basically the same, we have been working on a draft output, which is on‑line on the IGF website.  You can put comments examples on your own countries in there.  And also you can join our workshops we have this week.  The best practice workshops.  But I would like to go back to the basic idea behind the best practice forums.

There was a lot of knowledge on different topics in the community and that can be on gender issues, it can be on more technical, or the other best practice forum is cyber security.  There's a lot of knowledge available in the community, either with specific organizations, but with individual specialists or just by users, people that are on the internet and have certain experiences to share.  The best practice forums are there, to bring that knowledge together, to bring that at one point and try to put it in one document and give it back to the community.

So that people can find examples, knowledge that is available, but maybe available in this side of the world or in this particular community.  They have it ‑‑ it is presented in one document so that people can learn from each other and find the example.  I think that is one of the most important things to just to understand best practice forums, it's not ‑‑ it's not about finding the one best practice on something, no.  It's about bringing examples together from everywhere in the world from different communities, different ethnic regions, dealing with a specific topic, and bringing it together so we can learn from each other.

And the last point, I think our work, I want to say it's simple to understand, how the process works.  You have first the MAG, who chooses three, four, five topics.  Then there is the Secretariat, the work we are doing is just providing the paper and the pen.  We are there to support the community, to support writing down and making a text from it.

But the content itself, everything that comes in those documents has to come from the community.  And then it's clear where we can help, where we can get involved, where we can bring on the examples, bring on what is happening in your country, what is happening in your region, so that we can know and write it down at the MAG is happy, the UN Secretariat is happy, because we know what to write down.  And the community is happy because they have an interesting resource of information they can look into.

>> Thank you so much, if you have any questions please be free to raise your hand.  In the meantime I'm going to ask a question, next year we will probably have best practice forums on different topics.  What I'm most interested and I think you are interested in, if the next year, someone from this room will be interested to discuss the topic that will be the subject of the best practice forum, how does the process go?  There's the so‑called inputs and what's the role in ‑‑ so that the meetings, the best practice forums have, what's the role of public consultations, on some practical level, if somebody is from government, civil society or if somebody is a free‑lancer, how can they join and, part of the team in order to produce something?

>> I want her later to connect this to the project that we continued from the last year, which is called be connecting and enabling the next billion.  There will be a dedicated session, and it has similar logistic working modalities.  So practically, how they can be involved.

>> So, maybe I should start with that before we go into the methodology, they are all similar.  Connecting and enabling the next billion, I know it's a mouthful, but that's the full title, this is in the second year.  It looks at the challenge around access more generally.  As a best practice forum on gender and access, but this one looks at it broadly.  Last year an outcome document was published on that focusing more on the technical side of it, to some extent, some of the softer issues.  This year the scope has been extended somewhat at focusing on how we can get meaningful access for people, not just access.  And the focus this year is on two things.  It's how access contributes to the sustainable development goals which was agreed upon the end of last year, that's one of the focuses, and the other one is how we should adapt these policy options for connecting and enabling the next billion to national and regional contexts.

So, we have ‑‑ and just to, what she was saying about methodology, all of the intercessional activities, free to use their own methodology.  So you will see that each of the BPF's have used different methodologies, so you can jump from and say if this is different from what you have done.  In general, for the best practice forums, if you want to join the first ‑‑ join the mailing list, every best practice group has a mailing list and that's where all the notifications about meetings are sent.  And on the IGF website, you will see that each ‑‑ and other intercessional activities have a page so all notices about meetings and reports are published on that page.  That's another place that you can go to.

As far as the best practice forums on gender, goes, we had, and the same process was followed this year and last year, we had meetings every two weeks that lasted about an hour, and open to anyone as is usual for IGF things, and would be also used some other methods of gaining input.  We realized that coming to a meeting every week doesn't come to one's schedule.  We had a survey in which we distributed quite widely and we got input from I think 40 odd countries.  So we tried to really get input from different regions and that sort of thing.

And we ask for things like case studies and we approach people directly or we get them to volunteer for it.  Really, I think he has done the same to some extent, we really try to encourage community involvement as much as possible and we try to have different methods where people can join.  Depending on your time are availability, if you can join for a meeting every two weeks, great.  If you can't, fill in the survey or send us the report that you have done.  And we try to use one of our ‑‑ to draft the outcome documents and you will see outcome document was mixed of prime primary and secondary sources.  We do have ‑‑ about we had a call for input and people sent in their sort of studies that they have done or they send responses, to a list of questions, it's still on the website, that list of questions is on the website.

And all of these processes remain open until after the IGF and people can continue giving input until we finalize the output document.  We have updated the report from last year on abuse and violence this year.  We also consider these documents living documents because the field changes often and for instance, on‑line abuse and ‑‑ what happened year ago ‑‑ in short, I think that's, or long, that's the approach that we have adopted on some of these things.

>> Excuse me.  How ‑‑

>> The topics, how are they chosen?

>> Basically I wanted to ‑‑ the question you asked weave two different parts in it.  One is the moment you decide or the IGF decides what are we focusing on the second part, how can people get involved?  The first part, it's like with everything, with the IGF, the general theme, topics ‑‑ it also comes from the community.  And very important in that process is to come up with ideas and make sure that they are ‑‑ it can be possibility can be start talking about potential topics here with MAG members, but as important as ‑‑ the IGF, there's always the process where the Secretariat puts an evaluation on the website and asks for public input. 

And I think first open consultation meeting, Marilyn was referring to that.  These are there, too, that the community, so everybody can come up with ideas.  It's not to say this was good, this was bad, but I always say, in an evaluation, you have what was good, what was bad.  The most important part of the evaluation is what can ‑‑ what new things can we do.  And there, I think, after this meeting and starting to prepare the next meeting, it's important if you have ideas, look, I think this is a topic we should focus on next year to bring that on, make sure ‑‑ MAG members know about it.

And then the second part is how can you get involved discreetly in one of the topics, and I think there's ‑‑ the baseline is very similar for all BPF's, there on even open mailing list so everybody that want to get involved can subscribe and they are regular ‑‑ conference calls, everybody can join them.  And it's on that mailing list and in that calls are people that are joining, decide on what they want to focus on, and also decide how they are going to work., two BPF's discuss, we want to look at case studies, in that specific topic or came up with the idea to send out a survey.  Last year we did the longer survey, this year a shorter survey.  So, but the most important is make sure if you have ideas that they are heard.  The moment the BPF's kick off next year, make sure that you are subscribed to the mailing list of the ones that you are interested.

>> The BPF agenda, there was a ‑‑ had we needed to study how the ‑‑ divide, they did a literature of the reports around in the field and decided it wanted to focus on barriers.  That's one example of how that's done.

>> Thank you so much.  We have one question from ‑‑ also our respected MAG member and then I want to hear from you, your feedback after this.

>> I'm a MAG member from Indonesia.  I have been using the BPF document for discussion within the national IGF as part of our reference points of ‑‑ I would like to know from your experience and also the fellow on the use of outcome documents, because I believe in the IGF ‑‑ the things that we discuss is also the use of outcome documents and UN processes, whether it is also being ‑‑ and if I will read it so I would like to know your point of view on that.  Thank you.

>> Thank you.  Now, mentioning IGF, the new terms are just coming, I don't have time to explain, but let me leave that for a knowledge cafe session and different her the floor because I want to hear from colleagues.

>> Maybe you should come to the session on Friday because that's going to be the focus of it, is how, the outcomes of last year and this year have been used and how we are trying to take these outcomes forward.  I think that's maybe a better place to talk about this.  I think if you want to talk about the other things ‑‑

>> Thank you so much.  Exactly, that was will my recommendation.

Yes, is it a question or feedback?  Briefly.

>> So, my question was, actually I want ‑‑ best practice I heard the conversation to say if you want to get involved more you have to ‑‑ and then the regional and then global.  What I wanted to find out was, is there a best practice sort of on, which one can use to follow the ‑‑ IGF, I hear if you are not following some of the standards and you don't get to be listed on the IGF website, there is a working group coming up with a best practice on this one?

>> Thank you, excellent question.

>> So, in any case, I think there is a bit of a misunderstanding at the beginning that was created here, you don't have to start from your national or regional IGF's, if there's not one in your country only because the NRI's are coming from the community, they are the result of the need of the community, not the result of the IGF wanting something on their website.  So I think we need to clarify there.  If there's not the national regional, sub regional IGF in your country or even if it is, that doesn't mean that you need to be involved through them.  It somehow a logical process because then the IGF, but let's assume there isn't one in your country, then of course there are plenty of opportunities to enroll with the global IGF in the ways that Andrea now mentioned.  But there's no best practice in that sense, yes.

Yes, briefly.

>> I will be brief.  I think the issue you raised is actually very important issues.  We ‑‑ I'm from Nigeria, internet governance, the ‑‑ at that national level.  At this point in time we had a little bit of a challenge on how best can we draw our multi stakeholders framework.  Way is pushing for the global standard, that should be the way it's been done, but then look at the clarities, things that probably not allow to do it exactly.  So, I think, that question, we probably have to look into it, maybe perhaps we can come up with best practice on how to set ‑‑ a national ‑‑ I think initially ‑‑ very good input.  You really need to ‑‑ it's very important for us to do that.  It's a greater challenge going in at the national level.  Thank you.

>> Thank you.  Andrea, anything to add?

>> No, just, I think that's a suggestion you can take to the MAG next year, have a best practice forum on establishing your own NRI.

>> But there is something that we are doing now within the IGF, so the NR it's as a community, a network are trying to develop a settle of guidelines on how to establish and run an NRI.  It doesn't mean it's been dictated, it's just a set of guidelines as a compromise between the currently 79 and the new IGF's.  That's that you are more than welcome to join us on our cause and to subscribe to the mailing list, all of the links are on the website.  So you can look into the draft that we have now. 

After this IGF, the draft will be subject for public consultations on the wider communities.  Currently the ‑‑ I know we are over time, but again, it's lunch time.  Let me just take maximum of five minutes.  And ask what do you think about this?  I know it's too much information probably that is your feedback, but why would you recommend for the next year to do?  We are going to talk about this on Friday, but I just want an input from myself, starting from this gentleman, I'm sorry.

>> I didn't understand very well.

>> What do you think about this session?

>> Oh, I think it was nice.  It was open for everyone to participate.  And with little advice about how young people are being incentivized, and ‑‑ mainly in the ‑‑ process because it's very expensive to come to other countries.  In general, I think it's very open.  I'm from ‑‑ and I am a law student.  I participate in other forums, and many ‑‑ they are very closed and very hierarchy, and I'm older than you, I know more than you, so don't talk to me.  But it's very open here.

>> Thank you so much.

>> Can I interrupt your activity?  Can you tell me what you think about the session?  I saw you taking a lot of notes.

>> I think it's very useful.  I think young and oldest, because we have heard, did a good job at explaining this, putting themselves in the shoes of newcomers.  The one point about how can we do better or something different, I would like us, the newcomers, to have a chance to pass the mic around more actively and I'm hoping that the cafe will be an opportunity for that kind of newcomer led discussion.

>> Thank you so much.  This is the recommendation that I needed.  The knowledge cafes that we are going to have every day starting from tomorrow are only 45 minutes long, you will see a lot of IGF friends that are going to be there.  The idea was to bring you closer to some of the key stakeholders within the IGF, for them to get to know you, for you to get to know them and to ask them whatever you would like to ask them.  The concept of the knowledge cafes would be to give them very briefly, the opportunity to open the floor to tell what's their role within the IGF, but then to give you most of the time to ask whatever you would like to ask.  I think tomorrow is starting with private sector and technical community.  So colleagues from FaceBook, yahoo, Microsoft, Google, they are going to be there, and ‑‑ also helped us a lot, I probably forgot somebody, did I?  Yes, ICANN, yeah, they are going to be with us, those are all colleagues that are with the IGF from the beginning, so you are going to have another opportunity to ask them.  I would also like for you to send us an e‑mail or feedback, we need to improve this for next year and I want to see if there's a need to continue the tradition.  Thank you so much for being here.

>> I just ‑‑

>> Yes, you can also send any questions, any suggestions.  Thank you so much and see you around.