The following are the outputs of the real-time captioning taken during the Second Open Consultations and Multistakeholder Advisory Group (MAG) Meeting for IGF 2016 in New York, USA, from 12 to 14 July 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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14 July 2016
New York, USA
>>CHENGETAI MASANGO: Ladies and gentlemen, let's get started. Can we please all take our seats? Is remote participation ready? Is transcription ready? All right.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Good morning, everybody. I want to thank everybody who was here on time, and let's just take a minute or two to do some of the background logistics and hopefully a few more of the MAG members will come in.
Are we all set with the -- I see the interpreters, we're all set with.
The transcribing and the online participation?
And maybe we could -- you know, this has been a really disappointing experience for those that have been trying to participate on line, and I feel for their frustration. I've been in similar situations myself and it really is extremely aggravating.
And I think also there were a couple of times yesterday when I said things like "sense of the room." Now, you know, I tried to say in advance that I was actually looking for whether or not there was strong support or objections for, you know, a small basket of proposals, and that certainly was as much an invitation to those that are participating on line as those in the room, but our language doesn't always make that clear. So I want to make it really clear to the online participants that when I look for a sense of the room -- and I'll try not to use phrases like "body language" because clearly that's not visible in an online manner -- I really am trying to signal and get any input from the online participants as well.
So I appreciate that it's made a lot more difficult when you can't just jump in and speak, to type, but even just a quick signal to Anja in the chatroom that you'd like to comment and will come in means I won't close that item until we've actually heard from you on line.
And, again, Anja, if there's anything you want to feed into the room with respect to, you know, better enabling the online participation, then, you know, please do. Just put your hand up or something. Don't worry about this queue system.
So we had adopted the agenda yesterday for the two days, but let me just go through quickly what we want to get through today.
In the first two hours, we'd actually like to see if we can get to the point where we're very near final for the workshop selection.
Post that process, the secretariat will go away, communicate with those workshop proposers who had some conditionalities with the acceptance of their proposal. We can do some additional work in the secretariat to perhaps refine some of the, you know, potential balances or imbalances that are in, and certainly come back to the MAG with that after, but we should be to a 99% level there.
Anja's just raised her hand so let me see what she says before we go on.
>>REMOTE INTERVENTION: Ginger would like to speak.
Ginger, you have the floor.
Madam Chair, Ginger is saying that we're going we're going to leave it for later or --
I don't know if my mic is on. Well, Ginger wanted to speak but she's saying now that we might leave it for later, then.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Okay. So I think I heard you. It wasn't very clear. People need to speak closely and directly into the mic.
You said that Ginger wanted to speak but would come in later?
>> (Off microphone.)
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Okay. Just signal me again when she's ready.
So after we continue the workshop selection -- and we'll come back and talk about that process this morning -- we've planned a couple of hours to discuss the main sessions and some of the focused sessions, and in there I think we'll also cover the open forums as well.
And that has us concluding by sort of mid-afternoon, and then the rest of the day would be follow-up as-needed based on the status updates from the open consultation for all the intersessional activities. So that's the national and regional Internet initiatives, the dynamic coalitions, connecting and enabling the next billion, and the best practice forums.
One of the things we tried to do was not make -- have a lot of redundancy between the open consultation and the MAG meeting for those sort of presentations, so people should refer to the presentations that were given on -- two days ago, and if there is follow-up necessary, then we'll come to that mid-afternoon.
And then the final set of activities is AOB, and I'll see if there's a call for any AOB just now.
And within that, we want to work towards scheduling the third face-to-face MAG meeting, and, if possible, a MAG virtual meeting schedule.
So are there any other calls for AOB?
Then with that, we'll move forward to the --
Michael, you have the floor.
>>MICHAEL NELSON: I don't have anything in this area, but it may be interesting to spend 5 or 10 minutes if there's any other issues that MAG members think should be added to the retreat agenda as a result of the two days that we've spent together.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Just a second here.
Michael, sorry. I couldn't sort the volume out here quickly enough. Could you just quickly repeat your comment?
>>MICHAEL NELSON: Yeah. I was saying that it's possible that after the two days we've spent together, some MAG members might have quick comments to make about topics that should be added to the retreat agenda.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Okay. We'll leave -- put that under AOB.
Marilyn, you have the floor.
>>MARILYN CADE: Thank you, Chair. Marilyn Cade speaking.
I'm just reporting very quickly that perhaps under AOB for any of the NRIs who did not get to give a quick update on the first day when I did the overall NRI update, a couple were able to intervene. I've heard from two or three that they'd like to have three or four minutes to just mention what they've done, so if we have time under AOB, and we could plan on that now, then they would be able to perhaps organize their thoughts.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Why don't we actually try and schedule that in the 4:30 to 5:15 local time slot where we actually had some NRI time.
Then with that, I'd like to propose for the morning session -- I know some work was done in a smaller group but I don't know that that's been shared with the MAG yet and I haven't seen it either. The secretariat did a little bit of prep work, but basically if we look at the proposals that we accepted as "in" in the first 85, the profile of those proposals were shown yesterday and we can pull that graphic back up.
I think it's important to compare that against the profile of the entire 260 that came in.
For my mind, the last 20 slots, I think, should be used to address either any imbalances we actually see in terms of the diversity characteristics we set out -- returning -- first-time proposers versus returning, developed versus developing countries. I think we should also look at the spread of thematic tags that came in in the full 260 and the spread of thematic tags that we have in our first 80 and understand whether or not there are any that we ought to go away and look at as an exception and pull some in.
If there's a significant number of proposals that have thematic tags associated with them in the 260 that aren't pulled forward in the 85, to me that says there's some portion of the community that has an interest in this topic and I think it behooves us to examine that and look possibly to pull those in.
I think we also need a very quick discussion again on the issue of flash sessions. One of the things we wanted to do in terms of introducing some more excitement or diversity into the overall program was to have some different formats. We have the flash sessions -- it is a little confusing because we are calling them the same thing -- and we have the unconference streams that Miguel and the working group have identified. I'm not talking about those two specific activities.
This is whether or not in the workshop proposals that we received, there are any sessions that were identified as flash sessions that we would want to pull in. At this point in time, I believe -- the secretariat should correct me -- that we've identified one flash session in those first 85 proposals to come in.
So if there were some MAG members who believe there were some flash sessions that ought to be pulled in, that's something we can get to here in the next hour here or so.
I'm going to come to Cheryl who's in the queue, and then I think there's an announcement from the secretariat as well on the four.
So, Cheryl, you have the floor.
>>CHERYL MILLER: Thank you, Chair. I think that's a good approach to moving forward for sure. And after looking through the different workshops, I had a point of clarification on yesterday and then a quick comment.
Just point of clarification. Is it that those 85 are definitely in? We've definitely made that decision and we're not going back to them? Just a point of clarification. As some of us were talking in the room, some of us were unsure.
And then I would like to comment that there is one session -- it wasn't a flash session, but it dealt with the topic of healthcare and IoT. I think it might have been submitted by the government of Cuba. I would have to go back and look. I noticed there wasn't anything else dealing with healthcare, and I think that that was a very -- it's an interesting and important topic. Perhaps that could be converted to a flash session or we could include that in some different type of a format if the proposed format is not one that the room was comfortable with. Thank you.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Cheryl. That's a very good question.
My expectation or belief on the basis of what I think we all agreed yesterday is that the proposals we identified as in we should assume are in unless a subsequent review takes them out.
The one item I didn't mention a moment ago is we had four or five areas yesterday where some MAG members said they thought there was quite a significant number of proposals that were potentially quite similar and were either candidates for merger -- the two that got the most time I think were the Internet of Things, which had six or seven, and one on quality education.
The secretariat is pulling those clumps together and is going to send a note to the MAG on the basis of those groupings that were identified yesterday. I think we need a conversation on those. We're also going to identify which ones are already in the top 85. And those that feel quite strongly or have a specific interest in those topics, I think, can then look at the six proposals on the Internet of Things, which ones are accepted, and if they have a counter proposal, bring that forward to the room.
I think there was a lot of comments yesterday about the fact that there might be some redundancy and both whether it was in the same organizations or the same topic, and we clearly don't want to do that. That doesn't make for an exciting program. So I think we need to allow some room to move some of those in and out.
Chengetai also has two other announcements, which is probably going to add to our discussion here.
>>CHENGETAI MASANGO: Yes. Thank you very much, Lynn.
Those four that we had put aside yesterday because they were panel sessions and didn't have a background paper, they actually all did have a background paper, just that the information did not export across when the Excel sheet was made. There wasn't an error there at the beginning that we thought there was an error. There was no error. We either have to revisit those or just include them since they were in the top 60.
And then the other thing is that I did a quick count and we have about 27 workshop proposals which are of 30 minutes' duration. And the first one, workshop ID 142, made it in because it was in the top 85. The second one is 104th, so going down. It did have a fairly decent grade of 3.8. The next one, 3.7. So we may be able to look at those again. And some of the tags are also quite interesting. I mean,they are IGF regional, gender issues, and youth engagement is one of them. So -- and those are the types we are trying to encourage.
So that's for your consideration, whether or not we should just look at all the flash sessions as a whole and see which ones we want to add on.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Chengetai, one question, the 27 sessions that you just identified as 30 minutes or less were from the 85 we selected or just in the whole 260?
>>CHENGETAI MASANGO: They're in the whole 260. One of them -- as we said, one made it in because it was -- it was -- just one because it was 46th. And then the next one after that came 104th in the rankings.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: That's actually very interesting, having wanted to get away from kind of lengthy, big panel workshops and working to encourage them, that in our evaluations we found one that we thought met that criteria out of 27.
I have a queue, so I'm going to go to the queue.
Mourad, you have the floor.
>>MOURAD BOUKADOUM: Thank you, Chair. Just a logistical issue to raise with the secretariat. Could you put online the agreed top 85 proposals we agreed yesterday?
And, also, regarding the remaining -- because I remember that in the first day we said that we're going to have 110 workshop -- final list of workshops.
So I think that for the remaining non-selected workshops, we should also follow the already-agreed principles of geographical (indiscernible) standards, et cetera. Thank you.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Mourad.
Miguel, you have the floor.
>>MIGUEL IGNACIO ESTRADA: Thanks, Chair. This is Miguel.
Just to bring some clarity, we could change the name to -- "flash session" to "lightning sessions," if you would like. I think it would be better for all of us.
Also, if I remember well, we had 24 slots for flash sessions -- for lightning sessions now. And there are 26 lightning -- flash sessions that have now been selected. In that way, we could offer them maybe not every flash session because I don't really now how they graded. But we could offer the best ones to get into the new format. It would -- actually, we could give them priority.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: We should probably come back and talk about that because the flash sessions that came through the workshop proposals were of a different length than I think than what you were planning in your -- so -- and then is it a full sign-up? Maybe we can schedule that discussion. I don't know if we'll get to it today or not. If not, then I think it should be for our next MAG virtual call so we can determine what we actually tell -- sure. Miguel, you have the floor.
>>MIGUEL IGNACIO ESTRADA: We could not just sign them, we could offer them to adapt the format to lightning sessions. That's what I'm saying. Thanks.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: I think that's a good comment.
Marilyn, you have the floor.
>>MARILYN CADE: Chair, thank you. I'm certainly open to following the Chair's proposal for how we proceed. But I ask that we have a document to work from. We all know what document we're working from. And so I support your comments. But I also think that if we're not quite there yet in terms of time and the secretariat needs to have a little more time to organize, such as into clusters or whatever, then perhaps you could switch the discussion to the main sessions in terms of order. And the secretariat who are focused on this additional work could be allowed to do that because I'm just going to say, I have two devices in front of me. Not everybody does. I'm semi-English speaking, since I'm from Missouri.
[ Laughter ]
>>MARILYN CADE: Mostly we speak hillbilly there.
[ Laughter ]
>>MARILYN CADE: But I am struggling with our going back and forth, so please.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Yes. I think some additional processing would certainly have been helpful for the discussion here, and I'm trying to get a sense of the process we want to run and what's available to us. Chengetai is asking for the floor and then I'll go back --
>> (Off microphone.)
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: No? Oh. Okay. Well, then Cheryl you have the floor.
>>CHERYL MILLER: Thank you. I just want to park something for later. We don't have to discuss it now. But I really hope that we, after we go through this whole process, have in place an idea for how we're going to proceed in terms of giving feedback to those that did not make it through. Particularly folks who were new proposers or from groups that we're trying to encourage to submit proposals. Because I think after going through this, if I had submitted a proposal and looked on line and read the transcript, I would think, "Oh, my goodness." And we don't want to discourage people from not coming back next year and making an even stronger proposal. So I really think that we need to focus on that, if we have some time later today. I don't know if it's a conference call, but some real form of outreach where we can actually give actual real constructive feedback, not just a letter saying, "Sorry, you didn't make it." Thank you.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: And I think that's a good comment, Cheryl, and I know the secretariat does have a process.
Chengetai, do you want to comment to that?
>>CHENGETAI MASANGO: Sorry. Can you just repeat the question?
[ Laughter ]
>>CHENGETAI MASANGO: I was conferring about something else so --
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Basically I think Cheryl was asking: What is the process to get back to those candidates that were not selected? And her concern was that they make sure that they understand that -- feel comfortable with the process and aren't discouraged from participating in the future --
>>CHENGETAI MASANGO: Oh.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: -- basically.
>>CHENGETAI MASANGO: No. Definitely. We do send emails out to everybody, those that were accepted with no comment, those that were conditionally accepted, and those that were not accepted.
We -- also, last year, what we did was that we also sent out the comments that the MAG members made. I mean, we did some -- a little bit of editing, but -- so that for the next time, they know what their deficiencies were, if the MAG members did make some constructive comments to the workshops.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Juan, you have the floor, and then I will come back and comment on Marilyn's last comment or proposal.
>>JUAN FERNANDEZ: Thank you, Chair. I only want to ask a question and have a comment.
The question is: How are we going to proceed now? Do we have to complete the list to select 25, more or less, workshops on top of the ones that we selected yesterday? That's what we have to do?
And if that -- if the answer is yes, because I see the chairman -- chairwoman nodding, I think that that's very important because this is the opportunity in which the MAG will exercise its criteria to balance the program of the IGF. That, in the end, is the main task of the MAG.
In this sense, I underline what my colleague just said that we have to have some criteria for the selection of these extra 25 workshops.
One of the selection -- one of the criteria undoubtedly is the regional balance of the workshops, and in that sense, that can be done in two ways. One way is the proposal of the workshop nationality but also is the nationality of the speakers in all workshops. So that can be two ways of doing it.
For your information, I checked on the 85 selected workshops that we did yesterday, and from Latin America and Caribbean region, we have 15. That is not so bad. Maybe we should have a little bit more because it's the region in which the IGF is going to be held, but 15 is not so bad. It's distributed by seven from Brazil, four from Argentina, and one each from Mexico, Colombia, and Trinidad and Tobago.
So having said that, I will put to the MAG's consideration what I said yesterday, that another criteria for the selection of these remaining workshops should be the topic, because as it was mentioned yesterday, there's a few topics that are repeated extensively in the already selected 85, and on the other hand, there are some very important topics that are not considered at all, and especially those topics that are directly related with the 17 sustainable development goals that, you know, this year we are trying to align this IGF with the sustainable development goals.
So I think that we should open -- I have it open in my computer, the sustainable development goals, the 17, and that should be, I think, a look -- an hourglass to check the remaining workshops.
Thank you, Chair.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Juan.
Let me try and restate what I think I -- what I think I said earlier and where I think we are now in terms of progressing.
The most important thing we can do is to complete the workshop selection process. The easiest and frankly the most responsible way to do that is while we're all here voice-to-voice, face-to-face. It's impossible to do this sort of thing in -- really in virtual and through email chains.
So I -- and I actually think we're very close and I think we probably have enough information processed through the secretariat that we can drive ourselves through that discussion as well.
So let me just explain how I think this might work.
We could ask the secretariat to put up -- let me go back to the first --
The first point is, I think we've accepted 85 in, unless we determine over the course of the next hours to move some out because we go back and we look at merger or we think there's a strong imbalance in some place and we want to correct something.
I think our operating assumption on the basis of the broad diversity of the MAG and all the work they did and the very high scores for a small number, that those 85 are in. Or there may be 83 or something. Whatever the exact number is.
But it's pretty much the top 85 that were in the spreadsheet that came from the Excel. And I'm sure the secretariat can tell me in a moment the one or two that we set aside that we're not going to pull in.
I've asked the secretariat to put the profile up that compares the 85 to the full 260 so we can see if we're largely in line with what the community actually said to us was important and see if that identifies any particular imbalances.
I think we should look at the spread of thematic tags for the 85 and the spread of thematic tags for the 260. Again, that should highlight whether or not there were any areas that were of interest to the community that haven't yet been pulled in.
We also, by the way, have two conversations that are related to that. One -- the first one is, our title is "Enabling Inclusive and Sustained Growth" so I think it should be quite clear that there is a significant focus on sustainability, whether it's specific to the SDGs or in general.
And then typically we've identified what we called subthemes. We did the process differently this year. Well, I have to say actually I'm quite happy with how it worked out because I was a little worried about trying to do so many new things in such a compressed period, but I think it's worked out quite well.
I think we should identify what we think are the four or five main tracks, so that people can move more easily through the program. And honestly, I think that's pretty clear as well, because I think that we get those through the thematic spread.
The secretariat is ready -- or may have already sent out the list of the groupings for potential mergers. Those people that had a lot of interest in that topic or felt strongly could suggest, you know, which ones we might pull in or which ones were too similar and therefore need some adjustment.
And if we don't get to the merger discussion completely today, then that's possibly one that we could come back on online with a few exceptions. I'd rather not do that but if we had to, we could.
And then I think the other one is regional balances.
So I actually think we have enough information in front of us that we can start to work through it.
I have Jac in the queue, and then Marilyn, and then I'd like to look for a sense of the room. And I do want to hear from the online participants as well, so if there's any concern or comments from them, Anja, do let me know about whether or not we can move forward with that proposal.
Chengetai has got his hand up and I always try to listen to Chengetai, so let him give him the queue and then we'll go to Jac.
>>CHENGETAI MASANGO: I'd just like to remind everybody, especially from Juan's remarks, we don't have 25. The number of workshops we have is actually a function of the total duration of the workshops that we choose. At the moment, we've been choosing quite a lot, except for 13, 90-minute sessions, and then the rest are 60-minute sessions and one 30-minute session.
So the number of workshops that we can actually choose is going down, and my rough calculation is, you know, it's like 18 or so at the moment, if we choose 18 90-minute sessions.
So if we choose more 60-minute sessions, of course, we can choose more workshops. I'm just --
>> (Off microphone.)
>>CHENGETAI MASANGO: Yeah. I mean, it's a moving target as well, depending on what you -- you know.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: So I think if we use the planning number of a hundred at this point in time, that's close enough --
>>CHENGETAI MASANGO: Yeah.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: -- and honestly if we find that we've got a few extra slots, then maybe we can use that to pull a few other interesting proposals up.
Jac, you have the floor.
>>JAC SM KEE: Thanks, Chair.
What some of us were trying to do yesterday was to look at the different tags, the thematic tags, and then pool them together by clusters and then make some kind of analysis in terms of whether they were from developing countries or whether they were new proposers which were accepted and whether there were any replicated proposers and replicated speakers.
So that gives us a sense of, okay, so these are then potential mergers for those that we've already accepted, if they were from the same proposers, for example, that came from the same topic.
But it's actually quite labor-intensive. I don't know how far people actually managed to go as a group. We tried to distribute this amongst ourselves. But it's a very useful exercise, anyway, that can somehow help for at least next year, if we don't manage to do it for this time.
But just to reinforce what both you and Juan were saying, I think it's extremely useful to look at the percentages of the thematic clusters that were accepted in the top 85 as compared to the total. That will identify some gaps for us. But just apart from that, as well, looking at thematic diversity is an important thing. There are some that are completely new topics. For example, the one on wildlife trafficking, which I thought was extremely interesting but scored really, really low. And I think we should take that into consideration in terms of the 18 or so that's left.
And if we can get a sense of actually the 90-minute and the 30-minute sessions and actually what the amount of space we do have to make decisions, that could also probably guide us a lot better because I know it's not as big as we think.
And that for developing countries, new proposers, thematic issues and gaps, I would agree that these four criteria would be quite useful.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Jac, and I appreciate all the work that the working group did last night as well.
So any conclusions or opportunities you saw when you went through your report, you should pull it into the discussion, one by one, and then maybe we can actually take that work back within the secretariat and use that for some final kind of calculation, and if we need to make some minor adjustments, we can do so on the basis of that information.
Marilyn, you have the floor.
>>MARILYN CADE: Thank you, Chair.
I'm focusing again on process and I'm going to make sure that Juan is available, and also Eleonora, because I've looked at -- I've looked at the document that I think was forwarded from Sala and I've got a couple of questions.
One seems fairly important to me, but I, first of all, want to read a phrase. "Inclusive and sustainable growth."
Anybody recognize that?
It's the theme of our conference.
However -- and this was not an easy decision to take. However, when I look at what we've done in clustering, I don't actually see inclusive and sustainable growth, which implies growth economically in terms of opportunity, not just growth in access, although that is also implied. Growth also should be implied in terms of diversity of participation, such as persons with disabilities, et cetera.
I'm just going to comment on -- very quickly on Jac's comment. I'm not sure we can go as far as wildlife because I'm still worried about trying to get persons with disabilities in. But the other comment I'm going to make is that under the column "SDGs" that the group worked on last night, they didn't list SDGs. They listed the action lines. They -- that's not a map.
And I'm sorry to be so harsh about this, but we have an assignment that we were given when we got our 10-year mandate from the United Nations high-level event last year, and we were reminded of it by Under Secretary Wu that we are to integrate the SDGs into our work.
So, you know, I think we can try to map the action lines to the SDGs elsewhere, but our priority has to be the SDGs. So I think that was a very well-meaning thing but I want to go back to: When I look at -- I think we are missing some workshops on -- that focus on economic growth and I think because it's the theme, I want to put that in the list of those that we need to examine and perhaps move up.
So that's point number 1.
Point number 2, the -- we may even have to consider reducing some of the 90-minute sessions or asking some of the 90-minute sessions if they would except a 60-minute session in order to have more diversity and inclusiveness in the workshops. I appreciate everything that you said, Juan, about I think we do need to look about general regional perspective because we also know and the secretariat can remind us that a very large percentage of the attendees will come from the Latin American and Caribbean region and yet it is a global conference.
So we need to have a balance of making sure we are being of interest to the communities that we are able to attract.
But my particular concern is the fact we are not reflecting the SDGs and we are not reflecting the title, and I remember -- and Yolanda, I am looking at the Mexican host -- that for Mexico, in being a host, it is very important that we have a focus on the issues that underlie the selection of that title. Thank you.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you. And I hear your supporting points that were made earlier as well.
So, I mean, I'd like to pretty soon move to actually getting into the substantive work.
There are three more people in the queue. I'll take comments. I really would like, though, to understand whether or not we could go forward with the proposal that I outlined earlier.
So Juan, you have the floor.
>>JUAN FERNANDEZ: Sorry. No, just a quick intervention.
I want to support what Marilyn just said and also, to move forward, it may be -- it may be that that is not -- I tried to remain -- how can I say? -- neutral regarding the Cuban proposals, but I have to explain because Marilyn brought it up.
Of course you could presume I did some outreaching. I even did some conferences in Cuba about the IGF and about the main topic of the IGF. That is, this inclusive growth. And in that sense, there have been some proposals especially targeted for that.
I can mention one, number 52 that is called "Cuban Civil Society for Inclusion and Sustainable Growth," that it has exactly the approach that Marilyn said.
This has the added incentive that it's the new civil society organization in Cuba and that it's -- that concept is quite -- not new, but it's increasing in Cuba.
So I will think, Chairwoman, that we should also maybe, if you accept the possibility that MAG members -- not only me -- point out some workshop that we already identify, that it maps to what Marilyn said or any other subject that we may think that is not well represented and that it should be.
For instance, Cheryl mentioned medicine that I mentioned yesterday. Thank you.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: I am in complete agreement and actually quite anxious to get to the point where we actually start talking specific proposals.
So we have two more people in the queue and then I'm actually going to ask the secretariat to just show quickly the two profiles of the diversity from the 85 versus the 260 and the thematic spreads for those same two categories so we have that as two additional data points in addition to those areas that people think are underrepresented and the merger document which I believe gone out.
So Michael, you have the floor.
>>MICHAEL NELSON: Just real quickly, to respond partly to Marilyn's comment, I do agree that we haven't talked enough about economic growth. I think we talked a lot about sustainable development, and it's hard to say that we haven't included a lot of sessions that touch on that. The challenge, I think, IS when we try to cluster things, we try to go to finer-grained topics as the action items are.
But the main point I wanted to make is that in order to bring in some of the developing country proposals and some of the people who are proposing for the first time, I think we should focus almost entirely on picking out those proposals that did not make the cut where there may be one or two people who could bring a particular project or a particular viewpoint on to another panel.
I don't think we do them a favor if they have a weak proposal that we decided wasn't very good because it didn't have enough breadth and it didn't have enough expertise, we don't do them a favor by giving them a spot for their panel. They won't have a good audience.
We do them a great favor if we take one or two people and add them to a panel that's going to have a ready-made audience. And I think that's the way we should focus on getting more new proposers and more LDC participants rather than trying to have more panels that were proposed by LDC people. Thank you.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Michael.
Renata, you have the queue -- floor.
>>RENATA AQUINO RIBEIRO: Thank you. Renata. Thank you, Chair. Good morning.
Speaking on behalf of developing countries and inclusions, I would agree that having less 90-minute sessions and suggesting that some of them go to a 60-minute session and having more diversity, more slots, would be good for inclusion of developing countries' proposals.
And 15 proposals approved out of 260 from Latin America is very worried. We should think also that this lack of representation would dramatically disengage IGF from the region.
About the spreadsheet we started working yesterday night and SDG's indication, this is also something that could be noted on the feedback of workshops. Many did not indicate this. And we should stress the importance of this also for next year.
Mergers should also be an important part of our work today. When we identify the thematic clusters, we already see some developed countries, organizations, that have two workshops on the same theme that were approved that are highly ranked. So this is something that we should work on.
And I'm in agreement with following the Chair's proposal earlier. Thank you.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Renata.
Giacomo, you have the floor.
>>GIACOMO MAZZONE: Yes. Because we are discussing about development and about sustainability, I am the same line of what Jac said before, that there are some workshops that have not been enough considered in the pointing that there's been -- in the grading that's been made by the members.
For instance, there is one that is number 22, local content, sustainable growth. That seems to me well-balanced. There are a lot of interesting intervention, and it talks about contents and how the contents could be the driving force for the infrastructure. This is an aspect that we are completely neglecting in our selection at the moment.
So I think there is a problem of lack of comprehension of the diversity. We are so much focused on the Internet governance issues in itself that we don't see around it or even at the base of it. And I think that this is a typical example of an underevaluation due to our prism analysis of the world.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Giacomo.
I also understand that today is Giacomo's birthday. So I think we can all wish him happy birthday!
[ Applause ]
I suppose we could all sing happy birthday in our own languages and that would be a quite interesting experiment, but... so, happy birthday, Giacomo. We are very honored you are spending it here with us today.
Liesyl, you have the floor.
>>LIESYL FRANZ: Thank you, Chair. Good morning, everyone.
I just wanted to make a sort of reaction comment to some of the comments that have been made this morning about the diversity of the workshops. I think it is very important to have robust representation from the region that the IGF is being hosted in in any given year. But I don't think the sole indicater of that is how many workshops were proposed -- of the ones that are selected are those that were proposed by the region.
I think that when we take a look at the diversity across -- look at the diversity question, another indicater is also the number of -- the regional representation within participants in other workshops that may or may not have been proposed by the region.
I think that when -- in my grading process -- and I don't think we had a dedicated requirement for a certain number provided by the region or anything like that, but we did have a geographical diversity requirement across all the workshops.
So I hesitate to think of us as looking at only that one indicater of regional diversity and rather looking across all of the workshops as a whole. And even if that requires at some point -- I made two comments yesterday about sort of the -- what we fix and post for either diversity or improving workshops or incorporating people from other places. That's another way to improve the regional diversity across the workshops. Thank you.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Liesyl.
I think it's time now to start getting to some specific -- (off microphone).
>>RENATA AQUINO RIBEIRO: Thank you. Just to follow up on the Latin American situation, yes, indeed, there are participation -- there's participation on the workshops of Latin American speakers. But, also, you see many of them working for developed country organizations and based in developed countries. So that indicater is also not very realistic when we talk about developing countries' inclusion and regional representation.
The geographical diversity is very important. And I guess this would be the way that I would agree that we should insist on this criteria and maybe even think of other regions, Middle Eastern regions, for example, were not that represented. So we could start thinking about how to increase geographical diversity and have a more actable representation on the workshop's approval. Thank you.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you.
Zeina, you have the floor. And then after that I want to move to a quick review of the thematic tags, and we need to start talking about some specific discussions. We are nearly an hour into the meeting here and we have yet to get to a substantive discussion on workshops.
So, Zeina, you have the floor.
>>ZEINA BOU HARB: Actually, I want to support what Renata said about the regional presence of the workshops. And, certainly, I would like to see some proposals from the Arab region accepted because among the 85, I didn't see -- although we have 21 proposals from the Arab region but no one passed already.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: And I think this would be a good time for you to specifically identify whether or not you think there are some proposals that should be put in front of the MAG for consideration.
I have two more people in the queue. But could I literally just ask people first to look at the comparative view of the tags that are up there?
One of the, I think, richest areas for us to mine, which potentially addresses some of the other questions about whether or not we have enough workshops on economic or sustainable development or regional balance, might come from looking at some of those tags, either the new tags that were submitted by the community or some of the tags that had a lesser percentage of proposals. We may be able to pull some up from those categories that address some of the larger kind of concerns we have here. That's one set of input.
And then you all have the other graphs which show the diversity characteristics of first-time versus returning, developed versus developing, and stakeholder groupings. That and any other work that as individual MAG members you have done that would -- you believe would identify some candidates to be included in the workshop proposal, this is the time to start talking about them.
So I'd actually like some concrete proposals. We need to ask the other MAG members to be able to respond, look at your notes, your comments, and let's see if we can start making some headway into identifying the next 20 or so workshops.
With that, I have Xiaodong Lee and then Izumi and Cheryl in the queue.
Xiaodong, you have the floor.
>>XIAODONG LEE: I have a very good comment. I just want to second Renata's suggestion to consider diversity for the region and also diversity for the stakeholders.
I mentioned yesterday that we had lack of persons for government, intergovernmental organizations, or private sectors. I strongly we consider involvement from the private sectors. They play a very important role in the governance.
And I also look at the presence for the region. I think there's not enough presence for Asia-Pacific.
Thank you.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Xiaodong.
Izumi, you have the floor.
>>IZUMI OKUTANI: Thank you, Chair.
I agree with Liesyl that it's not just when you actually look at the regional diversity. I think it's worth just not looking at where the proposal is coming from but look at the content of who the speakers are. Because when I was -- like, receiving a consultation, I actually tried to encourage people to have, like, regional diversity rather than focusing on a particular region. So it would have been much easier for people to submit proposals from Asia, but I just really encouraged people, Hey, this is global IGF. So it would be good to, you know, reach out to people from different regions. So I think that should also be taken into consideration.
And I'd like to join the earlier speakers, like Arab or Asia-Pacific, even if not, like, a developing country only but like east Asia, I think our voices are quite limited. So it would be great, like, if this factor could be taken into consideration. Thank you.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Those are all good points.
Cheryl, you have the floor.
>>CHERYL MILLER: Thank you, Chair. I also wanted to put my support behind making sure that one of the disability proposals at least is included in the top final cut. I think I only -- I recall seeing at least two. I don't know if there were more. We had a whole discussion on how important this topic is last year, and a lot of them were knocked out and not included last year as well. So I would love it if we could not make the same -- go down the same path and at least make sure we're giving attention to this important topic. Thank you.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Cheryl, can you identify those workshop proposals or I.D. numbers so we can start talking about some specific proposals? If you can't right now, I'm very happy to give you a few minutes to do so.
>>CHERYL MILLER: Mike is saying they are in and they are accepted. So I -- both of them. So, okay, good. Thank you.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Excellent. Thank you.
Juan, you have the floor.
>>JUAN FERNANDEZ: Thank you, Chair.
Well, I'm going to break the ice and begin proposing concrete proposals and making a brief case for each. Of course, maybe this -- I'm going to use proposals made by Cuban institution because they are the ones I know. But this does not preclude that I could make proposals later if I look at some other.
Well, the first one, I already mentioned yesterday. The importance why I propose it is because of the topic, because it's medicine. It's Internet, how Internet is used for medicine. And this is not a theoretical. This is not to talk about a new software of hospital automation.
As you know, Cuba has thousands of medical collaborators in 67 countries throughout the world. And they use -- because they are -- in very different places, you know, rural. They don't go with books. They use Internet and a network that is called Infomed, that, by the way, it won many years ago in 2005 the Stockholm Challenge award. This is tried and prove. They use this for getting consultation to do second opinions. So I think it's very important. I think it's very interesting. It could be a lot of interest. It goes with sustainable development goals. And the number is 81. 81. Okay.
Then the second one that I strongly propose is there's one that is called, "Cuban civil society for inclusion and sustainable growth." I mentioned it before. It was a proposal of a flash session. It could be included in whatever modality. It's number 52.
Now, I'm going to talk of one that I think is very important, that even could be one of the main themes maybe for the next IGF. As you know, the sustainable development goal has a target for 2030. Have you figured out in 2030 how cyber things will be part of society, how that will be part of development, civil society 2030? Well, a group of different Cuban NGOs did a panel on that, a workshop in Cuba, and they want to present their result. They have the Association of the Blind. They have the Association of Women. They have different associations. They presented a panel, they presented a background paper that you can check there because they did that before. And I think that's very interesting for you to consider.
I just leave it to you to consider. It's number 48.
And another one that now that we're talking about sustainable development, that has to be carried out in the ground, in the field, in the local community. This is -- by the way, these people that presented this was one of the first -- it's number 25 because it was presented very early. It's the experience of different organizations in a locality, for local development, in the province of Santiago, the municipality of Santiago de Cuba. It's truly multistakeholder. There's an enterprise. There's civil society and also government, that they join together to use this Internet and ICTs for the local development. They have a background paper that you can read, very depth, that explain what they're doing. It's number 25.
Chairwoman, I will leave it there. But Giacomo was mentioning local content. There's another example, very interesting. If you want, I could mention it. It's called ECORED. It's a sort of Cuban Wikipedia. But it's not Cuban; it's Latin America. It's a Spanish Wikipedia. But the interesting thing is that it fostered local content, many municipalities, the history of the municipality. The landmarks that are not recognized anywhere are recognized there. And it's open. It's Wikipedia. Everybody can do it. It's called ECORED. And it's proposal 36.
And the problem is that when you read the proposal in English of those workshops, you can realize that some of those translation words don't -- automated translation. So it's horrible, the proposal. And that is why it got so bad scoring because the ideas are really good. I will stop there.
I'm not mentioning the educational because, fortunately, also the Ministry of Higher Education and Ministry of Education proposed open forums. So maybe the content of their workshop can be channeled through the open forum. But that's also another important sustainable development goals, the one related to quality education for all. And I think that should be -- we should take into consideration that. But that is also going through open forum. But this one are civil society. That cannot go through open forum, so that's why I'm proposing that.
Did you took the numbers?
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: I took the numbers.
>>JUAN FERNANDEZ: Thank you.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: I actually waited with bated breath for the first time. The numbers I have are 81, 48, 25, and 36.
So I think -- I mean, Juan's made, you know, a case for inclusion for those four proposals. My preference at this point is to try and get some discussion on those four proposals and see if there's any strong support or, I guess to the same extent, any strong objections to including them.
If we just go through and gather a long list of 40, we're not going to make any progress, so let's see if we can manage to get some comments on those four specific proposals, deal with those, and then we can move to the next group. Which means if you're in the queue but not specific to address those four proposals, then I would like you to reserve your comments for later.
So I have -- thank you to those that did so.
I have Indonesia, who is in the queue, and I'm --
>>INDONESIA: Okay. Thank you. I support the previous speaker. I would like to propose one of the title from Indonesia. That's the only one from Indonesia. If I can say, that's ID number 101, or the total number is 160, the inclusive multistakeholder works to protect certain online.
That's only one title that is proposed by our multistakeholder things. Okay. Thank you.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: I wasn't clear if the ID number was 101 or 160.
>>INDONESIA: The total is 160 and the ID number is 101.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: So ID number 101.
>>INDONESIA: Yes.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Cheryl, you're in the queue. You have the floor.
>>CHERYL MILLER: Thank you. I was just looking through these proposals.
I definitely would support Juan on number 81. I think as we mentioned, the medical angle is not covered in any of the other proposals that I've read.
I also see that it's a birds of a feather session, it's 60 minutes. It could be very interesting and I think they're doing some very interesting work on that topic, so I think that there would be a good level of interest for that one, so definitely want to support that.
I note that the one on Cuban civil society, it's a flash session, only 30 minutes. Also a pretty important achievement that they've made and so I would support that one as well. Thank you.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Cheryl. Very useful comments.
What was the number of the flash session?
>>CHERYL MILLER: 52, I think, unless I'm -- unless my printouts are wrong. Thank you very much.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: You have the floor.
>>REMOTE INTERVENTION: Thank you. Yes. I'm going to read a comment from Silvia Bidart.
"Speaking on behalf of developing countries, I agree with the suggestion of some 60-minute sessions and including more slots for developing countries' proposals. Economic growth and digital economy is a very important issue for these countries, so I would like to encourage everybody to include more workshops with inclusive development."
Thank you.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Silvia.
Igor, you have the floor.
>>IGOR OSTROWSKI: Thank you. I feel heavily lobbied in favor of more Cuban sessions at IGF, and automatically I'm tempted to start doing exactly the same for the eastern European front and saying, "Well, maybe we should be looking at more sessions, very interesting sessions, from my region," but I'm not going to do that.
And I thought -- just wanted to put out a call out there, if we do discuss these last few spots, that we actually focus on merits and on the content of these proposals, not necessarily the location where they come from. Otherwise, I will have no choice but to start lobbying for eastern Europe. Thank you.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Yeah. Thank you, Igor. I mean, there's nothing much pretty about this process, and, you know, it's been the process that's been used for a few years now and I think one of the recommendations is, immediately coming out of this session, I'd really like to suggest that the MAG set up a working group to determine how we do this better and not wait until the next MAG is appointed and we start it in December because we lose too much institutional memory and frankly the pain is probably too far removed to really convince us that we need to do something different.
So I sincerely appreciate everybody staying with the process and trying to do the right thing.
So at this point, I mean, Juan did break the ice by jumping in with four proposals. There was some support for 81. I really would like to get just a quick sense of whether or not there's significant support for any of the others, or significant objections again.
We don't need to pull all four in. We can choose to pull one or two in, note the others and set them aside and come back and revisit them if we find that there's a dearth of what we think is acceptable proposals. I mean, I don't think someone should be sort of unfairly disadvantaged for going first, but it is also important, at the same time, that we break the ice and start getting somewhat concrete about the choices in front of us.
So I'll go to the queue, and if everybody could just keep their comments really short, you know, you support X for some reason or you don't support X for some reason, that would allow us to make a lot more progress.
Michael, you have the floor.
>>MICHAEL NELSON: Thank you very much. And Juan, thank you very much for putting a concrete proposal out there because I think you've hit about three or four different important issues we have to address.
The first address -- the first issue I wanted to address Igor just addressed. We can't have people spending five minutes lobbying for things that they've been asked to lobby for. I mean, if we all did that, we would spend three hours doing that. I mean, we -- you said yesterday that it's not appropriate to kind of come forward and make the case for your own proposals or for your friends' proposals.
We have to argue them on the merits and Juan has four proposals that have merits but not as panels or as birds of a feather.
The reason they got low marks was because there was -- they were part -- they could be part of a big panel but they weren't covering a broad enough topic to merit a full panel, and we had a number of people do this and they got low marks.
That doesn't mean there isn't a place for them at the IGF, and I think our Mexican hosts have already provided a great way to highlight these important initiatives, and namely, the lightning talks.
Another possibility is some kind of poster session where people could share their individual experiences and talk to the people who care about that particular topic.
I think another problem we have to face up to, though, is some of these proposals, including the Cuban ones but there's probably several dozen, that really weren't Internet. They were much more ICT4D. Some of these didn't even use the word "Internet." They didn't use the word "Internet governance." They were often about using cell phones or something else.
So let's see if we can take some of the proposals that fall in this category and take the proposers and add them to another panel.
Don't cut down a 90-minute panel that already has six people, but instead, try to take some of these proposers and add them.
And then specifically with regard to Juan's topics, those were not well-ranked because they were not broad enough to excite a large community. They would be good as a flash session and they -- you would get to reach the people you need to reach. Thank you.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Michael.
They were good comments. I do wish we could be a little faster in them. Chengetai is suggesting we set a timer up for the comments, which I don't think is all that good because they're not all equal, but if we can all just manage to -- kind of direct and to-the-point comments, I think we'll be a lot better.
Marilyn, you have the floor.
>>MARILYN CADE: Thank you, Chair. Very quickly, I'm going to propose that we all remember our code of conduct, and so here's my suggestion: Instead of using the word "lobbying," we refer to what people are doing, which is providing clarifying information. I think that would help us all. And in fact, we all need often to be able to provide clarifying information. So I, too, appreciate that Juan did that.
I want to make two comments quickly.
I think when it's a totally unique proposal -- and I believe that the one that Cuba submitted particularly on healthcare is totally unique because it is from a country but it is a country that works globally in healthcare, so I am supportive of that one.
I am just parking the idea that the sustainable development one perhaps might be put forward to think about a merger with another sustainable development and economic growth, and so I ask Juan to think about that.
And I do think that a 30-minute flash session on a couple of other things that Cuba proposed perhaps -- I think it's number 48, the IoT in 2030.
So one -- one idea for a merger, one support, and one suggestion that IoT for 2030 be a flash session, and a call for us all to refer to us as clarifying.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: So Marilyn, can you -- I mean, I think that was useful because there were some concrete suggestions.
Can you just put the recommendation with a number, so --
>>MARILYN CADE: Sorry. I believe 48 is IoT in 2030, which I was proposing as a flash session.
Unique healthcare -- the unique one, I was referring to I believe is 81.
And the sustainable development one -- Juan will have to check me on this -- I think it's 25. And that is the one I was proposing --
>> (Off microphone.)
>>MARILYN CADE: No? The one for the merger I was proposing is sustainable development that you referred to as involving --
>> (Off microphone.)
>>MARILYN CADE: Sustainable growth, yes. Sorry. That's 52. I apparently trans- --
>> (Off microphone.)
>>MARILYN CADE: No?
>> (Off microphone.)
>>MARILYN CADE: It was the one I -- it's economic -- it's the economic development one, the one that --
>> (Off microphone.)
>>MARILYN CADE: Okay. That is the one that I thought might be merged with some others that are focused on SDGs and economic growth.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Okay. So maybe I'm going to try and -- again, because I want to make sure we get opportunity for other themes and other regions in the discussion as well.
I've heard a couple of people speak out quite strongly for 81, and I'm not ignoring Michael's comment at all, but I do think there's a lot which is very reasonable, and particularly I think Cuba and medicine really is a really interesting -- interesting area.
So let me just see if I can -- and I recognize fully that I am pushing this, and if it's too fast and we need more discussion, then please say so, but that we would support 81 going in and we can work with the proposers to address that.
We can look at 48 as a flash session.
And now I'm going back to Miguel's comment earlier where he said, you know, those that were identified as flash sessions in the workshop proposals, perhaps we can reach out to them separately to become one of the lightning talk formats, which I think is a nice thing to do.
And then there was a notion that we might merge 25.
I think we can capture -- if people are in agreement, we can capture those as kind of the current state and then come back and see if there's something else that adjusts that later. If it -- if it's a brief intervention -- a clarification intervention, Juan.
>>JUAN FERNANDEZ: Well, responding to Igor, I'm happy to propose some -- I already identified some from Albania, Russia, and I don't find any more from eastern Europe. Only one that is between Holland and Lithuania. I think they're interesting. I could argue for that. If I lobby for one area, I can lobby for another. But I prefer -- I prefer what Marilyn said, that I'm only clarifying because really -- really what I'm stressing is the subject, the topic.
And in this sense, the topic cyber-society 2030, I think it should be -- I don't know, I'm putting this in your hands -- to be open not only for Cubans to participate because I think that is important for everybody because it's -- it's a complement of the sustainable development goals. At the end of the goals is "2030," and it's very important to all of us to begin to think how it's going to be the cyber-society in 2030.
And --
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: So Juan, I'm not quite sure what your concrete proposal is.
>>JUAN FERNANDEZ: My proposal is to try to do that as an open thing for -- not only for the Cuban participants because maybe the Cuban participants will not be able to attend. To -- open to some other speakers that could join there. I don't know --
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Is this specific --
>>JUAN FERNANDEZ: -- which kind of session would be a more open thing, you know, for people to --
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Are you speaking -- are you speaking specifically to one of the four workshop proposals which we're trying to come to agreement on? What number?
>>JUAN FERNANDEZ: Yes. Cyber -- 48, 48. To do -- I don't know of all the formats because you're suggesting a flash. Maybe it's not a flash. Maybe it's some sort of mini-open forum, you know, something in which people can give their opinion of how cyber-society will be in 2030 --
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Okay, okay.
>>JUAN FERNANDEZ: -- and how do we get there.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you. So I put a proposal forward. Again, thank you for your patience, everybody. I understand I'm pushing this forward.
Is there any objection to moving forward with 81 as a workshop?
Jac, do you have a comment specifically to that?
Jac, you have the floor.
>>JAC SM KEE: Thanks, Chair. I think the reasons that's already been given for supporting it in that it speaks about health and that's quite critical is good. But one of the biggest shortfallings around the Cuban proposals was that it's very singular. There's no different stakeholder groups or different, like, regional representations, so I would say a conditional acceptance with recommendation to bring in other people.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Okay. I see -- with apologies to those that are on line, I see lots of heads nodding in the room that that would be a good condition to put on it.
And with that, I think we have support for 81 going forward and 48 to be evaluated as a flash session or we can set that to the -- to the side for now, Juan, but I don't -- didn't see a lot of support for that coming in.
So I've got quite a long list of people in the queue. If you want to speak specifically to these four, then I'll let you come in.
It needs to be a substantive new point, though, so we can move on to some other topics and regions.
So if you're not speaking specifically to that, would you please take your flag down, your electronic flags down?
And now I'll come to the top of the queue, which is Giacomo. That still leaves six people in the queue, so please, let's be right to the point.
You have the floor.
>>GIACOMO MAZZONE: I will not abuse my prerogative of birthday, but it's very --
[ Laughter ]
>>GIACOMO MAZZONE: No. I have a different proposal, if I may.
I think that first this year Cuba is important and would deserve special attention to Cuba and there is no reason to explaining why. I think that is clear to everybody.
But what I've suggested in my remarks and proposal of merge, I said first that it would be good to have a workshop in which this kind of interesting experience are explained, so sort of a window where we can see what is happening in Cuba, because this is something of interest for everybody.
So if this different experience in different fields can be exposed and explained and discussed with the others, it would be very interesting for everybody.
And the second suggestion is, there are proposals that could be easily merged if there is a good will with others.
For instance, the one about ECORED that I -- I pinpoint as an interesting one could easily fit within the workshop 22 about local contents. That's -- I don't see any problem and I don't think that is a problem for Cubans to join. This is what we have to do to incite people to work together and to create bridges between various proposals. It's -- so it's going the direction, what you say, but with some different angle.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Giacomo. Renata, you have the floor.
>>RENATA AQUINO RIBEIRO: Yes. Renata here.
I'd like to address again the issue of regional representation. I support the 81 workshop moving forward. However, if the conditional acceptance is based on having more participation of other stakeholder groups, I would also point out that one of the clusters identified, which was big data, mergers were suggested which were involving as well some Cuban proposals, so you have 58, 49, 53, 54, and 42 which are all about big data used for human rights and for common good.
So this would be a merger suggested.
Another merger which was already agreed upon by another MAG member on the spreadsheet was 187, 69, and 68, who have all been approved and they are about big data in cities, big data in environment, so this could also merge with health and infrastructure.
So, again, the issue that health not being represented is -- has to be taken into account.
And I disagree with the observation that we should not have regional representation. One of the IGF criteria is geographical diversity. If we do not have geographical diversity on the workshops, we are doing something wrong. So I would recommend we think about this, align merits of the workshops with geographical diversity. Thank you.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: I do think that's an important point and I'm sure the secretariat is noting it and will get back appropriately with those that we've identified with conditions.
Izumi, you have the floor.
>>IZUMI OKUTANI: Thank you, Chair. I actually have a comment -- like a general observation about the process itself.
I share like the comment mentioned earlier about, like, people suggesting for the workshop that they are involved, and I also feel like, you know, I would like to do the same, you know. And -- but, again, I wouldn't. And I can certainly, like, provide what seems to be objective, like, information about the workshop that I'm -- I have been involved in consulting because I know well about it.
But not everybody will have a chance to do that, so I want to be clear about the process. So I think if others are, you know, suggesting, you know, the people who are not involved in the workshop is proposing, you know, this should be like consulted. I think that's a fair process. But if you are involved in the workshop, even if you have like you're able to share, you know, what objectively is worth consideration, I -- I feel this process is not really fair.
And having said that, I think a lot of the Cuban workshops is very interesting, so I support, you know, incorporating that, but I think this should come from other people who are not involved in consultation or involved in the workshop for accountability of our process.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: And I think that's been addressed by a couple of speakers. I mean, I do appreciate Juan jumping in and breaking the ice and putting some concrete proposals before because it took us an hour to get to that point.
No, Juan, I know -- I was going to say that.
>>JUAN FERNANDEZ: (off microphone). They responded, but neither I revised the -- anything. I didn't do...
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: So, Juan -- he mentioned he wasn't directly involved in those. I think regional balance is an important consideration. We said we did want to specifically look at that, include some in. I think it was a good start. I think we do all need to ensure that we are not lobbying for our own proposals or simply looking at those from our own country or our organization. That's a principle we've always adhered to and one we need to stay with. And I do actually see intent in the room to stay with that.
So I would really like to close on these few very quickly so we can move to another maybe thematic grouping or regional grouping that we can address. I still have five people in the queue, though. So please, please, keep your remarks to the point, to the topic that's in front of us, and brief.
Xiaodong, you have the floor.
>>XIAODONG LEE: It's a very long queue.
Firstly, I wanted to support Michael's suggestion as so many proposers which failed selection to join other sessions to be the speakers or panelists.
Second, I also support the proposal 81, but I also support Jac's suggestion to add more people into this workshop.
But, third, I think maybe I missed the opportunity but I strongly suggest the MAG members to consider the proposal number 144, which is in line 161, "Enabling every user with a unique Internet culture I.D." This proposal is more concrete and more constructive and more specific. It's being used for people to understand. And especially it's a joint session with different stakeholders. It's a joint session with technical community, private sector, and also intergovernmental organizations. So I think we should encourage the collaboration in the workshop proposals.
The third reason is the universal acceptance is a very key issue for the internationalized domain name as also the email address internationalization to be success, which is a very key issue before and after the transition which may be happening -- we assume it be happening in September, October. So that would be very key issues. I strongly support that MAG member can consider that. Thank you.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: To the online participant. I mean, again, when the online -- Anja pushes her button when there's a question for the online participant. It's being slotted. It's all electronic. You are actually being slotted in the order. I think there might have been some concern as to whether or not they weren't being pulled in appropriately.
>>REMOTE INVERVENTION: This is a pending comment about workshop number 164 and 127.
From Aida Mahmutovic, my support goes to 164 because it does speak from a developing country perspective. And I strongly believe it needs to be prioritized.
My second support is for number 127. Both of them are focusing on important topics, which is sexuality. I believe we will all agree especially after last year's IGF in Brazil how important gender issues are as thematic (indiscernible).
And they also speak about safety and access to information. Therefore, once again, my strong support for 164 and 127. And thank you for giving a bit more space for remote participants and those present from developing countries in advance. Thank you.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Aida.
Julian, you have the floor.
>>JULIAN CASABUENAS: Thank you, Madam Chair. Going back in my notes and evaluations and not making any changes on that, I would recommend to include 52 session, which is a flash session.
And also I support Jac's, Renata, and other comments to support 81 proposal, including other stakeholders, not just to represent a more broad regional representation. Thank you.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Julian.
Zeina, you have the floor.
>>ZEINA BOU HARB: Thank you, Madam Chair. I would like to propose for all of us to reconsider the workshop number 165 because it's proposed by a newcomer, new proposer. It covers the whole Arab region. It's a report detailing the ICT situation and the whole Arab region. And it's based on five SDGs. So it is worth to be considered, please.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Zeina.
I have four more people in the queue. I'll take them in the queue. And then when people are putting forward proposals, I think identifying the title and the number right up front is very helpful, as Zeina just did, because then we can all pull them up quickly and look at them. Then we'll come back and figure out how we process our way through those.
Shita, you have the floor.
>>SHITA LAKSMI: Thank you, Madam Chair. I would like to support the Proposal Number 193, "DigiMon: Responding and analyzing threats to digital rights." It is also part of the standard deviation's top 30. It is flash session. This is very relevant for Malaysia, (indiscernible) Malaysia. And other organizations that support this initiative is also helping other southeast Asian organizations. So I really support this proposal. Thank you very much. 193.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Shita.
Slobodan, you have the floor, please.
>>SLOBODAN MARKOVIC: Is this working? Thank you, Madam Chair.
I would like to put forward the proposal to the MAG to reconsider proposal number 250, titled "How to make remote participation sustainable." As far as I could see this was the only submission tackling specifically the topic of improving online participation at IGF and specifically targeting youth. Also, the proposal came from a developing country.
And now I applaud and share your dedication to online participation, Madam Chair. But I hope that you also agree that we need to do more and get better at online participation.
I know that this topic will be discussed at the forecoming IGF retreat. I think I saw a related agenda item there. And, by the way, this retreat should also be streamed and transcribed.
But to return to topic in hand and to reiterate, I think we should support proposal 250 and create space for discussion on the topic of online participation at the IGF. Thank you.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you. I personally would strongly support that, and we'll come back and do a quick call on that in a few moments.
It's quite a lengthy queue now. So if I can cut it off at Marianne just so we can assess where we are and try and take some decisions on those that we have received so far. In the queue I have Cheryl, Liesyl, Hossam, Jac, Mourad, Renata and then Marianne.
Cheryl, you have the floor.
>>CHERYL MILLER: Thank you, Chair. I have three proposals that I would like to mention and receive some comment on.
The first we started a discussion on yesterday. It was proposal number 27, "WePROTECT: Combating online child sexual abuse with the MSM." I noted that it was a new proposer. It is an extremely important topic. I know that there are some others that are also similar but not exactly the same as this.
What the U.K. is doing is really quite interesting. This is a capacity-building session, and I think that I would like to strongly support this one as a first one, please.
And, secondly, I note Giacomo's comments on content and given the fact it is his happy birthday, I also would like to support -- seriously, though, the local content issue is very important to include. I don't know whether or not 22 can be merged, but it's a debate format. It looks like it could be very interesting in terms of the description and the way it's set up. Perhaps in terms of fitting it in, maybe we can shrink it from 90 minutes to 60 minutes. But I think that would be another one worth discussing.
And then, finally, number 111, "Empowering and educating the next billions of Internet users." This one is a breakout group discussion and also a very important topic on the education angle. It looks like it has a number of well-balanced speakers that are proposed, good diversity, and would also like to have some discussion on this one.
Again, this one is 90-minute. I don't know, for those -- as we're trying to fit everything in, I don't know if there's any flexibility in maybe shrinking some of the 90s to 60s. But we would like some further discussion on that. Thank you.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Cheryl. Can you just tell me what the first I.D. number was again? We've got 22 and 111 as your second and third.
>>CHERYL MILLER: It was number 27. So 27, 22, and 111.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Great. Thank you.
Liesyl, you have the floor.
>>LIESYL FRANZ: Thank you, Chair. Is this an okay time to support ones that have been given -- put forward?
I would like to support 164. I had given it a 5 actually, a high ranking. So probably no further need for explanation there.
On 165, I had also given that a high mark. One comment I made is that it could maybe be improved by having a government speaker, if I may say, but also a government speaker that might -- or somebody that works in the region, even if they aren't -- who works on the region if they're not in the region. It might be an interesting, but I would support it regardless.
On 127, I do want to support it. I didn't give it a high mark but I made a comment which I think supports my ability to support it today. I said this workshop proposal doesn't present the diversity in its participants or speakers. It would be of interest, but perhaps it could be a flash session rather than a -- it's described as a tutorial for 90 minutes, which I thought might be a bit long. So if maybe it has some adjustments in its format or participants. But, in any case, I would support those three going forward. Thank you.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you. Thank you, Liesyl.
Hossam, you have the floor.
>>HOSSAM ELGAMAL: Yes. I would support proposal 144, which is "Enabling every user with a unique Internet culture I.D." It does cover local content, multilingualism, and it's very unique. So I think it's very important.
One thing -- suggestion is to increase the speakers' diversity a little bit. But other than this, this is a very important topic to cover. Thank you very much.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Hossam.
Jac, you have the floor.
>>JAC SM KEE: Thanks, Lynn. Is it okay to suggest new proposals now, or are we just recommending? Okay, it's fine. I'm sorry if it's quite a lengthy one. But I just wanted to say I also support 164 and 127 for the reasons already said.
And just as a comment, I'm really very pleased to see the large number of workshop proposals that came under gender issues but as primary, secondary, or third tag. And also the amount of workshop proposals around online violence against women. And I think that also speaks a little bit to the impact of the best practice forum, if I can say so. I think it really does matter when it is presented that this is an important Internet governance topic and, therefore, it then sort of opens up the space and then people want to bring this topic into this space and I think that's something to note and it's quite heartening.
Saying that, I have four workshop proposals to suggest. One is specifically around gender issues. I think that's about 15 workshop proposals in total that sort of looks at gender issues, and about five has been accepted. So I think we can definitely make some space for that.
And the one I want to propose is actually workshop number 111. It's quite low on the list. It's a bit of an outlier. But I think it's important because it brings in new stakeholder groups and issues into the space. One, it's Francophonie Africa. And I think that's an important region. I didn't really see any on this topic so far.
Secondly, it focuses on young women. So I think that also is quite an important thing to kind of try and support. This is really quite targeted and specific, and it could be about language issues that the workshop isn't quite written in a particular way. But I think that's valuable to have a look at.
Secondly, also around new stakeholder groups and issues is 237, "Artistic freedom and cultural expressions online." It brings in a very important component around expression that links to SDGs and cultural expression. So I think that's useful to have a look at.
And another one is -- again, on new issues into IG is the one on 124, "Multistakeholder cooperation against illegal wildlife trade." I think that's highly interesting. It looks at data mining and big data in relation to trafficking of wildlife. I don't think it's a topic that we've really tackled very much in IGF space. So I think it's really an opportunity to broaden and open this up. And, finally -- sorry, 124.
And, finally, on workshop 134 which is "Assemblies and associations online: Coping with challenges," because I happen to look at the human rights cluster yesterday, I noticed that there were a few gaps within the human rights clusters. And one of them is really around freedom of assembly and association. That's not covered at all.
And if I may, the second gap in the human rights cluster is around application of human rights in law. So that's also not covered so far. So maybe that's also something we might want to look at.
And before I give up my space -- sorry for being so long. Just a little comment on Mike's comment earlier that ICT4D is not something that's relevant for discussion here, that is distinct from Internet.
>>MICHAEL NELSON: (off microphone).
>>JAC SM KEE: I'm not sure I understood what the distinction was in relation to the comment. I just wanted to emphasize that it is very late, and I don't understand the distinction if that was, indeed, the intention. And I don't really want to, like, have a dialectic discussion about this. But just wanted to emphasize that it is quite key and it links quite strongly to SDGs, and I don't see the distinction at all.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Jac. That was very helpful. And I'm glad you started bringing in some of the other thematic areas that we needed to look at as well.
Michael, your intervention is brief and specifically to that point?
>>MICHAEL NELSON: Correct. I just wanted to say that my point was that if you go to an ICT4D meeting or you go to a WSIS meeting, you will see a lot of discussion about computers without Internet, cell phones without Internet, and that's outside the realm and some of the talks -- proposals that I was addressing were ones that didn't even talk about Internet.
But I fully agree with Jac, that Internet is fundamental to ICT4D. It's just that not all ICT4D is Internet.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Michael.
Mourad, you have the floor.
>>MOURAD BOUKADOUM: Just want to second regarding the proposal of workshop 165. It's important for the region because the region is facing huge -- MENA region is facing huge challenges in terms of youth employment, economic diversification. Digital empowerment is very important for the region.
I would like also to invite the group to consider the inclusion of workshop 16, "Internet access in the poor areas of the MENA region," for flash session. Thank you.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Mourad.
Renata, you have the floor.
>>RENATA AQUINO RIBEIRO: Yes. I would like to address gender issues as well, supporting workshop 127 and 164. I would, however, note that workshop 127 also refers to LGBTQ issues. So I -- I'm not sure how a merger should be done here. There's only 164 as well but use of freedom of expression while 127 is a technical community workshop. So these are the only two proposals that mention LGBTQ. So I think they should be noted.
And I would bring up again 169 about the effect of an IGF in the region. We have been discussing this issue of regional grouping exhaustively. But I would again like to stress it is about regional diversity and bringing it onto the IGF and also in the aspect of ICT4D.
And for the wildlife workshop, 124, if the issue is getting more stakeholder groups and diversity, I would again recommend turning to the big data cluster which deals with environment and cities, so this should be an interesting mix to bring the people who are working with big data and environment and the wildlife and Internet proposal. That would be it. Thank you.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Renata.
Marianne, you were at the top of the queue. You've now dropped down a little bit further, but as I had said, I was going to drawn the line under you and then try and catch where we are. I'll come back to the queue, so the rest of you stay in, but I think there's starting to emerge some consensus on a few that we should capture.
So Marianne, you have the floor.
>>MARIANNE SAKALOVA: Yeah. So I would like just to support workshop 250, and there is a message from Ginger. She said that the workshop was poorly wrote and it should be developed further, and I do support that because remote participation is important not only for use in developing countries and our face -- our online meetings and all our communication on line shows that it is important to discuss various modalities and it is closely connected with digital literacy of all -- of all of us, so I think it should be worked more and it should be included into the list.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Marianne.
So let me see if I can try and capture where I think there's support for a few and then we'll -- we'll continue back to those that haven't had any comments yet.
There were quite a number of people that came in -- well, we'll take 250, on the remote participation. I always looked at that one. I think there's some good speakers and I think with Ginger's comment and engagement as well. I mean, I'd like to put that forward as one we include. It's so critical, and obviously we're not doing that as well as we need to.
There's support for that?
I'm assuming support from the online participants as well?
Okay. Then we'll rule that one in.
There was pretty significant support for three other sessions: 164, 165, and 127. If it helps, we can try and pull up the names of those quite quickly, but I'm assuming that in the background those were some of the earlier ones which were put forward that people had looked at those and had a chance to comment or support or object.
Are people comfortable enough with pulling in 164, 165, and 127? Each one of those have had at least three interventions supporting and none against.
So this is a chance for the online participants as well to raise their hand if they have anything further they'd like to add. Otherwise, I'm looking at people here in the room and I see Christine has asked for the floor. We'll give her the floor and then see if we can close on those three.
Christine, you have the floor.
>>CHRISTINE ARIDA: Thank you, Madam Chair. Yes, speaking for 165, I think maybe one thing we could suggest to them is maybe include a business sector participant because maybe that is one of the things that are lacking, but beside that, I see there are so good speakers that are involved in the NRIs of the vision, and I also see that the topic is about sustainable growth and inclusion so it actually goes quite good. And there are newcomers, so I think some guidance specifically on adding maybe a speaker from the business community would help well to make a good and strong workshop. Thank you.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Christine. And I'm sure the secretariat will give that feedback. Liesyl had also suggested that we either get a government or a regional speaker that could speak from that perspective as well so I'm sure that will be fed back to them.
So I'm looking to close on 164, 165, and 127 on the basis of the support I've heard for it.
No objections?
We're going for a close, then, on those.
Sorry. There are still a number of other proposals that were put forward that we're still looking for some additional comments on. We can go through those numbers quickly if that helps. I hope people have been noting them and looking in the background, but would it help to go through the numbers quickly?
Again, these are proposals that people have specifically put on the floor with reasons for why they thought they should be included.
So the numbers I have were 16, 144, 52, 169, 119, 27, 22, 111, 11, 237, 124, and 134.
If you could, for the moment, try and confine our comments to that batch, then we could perhaps open up another -- another wave.
Is there anyone -- I've got five people in the queue. I'll come back to the queue now and I certainly hope it's actually on some combination of those proposals that are in front of us.
So Michael, you have the floor.
>>MICHAEL NELSON: Yes. Mine was actually on Jackie's -- Jac's suggestion regarding 124, which was on wildlife and the use of the Internet for selling of things like rhino horn.
I didn't rank that very high. It's an interesting topic and it's a very interesting case study, but I think it would only make sense if that was combined with at least two other sessions on the role of Internet service providers in filtering out bad speech or illegal activities.
There's a couple related ones that might work with that. There's two top -- two of them are on Internet anonymity and hate speech. I think that was number 220 and 221.
Another one that might be brought into it would be 217, which is on intermediary liability, this whole question of do ISPs have to filter the Internet.
So I would only support Jac's proposal if it was to take one person from that session and add them to this broader panel. Thank you.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Mike. We can certainly hear if there are any other comments on that and potentially ask the secretariat to take it forward. I'm going to --
The -- I had Laura in the queue. Laura, you have the floor.
>>LAURA WATKINS: Thank you, Chair.
I wanted to also speak around that workshop, which was number 124.
I scored it quite highly and it sort of -- I thought it was quite unique while moving through the scoring process. I'm not sure I quite agree with some of Mike's comments around some of the mergers. I think that changes the nature of the session that was proposed and I think it kind of -- it changes how it was focused. I would support inclusion of that workshop as-is.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Laura.
Xiaodong Lee, you have the floor.
>>XIAODONG LEE: I still try to encourage MAG members to consider the proposal number 144 about the culture ID address internationalized domain name and email address to enable the multilingual Internet because, you know, issues especially in China that so many people cannot access the Internet because of the language issues and also how to enable the Internet to support the multilingualized domain name and the email is very important. But up to now there is -- ICANN open the new gTLDs, there is over 50% is -- I think it's more than 60% is in Asia. This is a multilingual area. But now the universal acceptance issue is very tough issue for the software vendors to support.
I mean, this proposal is a transition with Microsoft. And also with ICANN USG, I think it should be a wonderful proposal to consider. Thank you.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Okay. Thank you. We'll call those clarification comments.
I will point out that that workshop actually does have speakers from Russia, China, Thailand, Japan, and it does have the private sector as well there for business. I mean, I think, you know, it is an interesting topic. I think we need to decide here whether or not there's support for including it or not and maybe we can try and just look for support on line, as well as here in the room, either for including that or are there any strong objections.
144, any strong --
So either -- again, I say "support for." If there's not support, people should indicate that as well, but the title was "Enabling Every User with a Unique Internet Culture ID." The tags were "multilingualism and local content," "access and diversity," and "connecting the unconnected."
I see some heads nodding around the room with respect to supporting it. I'm actually kind of keeping track of stakeholder support when I look for heads nodding around the room as well, so there's quite a good mixture there.
With no further objections, then, we'll pull that one into the accepted list as well.
Elizabeth, you have the floor. And thank you, Xiaodong.
>>ELIZABETH THOMAS-RAYNAUD: Actually, that was the one that I was going to just mention that I thought was really important because of the issue. I think sometimes we've thought of the internationalization of IDNs as sort of one achievement and I think it's important that we continue that dialogue, so thank you for moving that forward.
The other one I had -- I wanted to lend some support to was 111. You had asked for people to consider that. I'd like to support that one.
And there's one other one that I wanted to mention that isn't actually already in your stack, so I don't know if you want me to use my moment of time.
It's 199. It's involving the -- it's looking at the Ruggie principles, which are the U.N. principles on human -- business and human rights, and I think it's really -- in light of some of the proposals around the anticorruption best practice forum and some of the new sort of topics we're looking at in that area, I think it's a worthwhile topic and proposal for us to consider, and a different angle on the human rights picture, but an important and engaging one for our diverse stakeholders.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Elizabeth.
We have an online participant. Anja, you have the floor.
>>REMOTE INTERVENTION: Thank you. Aida would like to support workshop 250.
Renata, 169 and 250 and 193.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: I'm sorry, Anja. Could you -- that was just very quickly.
>>REMOTE INTERVENTION: Sorry, sorry.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: So 250 was in. So what were the others?
>>REMOTE INTERVENTION: 250, Aida.
Renata, 169, 250, and 193.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: So I note from my notes here, I think 193 is a new proposal, so we'll put that in and put it in front of people, and 250 was already accepted.
So thank you.
Next in the queue we have Marilyn.
>>MARILYN CADE: Very quickly, I'd like to support 144.
I would also like to suggest that 52, which is I think very similar to 271 which hasn't been mentioned yet but in the next round I will mention it, it's similar in that it focuses on sustainable development, economic growth, so I would propose 52 be thought about for a merger.
169 is a flash. I can support that.
119, I have many questions about because there are several workshops that have at least two of the same speakers in them and the topic is similar to similar workshops. I think 119 needs to go into a cluster and we need to also be looking for just the same duplication of speakers that appear over and over. So then those speakers could help to -- and in some case the duplicate proposers could help to get mergers.
I have a very serious concern about 111 -- about number 11. I rated it very low, although I'm a big supporter of the topic and I want to explain why.
I think it needs to be merged or significantly improved. It is headed in the right direction on the topic, but it has proposed speakers -- it's focused on youth and women and the two confirmed speakers are male and well beyond the age of youth.
[ Laughter ]
>>MARILYN CADE: So -- and I would know because I'm 69. So -- so my suggestion on that one, it needs to go into a cluster, be significantly reexamined, and possibly merged.
And then I just had one other one, which is 111, and I'm going to make a comment about it. I think we need to be really, really careful that if we're talking about a workshop and we in any way have an affiliation with speakers or proposers, that we're very, very careful about making comments. I don't have, with that one, but when I look at it, I think it needs merging. I really don't think --
I think I mean 111. Let me make sure because I went through this so quickly.
I'm a little concerned -- I believe it's the one about empowering and educating the next billion. I think it's -- there are a couple of others that are similar enough in the area of digital education, and I think given the -- what's trying to be done here and the fact that it, too, is kind of limited in -- I mean, it has an excellent direction, but there are two provisional speakers confirmed, so I see a lot of good ideas but I don't see the what I would call "spade work" that some of the others did.
So I've put one more that I'll come back to you when you open the queue again for new ones -- that's 271 for a possible merger -- and I've gone through my comments on the others. Thanks.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Marilyn. Shita, you have the floor.
>>SHITA LAKSMI: Thank you, Madam Chair. I would like to clarify first that 193 was my proposal, so it was not new. The second one, I would like to support proposal number 250 for participation because I think that's really an issue that we have.
And also support proposals number 134, because I think assemblies and association is a topic of freedom of expression that is rarely being discussed in this session, and then I -- the speakers are also very diverse from many -- from the global perspective. Thank you.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Okay. Thank you, Shita.
And just to be clear, if we've actually taken the -- you know, a consensus call on whether or not a workshop should be in, there's no need to come back in and support it.
The six that I have at the moment are 81, with some conditions noted -- actually quite a few of these had conditions noted -- number 250, two five zero, 165, 127, 164, and 144.
So if you're in the queue to comment on those, it's not necessary. They are in and any other conditions or dependencies are noted.
Iliya, you have the floor.
>>ILIYA BAZLYANKOV: Thank you, Madam Chair.
I would like to also support the chair's mention of workshop 111. In eastern Europe, we see a lot of people coming on line first time and they don't have enough knowledge how to combat online threats, ransomware, malware. In Bulgaria we recently had cases with viruses encrypting your hard drive and people had no idea how to combat this.
This workshop may need to broaden the speakers and maybe lower to 60 minutes. Thank you.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you. Ephraim, you have the floor.
>>EPHRAIM PERCY KENYANITO: Hello. This is Ephraim. I just wanted to express my support to 134, as Shita has mentioned about assemblies and association on line, and then also to talk about 234. Though I'm expressing that there might be a high level of interest, because of the one of the proposers is from Access, Access Now, just wanted to highlight about 234 that it's unique because it focuses on connectivity and human rights. Others focus on disconnectivity. Thank you. So 134 and 234, those are the ones I wanted to -- 134 and 234. Thank you.
>>SUMON AHMED SABIR: Thank you. I like to support actually proposal number 243 talking about accountability in Internet policy. I think it's a rare kind of proposal and I think it is also rated 96 in the (indiscernible) and it's also talking about to be responsible or accountable in developing public policies. I'd like to support the proposal and for your consideration.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Sumon. We have an online participant, Anja?
>>REMOTE INTERVENTION: Yes. Virat supports 111.
And I'm sorry. There is just an additional comment that just came from Virat about this workshop.
We had agreed that provisional speakers were perfectly acceptable for this stage of submission. We can certainly expand the range of speakers. Thank you.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you. Thank you, Virat.
Sorry, just one second.
Juan, you are asking to understand those which we accepted this morning?
>>JUAN FERNANDEZ: No, which are considered?
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: The ones we are considering at the moment.
>>JUAN FERNANDEZ: (off microphone).
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Maybe this is a good time, there are four more people in the queue which I can allow them to go through -- there is about four or so that are actually getting good support from the room which I think I can also try and call consensus on from the room and the online participation. And then that still is going to leave quite a long list of proposals. A number of them have just come up so people haven't had time to respond to them yet.
So maybe if you could give me one more minute, Juan, take these four comments. And then we'll draw a line under those that we think we have consensus on and start a new group. Does that work?
Flavio, you have the floor.
>>FLAVIO WAGNER: Thank you, Lynn. I would like to support two workshops. One of them has already been mentioned. That's 191. It is well-ranked, position 97, so in the top hundred. It deals with an issue that I think it has not been covered by the other workshops already accepted, which is regulation of OTTs. It comes from the private sector, which has not too many proposals accepted so far.
And the other one is the 195. It is also relatively well-ranked, position 123. It has not been mentioned yet. It deals with innovation in the digital economy and its role in the sustainable development goals. I think it's important. Also comes from the private sector, and it's well-ranked. Yeah.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Cheryl, you have the floor.
>>CHERYL MILLER: I wanted to go back and support 199. I went back and looked at that. I think it will be a pretty interesting discussion. So I want to put my support behind that.
I just want to make a comment because there are a few comments keep circulating about, whether or not people are connected to workshops, et cetera. Aside from the fact that I know all of you in the room, I'm not connected to any workshop. So I want to put that out there. Also, with respect to speakers, I know there were a lot of first-time proposers that explained to me that it's really difficult getting speakers that far in advance. And I think we did agree that, as Virat mentioned, having speakers that are provisional would be okay. I would hope we would see some flexibility on that issue. Thank you.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Cheryl.
Michael, you have the floor.
>>MICHAEL NELSON: I wanted to support Flavio's suggestion that we support 191 on OTTs. This is an incredibly hot issue in many places.
And also want to throw my support behind 134 on assemblies. I do have a concern about -- I think it was 193 which was suggested. It's a flash session, but it's a very narrow session. And it's really about one project from one group. We had probably 15 or 20 of these types of proposals. Many of them were interesting, but they don't merit even 30 minutes. Again, I think it would be a great fit for lightning rounds.
And the last thing I wanted to talk about was a proposal that was in the top hundred but we haven't talked about yet, at least I haven't heard us talk about it. And that is number 109, which is about Internet shut-downs, which I think, if combined with 107, which is on a related topic, would be a very strong and fascinating proposal. The number of governments that have shut down the Internet in the last year has almost doubled. This is certainly a major problem. Thank you.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Michael.
Jivan, you have the floor.
>>JIVAN GJORGJINSKI: Yes, support for 144, 155, 169, 119, 124, 134.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Just a little more slowly.
>>JIVAN GJORGJINSKI: Sorry about that.
[ Laughter ]
I wanted to see save some time. 144, 155, 169, 119, 124, 134. And 191.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: And the last one was 101?
>>JIVAN GJORGJINSKI: 191.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you. Juan, you have the floor.
>>JUAN FERNANDEZ: Thank you, Chair. I would appreciate we do stop in the way and try to see where we are because there's so many, it's hard for me to check them all. Maybe we can have it in a table or maybe for -- during lunch to have a...
And now I want to add because, as I said, I'm not only adding from a special country but because of idea. I want to add 83 and the name of the workshop speaks for itself. It is called "Improving stakeholder representation in multistakeholderism." It's a very important topic for us.
And I want to increase also 140. The name is "Internet for All: Improving global and regional coordination." It has to do with the same topic. And for who are interested in the details, that's been proposed by the World Economic Forum. So you can say I'm doing lobby for the World Economic Forum.
[ Laughter ]
Something like that. Thank you.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Juan.
I have four more people in the queue. I'd like to take them, and then I think there's about four or five that have had really significant support in the room. I would cover those, judge whether or not there was support, and then I think we'll take up your suggestion, which is maybe to list those that have been mooted for inclusion, make sure people are clear on them. Make can take some time over lunch, look through them, and we can come back to them.
Maybe just before lunch we could actually have a quick introduction to the main sessions so that people can think of that as well because that's the next item on the agenda. So think about that and we can come back and see if that actually works as a proposal.
I have three people left in the queue.
So, Izumi, you have the floor.
>>IZUMI OKUTANI: Thank you, Chair. I'd like to join in support for proposal 191. I think it's a very specific topic covering OTT. It's rare, interesting, and I think it's also, like, getting more attention. So I support having this proposal.
I also would like to join in support for proposal 165. I think this covers the gender issue but then from the regional perspective, specific to the Arab region which, again, is rare, so I think it's a good proposal to be included. And I think the suggestion about a way forward that you suggested, Chair, is helpful.
So I would like to double-check, which are the ones from the top 85 that is accepted. And if there are any gray ones, I would like to double-check which are the ones. So thank you.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: That's a good point. We'll come back to that in just a moment after the next two speakers.
Three speakers left; and then let's see if we can kind of wrap this up, close it up, so we can allow some of the work to go forward over the lunch break.
I have Shita, Mourad, and Julian in the queue.
So, Shita, you have the floor.
>>SHITA LAKSMI: I will be very brief. I just wanted to comment what Mike Nelson was saying about flash session. If we see the description of flash session, it is a format that should be used for a session where an individual organization wishes to inform the community about the work they have done. So it's really specific. Thank you.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Shita.
Mourad, you have the floor.
>>MOURAD BOUKADOUM: Thank you, Chair. Just wanted to second Juan from Cuba on the importance of workshop 83. It is the heart of our work, so we do have support. Thank you.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Mourad. I noted the support for 83. Thank you.
Julian, you have the floor.
>>JULIAN CASABUENAS: Thank you, Madam Chair. Just going through my notes, I would like to support proposals 124, 127, 164, 165, 111, 144, 169, 190, and 191.
Thank you.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you. And I think I caught all that as well.
So the secretariat is going to go through and identify. I think there were only two or three in the top 85 that weren't pulled in yesterday after we discovered that the four that we had asterisked and set aside did, in fact, have background papers, they just hadn't been pulled over into the evaluation table. But Chengetai is going to confirm that now.
To date, without taking into account this very last round, we've pulled in 81, 250, 165, 127, 164, and 144. In this last round, there's been pretty significant support -- and I think I'll just do them one by one and try and look for any concerns with moving forward. And, Anja, if there's a hand up that goes on from the online participants where they want to come in on any of those, just let me know.
So there's been fairly significant support for 191, the OTT. There has been at least six proposals that have come in -- MAG members that have come in supporting that. And the same thing for 134. There have been at least five or six that have come in supporting that one as well. So I'm just trying to look around the room and giving the online participants time to make sure we are in agreement with those two moving forward.
There was significant support and that would be four more for 169, which I think was a flash session.
The one thing we need to do is go back through the transcript and make sure -- my notes aren't all that complete -- whether it was a flash session or it was -- or if there was specific conditionalities on it. If there are conditionalities on it, we'll go back through carefully in the transcript and make sure we go back to the proposers. That was, in fact, supported as a flash session. So that one goes in as well.
There was quite significant support for 111. Again, I've got four people supporting there. A couple conditionalities that I remember were perhaps looking at breaking it down from 90 to 60 minutes. So we would bring that one in as well, if there are no objections.
Marilyn, you have the floor.
>>MARILYN CADE: Thank you, Chair. I continue to have an objection to this one, not to it being included but I'd like to see it considered for merger or significant enhancement before it moves forward. I really agree, particularly because I work with NRIs and I work with ICT associations from developing countries, in particular from the Arab states and from Africa and Latin America, that this -- there's a great need for the underlying concept. But I'm not satisfied yet, and I think that it should be improved. And I think it could also be merged.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: And I think that's not different from a lot of the other conditionalities that people put on them. I heard a number of -- I would say sort of hard conditionalities; not "it would be nice if we support" it but we are looking for these changes. So I don't think that proposal is any different.
There's a couple that are a little questionable. There was workshop 11 which was -- both had a gender aspect, African region, and young women. And Marilyn had made the point that the only two confirmed speakers were elderly male. I think clearly there's some work needed there, and I don't assess any kind of clear support for that in the room yet.
The others all had -- I'll come back to that in a moment. The others all had perhaps one -- either just the person who actually put it forward for consideration or one other person speaking in support of it. So with that group -- and it's quite a large group -- I'd actually just like to list what those numbers are. And I think at this point, we can ask everybody to take a little bit of time over lunch, look at them, we come back after lunch, and hopefully we can go through quite quickly and just look for whether there's an appropriate level of support for them or not.
One of the things I'd like -- and, Anja, I see your hand. I will come in a moment.
One of the things I would actually like the secretariat to do when we're all done with this nearly final or intended to be final list, obviously understanding that a lot of the proposals have conditionalities, is to go back and kind of recast the spreadsheets so we can look at all the different diversities, regional, stakeholder, first-time, and all the diversities we keep and if we see -- and that will be available to all the MAG members. And if we see any of the areas that are really sort of wanting, then I think we can open that back to the MAG and try to identify some additional proposals that we might work with to bring them up to an acceptable state.
So I just want to make people comfortable that since this is quite rushed -- and I think we're actually trying to look at a lot of additional characteristics that we haven't pulled into past processes, that we will actually slow the process down a little bit, take a thoughtful look, and come back if we recognize there are any significant gaps.
So the ones that I have open -- and, unfortunately, it's not in alphabetical order or numerical order -- and if I have missed any, please jump in.
The ones we've had proposed but not sort of judging enough comment on yet are numbers 101, 16, 52, 119, 27, 22, 11, 237, 190, 109 -- actually, there was a comment there that 109 might be merged with 107. So maybe we can look at those both at the same time -- 195, 243, 271, 83, 140, 199, 193, and 234.
Did I say 193? Yes.
Did I -- I want to come to Anja as an online participant, and then there are two more people in the queue. And if I have missed any numbers, do let me know.
Anja, you have the floor.
>>REMOTE INVERVENTION: Thank you. Can you please note the support from Ginger on 199 and 124. And from Alejandra Erramuspe support for 140.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Noted. Thank you.
Cheryl, you have the floor.
>>CHERYL MILLER: Thank you. Actually, in going through my notes, I think 27 was included. So I apologize if I caused confusion on that. I would also like to support 140. Thank you.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you.
Michael, you have the floor.
>>MICHAEL NELSON: I just wanted a status check. Do we have any sense as to how many we've already included in and how many open slots we still have? Because by my count we have probably three or four --
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Ten in. We have ten in, and that would say roughly about probably eight slots if we are working towards a hundred. What that hasn't assessed yet is whether or not they were 30-minute slots versus 90-minute slots. Roughly that would be about another eight.
>>MICHAEL NELSON: So in this last round, we're going to have to radically change our behavior. We're going to have to reject about 80% of these.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: I think we can at lunchtime look and see if there's room for a few more. Or if there's strong support, we can always put them into kind of a holding category because some of the earlier suggestions for mergers and that sort of thing might, in fact, not be taken up or even some of the conditionalities. That would actually give the secretariat a little bit of leeway once they have the time to actually sit through and look at the length of the proposed workshops.
Would it be possible for the secretariat to reorganize the spreadsheet and put the top 85 and these additional ten or so that we've put in so that we can now look the top 85 are the ones that are in and we could -- and get that out?
>>CHENGETAI MASANGO: Yeah.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: So if we could actually do that in the background before lunch, that would help people's participation.
I guess if we had our wishes, maybe we'd even highlight the 95 or so that we have agreed at this point are in and then include the next 15 in a yellow lining or something so that everybody had them right there in one row and those next 15 or whatever would be easily accessible. Perhaps one person doing the work rather than 50 odd would be a reasonable savings.
So are there any other comments on this process? My proposal was that we take the next half-hour and ask -- assuming it's Liesyl or perhaps it's Virat, if he's still online, to just introduce the main session topics. Again, that will allow us to think about it a little bit other work or if there's any additional work we need to do to try and move that forward.
I think we can make good progress on the main sessions. I also think those are activities we're going to need to move forward into the virtual MAG meetings anyway and continue to track them over the future meetings. So if we can make a really good start on them today, I'd consider that, you know, success.
Is everybody okay with that as a -- as a plan?
Liesyl, are you ready to introduce it?
And my thanks to everybody this morning for sticking in with the process and continuing to stay with it through the rest of the afternoon. Thank you.
>>LIESYL FRANZ: Sure. As -- very similar to the comments I made on Tuesday in the open consultation, thanks to everybody for submitting their main session proposals.
We have nine proposals and I'm a little bit unsure how that fits with the number of slots we have or don't have, depending on length of time and things like that, so I leave that to the group.
Just one thing I'll say is, as main session working group coleads, Virat and I -- and this was part of the deal --
[ Laughter ]
>>LIESYL FRANZ: -- when I agreed to do it -- he -- that the workshop -- the main session proposals are -- we collected them and they went to the secretariat and we collected them, reminded people to put their proposals in, but we are not in the business of assessing them except as the coleads for the working group, but rather in our, you know, sort of MAG seat role.
So -- but anyway, let me just remind you what the proposals are, and perhaps I could also ask the secretariat to send the -- the updated compilation with the nine before lunch, so that as you're reviewing things and will be assessing the proposals, maybe you can take a quick look at it as well.
The first is "Toward an Interoperable Global Internet Network, Solving Current Problems on Cyber Jurisdiction" proposed by Indonesia.
The next is "Connecting the Next Billion Phase 2," proposed by Constance Bommelaer.
Next, "Sustainable Development, Internet and Inclusive Growth." Hossam Elgamal and Elizabeth Thomas-Raynaud.
"Trade Agreements on the Internet," Jeremy Malcolm and Renata Aquino Ribeiro. I hope I didn't get too far off on that, Renata. Sorry about that.
"Dynamic Coalitions Main Session" by Avri Doria and Markus Kummer.
Then "Shaping the Future of Internet Governance," which I put forward as supported by Flavio Wagner. That was workshop proposal 179, and just to iterate that that would be a proposal to change it from a workshop to a main session.
"Assessing the Role of Internet Governance and SDGs" by Marilyn Cade and Jandyr Santos.
"National and Regional IGF Initiatives" main session, Marilyn Cade.
And then "Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, What are the Implications for the Internet and Sustainable Development," by Jac and Ginger.
The compilation that the secretariat has sent out and will remind you when they send it out again has the proposal descriptions in -- for each in the compilation, so I urge you to at least eyeball that at your convenience.
Perhaps if you -- Chair, I don't know if you want folks who have proposed workshops to say a few words about them now or how -- I don't know how you want to handle that, but many of them, if not all, are in the room, so I'm sure they'd be ready to do so.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: No, I think -- I think that would be useful. We have two people in the queue that I'll come to in a moment, and Chengetai has informed that there are seven slots for main sessions, with the nine proposed.
So we have ISOC, which I'm assuming is Constance, in the queue.
Constance, you have the floor.
>>CONSTANCE BOMMELAER: Thank you very much.
With regards to the main session proposal, the idea really is to reflect the outcomes of the work we're kick-starting and that I presented yesterday during the open -- the day before, sorry, during the open consultations.
In the main session proposal, it was -- it was also noted, after discussing with some of you and with the IGF secretariat, that it could also make sense to merge this topic, perhaps it doesn't need a main session on its own, with the main session proposal on sustainable development.
Another proposal could be, as we did last year, to have a main session on IGF outputs where we presented the best practices plus the policy options.
A third option could be to have the main session sitting on its own, but as I said, not necessarily. It's not compulsory. Thank you.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Constance, and thank you for all your efforts leading that work as well.
We have Markus in the queue.
>>MARKUS KUMMER: Thank you, Lynn, and to pick up on Constance's remarks, which were very helpful and tie in nicely with what I'm going to say, we had an agreement in principle to have a main session on the best practices forums, but for some reason, inexplicable reasons, they fell through the crack and the proposal was never submitted after the call for -- not formally submitted, but there was an earlier agreement in principle to have a main session, and this could be one of the options, as Constance suggested, to have a main session on all the outputs coming from these intersessional activities.
But I think it is important to give the best practice forums visibility in a main session. There is the interpretation in all languages. It will be reflected at the highest status in the outcome document in whatever way it's being done, but I would like to put in a plea that we really elevate the best practice forums to a main session. Thank you.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you. Liesyl, you have a comment on that?
>>LIESYL FRANZ: Well, actually my mic was lit for getting in the queue for the other proposal, but I did -- it just raised a question for me and I'm sorry, Markus, if it didn't get captured in an earlier email chain. I know there was a lot of email chains at one point.
>> (Off microphone.)
>>LIESYL FRANZ: Okay. And I guess just because I have the mic and Constance had indicated that there's flexibility in the way that we might handle the policy options, it just strikes me that the policy options and the BPFs are both under the category of intersessional work and might be a nice complementary combination.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Markus and Liesyl.
And I think we can probably leave that as an offer at the moment until we -- until we go through.
We did, you know, to my belief, acknowledge at the first MAG meeting that in fact the BPFs were worthy of a main session, so I think it's just a matter of how and where they get slotted in. That work is incredibly important and we've heard a lot of good comments about it, so I don't think this is fighting for a slot, per se. It will just be a matter of what's the appropriate way to manage all the main session requests.
I have UNESCO in the queue.
>>UNESCO: Thank you. I have one question and some suggestions.
First, I wonder, is this main sessions reserved for MAG member to propose and organize or is it open for the stakeholder to provide inputs?
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: I think historically it's been the MAG members. Chengetai can correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought it was primarily to sort of assess those areas that were of most interest and supported the overall track and themes.
I do recognize that I think one of the main session proposals this time came in from a non-MAG member. I don't know that we've been all that clear on that historically, so -- and I tend to lean towards more kind of inclusiveness and flexibility than less. I think we should look at that proposal, judge it on its own merit, but if it is accepted and does come in, then I think it is appropriate that it actually have some MAG membership in the coordination role as well.
We have an online participant, Anja?
>>REMOTE INTERVENTION: Yes. Virat, you have the floor now.
Virat, can you try to speak now?
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: It's very late Virat's time so --
>>REMOTE INTERVENTION: I'm seeing Virat speaking but I can't hear him so maybe we can come later to this and we're going to try to fix this.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Anja. I also appreciate that it's very late where I believe Virat is as well, so appreciate his support and participation.
Next in the queue I have Marilyn.
>>MARILYN CADE: Thank you, Chair. Marilyn Cade speaking.
I just want to clarify that I am speaking now as a MAG member who made a joint proposal for a main session on assessing the role of Internet governance in SDGs. I know my name is shown as having proposed two, but in the second one, which is the NRI session, I am acting as the scribe with Anja.
I can come back and talk about that at a different time, but now I'd like to focus on this main session.
The writeup will be updated very shortly because this session is proposed to be conducted in a similar fashion, for those of you who were there last year, as the WSIS+10 interactive consultation. It's a joint proposal by myself and from Jandyr, and we have invited Shita to represent civil society so that we have a -- at least three co-organizers.
The effort will be to take the similar consultation approach but we have added an enhancement of inviting David Souter, who is an expert in SDGs -- he is confirmed -- who will give a 20-minute sort of overview about what the SDGs are and some of the examples of how SDGs and Internet governance are related, since we are not talking to SDG experts, we're going to be talking to over 2500 very diverse people and this will help them in their preparation.
We will also do a background paper, as we did last year, and we will have guiding questions which will both be published but will also be available in paper form when people register so that they will be able to see them.
The first part will be an opening statement from the host, a description of the format. Then we'll go to the overview of SDGs, and then we will go to the open mic using probably five mics this time, because I'm hearing from our Mexican host and from others that we'll have a significant amount of academic attendants.
So rather than trying to put both civil society and academics all at the same mic, we would try to have additional mics. The mics are labeled, people have limited talking slots, and we'll divide the SDGs into segments. So people will be asked to comment on SDGs 1 through 5, for example.
We'll have multiple rapporteurs, and the -- there will be heavy reliance on the use of guiding questions so people are making comments about their interpretation about how to achieve the SDGs and how Internet governance relates.
We plan to invite Ambassador Fonseca -- I'm glad he walked back in the room just as I mentioned his name -- as one of the co-moderators, and then we'll invite one of the ambassadors from New York who is heavily engaged in the STI work so that we will have the same sort of setup we had last year where we had some New York high-level attendants and then we will have Ambassador Fonseca and one other co-moderator who will manage the rotating from microphone.
If you remember, we go two-minute speaking slots or three-minute speaking slots that goes in alphabetical order, business, civil society -- so it starts academic, business, civil society. We make a round around the mics, and that way nobody dominates.
We will take remote contributions, and we will then have a summing up by a group of rapporteurs that will be drawn from the MAG members and others who volunteer, and we will have an orientation session for those rapporteurs both on line, ahead of time, and then we will expect to have our session report that will be available for a quick readout from our co-moderators in the room and then also of course published in the overall IGF meeting report.
Happy to take any questions and I believe Jandyr is here and Shita, who has just been able to say yes to our invitation, is also here.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Marilyn. Would you consider adding a sixth queue, which might be youth, particularly since this is SDGs and...
>>MARILYN CADE: Excellent idea -- (off microphone) -- last year, we'll start anti-alphabetically and start with them.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Yeah, I think that would be great. They are the ones, of course, that are living -- will live the longest with the world we're leaving them.
Izumi, you have the floor.
>>IZUMI OKUTANI: Thank you. So as someone who is involved in the IPv6 best practices, I obviously have no objection to having a dedicated session on the best practices forum, but I'd like to make an observation that it covers really like a wide variety of topics. You know, certain best practices are around like access and others are around gender. So I think when we plan it as a main session, we have to make sure that it doesn't get scattered and people, like, have clear structured idea on what actually is the output.
And I do see the value in that on having people have clear idea on what were the output of each of the best practices forums without participating in it, but I think that's something that we can consider.
And another thing is that I think we have quite strong synergy with some of the main sessions being suggested. For example, connecting the next billion. I think last year we actually provided feedback to -- on that. So I think we can also consider, like, how best practices forums can feed to the main session that has a strong synergy to their theme.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Izumi.
German, you have the floor. Would you give the floor to German, please?
German, maybe?
>>GERMAN VALDEZ: Yes. Thank you, Madam Chair.
It was also my recollection that at some point we agreed to include the best practice forums as part of the main sessions. I was trying to look in the records but I couldn't find it. So that was my understanding, so I would be supporting what Markus also explained before.
I think the same nature of the best practice forums offer tangible outputs that I think would be good to show at the main session times.
And additionally to that, well, we need to also be careful to -- and have the main sessions that are our flagships and more visible content in the agenda to be aligned with the main theme that we agreed in our first meeting in Geneva. Thank you.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, German.
Liesyl, you have the floor.
>>LIESYL FRANZ: Sorry. User error.
Thanks. I just wanted to say a few words about the proposal that essentially I took someone else's really good idea --
[ Laughter ]
>>LIESYL FRANZ: -- and thought that it might be a very interesting main session.
It's -- it was the workshop proposal 179, "Shaping the Future of Internet Governance." And literally as I was grading it, I thought that it would -- it would provide -- well, first of all, have a lot of interest from the community at the IGF, and so, you know, space might be -- just from a purely logistical -- might be an issue, so I thought that would be one reason, but also it brings in specifically the youth programs that were so well executed in Brazil and brings them forward.
So that was the reason it struck me. And I'm heartened to see that it didn't strike just me as a good proposal because it's number 5 in the outcome of the review.
So essentially the premise is to engage Internet and Internet governance pioneers and the voices of the future, as you just -- as you just -- as you just said, Chair, debating the issues and how to address them. The discussion will address key questions before the Internet community and provide what I call -- I used quotes because I couldn't come up with anything better -- "old and new perspectives particularly providing these youth perspectives."
So I really just put forward the workshop proposal which lists out specific speakers that would fall on the pioneer side as well as those that participated in the youth program. So it had specific speakers that were -- that they were engaging as outlined by the workshop proposal. And I suggested it could have adjustments as needed to pose provocative questions before these -- before these folks.
Generational differences about how the Internet works and is used.
The impact of youth participation in the Internet ecosystem.
Preparing and engaging youth Internet governance themes.
And then I added any additional issues that arise in the preparations and consultations that are required essentially by the main session guidelines. So the input from the community would still -- would, I guess, augment the initial workshop proposal which was already very good.
I guess I would say -- I don't know if Flavio who was kind enough to support my hair-brained idea might want to say a few years. I also wanted to mention that Thiago and Marcel, who were the initial workshop co-proposers, are here and would be available, I think, to answer any questions that the MAG members may have about the more substantive content and their initial proposal.
So I'll leave it there.
And, Flavio, maybe you want to come in. Thank you.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Flavio, you have the floor.
>>FLAVIO WAGNER: Thank you, Liesyl, for the introduction. And thank you, Lynn.
Just want to second the proposal. I think we have been talking a little -- a lot about youth engagement. There are many workshop proposals on youth engagement but none -- no other main session proposing this discussion. So I think it's important to have in the main sessions this discussions. If we organize well the schedule, this can be a kind of conclusion of the many workshops that will be held maybe before discussing youth engagement and then this can bring all those ideas into these main sessions. And I think it would be very nice to have this.
I see other proposals in the main sessions, at least two or three talking about the sustainable development goals and Internet economy and so on. So I think this is a different proposal. It is worthwhile to have it. Thank you.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Flavio.
The queue has just more than doubled in the last minute or so which maybe expresses some interest in this topic. We'll keep working our way through the queue until we stop for the lunch break, and then we'll come back and address it.
I think there are ten proposals in. There's sort of a proposal that we might put the best practice forums and Connecting and Enabling the Next Billion into one forum which means we have nine proposals and seven slots. I think some of the slots are a given based on the first MAG meeting such as the NRI slot, clearly the combined BPF, Connecting and Enabling the Next Billion, we had said both of those were.
So we are down to a relatively small number of proposals that we need to evaluate. I think we can come back and take the first pass at that immediately after lunch, and then try and determine where we go with the future development of those. That's how I would propose to try and move that agenda item forward.
Renata, you have the floor.
>>RENATA AQUINO RIBEIRO: Yes. I would just comment quickly on the trade main session proposal. This proposal brings together a new civil society coalition on digital trade and is of interest to developing countries as well since it deals also with intellectual property issues. And I would speak for my MAG colleague, (saying name), who is also participating on the organization of this proposal. Unfortunately, we submitted our names very close to the deadline, so we didn't have time to amend properly the proposal.
But this would be a proposal that we would have an interest on especially since it refers also to the one Internet report released in June by the Global Commission on Internet Governance and multistakeholder model on Internet governance issues relating to encryption, censorship, transparency, and indata. Thank you.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Renata.
UNESCO, you have the floor.
>>XIANHONG HU: Thank you. I didn't finish this now so I would like to continue. Actually, first, I agree with what was just proposed about main session on youth, which I think is really crucial.
And, secondly, from the proposal read by Liesyl, I didn't hear any session really about human rights, which given my experience from former IGF, that human rights session was always the best attended and most popular session among all the main sessions. I think we need to keep this tradition and highlight freedom of expression, privacy, and this crucial human rights-related issues at agenda of the main session, which tends to address the overarcing issues about Internet governance.
And, also, I mean -- I also want to stress the relations between the main session and workshops because I understand the function of main session serves several functions, either to compensate the insufficiently addressed issues of the workshops like the youth, like maybe gender, maybe also some other issues, and also to address those cross-cutting issues. If we got so many workshops addressing the same issues, like Internet of Things, the emerging issues, why not we have a main session on that?
If so many workshops talking about human rights, freedom of expression, then why not we have -- to have those workshops to talk to each other at the main session because they are really talking about different issues. And now we need to have an overview about what is talking about and which would help us to produce more constructive outcomes.
And maybe a main session about gender, if that's -- that's also an issue which has been discussed by so many workshops. So this can help the IGF to produce more quality outcomes in the end.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you. Very good comments.
Zeina, you have the floor.
>>ZEINA BOU HARB: Thank you, Madam Chair.
I just want to point out that after reading that there were 70 submissions, including 22 from national and regional IGF regarding the policy paper to connect the next billion, I recommend to keep it as a main session and give it all the time and let everyone who has a say to add it in this session instead of merging it with others. I can see there are other session proposals that can be merged. But let us leave this one and give it all the importance it deserves. Thank you.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Zeina.
Michael, you have the floor.
>>MICHAEL NELSON: Thank you. Thank you, Chairman. I wanted to start with a commercial. The best practices forum working group is going to meet for lunch and try to finalize our mission statement. We'll be in the cafeteria directly above the first conference room we met in on Tuesday. So just take -- go there and take the escalator.
And if there's other things going on, I'd be interesting in knowing what else is happening over lunch.
I just had a couple quick points. One of them I think is uncontroversial, and that is I really wanted to support Liesyl's idea of combining the best practices forum with the next billion because I think that works for several reasons. First, we do need space for the best practices forum. But more importantly, three of the best practices forum relate directly to the next billion initiative. I do think we have to ask ourselves if we want to have major initiatives like the next billion allocated a main session every year. Because we had one last year doesn't mean we need to have one this year. I think combining the two would actually get you larger audience and identify some synergies.
More controversial, I think we have to do what Lynn said. We have to find at least two sessions that we don't think should be on this list. And I will offer up the trade session as something that I think is going to be very difficult to include as a main session. I think it's a very well-written proposal. All the proposals are very well-written, and I agree with the viewpoints expressed in that proposal.
The problem is that it's not going to be seen as a balanced debate about the trade issues. There are other proposals for sessions that will be on the other side of some of these issues, but they're not main sessions.
So I think in order not to make it appear that we're picking one side of these different issues and promoting it as a main session, we might want to not include it.
The other similar point could be made about the dynamic coalitions. I do agree we need to highlight the work they're doing, but in some cases the dynamic coalitions are organized around one political position and they're not going to even talk about any other viewpoints.
So in order to not be seen as promoting a particular political agenda and since we do have to find two that we are going to take off the table, I would suggest that. Thank you.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you. I'll try and take two more comments before we break for lunch. But I'll also notice that there was a comment that said we also haven't addressed human rights, Internet of Things, and gender which certainly are significant issues. So I'm not just trying to manage the two off the table. We are trying, of course, to get the main sessions we need for the forum. And we may be, in fact, pulling some other topics in.
And I think we need to determine whether or not -- how the MAG actually feels about that, given there was a call and a proposal should have come in.
Jac, you had the floor.
And, Markus, I will give you the floor, and then we'll pick up the queue after lunch.
>>JAC SM KEE: Thanks, Chair. I think maybe I might respond a little bit to the question around human rights and gender. The session around economic, social, and cultural rights is actually, in fact, building on the main sessions on human rights from previous years. We -- it's really great to see human rights as being the biggest topic of interest as seen through the workshop proposals. But, also, I think given this year's focus on the SDGs, it's also really good to build on the human rights conversation as well to be broader than civil and political rights, for example, broader than freedom of expression, privacy.
But I do note that maybe in the process of broadening this, we could be missing out on some things. So perhaps it should be bigger and just say quite -- put it up front that it's human rights and economic and social and cultural rights so it really does encompass both quite strongly.
And one of the interests of looking at the ESCR, not just in terms of the strong links to SDG but looking at access enabling, the exercise of rights, is also to highlight things like gender issues, education, local content, multilingualism, access to information, health, and so on. So these are really, really good comments, and I think that will be taken into the shaping of the main session.
And, also, just to say that Ginger and I worked on this, but we really are open for another co-organizer especially from another stakeholder group. So if anyone in the MAG is interested, we really very much welcome this.
And that the policy questions and the format and the shaping will also again be opened up for broader input by the IGF community largely -- too close to lunchtime. So we will open it up on the Google Docs so there's definitely opportunities for input.
And then just to build off on Izumi's point on best practice forums as being quite useful to feed into other main sessions where it links, for example, connecting the next billion. There could also be BPs that maybe fits into the ESCR main sessions. I think it could be a good way to think through how this could be distributed into different spaces.
The only thing, though, is just to think about -- I think the only thing to consider is do we want to have a main session on intersessional work specifically, looking at intersessional work as achieving IGF outcomes. That's the only sort of question to put out there. Like, is there a purpose to this and how might we want to do this, if so.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: That's a very good comment, Jac.
And with that, Markus, if you don't mind, I'll leave you as the first speaker after lunch.
So I think just -- I believe people have -- although I haven't looked. Do we have the reformatted spreadsheet send out to the MAG yet, which has recategorized those that are in and then identified the 15 or so that are still open for consideration? Has that gone back out?
>>CHENGETAI MASANGO: We're sending it out right now.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Chengetai is sending it out literally as we speak. So when we come back -- and I'll talk to a few people and see what's appropriate -- we'll either pick up this main session discussion and try and get it to a reasonable point. I think it's clear that we're going to have to continue some of the discussions online.
And we will come back to the specific workshop proposals that were put out for review and try and close on that quickly.
Then we have -- basically, the other item was a follow-up as needed based on status updates from open consultations and requests from a o the couple NRIs to give updates on their activities during that session. And then we had some sort of housekeeping but important, most specifically scheduling the third face-to-face meeting. I think it's really important that we try and close on that today because a lot of people are going to be going away for holiday over the next few weeks. And I don't want to leave that open for another month or so because it just messes with schedules and the calendar gets full and we're apt to lose venue space as well.
So Chengetai did send out a proposal last night. If we could look at that when we come back. If those that are participating online, if you have any specific comments to that and aren't going to be with us this afternoon, please make sure that either Anja or Chengetai have it so we can take that into account as well.
With that, I thank everybody again this morning. Thank the interpreters as well. And, please, if we can start back really promptly at 3:00, that would be really helpful. Thank you.
[ Lunch break ]
[ Scribes have no audio ]
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: -- of the main sessions are interpreted and in a large room. There was a proposal to see if we could get the BPFs and the dynamic coalitions to share a slot. Very quickly, that was ruled as not -- not workable for either one of them. Basically it doesn't -- didn't give either one of those communities enough time to accomplish their work. And I think there's been a strong request from the BPFs for a three-hour slot, so they were agreed at the last MAG meeting for a main session slot, large room interpretation. We were trying to find a way to give them two hours. I think they've come in with a strong request for three.
So I guess it -- against that criteria, I guess we're sort of two-thirds committed or something.
Let me --
>> (Off microphone.)
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: DCs.
So let me ask Markus to come in and explain the current state of that and then, Virat, we will go to you in just a moment as well.
Markus, you have the floor.
>>MARKUS KUMMER: Yes. Thank you, Lynn. Yes, you're correct. We had a decision in principle to give a slot, a main session slot, in -- with all interpretation to BPFs and to dynamic coalitions but it was open whether it would be a full session or a half session, so to speak, and now we seem to be moving towards merging the best practice forums with the connecting the next billion as one intersessional activity, and the question is now whether or not to give the dynamic coalitions a half slot of 90 minutes or a full slot.
And I saw Virat's proposal, and speaking on behalf of the dynamic coalitions, I would like to reiterate their request for having a full slot. They had done a lot of work and we had started immediately after Joao Pessoa having calls of taking stock and how to move forward. We had presented at the MAG meeting in April in Geneva that we have moved towards a common shared principles.
There were some comments made by people present and we have taken that into account.
One comment was the dynamic coalitions would commit themselves to take on board dissenting opinions. They agreed to that in principle, and now we have started on preparing a main session and the paper is included in the annex Chengetai had sent out.
Avri had given a first presentation two days ago, and the dynamic coalitions really have moved -- come a long way towards moving -- if you recall, the starting point was how can we integrate them into the main work of the IGF, and they have come a long way.
We are not there yet, and their proposal is to have a hybrid session. Half of it would be devoted to horizontal issues common to all dynamic coalitions such as processes and procedures, and one issue that was of concern to many MAG members and it was also mentioned two days ago was will there be outcomes, will they be seeking endorsement by the MAG, and this is, for the time being, off the table but the dynamic coalitions are working towards finding procedures that would allow that, but we are not there yet.
But having said that, having one half of the session devoted to horizontal issues such as common procedures and the other half would be devoted to individual dynamic coalitions, we have 14 of them who would like to be present. You can do the math. That doesn't give much time, even 90 minutes divided by 14, and they agreed to keep it very short. They will provide a background paper and the sessions will be more tweet-like and we agreed on what some people -- the term they used as a working term was an agent provacateur who would actually challenge the dynamic coalitions and ask questions that would provoke them into an answer but all very short, tweet-like, and I think an important part of it was also the request by the dynamic coalition to have a tweet wall.
But I'm turning to Avri, the co-facilitator. Maybe she has something to fill in which I may not have mentioned.
But again to repeat the plea for a full session for the dynamic coalitions. It is an important part of intersessional work we have had right from the beginning, and integrating them in the mainstream, I think, goes a long way towards strengthening the outputs of the IGF. Thank you.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Markus.
Avri, you have the floor.
>>AVRI DORIA: Avri speaking.
Yeah. I mean, Markus basically said most of it, but what I really wanted to emphasize was two points. One is the continuity of work that goes on in the dynamic coalitions. They're, at the moment, still the only part of what we do in the IGF that is on a full year's work cycle and isn't something that starts and stops with every -- you know, after a meeting, go into hiatus, and then once there's a new MAG, start again.
These are groups that are working, you know, twenty- -- I mean, 12 months a year, you know, in terms of getting their stuff done, so I think that's a very important part of supporting it.
I think the other important element is, we're still in the process of building the faith between the dynamic coalitions and the work they're doing and the -- the comfort of the other IGF participants who worry about their outputs, who worry about what it means to have a dynamic coalition working in a bottom-up manner and integrating their work with the rest of the IGF community. So I think that that is one of the parts that makes it very critical that they do have the main session and they have it in a way that everybody can understand what's going on, so that we can continue to build a sort of faith and trust between the work that's being done there and the rest of the IGF, so thank you.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Avri.
I'm going to go to Virat who kindly ceded his time a moment ago to set the stage here.
I will let the conversation on main sessions move hopefully until we've got some high-level direction for how we're going to move forward and then quite quickly move back to the workshop selection so we can complete that process. I know there was a lot of good work done over lunchtime.
Virat, you have the floor.
>>VIRAT BHATIA: Thank you. Can you hear me now?
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Very well.
>>VIRAT BHATIA: Can I be heard?
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: We can hear you very well, Virat.
>>VIRAT BHATIA: Okay. Thank you. So I just wanted to -- I wanted to comment earlier, but I want to thank the team that's helping us with the remote participation, especially, Anja. She has worked through the lunch to get this thing working while all of us were away at lunch and dinner. I'm very thankful to her for all the work she's done. It has been difficult and outstanding effort by the team.
On the main session as a co-leader of the working group along with Liesyl, I wanted to just make a couple of recommendations that (indiscernible) make a final decision on both the numbers of main session and the durations.
(indiscernible) after every IGF, we talk about how there are too many main sessions and we want to cut it short, et cetera. And then we come back and we have multiple main session slots.
In principle, we have a basic structure which has a grid. Three hours before lunch. Three hours after lunch. So essentially we have (indiscernible), if you can see my (indiscernible) states on day one after lunch and one post-lunch on day four. Essentially leaving us with six slots.
So I might stand corrected, but I think Chengetai said seven. I think we have six slots.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Yes, we have six slots, Virat. That's right.
>>VIRAT BHATIA: Six slots of three hours each to accommodate proposals that we have.
If you go to six straight, we can just go with -- yeah, we have -- I heard him say ten. That's why I wasn't sure.
So if there are six slots, if you look at the options that are there in the email, if you pick six slots -- six out of the nine proposals, we can just easily give them three hours each.
If we pick seven sessions out of the nine proposals, we can do five sessions of three hours each and we can do either two main sessions of 90 minutes each or one main session of two hours and one of 90 minutes each. And so on and so forth.
If you do eight main sessions out of the nine, we'll be able to do four -- three hours each and everything will be (indiscernible). They could be 90 minutes each or a few could be two hours and 90 minutes. If we pick all nine -- I would recommend we don't pick all nine because that would squeeze sessions.
There are also (indiscernible) available in the attachments, you will see how (indiscernible) which is a ten. It must break for lunch at the same time which is 1:00. It will again start at 3:00 post-lunch. If you have to make any changes or extra time, it will have to be on day 2 and 3 post-lunch in the second session.
Usually we end at 6:00. If we pick up more than six or seven sessions, then we'll probably end up at 6:30 some days.
The short point is that we can accommodate seven or even eight main sessions. (indiscernible) six that we shouldn't go beyond that, but there is a possibility to do that.
So I wanted to leave that with you because I won't be able to contribute in the ongoing discussion. The audio sometimes is not there at all. But this might help you make the decision. And then there are those -- if you can click on the graphics, you will see below that it can help you get an idea physically of how those sessions will run and how they will sort of go off.
If we go with 90 minutes, then there's no issue. If you go with a combination of two hours and 90 minutes, then we will have to go 30 minutes off.
One last point, any variable sessions which are of two hours and 90 minutes must be scheduled in the second half if they are back-to-back. You can do two 90-minute sessions at any time you want. But if we choose the duration of two hours and 90 minutes, then we should pick it in the second half so that the grid, by and large, and the delegates know what time the conference begins, what time the lunch starts. It is also important because these are the slots that we use for workshops and open forums, which are also divided in 90-, 60- and 30-minute slots. So they all fit into the three-hour slots everywhere. I just wanted to leave that with you. This is for (indiscernible) in the discussion in the next day or so -- sorry, next two hours or so. Hopefully, we can...
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Virat. Thank you for all the work and for the very detailed memo as well.
I did just check with Yolanda here. And, in fact, their intent is to use non-U.N. interpreters which gives a little more flexibility and potentially a longer working day, an earlier start perhaps. I would hope most of you would think that's good news.
[ Laughter ]
So I think there's a number of things we could do with respect to perhaps some of the flexibility around the main sessions and things. I think Virat laid out a number of proposals. I think I would just like to underline at the last MAG meeting, I think we clearly agreed that the NRIs got a main session slot and we clearly agreed that best practice forum had a slot as well. And that's now, it seems, going to be merged with or shared with the Connecting and Enabling the Next Billions. There is a question in front of us on the dynamic coalitions. As I said a moment ago, I think we sort of 2/3 agreed -- we did agree at the last MAG meeting they would be given a main session slot in the larger room and the interpretation.
It was pretty clear then that they were looking for a minimum of two hours and I think have come back now with a fairly complete proposal on the three hours.
I'd like to just clear that up and underline that once and for all so we can move forward with the rest of the planning. So I would like to open -- there is a number of people in the queue. What I would like to hear on specifically is if there is support for the dynamic coalitions having a three-hour main session, which again means larger room and interpretation.
So if people can -- I don't know how to manage it when you get this kind of queue. It's not so easy as putting your flag down and your flag back up.
Is there anything that would like to speak against the dynamic coalitions having a three-hour main slot?
Sure. Elizabeth has a clarifying question. You have the floor.
>> ELIZABETH THOMAS-RAYNAUD: Sorry. I don't want to speak against them having a main session. My sense was that we tried this last year as an experiment. And I was in the main session room, and it wasn't a very full session. And it wasn't something where people were very interactive outside of the dynamic coalition presentations.
So I think, like everything, once you try an experiment, you learn from your experiences and all of those things. Thoughts around how maybe to change that would be if I were to look on a program and I saw "dynamic coalitions," it doesn't resonate with me. It makes me feel like I'm outside that group and I don't know where my link is. And so there are a lot of really interesting topics within the dynamic coalitions. And so I would discourage the organizers and the groups from getting into many process internal discussions that for a huge number of people at that event will not be relevant and will make them feel like it wasn't -- not understand why it has a main stage.
I would really encourage them to take some of their substance and make it seen in the explanation of what they're doing that these are the kind of topics that they do.
I would encourage them to frame and make it clear, you know, that in many cases how they come to do this and what's sort of unique and original about the way that they do it so it isn't mistaken for other activities that are done.
And so if perhaps some of the internal "about us and how we work" discussion was taken off the agenda, there would be more space -- I mean, it would be flexible to cut it down to a two-hour session. And I don't think using a main stage for an internal-type business "how we're governed" discussion is a good use of IGF time.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: And I think those are very good comments. I too was in the dynamic coalition session last year.
I wonder if there's an opportunity given that there's an extra room, so to speak, and there will be interpretation in three languages in that room, if it would be possible to move the organizational or management session of the DCs to one of those rooms and maybe still save the other 90-minute session for a main session in one of the full rooms which would be the one that might address more of the content. So I just put that out there for the moment.
I think we have a lot of other decisions in front of us with respect to the other main sessions as well, and we'll probably have to swirl through these a few more times.
I have quite a queue. So let me go through the queue. And, again, this is just trying to identify for the ten main sessions that are proposed, are they all relevant? Are they all appropriate for a main session slot? And I think we should then -- we should have the discussion on that merit. And then depending on that particular answer, we can go away and work out some of the scheduling problems.
So I have Peter next in the Chair. Peter, you have the floor.
>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Thank you, Chair. I defer to the much greater experience and brain power of Virat and others on actually organizing the logistics so I don't think I can help much there.
In relation to the dynamic coalitions, I was of the impression as a MAG member that we had agreed to a session. I don't particularly have a view as to whether it should be a 2 1/2- or a 3-hour session but it seemed that we had already agreed, as far as I can recall, to that and I think that, you know, we should go ahead with that.
My main -- more my concern, really, why I put my hand up, was to comment on another proposal and so if I can do that, I've had a -- I only had a quick read through the proposals and I think there's some problems that we should address with proposal number 1.
This is a proposal that talks about the evolution of the Internet and the post-IANA world which are very interesting topics, but I'm not quite sure that this is ready for prime time.
The technical approach that's taken is that there will be a series of national intranets set up, presumably under governmental control, and that the current Internet is going to act as the linking gatekeeper between these intranets, which is completely different from current technology, so there would have to be quite a lot of technological improvement and innovation done before that would become a realistic technical proposal.
So I'm not sure how helpful it is at this stage to talk about it when there isn't a technical underpinning for it.
And the second part in terms of the post-IANA discussion that it wants to have, again, I think that's a very interesting topic. I don't think it takes quite into account all the recent developments that have gone on at ICANN in terms of creating a post-IANA transition structure, and in any event, that's covered by a number of workshops.
So it seems to me that, you know, interesting stuff but not quite ready for a couple of reasons yet to have a whole main session. Perhaps we can take some of those bits, feed them back into some of the workshops, and see how it goes. Thanks.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Peter.
European Commission.
>>EUROPEAN COMMISSION: Thank you, Chair.
I also wanted to share some general remarks on the main sessions, so looking at the topics that we have here, I think that at least it strikes me that we don't have anything about cybersecurity and cybercrime, which is an area that presents still significant challenges and is an area of continuous global concern, and it would be nice to be able to bring forward in a main session also the discussions that have taken place already in the past on this issue.
I know that this is not very helpful because we need to eliminate some of the topics, but I think that cybersecurity is an important topic that should be in a main session.
Also, but maybe this -- another topic that is missing is maybe the emerging issues, and here a possibility could be maybe to enlarge a little bit the topic, "Shaping the Future of Internet Governance," which was proposed by Liesyl and Flavio.
Maybe -- this is just a suggestion -- you could consider something a bit broader like "Shaping the Future of the Internet and its Governance." In this way, you would have a forward-looking exercise where you think about how will be the Internet in the future and which governance it will require. It's just a suggestion.
And finally, I would like to say that the main session on trade agreements and the Internet looks very topical. In particular, if it could be enlarged to cover also digital economy aspects, which is, you know, a broader topic that has been at the center of some dis- -- high-level discussions this year, including the OECD meeting in Cancun, and it's also discussed at G7, G20 sessions, and in a way, it is related to the Fourth Industrial Revolution that we are entering.
So, yes, these are my remarks. Thank you.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Cristina. Very helpful.
Izumi, you have the floor.
>>IZUMI OKUTANI: Thank you, Chair.
So my understanding of the main session is the theme should be, like, relevant to the wider audience, so first comment on the dynamic coalition.
I think your suggestion, Chair, makes sense that perhaps to pick the topics that's relevant to the wider audience from the dynamic coalition, allocate that for 90 minutes, and then for the administrative matters on how to, like, exchange information about organization of dynamic coalitions, I think it's more relevant to the organizers of the dynamic coalition. So that, like, splitting approach seems to make sense for me and that's -- I understand that's what the NRIs are doing, so they have a main session that's relevant to everyone and then have a separate smaller session for, like, NRI organizers.
I'd also like to comment on main session number 1, which will cover the -- that mentions the topic of Internet and the IANA stewardship transition.
Again, going back to my point that it should be like of wider interest, and I think this topic of Internet is, I think, very specific, and I would actually rather suggest that since it mentions the word "cybersecurity," there was a suggestion from the European Commission to have a main session on cybersecurity, so rather focus on that theme and expand on that, rather than just pick a very specific topic about the Internet. That's my thoughts. Thank you.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Okay. Thank you. I've got -- I don't know, roughly probably 15 people in the queue, so if people could keep their comments quite to the point, we can hopefully make a lot of progress here in the main sessions before reverting back to the workshop selection.
Marilyn, you have the floor.
>>MARILYN CADE: Thank you, Chair. Marilyn Cade speaking.
I also have some concerns about workshop 1. I agree largely, Peter, with what you said. I think sometimes there's a topic of particular interest, but in my view, to be a main session, we really have to have gone through some workshop kicking-and-screaming-level work, in many cases, and also to try to find whether or not there's enough commonality and understanding to move it to a main session.
So I actually cannot fully support 1 as rising to the level of a main session.
I also note that one of the proposals is referred to as a follow-on to a sustainable development workshop last year proposed by two business representatives, Hossam, who is a part of the business community, and Elizabeth. I think -- I don't really think that that can be -- to me, it really -- perhaps it could be a 90-minute session, since it's referred to as a follow-on.
And then on the trade one, I have a couple of concerns about right now we are -- propose to be thinking about merging some of the trade workshops, and I'd like to get us through whether or not we're really going to make those mergers happen and then possibly look at if this is about the digital economy and trade, then perhaps it would -- could be collapsed as well.
And then finally, on the future of the Internet, I do think that a youth session, a youth-directed session -- I hope I'm being clear -- that a youth-directed session would be organized by youth with much more of a focus on the full range of youth between the age of 18 and the age of 28, roughly, the U.N. definition, so there would be three categories of ages, and that it would be much more organized about how youth are being affected by the Internet, being affected by the online world, the future of work in an online world, the future of living in an online world, and I think that would be very, very different from the proposal we have right now.
So I sent Liesyl a note that I think it -- it's the right concept but could be completely reformatted and be much more engaging of bringing youth into a main session. Maybe it needs to just be a 90-minute session but I think the idea of taking such a session and giving it some main visibility and engaging youth in putting forward such a session could be -- could be very exciting.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Marilyn. I'm going to -- the queue is closed now on this particular topic. There's, I don't know, 17 or so more people. By that time, I will have heard from virtually all the MAG members here in the room, I would suspect, and I think we'll have enough of an indication as to what the next steps are, and that should allow us to go back to the workshop proposals.
So Ephraim, you needn't have left the queue. You were the last one in.
Michael, you have the floor.
>>MICHAEL NELSON: Just -- just very, very quickly, one question we should ask ourselves is: How do these decisions we make this year look when we compare to what happened last year and the year before, and how will it affect what we do in the future?
It may be because I've been on the MAG for three years, but I tend to think in a three-year cycle.
What I'm hearing some people say is, "Well, we need to have this kind of session because we had it last year," and the assumption is we'll have it next year. That doesn't leave a lot of room if we lock in several topics and give three hours to these topics each year.
So we should be ready to say, "No, we did that last year, we'll wait another year -- we'll wait two years before we come back to that topic."
Related to that, last year we did have a main session on cybersecurity and trust and it was very broad and it was a little unsatisfying for those of us in cybersecurity. I think this year we have some more specific topics and I think that's good because it leads to more debate and you get a tighter panel of people talking about the topic. But I -- I do hope that as we think about which ones we don't need to do this year, we will think how maybe it's okay to wait two years or even three years before we revisit a particular topic.
And just on one specific one, I do have some concerns about number 1 as well, as others have expressed, and I do think dynamic coalition could be handled in two hours because, again, we did it last year, we'll do it -- probably do something next year.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Michael. I think it was a good point that we should be looking forward and using these main sessions, in particular, to drive some of our interests going forward.
Flavio, you have the floor.
>>FLAVIO WAGNER: Thank you, Lynn.
Two comments.
One -- the first one, I would like to second the positions already expressed by Elizabeth and by Izumi regarding concern on the sessions on the dynamic coalitions and NRIs, that they should really make the effort not to deal with administrative matters during the -- the time of the main session and leave this for separate sessions.
I remember that last year we already had this discussion about this difference between thematic main sessions and organizational ones, that we should have room really for main sessions discussing very substantive issues on subjects that are of wide interest to the communities and not for particular IGF matters, organizational matters, I would say.
So this is one question.
So the other one is a response to Marilyn, the information that is given to me from the organizers of workshop 179, which is the origin of this proposal by Liesyl and supported by me regarding this main session involving the youth.
So the youth, they are involved. The young people. Involved not only as proposed speakers but also as organizers in the workshop. So there is -- we can see the list of youth representatives that are confirmed.
We have Adela Goberna, 23 years old from Argentina, president of the Youth Observatory, which is a special interest group from ISOC.
Angelica Contreras, 25, important Mexican Internet activist deeply engaged with women's rights on the Internet environment, .
Kimberly Anastacio, 21, Brazilian prominent young researcher on I.T. governance.
Florian Daniel, British entrepreneur very engaged with youth at Insafe Network in Europe.
Bianca Ho, from Hong Kong, youth representative appointed by the U.N. to the MAG, also NetMission ambassador.
And Ephraim Kenyanito, 22, from South Africa, member of the steering committee for the youth coalition on Internet governance and youth representative at the MAG.
So we have really youth representatives from all continents, not only as speakers, as confirmed speakers, but also involved in the organization of the event.
So I think the concerns from Marilyn are adequately covered already. Thank you.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you. Juan, you have the floor.
>>JUAN FERNANDEZ: Thank you, Chair.
Main sessions are the main event on the IGF and are the events that are organized by -- by us, so I think we have to be -- those are the events that we have to be -- without any doubt, that are really relevant and that really keeps it interesting.
So having said that, I want to comment on the particular of this year.
I always defended the best practice forum and dynamic coalitions because they are part of what I call the permanent -- permanent things of -- of the IGF. That it's not one year to one year but it's going on all -- all year.
So I defend that strongly.
But I agree with Elizabeth that maybe the main session is -- and also, let me say and I think that we have to strengthen both best practice forums and dynamic coalitions. And last year we had a very important conversation regarding dynamic coalitions and tried to institutionalize those.
But having said that, I agree with Elizabeth that maybe we have to think if -- if the format of a main session is the better way to really strengthen dynamic coalition and best practice forums as a permanent movement within IGF.
We have to think that.
I'm not saying now if it's for or not, but we have to think about that, stressing that those are the permanent things.
And now going back to the -- to the main sessions proposed, first, before giving my endorsement to any one, I feel that whatever six we select, we will have to rework them and to increase and to perfect them, no matter how good we think they are now.
Because I repeat: These are the main events.
Having said that, I don't want to disqualify any. I just want to say the ones that by reading only the topic, it really strikes me as relevant.
For instance, going from down to up, "Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights, What are the Implications for the Internet and Sustainable Development." That's really innovative in this. That really gets my attention.
The other one that is there, "Assessing the Role of Internet Governance in Sustainable Development Goals," I think that's all something that needs to be addressed because we want to align ourself with the sustainable development goals but we don't know how. You know, ITU has done this matrix and all that that somebody defends, somebody not, so to have a conversation with everybody there around this I think is very important in this year.
And let me move that up.
And "Shaping the Future of Internet Governance," I like the title. I don't like so much the way that it's done inside because it's more like a conversation of opinion, but going back to the title, Internet governance is in a flux. Many things are going on. You know, initiatives grow -- get born and die. The IANA transition. There's a lot of things going on in Internet governance, and I like the idea to put young people to talk about that with old people, but I think we need to put in -- if this is selected, to put a little more structure in that discussion in order to have it more steered towards some sort of useful conclusions.
Those are the ones that really strikes me as relevant for this year. The other are interesting, but as has been said before, some are a continuation from last year, and maybe it's not -- I'm also not sure that national and regional initiatives, also the format of a main session, is the way for doing this, because main sessions are the main event where the people that go for an IGF for the first time, where the political or the important people go there and see. So that's my idea.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you. I think there were very good comments, although I might suggest that instead of "old people" we say "longtime practitioners" or something.
[ Laughter ]
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: But Giacomo, you have the floor.
>>GIACOMO MAZZONE: Yes. Thank you. I want to say that first about the idea to modify the dynamic conclusions slot or even the regional and national IGF initiatives slot seems to me first something that is wrong in principle because as has been correctly said, these are the permanent tools that make the life of the IGF all along the years, so it will be really the wrong move to do.
Secondly is that I don't understand why we come back on already taken decision, because people is not eventually proposed workshops because they were sure that they will have a slot in the plenary, so now you -- we will say to them that they cannot anymore supply -- propose a workshop but they will not have any more the slot or they have a reduced slot? Seems to me unfair. And in general, I don't like that we change mind so often.
On the other point, I think that the proposal of the European Commission to merge the trade and the digital economy seems very good because one is a little bit unbalanced towards civil society and the second is a little bit unbalanced toward the private sector. So merging together the two would be beneficial for both, because I think the digital economy, sustainable economy, and trade are absolutely interlinked.
So my suggestion, we go for a merger of these two plenary sessions, and then if there is a problem with the number of slots, I think that what we can do is to reduce the duration of the plenary. I don't think that this is something that will create major hearts, if it's made for everybody, because this -- in this case, we will show equal attention to all the different topics and without creating artificial priorities. Thank you.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Giacomo. If I could ask people to just really be quite succinct in their comments as well, that will help us move forward. Council of Europe next.
>>LEE HIBBARD: Thank you, Madam Chair. I think we are all saying very much the same thing which is these sessions are the main sessions. Therefore, they are the signpost of the Internet Governance Forum. When it comes to looking at the whole event, you look at the whole sessions and say to yourself: What is this event about? And so I think we're getting lost in terms of the titles. All of the sessions are very interesting and very engaging, but the titles don't communicate what they mean. I think we need to spend time -- maybe not this group -- in terms of what we are trying to communicate, explain, exchange on.
What's the purpose of a main session? Is it to complement the workshops which are more technical? Are they there to bring people together and be more general but meaningful? I feel like they're the glue between the workshops and, therefore, they have to go high up or they have to be meaningful. So they need to be curated. They need attention to media. Are they the spaces where the media are going to come together and look and see what's happening? Are they going to be technical?
So I feel like there's a need for -- a media curation needs to be put onto the workshop proposals -- not proposals but titles. The titles are very general and don't mean a lot to me in my personal opinion. I understand them. I understand the merits. But they need to be -- who is the audience? You can't control the audience. Therefore, it needs to be, I think, more narrow.
I think it will be better to ask questions or to have a generic part and a question. So at least when we go into that session, we know we're going to ask a question. It's specific. And we come out maybe with that question answered. So I really wold like to see attention to either a generic pot but also a question and made more narrow.
I asked the question whether the duration of different main sessions, does it have to be one, two hours, or three hours? Can it be even shorter? Because some can even be shorter.
Of course, new entrants is key. Youth are new entrants, one could say. So are we spending enough time on the new entrants in terms of these main sessions?
The last point I would say if we're going to talk about trade agreements, then we need the right people in the room. Are the right people going to be in the room for that? If you go into that session and trade doesn't have WTO, if you go into a session which involves cyber jurisdiction, you don't have people involved in international law, then there's a mismatch between what we are trying to achieve. Thank you.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: No, I agree. It's clear, as has been said several times, whatever ones we decide to go with are going to need a lot more shaping. And so if we could not repeat that point, that would help us to move forward.
Miguel, you have the floor.
>>MIGUEL IGNACIO ESTRADA: Thank you, Chair. Just want to show my support for Liesyl and Flavio's proposal to give an upgrade to 179. And also to Marilyn and Jandyr's proposal for the main session.
And, also, I would like to -- the MAG to explore the possibility to give an upgrade to another proposal in order to cover all the aspects that were not covered, for example, Internet of Things and stuff, to look through the proposals and check whether there's one we can upgrade.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Miguel.
Elizabeth, you have the floor.
>>ELIZABETH THOMAS-RAYNAUD: Thank you very much. I actually haven't had a chance, neither my co-organizer or I, would like to present our main session yet. I would like to do that, if you will.
Before I do that, I just wanted to address some of the different points that were made. I would support your proposal o the dynamic coalitions and appreciate that.
I would like to support the expression by Peter and some other members regarding proposal 1. And before the lunch break, Mike was speaking about the trade session, and I would say that I share those concerns that he expressed. And this idea that perhaps the workshops that are already covering the topic would be sufficient for that one.
So regarding the proposal that I put forward with Hossam -- and I'll just clarify that while Hossam is, indeed, a business person at the outset, he's actually such a good business person that the Egyptian government said, "Please, come and help us." So he's working for the Egyptian cabinet at the moment. And so this proposal is actually business and government, putting it forward together with other stakeholders.
I have outlined in the proposal for the -- for those of you who may have missed it, that we, while putting forward the ideas here together, fully intend to develop a small committee of diverse colleagues from other stakeholder groups who would work with us to execute the session, to identify the right stakeholders and ensure that the usual balance is there. We just didn't have time to do all that work ahead of the proposal.
So just to describe a little bit what it is about -- because I think there's also a little confusion about what it is and what it isn't.
I wanted to reference the very good guidelines that we were given in developing a proposal for a main session. I'm just going to top line them because I think it's important that we see them in our head.
So the contemporary and relevant framework, obviously we chose this topic with the sustainable development overarching idea but then also building in the main theme of inclusivity. And I will elaborate a little bit more on that. But this is a really important part that is how we get specific because obviously sustainable development is pretty much everything. As we know by the 2030 agenda, it covers off the global vision for the future. So whether our session is 90 minutes or three hours, none of us can possibly do that.
So what we are looking at here is to build on the foundations that were started in the discussion of the sustainable development goals and the Internet economy last year. And that is not at all to say to repeat. That is to say that we had a very good session last year with three hours that were filled to the point that, frankly, I was the remote participation moderator. And I thought three hours is going to feel really long. And at the end of the session, it felt like we could still talk for a lot longer.
And as a result of that, there were actually three developing country governments that wanted to talk longer, talk locally, and talk about this.
So I think when we think about the goals for our proposal, I flag those things because I think that's what we're trying to do in the contents and substance session, is be appealing to developing countries, to be relevant in the global context, and then get specific into the Internet and the role of Internet governance and the role of ICTs in facilitating the progress that we want to make.
So there are three questions that we want to drill down more specifically into during this session. We will be inviting youth to participate and speak at this session so that component will actually be included. We will have some research papers. I'll let Hossam speak more specifically about those. That will be part of it.
And so the three buckets that we want to look at were the knowledge for community development -- and so this is considering the role of education and the policies of education and training and the challenge of illiteracy and integrating digital education into leveraging Internet for inclusive development.
And, again, this is about taking the sustainable development goal of ensuring quality education, fair comprehension -- comprehensive and promote life learning opportunities and then linking it to the Internet, the economy, but also inclusion because our analysis and our understanding from last year's session is that if we don't -- if we don't make that real -- and I think it's why everyone agreed to a main overarching theme of inclusion, if we don't make that real, we can give access all we want and we will not actually have an effective and impactful Internet.
So then there's the youth and employment part. And I won't elaborate in detail on that. I will just let you review and look at the proposal. But this makes a link again between -- sorry?
>> Incubating.
>>ELIZABETH THOMAS-RAYNAUD: Yes, thank you -- incubating the ideas and actually having them realized in terms of small and medium enterprises and other experiences.
And then I think the other point I wanted to make -- and I know Hossam will speak so I will let you elaborate on a few of them -- is that in addition -- so we'll be working with the Egyptian government. And the support and the engagement in this issue goes right up to the top of that.
We also have the World Bank interested in working with us. And I think that's all I need to say about that for now. I will leave Hossam to say the rest.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: That was quite a thorough introduction. So, Hossam, if there's a key point that you think is missing, perhaps you could cover it. Otherwise, we'll move on.
So, Hossam, you have the floor.
>>HOSSAM ELGAMAL: Thank you. A lot has been said by Elizabeth. Just to make sure that the main objective of this main session is to talk about inclusion within the sustainable development goals. Inclusion is not just -- inclusion is not just for disabled people but inclusion for marginalized people, for remote areas.
What we have seen in our developing world is that while sometimes we can be doing very good GDP growth, but then this is not reflected all over the countries. And this cause problem.
So we want to show that using Internet and proper Internet governance, we can help having proper inclusion of marginalized people. And for that I have the support of the prime minister of Egypt for that session. We have the support of some intergovernmental organizations who will bring youths to speak from their own point of view about inclusion in sustainable development and about how to use Internet to achieve this properly.
And we will ahead of time -- some of the researchers will be providing research papers and will be doing some polling as well in the countries. We'll bring also some colleagues from the African continents to do the same so we can really bring a very practical showcasing of what can be done in what we are saying.
So it's really policy making for the short-term for making sure we achieve inclusion using Internet. Thank you.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Hossam.
I have about seven people left in the queue that I drew the line under before. So we'll go through them quite quickly. And then, again, just try and lay out the next steps.
The next two speakers are Jivan and then Sala.
>>JIVAN GJORGJINSKI: Thank you. I think there's -- quite a few people mentioned that perhaps there are several things that we should be -- that we should include, and one of them is Internet of Things. Internet of Things kept on coming up. And it's unfortunate. I would have wanted to but I didn't get a chance to write a main session proposal on that. If I did, I would have done it on that.
So not to throw a wrench in the machine right now and propose a new one, just thinking of how it can be included in some of the existing proposals.
One is connecting the next billion, perhaps put a part of the conversation on Internet of Things and think about it so that it is a subpart of the program that will be discussed in that.
Also, the shaping the future of the Internet governance. And perhaps as Christina mentioned, if the focus is slightly shifted into shaping the future of the Internet and its governance.
Now, I think also it's important that all of these, as we get them to be better -- and I do think all of them do need some work. They need to focus on a key question. All of them somehow are a bit too broad. That's when things are relevant. And if it is for the Internet of Things, I think that trust is the key thing that needs to be discussed. As we open this can of worms or blessing to humanity or whatever it is or however it manifests, I think that trust issues will be rising more and more. So that would be the kind of -- a part of the question that I would put on IoT.
Now, just a very short show of support to what Lee has said in terms of a general comment on what main sessions are. Main sessions really should be the bubbling up of main problems. It is our, MAG's way of saying to the world or whoever listens: This is important. This is -- this needs -- requires attention. This is what smart people who have been focused on this issue think about it. Let's everyone invite and some next steps.
So I think that we really have to be careful with the main sessions and to really make it interesting and really try to bring in the media and communication -- all communication ask that we talk about and focusing on the main sessions because the IGF can be presented to the world through the main sessions.
So I don't know if we're going to finish at all main session discussion today, but I think we really have to get it right.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: I agree we have to get it right. One of the other comments that came up in a side conversation is maybe we have some that are main sessions that do just what you and Juan and folks have said, and maybe the others are labeled intersessional work or community session or something if we really feel there's a different distinction at the end of the day.
So I think we have a lot of kind of things we can play with to maybe really highlight those sessions that we think are really important to the future.
So the next few speakers, again -- if you joined the queue after I said it was closed, you know who you are.
[ Laughter ]
The next ones that I have in the queue are Sala, Rafael, and Avri. And then there's a few more after that.
Sala, you have the floor.
>>SALANIETA TAMANIKAIWAIMARO: Thank you, Chair. Hi, everybody. You can all relax now. I just wanted to say happy birthday, dear Como. And back to business.
In terms of the main sessions, I just wanted to maybe just take us on a different tangent a bit and perhaps think about you know how this is the first IGF that sort of represents the next generation or the next group. It's not just a jump from, say, Samsung 5 to Samsung 6 to Samsung 7. This is sort of like an evolution. And, you know, the MAG in terms of setting the agenda -- and I would like to ride on what Jivan and what Lee were saying. This is our opportunity to set the agenda. And despite the polarizations, and acknowledge it exists, and despite the fact that you have got diversity, I think that diversity is our strength.
One of the biggest strengths that I find is if you look at a lot of people that are proposing the sessions, the main sessions, with the exception of the first one -- correct me if I'm wrong. Is the first one not here? The rest are here, at least? Co-proposers?
Even if you take a look at that, we have the opportunity to actually create -- you know, instead of stand-alone sessions but have one major theme where, you know, everyone builds up to the idea or the agenda that we as a MAG would like for the world to see or where we want to take the IGF to set the tone is sort of what Jivan was saying. Not so much just the tone -- I'm not sure if you guys play the guitar. Maybe this is a bad example. But you know how you have a tuning fork, how when you -- when you set a tuning fork and you set a frequency, it sort of calibrates the other instruments. And so in a time when Internet governance is heavily polarized, there are so many discussions, I think the common thing that brings everybody together despite the polarizations, despite the diversity is things like we want to see -- we want to see change and positive change. We want to see development.
So tying it back to the sustainable development goals, tying it back to something that can universalize into concrete tangible outcomes, I would like to just make the first -- to say that priorities should be given to what the CSTD -- the output in terms of dynamic coalitions and best practice forums. And, also, priority should also be given to the NRIs, like the voices from the diverse groups. And also in terms of the other workshop proposals, they are all really, really brilliant, from the incubating of businesses, looking at examples in the developing regions, from what Liesyl was sort o saying, and Flavio, in terms of getting unheard voices. But if we can get a neutral -- somebody to sort of bring all these people together, for them to tailor their session proposals in a way where it's building up to a central theme, you know what I mean, instead of just -- that would be really great.
Anyway, I hope I made my point clear.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Sala.
Rafael, you have the floor.
>>RAFAEL PEREZ GALINDO: Thank you, Chair. I will be very brief. I just want to, first of all, to echo Peter's concerns with regards to Proposal Number 1.
And, secondly, I wanted to express my concern -- sorry, my support for Flavio and Liesyl's proposal which I really like the idea of getting together youth and pioneers in order to draw conclusions and lessons to build upon in the future. Thank you.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you. Thank you for some very useful and concise input.
Avri, you have the floor.
>>AVRI DORIA: Thank you. Avri speaking.
First of all, in terms of the dynamic coalition, I see a certain logic in what's being proposed.
I'll take it back, you know, and talk to the dynamic coalitions to see what can be worked out. Certainly the idea of coming up with a better title than just "Dynamic Coalitions" is probably really good advice.
In terms of the other ones, I wanted to just quick -- some -- I have similar comments to a lot of people on number 1.
I'm concerned about the sustainable development, not because of the topic but because it almost feels like we're trying to boil the ocean in that one. That it's really hard to get hands around it. And so I know we're going to be talking about that, but that's really one of the big concerns I have.
The trade agreements, I have a concern about the Internet governance relationship and having the right people in the room, and so I'm not quite sure that I see how that one fits in.
The shaping of the future of the Internet, that sounds like a really good idea with the youth. Do we have to be careful about how many MAG members we have actually as panelists on main session? I don't know where we stand on that, but when I heard about the two distinguished members of MAG on it, I just wanted to -- okay. Maybe I misunderstood or maybe I've got something backwards, but anyway...
And I really wanted to speak out strongly in terms of the economic, social, and cultural rights because that is a well-formed session and it is a critical subject for us to deal with. Thanks.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Great. Thank you, Avri. That's very helpful comments.
Liesyl, you have the floor.
>>LIESYL FRANZ: Thank you. I'll try to be brief but try to capture a few things that struck me.
First, on general comments, there have been several proposals -- well, not really proposals because they've been brought up in the room but for covering main sessions on things like trade, cybersecurity, and IoT were really the three I captured. And I really, really appreciate Jivan's comments about if not its own main session, then capturing the content or the con- -- the issue within the main sessions that are out there.
I think not only is that a more dispersed way and, I mean, perhaps much more exciting way to deal with whatever the issue is, whether it's trade, cybersecurity and IoT, in -- across the main sessions where they're relevant and where they can bring salient parts of the discussion to the debate.
But I think it also avoids one thing that I think we've seen in the past, and maybe this is my own experience with organizing main sessions a couple times with MAG members and with Lee from CoE, where we were desperately trying not to make the main session on the topic, where there were several workshops, not just be duplicative or redundant or report-outs, so I'm actually very excited about the idea of not having necessarily main sessions that are dedicated solely to an issue that we have seven or six or more great workshops on where the challenge would be to make them distinct or different in some way.
So I think that that's a great suggestion, Jivan, so thank you for covering that in a way that's better than I'm just doing.
[ Laughter ]
>> (Off microphone.)
>>LIESYL FRANZ: I was "Jivan, hey."
My second comment is to Lee's comment about making the workshops more attractive and being curated, and I think he's capturing something that we're in -- where we are in the process, which was the proposal for the workshops, and I commend everybody back to the workshop guidelines which do address things like social media and I don't think we used the word "marketing" but promoting and making them exciting. And so I commend people as they're organizing the workshops between now and the IGF, they have an opportunity to do that, and I think his recommendations were well on point there.
On that note, I just want to refer people back to the guidelines again, because there was one specific -- we had a conversation earlier about building on past discussions from other IGFs, and that is indeed one of the guidelines, guideline -- principle 6 in the workshop guidelines. So to the extent that that can be combined with the marketing and the excitement aspect of the main sessions, whatever they may be, I think that's great.
I totally think we're heading in a better direction with regard to the DCs and the -- and the NRIs with regard to pulling out the organizational aspects of those discussions from the main session and trying to make the main session itself more robust and exciting and I think some of the comments we're hearing will really help with that.
So to the extent that they can cover some of these aspects, that would be great.
And in addition to the name change. Perhaps we all can probably think about name changes that might be more exciting.
Then last, I'd like to take a moment to address the proposal for upgrading workshop 179 to the main session.
There's been some really good suggestions for that, and I just want to cover a couple things.
First, I hesitate to call it just a youth session because I think one thing that was attractive to it for me was that it wasn't a youth-focused session, it was a session on important topics that had youth in it.
So I -- I'd really hate to use that abbreviation for it. I don't know how the organizers feel about it, but that's -- that was my reaction, so --
Because I don't want it to appear like it's the only youth session or that youth should be directed there. They should be interspersed throughout.
So thank you to Flavio for your further explanation about the youth participants and those that are engaged in the development of the workshop, and I think that that addressed Marilyn's concern in her note to me.
I hope that -- and certainly I think as -- if it is accepted, I imagine that the workshop organizers and the MAG co-organizers that will be helping to curate it between now and the IGF will take -- you know, as guided in the guidelines, take input from the community to, you know, raise the salient questions, market it, promote it in the ways that people have talked about here and will continue to do so.
Thank you.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Liesyl.
I have four more people in the queue before we move to the next topic, and Sala, you had earlier referenced the -- the first proposal. In fact, Moedjiono is here. He did actually introduce -- he did introduce the proposal earlier. He is also the next in the queue, and I think at this point, when I read -- there have been seven strong, I think, statements with respect to they just didn't think that that proposal was ready for a main session or appropriate for a main session. I don't think it's fair to let Moedjiono take the floor and not kind of indicate that to him just now.
So you do have the floor, sir, and if there's anything, finally, you would like to say with that, I think there's been no one else who has spoken out in support of the proposal and as I said, seven quite strong comments that they thought it just wasn't ready or appropriate yet.
So you have the floor, sir. Indonesia.
>>MOEDJIONO SARDJOENI: Okay. Thank you. I would like to describe the title of number 1, "Towards an Interoperable Global Internet Network, Solving Current Problems on Cyber Jurisdiction."
It is the result of our discussion involving the national multistakeholder in Internet and also international multistakeholder organization, both discussion and then come up with one kind of -- this title where we have to describe -- we have to discuss with all of the multistakeholders in the session involving how the future of the Internet network where every country can set up their own intranet under their own national law and also those intranet networks can carry out interoperability with all other Internet networks and also several things that can be solved within the discussion. That's why I try to propose this kind of topic, so we can discuss what is the problem and how to solve this problem with international multistakeholder organizations. Thank you.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Moedjiono.
So I have Markus, an online participant, and Ephraim, you were in the queue. Immediately then, you've dropped out again but I'm just wondering if that's a mistake. So you'd like to be in the queue?
You will be our final speaker on this topic.
So Markus, you have the floor.
>>MARKUS KUMMER: Thank you, Lynn. I'm not sure whether it's appropriate for me to comment on what Moedjiono's just said on proposal number 1. I listened with great interest, but I share personally and also in my capacity as a member of the board of ICANN some of the concerns expressed before and I think it's very interesting but I think the proposal may not be mature enough for a main session as it has not been discussed widely before and I wonder whether it might not be possible to turn it into an open forum where the Indonesian community can explain their discussions. That's just a thought.
But I -- my comment was essentially back to the dynamic coalitions, and to build on what Avri says, yes, of course we'll go back to the dynamic coalitions and I think what you proposed, to split it into two, may actually work. There is need for a space for them to discuss horizontal issues, but there seems to be a misunderstanding. What they propose as horizontal issues are not just organizational issues but broader issues that are of common interest, and they relate also to the interaction with the broader community and that's why it is important to do that in a setting where as many people as possible will participate. And I do understand that many members of the community have concerns about the dynamic coalitions which sometimes are seen as small special interest groups, and that's why it is important to get the input, and we had that when we had a consultation at the last MAG meeting, and it's important for the dynamic coalitions also to hear concerns other people may have and to take it on board.
It is, after all, an important part of the community going forward and to make sure that they are integrated.
But do I take it that your proposal is to give them two-hour main session and then a separate session where they would also have interpretation and could discuss these horizontal issues?
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: I think the proposal earlier was to give them a separate workshop slot, which would have interpretation for what we had previously called the horizontal issues, I guess, and then I think it was actually a 90-minute slot if we were to split a three-hour slot into two. But I think there's some more refinement to be done on these proposals in any case, but at this point it would be a 90-minute slot as a main session in the large room with full interpretation and a two-hour slot in another room with interpretation into three languages.
We have an online participant, Anja?
>>REMOTE INTERVENTION: Yes. I will read briefly a comment from Alejandra Erramuspe and then later if we can give the floor to Virat.
So reading a comment from Alejandra, "I want to support assessing the role of IG in SDGs, shaping the future of Internet governance, and national and regional IGF initiatives."
And now Virat.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: There's a slight problem in the room here. I think there's a delay that's being broadcast back through the mics, so let's give it a moment. Anja, did you get the full comment in?
>>REMOTE INTERVENTION: No. I didn't hear it.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Okay. Well, let me come --
>>VIRAT BHATIA: Can I speak now?
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Okay.
>>VIRAT BHATIA: Can you hear me?
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Please go ahead, Virat, and if you could be brief --
>>VIRAT BHATIA: Can you hear me?
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: -- we need to move on to the next --
>>VIRAT BHATIA: I'm speaking.
[ Laughter ]
>>REMOTE INTERVENTION: We can hear you, Virat.
>>VIRAT BHATIA: Can you hear me now?
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Yes, Virat, we can hear you. Please speak --
>>VIRAT BHATIA: Okay. I just wanted to again offer -- thank you. I just wanted to again (indiscernible) my (indiscernible) everybody else has (indiscernible) the working group. I just wanted to --
If you could mute me because I'm getting a lot of sound back. (indiscernible) comment earlier that these are plenary sessions. I just wanted to advise everybody in the room these are not plenary sessions if plenary is understood as the only unique sessions being held.
Every single main session competes with between six (indiscernible) workshops or open forums simultaneously. The only plenaries are closing and opening. So these are not plenaries by any stretch of the imagination, just a larger room, perhaps, so just please keep that in mind.
Secondly, we have guidelines which can help us select, because everybody who has provided main session proposals was informed that the selection criteria is in the guidelines, so if we run over the number that we can accommodate, we should use the guidelines, we should put them to use, and that will help separate proposals one from the other.
The third point is to the best of my understanding, most of the -- till now, at least, the main session proposals have been submitted by MAG members, so if there are -- this time I think there are some proposals -- or one by non-MAG members, so the MAG must make a decision on whether you want to open this door, because once you create a precedent, in future years then you will have a lot of main session proposals coming from the community which will have to be accommodated along with those from the MAG.
So we'll need to make that decision and unless I'm wrong, I don't think main sessions have come from outside the MAG in the past except, of course, dynamic coalitions and BPFs, which represent (indiscernible) MAG.
And finally, if we can -- just two numbers, I'll leave with you. If we can zero down on seven main sessions, you still have five three-hour sessions, one two-hour session, and one 90-minute session. If you zero down on eight, you can have four three-hour sessions, two sessions of two hours each, and two for 90 minutes. You can find a special room large enough to take forward the dynamic coalition, BPF intersessional work (indiscernible) short session at the main room but I think those are very important and if we can arrange for translation (indiscernible) sessions here (indiscernible) space so I (indiscernible) create some space for these two or three important pieces of work which happen throughout the year, so we might want to think innovatively, starting this one, on how to accommodate those and that way we can get down the main sessions to perhaps seven and accommodate them reasonably well. Thank you.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Virat. And thank you for staying with us so very, very late. In fact now it's early in the morning in India, so thank you.
Ephraim is the last speaker on this and then I'm going to try and underline where I think we are and we'll quickly move to the -- back to the workshop selection process.
Ephraim, you have the floor.
>>EPHRAIM PERCY KENYANITO: Hi. This is Ephraim. First of all, I would like to appreciate every effort to include young people. And not just young people but every disadvantaged group and the marginalized.
So just to reemphasize that it's good for us to have that session and to look for support. And I thought but to build onto a conversation which we started last year during the MAG meeting in Geneva in the middle of the year about like having a -- like a -- an online resource for people to reach out, because some of the things that people have said in the past when we say "Why don't you include young people in these discussion" is that "We don't know the young people." The YCIG had come up with -- the YCIG is the youth -- dynamic coalition on youth. They had come up with like an online resource with young people's names who had offered themselves to participate in this can be involved in, and we'd like to just re-share that and request if the secretariat can also share that as part of their recommendations, especially the sessions that you've said that they need to include youth, but this, if possible, should be shared with all people.
And then also to build onto Flavio's comments about young people and we just appreciate the kind of input from the CGI.BR last year, but before then, if you remember 2014, during the taking stock main session, there was a statistic which I can't verify but it was quoted that the percentage back then before 2014 it was 3%. Last year, CGI.BR did a good thing, the kind of program, and this year something similar is coming up. I've been talking to our Latin American colleagues. But then what is the sustainability of this. It goes back to this session, like trying to -- when this moves to Africa or to other countries, the IGF, how do we find sustainable mechanisms to -- not just inclusion of them, but inclusion of the marginalized people. These are discussions which I would be interested in supporting the main session to have that kind of discussion, sustainability, how do we bring all these efforts together.
The State Department, I would like just to appreciate. They have the YALI program and -- the Young African Youth Initiative program, which have been involved in so many activities. How do we bring all these voices together, ISOC ambassadors programs and all these programs, how do we bring them and share best practices? These are some of the discussions that would allow us to have.
Lastly, I would also like to support the idea of the socioeconomic rights main session. Thank you.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Ephraim. Let me try and capture where I think we are on the main sessions. Also, address one of the points Virat mentioned.
We did have a discussion this morning about the trade panel. And Renata, in fact, mentioned that she and I believe another MAG member actually were co-organizers as well. It's just when they put their names on the slot, it was too late or something. We haven't been all that clear on whether or not we would allow submissions from non-MAG members.
So at this point, I think given the discussion we've had on it, it's in the mix. We can clarify for next year what we would like to do with them. But I think it's in the mix to determine whether or not we go forward with it.
What I heard was that for the first proposal, Indonesia, there has been significant concerns about including that as a main session in terms of its, I guess, readiness or appropriateness. And nobody other than the proposers speaking for it. So I would like to leave it to Indonesia, Moedijiono, and the secretariat perhaps to see whether or not there is a workshop slot or an open forum, which is clearly a previous host of the IGF. You are quite entitled to and see if we can accommodate it that way.
So I think where we are at the moment is we have one three-hour slot for the next billion and best practice forums. I think we've agreed there's one three-hour slot for the NRIs. I think we've agreed that the dynamic coalition people will take back to the dynamic coalition community the notion that they would be given a two-hour slot with interpretation for the horizontal set of discussions. And at this point in time, it's a potential of a 90-minute, possibly two-hour but more likely it would be 90-minute if it was going to be a full main session. We do have some other flexibility, of course, with some other large rooms, which would have interpretation in three languages. So I think there's some things that we can play with.
That leaves -- there was sort of a significant amount of support for all of the other proposals. That would be the workshop proposal 179 upgraded, the SDG proposal, the sustainable development proposal, and the economic, social, and cultural proposal.
The trade proposal, notwithstanding what I said a moment ago, has had four quite strong comments expressing concern and one supporting it. I don't know if the room is ready very quickly to come to the decision on the trade and whether or not that goes forward or we bring that forward to the MAG.
But that is the only one that is, I think, at this point questionable as to whether we continue to bring it forward or we suggest that it's not appropriate for a main session. We really don't have a lot of time.
So I'll kind of look around the room and ask for any comments from the online participants as well with respect to whether you think we are ready to close on that proposal going forward or staying in the mix or whether or not we move it forward.
So let me just ask quickly. Do people feel we're ready to take a decision on whether it stays in the mix or go forward? This is the trade proposal, trade agreements and the Internet.
>> (off microphone).
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: The ones that are definitely in are the best practice forum and the Connecting and Enabling the Next Billions and the NRI and some type of dynamic coalition session primarily because they were all agreed at the last MAG meeting.
The other proposals, the sustainable development Internet and inclusive growth, the third one in the table, the -- whatever, sixth one in the table, the shaping the future of the Internet, the upgraded workshop proposal 179, and the economic, social, and cultural, and the SDGs are the four that have had fairly significant support in the room which would imply they're going forward with some significant additional discussion on how we make them everything they can be.
The one that I think did not, is somewhere in a gray area, is the trade. And I said by my calculations, there were four commenting against it and one commenting for it, if they weren't, in fact, a proposer.
So the question in front of us just right now really quickly is: Is the room ready to say the trade proposal goes forward as a main session or it does not? Are we ready to take that decision now? So I see lots of heads nodding around the room for those that are participating online.
Let me -- I would say by the readings here that there's not support in the room for that to go forward. So let me ask if there's anybody that wants to argue to the contrary or position to the contrary.
Renata, sorry, you have the floor.
>>RENATA AQUINO RIBEIRO: Yes. I would like to address the issue of supporting the -- the MAG member supporting the main session. There is a digital trade coalition. There is a civil society coalition on digital economy, and I am part of it. And so is Jeremy Malcolm and many other civil society activists who used to be MAG members and so on.
And we do this proposal with many intergovernmental organizations, so IGF, trade and development, UNCTAD, and many other intergovernmental organizations. So this is a proposal which, indeed, also shows up this theme in many workshops but it's by many different civil society groups.
And when I spoke with Omar, we were -- Omar was in middle of trying to get his visa to the meeting, which he did not succeed to get, so that's why he is not here. Omar from Afghanistan, private sector. And we were finishing up the talk on this proposal to send it to the MAG as well as organizing the many different civil society groups for the workshop proposals.
I would once more stress that this is a digital economy issue. So having this theme in the discussions is very important. I do understand points made that when we are referring to the TPP, we are referring to countries that are in the TransPacific agreement. So neither Brazil or Afghanistan is there. But we do support this proposal because we also think that it relates to other international concerns such as intellectual property, censorship, and so on.
So this would be my comment regarding to the trade session. As you have also said -- you all have said, there are many other proposals related to this. It would be important that they get represented.
I would like to address another comment on the youth session. There are many groups -- also, there are many different youth coalitions and those participants are already integrated into these many different groups. So this is a proposal that comes with an array of projects attached to it. So I would really recommend considering it in a broader view.
And I would also express support for the ESCR main session. Since human rights was also a theme that was really analyzed to be the IGF 2016 main theme, this will be an interesting main session to move forward. This would be it.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Renata, for all your comments.
I think I still have to lean if I read the sense of the room to that proposal not going forward as a main session proposal. And I don't know if it would be appropriate to look at it and see whether or not there's some way to take some of the components of that and put it in some of the other programs which I think you were commenting on. So if I can underline that and we move forward from that perspective. So the trade main session proposal at this point is not going forward as a main session proposal either.
There's a couple of people in the queue. Is it specific to this point? Because we really do need to move to the workshop proposals.
So, Jivan, you have the floor.
>>JIVAN GJORGJINSKI: I mean, if the feeling in the room is strong that this shouldn't be included, then okay. But there is something in that. There is something in trade that we should really open up and perhaps -- what I wanted to say is my feeling with all of them are somehow, I don't have a good feeling that -- all of them require a lot of work.
And perhaps if we open it up for another week so that everyone can kind of reshape their own proposal based on the discussions here. Of course, that would open up the possibility of one more or other being included and to organize an online meeting just on main sessions.
I don't get a feeling that we're there to make the decision on main sessions at the moment. Just personal feeling, but... yeah.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: So let me -- I think -- I don't think it would be fair to open it up for new. I think that doesn't give credit to all the work that everybody's done and the time lines.
I think the sessions that are still in everybody has really said needs significant more work. So they're not necessarily in. They're ones we're carrying forward for further -- I suspect they will be in once we continue to improve upon them, with the exception of the trade and the first workshop proposal. I think were the two that were definitely not moving forward as a main session.
So I think there's agreement for that when I look across the room. I see lots of heads nodding. Is there anybody who believes I have captured it incorrectly? Which is entirely possible.
Okay. Then let's -- Liesyl has a clarification, Jac, and then we're going to move on.
>>LIESYL FRANZ: Thank you, Chair. It's really a clerical point. If workshop number 179 is being upgraded into a main session, then that leaves an open slot for a workshop. It was not the intention to have a workshop and a main session on this same thing. Anyway, just wanted to clear that up.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you. That was a given.
>> (off microphone).
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: No, no, I know. Just trying to make it a little light.
Jac, you have the floor.
>>JAC SM KEE: Thanks, Chair.
I think there is something about the trade topic, given the fact that there are quite a lot of workshop proposals that have come in on that. I also really do appreciate the sense that maybe as a main session in the competing space, that it might not work so well. But I would recommend thinking about how this can be integrated into the other main sessions so that it is also very being raised at that platform and at that level.
And since I have some space, if I could just say something around 179, I think it's a great idea. But what I love about it is actually the same sentiment that Liesyl was saying. It's that it's having different people of different generations sitting and having a conversation rather than sort of looking at it as a -- rather than an identity kind of a session but more like this is about the future of the Internet and let's have -- yeah.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: I think we're done with the main session.
People, please. I have tried to close this queue three times. I now have a queue of five people and a few more people in the room asking for some short. We need to close on the workshop selection process.
I have online and Marilyn Cade and Mike Nelson in the queue.
Online participant, please. People need to keep it really short. It is not possible to do workshop selection over the course of the summer through mail and Doodle poll and virtual meetings. We need to move to that quickly. The main sessions we can continue in the virtual meetings much more easily.
I do want to give time to the online participant.
>>REMOTE INVERVENTION: Really briefly I am going to read just their comments. Renata supports economic, social, and cultural rights session. And Ginger prefers to drop the trade session since we are aiming for the consensus of all MAG members, even the online. Thank you.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you. Thank you, Ginger.
Marilyn, you have the floor.
>>MARILYN CADE: Thank you, Chair. Would you just -- you don't need to do it now. You can even do it in writing. But when you say that the proposals such as the one from the NRIs, et cetera, need substantive improvement and work, could you clarify online please what that means because that session has already been heavily, heavily worked by the NRIs. I'm sure they're happy to do a lot more. Right, Sala, we're always happy to do more?
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: I didn't pull the NRIs out. Quickly, I said as a general comment, most of the comments have said we need to do more with the main sessions, not just on the main sessions but also how they're seen and promoted. So it wasn't anything more specific than that.
So with a deep breath -- and I'm not quite sure how we close out the day here and we do have a hard stop at 6:00 for a number of reasons. There was quite a long list of proposals that people were asking to go away and take another look at over lunch.
There was also a very useful Google doc that was started on the basis of the clusters that had been identified yesterday. I haven't had time to check so I don't know what's happened to the Google doc in the last few hours or so.
We have about eight more slots roughly, eight to ten, that we can fill in to get to the program of 100. Now, Chengetai also says occasionally some workshops drop out or they're not there. So if we were to identify a few more as alternates, that would be good for the secretariat in terms of backfilling some of those.
The task in front of us and we literally have about an hour and 15 minutes -- and we should have some time at the end to wrap up. And by saying that, that means we're not getting through the follow-up on any remaining questions on any of the intersessional work. And there was a request from a couple of the NRIs to give some short interjections on their work, which I certainly would like to accommodate if we can. If not, perhaps, they could submit something in writing and send it to the MAG list.
Marilyn is shaking her head yes, that would be with apologies to them because it's always good to hear the voices and see the faces and the updates. If we get to the workshop selection quickly enough, maybe we'll get there.
So the workshop selection process, we had two kind of last buckets going. One was the long list of items which we had put forward which had some support in the room. And then there's a cluster document. If we could go through the long list that was put in front of the room. My feeling when I looked at the cluster document at lunchtime is that the cluster document, again, had two purposes. People said there's a lot of similar topics. We should look at them and understand whether or not there's too much redundancy, duplication, opportunities for merger, that sort of thing. I think that's a more substantive piece of work. And I saw some really good work happening again in Google docs which was trying to look at which ones were already accepted, which ones had a regional difference and those sorts of things.
That might be something we can take offline and try and advance if it means some more rationalization.
But for the moment, what I would like to do right now I think with everybody's, I guess, support would be to work through the list.
And what we're looking for here are just short comments of you believe proposals X, Y, and Z should be included or it's an opportunity for merger or if you have a strong objection, too. And, again, we're trying to get from that list of -- I think was 15 or 20 proposals till about 10 that we would actually rule as "in" towards our goal of a hundred.
Is that process clear?
So, Jivan, you are in the queue.
>>JIVAN GJORGJINSKI: So I -- based on the table that was provided by Chengetai on the clusters, I looked at the IoT ones, and within those -- within that group, there were number 35, 123, 131, 170, 181, and 188.
So --
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: To the ones in the cluster or...
>>JIVAN GJORGJINSKI: So these are the ones that are originally in the cluster, so I'm going deductively, starting at the top, or an inverted pyramid.
131 is not really on IoT so that automatically disqualifies it. At least from what I looked at. If it really is 131. Perhaps it was a mistake that it was put there, but that's not IoT.
123 is topical but the idea is not well developed, so it is number 242 on the list of all the rated ones.
It's on -- so 123 was unique cybersecurity challenges and IoT.
It's a very topical issue but it -- the idea of whoever it was proposed didn't really develop it. It proposes a birds of a feather which indicates that perhaps it could be fitted into something else, but by itself, it's really, as I said, number 242 out of all of them.
So we're left with 35 and 188.
Of those, both were well developed within themselves, so I would leave them separate, and they're within the 85 that we've already identified to be workshops on their own.
And the remaining ones are 170 and 181.
Both are, from what I can see from this latest table, outside of the 85 that have been included, or whatever, 90. I don't know what number we're at. So they're not within it. Correct me if I'm wrong. They have technical focus and a regulatory one as well. They're number 106 and number 90 from -- so there is an incentive to merge. They're both outside of it, so there could be an incentive.
So the proposal on IoT of -- from within the group that was proposed is to take out 131, to take out 123, leave 35 and 188 as workshops that can be organized on their own, and perhaps propose to merge 170 and 181.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Okay. Thank you, Jivan. That was very clear.
Renata, you have the floor.
>>RENATA AQUINO RIBEIRO: Yes. I would just like to discuss the issue of algorithms that I discovered deep buried on big data cluster, which I already mentioned that I've proposed a few mergers specifically about big data in cities, in sustainable cities. So 68 and 69 which are highly ranked and 187.
So I would again discuss this merger, put forward this merger idea.
But the issue of algorithms, it's amazing how few proposals came up, and this is such an important issue for the theme of IGF 2016.
We all live our lives in social networks and in platforms which are defined by algorithms, and workshop 232, which directly relates algorithms to human rights is -- has got a low rating and it could be merged with 42. And so it's 232 could be merged with number 42 and also many -- any other of the big data workshops. So 69, 58 would be interesting to merge. But 232 and 42 would definitely be a recommendation and I think that needs to be present in IGF 2016, in my opinion, is algorithms.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Renata.
Juan, you have the floor.
>>JUAN FERNANDEZ: I'm a little bit lost. Are we commenting in the --
Before lunch, you dictated a list of 18 possible workshops. Are we comment- -- can I comment on that list?
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Yes. That is what I think would help us. move forward. Thank you.
>>JUAN FERNANDEZ: Okay. Well, you sent a list of 18 possible workshops.
First, I -- I am not against any of them. I would only point out the ones that I strongly support.
In the same order that you gave it, I support number 16, number 52, 27, but I want to point out that it's a possible merger with 88, that it's already on the list.
22 I support but it was mentioned to merge with 36. Nobody mentioned that before. That was Giacomo's proposal, to merge with 36. I think it's very easily to take the -- the speaker from 36 and to put it in 22.
195 is the other I endorse.
271, 83, and 140 and 234.
The ones that I don't -- didn't mention, I'm not against them but these are the ones that I strongly endorse. Thank you.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Juan.
Laura, you have the floor.
>>LAURA WATKINS: Thank you, Chair.
I have a very, very quick comment, actually, about two proposals that have already been accepted.
In working through the collaboration document, they seemed really similar to me. I was looking at the domain name system -- proposals related to the domain name system. Proposal number 75 and 173, titled "Domain Name System Fragmentation, Risk and Reality," and "Internet Fragmentation, Net Neutrality," respectfully, from looking at the outlines, they seem pretty identical and I think they could be merged to make room for something else. Thank you.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: So we'll ask the secretariat to look at that and take that forward unless there's any strong objections in the room.
Sala, you have the floor. Again, I'm really interested in comments just as Juan just did with respect to support for the list that was put on the table by all of you.
Thank you, Sala.
>>SALANIETA TAMANIKAIWAIMARO: Thank you, Chair.
First of all, I'd like to thank Flavio, Bianca, Ginger, Michael, Jac, Renata, Giacomo, Ivan, Laura, Marilyn, and if I missed anybody, it's only because I need to sleep.
[ Laughter ]
>>SALANIETA TAMANIKAIWAIMARO: But -- and the IGF secretariat, of course.
Juan and Peter.
First of all, thank you so much for putting in the time to go through the thematic clusters. By now, all MAG members should have received a link. Do you have it in your email?
So if you open that link, you should have a spreadsheet, so essentially every -- every suggestion that has been given by any MAG member in relation to potential mergers, you can find it in that spreadsheet, and it needs to be updated to remove the five workshops that were removed today in this morning's discussion.
And what we've also done is we've linked it also to the SDGs, just for those who are interested in tracking what's actually happening.
So if you open the spreadsheet, you'll notice a bunch of things. One, you'll see -- particularly in the second worksheet, you'll see categories that are in black font. Those ones are the IGF secretariat categories. And then you'll see subthemes.
Now, why we've done that is because if you take a cluster like human rights, even within human rights there's a lot of diversity, so all the group of -- the group of volunteers, we've created subthemes. They volunteered to look at clusters, to look at the subthemes, and looked into what you had suggested in terms of mergers.
So hopefully that helps make everyone's life easier.
And thank you, Chair. Back to you.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Sala. It's a very complete document and a very complete piece of work and I think gives us some really good pointers to some things we can pull into next year's process.
Again, this year, we all recognize that the time was compressed and there wasn't a lot of processing time between the evaluations coming in and the secretariat needing to get the ratings back out. In fact, it was just a matter of days.
I think we can continue to work through these, and looking at the spreadsheet, it's so complex I think what would help is as Jivan just did, if there was a Jivan for the other clusters -- he took responsibility for the Internet of Things. If we could get one person identified as the lead for each one of the other clusters, drive a discussion with the rest of the MAG, and if there's a recommendation that comes from a significant portion of the MAG, then I think we can look to bring it to the MAG and move it forward.
I don't know how we manage to this level of complexity otherwise.
If it's short, Sala, because I really wanted to go back to what I had asked everybody to do was to take us through the list, not the clusters at this point.
>> (Off microphone.)
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Uh-huh.
>> (Off microphone.)
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Sala, you have the floor.
>>SALANIETA TAMANIKAIWAIMARO: It's still green. Oh, now I have the floor.
Thank you, Chair. So in terms of people that went through the different clusters, Jac has the lead on the gender and I think people know who they are. Bianca had the lead on the child -- and she is working with Marilyn on child and youth. And others, you can just press your buzzer.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: I'm going to give the floor to Chengetai in just a moment to suggest how he thinks we can move forward with -- with the cluster exercise. Do you want a minute to think about it first or --
>> (Off microphone.)
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Okay. You have the floor.
>>CHENGETAI MASANGO: With the cluster exercise, if you identify workshops that can be merged, the IGF secretariat can contact those people, and then if they merge, that means that there will be one extra slot, correct?
We are going to -- as the chair suggested, we're going to have a few workshops which are on the waiting list, in case some drop out, or if they're merged, then they can just move up and take those spots.
Is that fine?
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: I think the only thing we need to make sure is that if -- if the MAG has approved a workshop in its own right, we don't want to lose that by any sort of subsequent forced merger.
So I think if there's a workshop that people think has some potential or some good speakers that you think the approved workshop should be made aware of, then I think we can make them aware of that, but I don't want us to -- I don't think it would be fair to start sort of forcing a merger on something that was approved in its own right.
So I think that's the only caveat I'd put on what I understand is the exercise in front of us.
So back to the list of 18 or so that you all had put on the table before we left, I have four people in the queue: German, Flavio, Marilyn and Jac. So German, you have the floor.
>>GERMAN VALDEZ: Thank you, Madam Chair. I would like to express my support for workshop 83. I recognize that the document really needs some development, but I think the topic of the workshop, which is improving the stakeholder representation, has a direct impact in the day-on-day operations of many of the stakeholders that are represented here in this room today.
I think it would be great if we can have this workshop included to have a candid and honest and direct discussion during the next IGF.
So we have plenty of workshops here to discuss, but I'd like to specifically give support to this one. Thank you.
One final moment, please.
I would like also to request that we really save some time for -- at the end of the meeting, the agenda as stated, to discuss about the coming MAG meeting. At least to discuss the expectation of that meeting. Thank you.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, German.
We have Flavio, Marilyn, Jac, and then Yolanda.
So Flavio, you have the floor.
>>FLAVIO WAGNER: Thank you, Lynn. I would like to bring your attention again to workshop 195. I scanned the 85 or 90 workshops we have already accepted, and there is only two or three that deal with Internet economy. Very few.
And none of them deals with this specific aspect of innovation. And this proposal also establishes a clear relationship to the role of innovative companies in the developing world and in relation to the sustainable development goals, so I think we should include this. It is well ranked. It's in position 123. And we have very few proposals accepted from the private sector.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Flavio.
Marilyn, you have the floor.
>>MARILYN CADE: Thank you, Chair. I'm going to speak in support of a merger between workshop 25 and 271. I wrote about that.
I think it also is moving in the same direction that Flavio mentioned. It is about inclusive and economic growth and development, so by bringing the Cuban proposers into 271, it would both add a unique diversity, almost case study, within that and also give us one that focuses on economic development.
And then just to confirm, I will work with Bianca, but I also will offer to focus on cluster 11, which is Internet and ICTs for sustainable development, in trying to look for mergers, if anyone wants to work with me.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Excellent. Thank you, Marilyn.
Jac, you have the floor.
>>JAC SM KEE: Thanks, Lynn.
So I looked at four different clusters: Human rights, policies enabling access, multilingualism, and gender.
The one on human rights, in fact there's only three human rights sessions where human rights was the first primary tag that was -- that is accepted. As I mentioned earlier, there really isn't any recommendations for merger because there are -- there's not a lot of duplicates in terms of proposers as well as -- as well as speakers. Where there are similar proposers, the topics are actually quite distinct, so there isn't really much recommendation around that.
The only thing is that there is a clear gap around implementation of human rights in law. I think that's something that is -- that did -- that did come up, and two proposals that looks at this is proposal number 194 and 134.
134 is number 86, I think, so I'm not sure if that's -- oh, 134 actually was already accepted so that's fine. Okay.
Okay. So I'm just going to leave that.
Sorry, sorry. It's 194 and 267. So both are looking at human rights on Internet and law and implementation. Although one might be in. 267 might be in. I'm not sure. So just to double-check.
And then on policies enabling access, actually this might not be a very useful exercise because what I should have done is looked at all of the access cluster rather than just this one, because you really had to look at access and diversity, et cetera, et cetera, so I'm not sure if it's any useful at this point just to look at that right now, except that there's quite a few that isn't really about access, it's more about Internet of Things or about freedom of expression or about Internet governance and multistakeholder participation. So no recommendations around that either.
On multilingualism, three proposals that primarily focuses on this was accepted, and then another one that isn't quite accepted is proposal number 22, and could be useful for consideration because the speakers are focused from developing contexts and is looking at local content specifically around films.
So that could be considered.
And then around gender, I think we've also made some decisions around this. We really just have four -- four session -- four workshop proposals out of 15 that was accepted, and no sessions on sexuality was accepted but after 127 and 164, I think, from the conversation earlier I think that's been addressed, so I would still -- I guess I would support that to be still kept into the -- into the group.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Jac. That was obviously an incredible amount of work, so thank you.
Mexico. Yolanda. If you could light Mexico's light.
>>YOLANDA MANCILLA: Thank you. Just a quick comment. I thought the 140 was going to be added to the list and I just would like to put into consideration because we do a lot of work on -- with Latin American and the Caribbean region under ALAC, so I thought it was a good example, and also European Union has a lot of regional cooperation and maybe we can work with the organizers of that particular workshop in having representatives from different regional organizations on the topic. Thank you.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Yolanda.
Ephraim, you have the floor.
>>EPHRAIM PERCY KENYANITO: Yeah. I just -- I was looking for more clarity. I'm looking at this document on the top 95 workshops.
During the previous session, I had highlighted one workshop, 234, about linking connectivity and human right on disconnectivity, but I don't know if I have the right version on these top 95 workshops, but I can't seem to see it here. Because in the previous selection, it was number 88.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: I think there have been a couple of other people supporting -- speaking out in support of 234. It was on the list of the, I don't know, 18 or so workshops which we went away to evaluate at lunch, so we'll come back to that in a moment when I try and call where I think we've got some consensus.
Izumi, you have the floor.
>>IZUMI OKUTANI: Thank you. I'm also looking at the list of top 90 workshops and I seem to see like 134 appearing twice. And I think 234 was mentioned but it's not reflected, so I wonder if that was a -- like a typo that is appearing.
And also, I want to make a comment about proposal 143, which is under "re-examine," and I understand like there was several concerns expressed about this, but this is submitted from a new proposal and also from developing country. So I think as a way forward, it would be helpful to provide advice on how to improve the workshop to be encouraging to the new people and developing country. Thank you.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: I think that's a good comment. I think the secretariat does try and do that on the basis of the comments that were included in the evaluations.
So let me just do a quick call for whether or not there are any other MAG members that want to speak out sort of in favor of any of that list of about 20 workshops.
Again, that list of 20 workshops were workshops that some MAG member put forward as thinking it was appropriate for inclusion in the list of a hundred and we were looking for -- of which we were looking for sort of half of them, 10, so we were looking for direction from the MAG members with respect to what are the 10 additional ones we should pull in.
We are getting close to some kind of commonality of view, probably around eight of them or so. I just want to make sure there is a clear last call for anybody who wants to come in and speak strongly in favor of any that were in that basket of 20 that were on the table. I have Indonesia and Sala for the floor.
Indonesia, you have the floor.
>>INDONESIA: Workshop ID 101, it's not in the list. I propose it but it's not in the list. Thank you.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: You proposed it. It's on the list of 20, and I'm looking for a measure of support from the rest of the MAG members to move it forward. But it's on that list of 20 that went out, I assume. I'm working from my hand notes here. 101 is not on the list that went out? Flavio says it is. Okay.
It's on the list of again about 20 workshops that were put on the table for further consideration. We are looking for input from the room here. And if there's significant input, it will go forward to the top 100. Failing that, it would be on the alternates list, if you will, of the next sort of ten. Thank you.
Sala, you have the floor.
>>SALANIETA TAMANIKAIWAIMARO: Thank you, Chair. If I could just direct your attention to -- back to the spreadsheet, if you look at the worksheet on clusters, so the first column, just so we are all on the same page, first column being cluster, second column being workshop selected by the MAG, although that has to be revised to remove the five -- or the ten now, and number of workshops accepted and those not in the top hundred.
I would just like to make a quick comment. There's another column there called "telling" whereby you know there's a count -- there's a number of workshops accepted. There's a count in terms of the different thematic areas. So you can see that one thematic area, take, for example, freedom of expression, you've got 19 workshops. The least is cybersecurity, 1, 5, 4, 14. And, you know, it varies. Maybe that could fine-tune the MAG's considerations in terms of how they would like to equalize the playing field a little bit across the thematic areas. Thank you, Chair.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Sala. I think we're actually looking for considerations from the individuals that are tagged with driving that discussion and bringing it back to the MAG. Thank you. I'm sure they will take a closer look at it.
I have an online participant and then Jac in the queue.
>>REMOTE INVERVENTION: So just to note that Silvia, Ginger, and Alejandra, they are supporting workshop number 140 and Ginger is also supporting 199.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you.
Jac, you have the floor.
>>JAC SM KEE: I think the process of the cluster lead working through it will work better because some include subthemes; some don't. So it isn't exactly 19 because it includes subthemes as well. So, yeah.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: I don't have anybody else in the queue at the moment. And if I just go through and of the -- I didn't count them up. It's roughly 20 proposals that had come in, let me go through the ones that have had a lot of support. That would be sort of three additional people and above coming in. The numbers that I have are 271, with the suggestion that that be merged with 275 -- sorry, that would be merged with 25, proposal number 83 and proposal 140, 199. And then those that have two each are 195, 234, 52, and 11. But 11 had some conditionalities as well with respect to ensuring that we actually had African youth, women as opposed to the two males.
Now, 119 and 16 also had some support above the individual who actually put it forward. If we wanted to add those in as well, I think that gives us the full complement that we were looking for which should be roughly about a hundred that have been specifically ruled in.
Chengetai believes there is room for a few additional slots, I think, based on what he looked at before lunch because of the number of 30-minute sessions that had been approved. We obviously need to go back and look at that in some more detail. And I think that -- assuming that's true because I believe everything Chengetai says -- would actually give us some room if some additional items are identified through the subsequent cluster work.
And the rest of these can be wait listed. I hope we have that list quite clear. If not -- I'm sure the transcribers caught it. I think they're doing a fantastic job.
If people are okay with that, I think we'll ask the secretariat to put out a definitive sort of Excel spreadsheet that lists those that are in. I think we shouldn't take all the others out yet because it's too useful a document to have them all in one place. But if we could reorder the spreadsheet, list all those in which, again, I expect to be somewhere about a hundred proposals or so. And then they can run the statistics again so we can look at the various components of diversity, again the ones that we continue talking about, first-time versus returning, developed versus developing, et cetera. I think when we have a little more time take a thoughtful look at it. And if there is anything that we think needs some additional balance or some additional effort or attention, then we can put a special effort behind that and pull those in.
Is everybody okay with that process? Because I suspect about half of you are about to go on holiday quite soon. So I think we'll have to rely a lot on the notes and the scribe and allow the secretariat to go forward and take forward some of the comments they have had with respect to some of the conditionality and proposal mergers as well.
So I have five people in the queue which we'll come to, and then we can try and move to some of the other items quickly that people wanted to capture before we leave.
I have Marilyn Cade, German, and Indonesia and Julian and Renata are the ones that in the queue at the moment.
Marilyn, you have the floor.
>>MARILYN CADE: Thank you, Chair. So I made my proposal about 271 and 25. I'm so sorry, but I have to again ask clarification. I think your proposal to have the secretariat give us an updated list is going to be very, very helpful. I'm also, though, working as others are on this clustering idea and merging. And every time I get a new list of workshops, I'm trying to figure out if I'm -- if they're in which I understand if they're in, I'm not trying to merge them. But if we keep taking up additional workshops until we figure out the mergers, I'm a little concerned. We might be opening a slot, but I may be negotiating merger. And in the meantime, I'm being negotiated -- somebody's negotiating out from under me, so to speak. I don't mean that negatively.
If we could really try to figure out -- I thought Jivan did a wonderful job of collapsing -- one, two, three, four, five -- six into a shorter list. Some of us still need to do more. Some of these have much -- they've got, you know, a lot to work through. So is there a way for us to -- when we consider a new list, as you just did, you gave us a new -- can we flag if they're in a cluster to be merged?
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: So I -- my intent was not to give you a new list. My intent was to fill in the remaining ten slots from a list that you all gave me before lunch.
>> (off microphone).
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Can you give Sala the mic, please.
>>SALANIETA TAMANIKAIWAIMARO: A clarifying question, Chair. From the 90 back to a hundred, because we have the ten extra slots?
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: We started the morning with roughly 82 slots or something.
>>SALANIETA TAMANIKAIWAIMARO: Sorry.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: We finished lunch with about 90. We had 20 more proposed of which we were looking for ten more to get to what is meant to be sort of a firm 100.
Marilyn actually brought to mind something else, though, because there were a number of proposals for merger that I have noted here separate. But I didn't count in that final total because I don't know if, in fact, there will be support for merging 25 and 271 or 75 and 173. I think the secretariat actually has that proposal and will go away and look at them.
And I think if they come to fruition, of which I think we know that's oftentimes difficult, we believe there will be room in the program for them. But I think we need to allow the secretariat some time to go away and work with the individual proposers on the issues of merger.
So the secretariat should be able to give us a final list of those that are in and from the transcription notes or our own notes identify those that are were specifically identified as possibilities for merger. I'm sure you'll all look very closely at what comes out. And if you think anything was not captured appropriately, we can certainly revisit it.
But is that clear enough for now going forward? I think it's pretty clear that we have some -- I don't know if I would call it clean up work or kind of capturing work to really reflect well what we have done here and what the current state is. And we'll ask the secretariat to do that and get that back out to everybody quite shortly so we can do what perhaps is best called a sanity check and a full diversity check.
So, German, you have the floor.
>>GERMAN VALDEZ: Thank you, Madam Chair.
It's kind of related to the current discussion. If I remember well last year, the secretariat reserved the right to include a few workshops if they find there was room after the evaluation of mergers and the length of the sessions. Can we expect that for this year? Nothing against that. But I think for the sake of clarity, I think it would be good to know if we can expect new workshops if the secretariat is going to reserve the right like last year. Thank you.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: I would suspect the secretariat would like to reserve the right for some flexibility. And we can make sure that that's actually called out appropriately as well.
Indonesia, you have the floor.
>>INDONESIA: Thank you, Madam Chair. Could you do more for the title in the main session proposal was rejected, can be moved to either dynamic coalitions or workshop? Thank you.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: I'm not sure I understood the request. Are you saying if the main session wasn't accepted, could it be moved to --
>>INDONESIA: Yeah, moved to dynamic coalitions or maybe workshops.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: I think for yours specifically, Moedijiono, it was most suited for an open forum, Indonesia as a past host of the IGF. So I think those that were proposed as main sessions, which we have only taken two out so far, we can certainly look for whether or not there's an appropriate place for them.
Julian, you have the floor.
>>JULIAN CASABUENAS: Thank you, Madam Chair.
Just looking into an exercise and highlighting the importance of remote participation, I would like to suggest to request to -- some proposals that are accepted already to review their proposals for remote participation, which in my point of view are very weak. I'm talking about proposal numbers 72, 73, 121, 126, 132, and 160. I think it's important to highlight that -- it's important to improve the proposals for remote participation in those.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Okay. That's a very helpful comment and noted, Julian. Thank you.
Renata, you have the floor.
>>RENATA AQUINO RIBEIRO: Yes, I was pleased to address some of the clustering exercise and some of the workshops which relate to a similar theme and also have speakers, have very similar approach.
I would support Jivan's comment on Internet of Things merger of 170. I found 123 to be similar. So those are Internet of Things workshops, 170 and 123.
Also, I would refer to workshop 100, "South School of Internet governance." It ranked 136. This is a workshop which brings together many Latin American countries and now also global South countries. And I scanned the whole list of workshop proposals, and I did not see any other proposal addressing schools of Internet governance. So this is a very important issue, and I would think it's interesting for the MAG to consider having this workshop. Even if as a conditional acceptance to bring other representatives from other Internet governance workshops for a dialogue -- other Internet schools for a dialogue. Thank you.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Renata. There's nobody else in the queue, so to draw a line under this part of the day here. Sorry, Renata, you want to come back?
>>RENATA AQUINO RIBEIRO: Sorry, I also forgot 101 in child online protection from a developing country, I would support.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: So I think as I said a few moments ago, I think we've done an awful lot of work here the last few days. I think we've got a good proposal. I think we're managing across a number of fields, thematic and diversity, et cetera, that we haven't done in the past. I think that will only ensure a more balanced set of workshop proposals.
The preparatory process leading up here was, I'm sure, fairly brief for everybody because even you as MAG members weren't able to see the relative rankings or the total rankings until a few days before coming, which is not nearly enough time to give it a thoughtful review.
It's very, very unfortunate but it was just the result of the timetable which we all agreed and the fact that it was compressed.
The good news is that I think having gotten through that and having advanced the main sessions fairly significantly, I think we're pretty much back on track with respect to the schedule, with respect to where historically this process has been after the second MAG meeting. I want to thank everybody really for hanging in there for this process.
I would like us to get a working group established and maybe the bucket email list is a good idea as well. But I really think we need to get started now on what we need to do to improve this process for next year. So we can take that to the MAG mailing list. I just don't think waiting until we're through this cycle and the new MAG is appointed, frankly, that will be far too late already to impact anything for the next cycle plus we lose all the learnings -- I'll call it that, all the learnings we actually got from this process this year.
So we'll take that request to the MAG list and hopefully we can make some real kind of immediate improvements in the process, both as the calls go out, as well as what we actually do to review it within -- you know, within the MAG here. But my, you know, truly most sincere thanks to everybody for staying with this process. It's -- I'm sure it's not been easy for anyone.
Rasha, you have a...
>>RASHA ABDULLA: Just a very -- very briefly, there is a mailing list that was established for a working group on workshop evaluation, so that could serve as the -- as the group -- I can resend the email and people can just send their suggestions to that.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Okay. Thank you. I do think that could be one of the most important activities we carry forward coming out of this, both in terms of responsibility to the community as we actually set the overall work, so thank you.
We have roughly a half hour left with a really hard stop at 6:00 for many reasons.
If folks are okay, we did have one item which was the follow-up as needed based on status updates from open consultations. If we could take that to the next virtual MAG meeting, I think that would be the -- the most appropriate way to deal with that, and that would leave us time to do a little bit of housekeeping and some organizational efforts, because my feeling is if we don't make a good progress on that in the next couple of days, before we know it, we'll be frankly into September, with so many of the holidays between now and then, and that won't serve the rest of our planning year well.
So I think there was a request to have a discussion on the scheduling of the third face-to-face meeting. I saw a lot of emails come in sort of before and after the lunch hour. I haven't looked at them in the last few hours so I don't know what the current status is.
>> (Off microphone.)
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: I'm hoping that maybe Chengetai can give us an update on sort of just where we are overall with that, and if the Doodle poll is out already, encourage people to fill it out as quickly as possible. It's hard to call a consensus if you only have 20 people out of 55 or so responding, so we really need to hear from everybody.
But is there anything you want to add to that?
>>CHENGETAI MASANGO: Yes. I sent out a Doodle poll just after lunch, and we have 30 people who have responded so far, and all the dates, week of 19th September, week of 3rd of October and week of 10th of October, they're all equal at the moment.
[ Laughter ]
>>CHENGETAI MASANGO: So -- yeah. So that's good.
And the -- well, it's not good, but at least we've got a lot of response.
The meeting is going to be held in Geneva, and it's subject, of course, to nailing down the actual room, which as soon as we get this over and done with on Monday, we'll try and get the room booked on Tuesday.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Let me open that up for any comments. I see Marilyn and Peter.
So Marilyn, you have the floor.
>>MARILYN CADE: Thank you, Chair.
Thank you so much for doing the Doodle, and I know there was a lot of back-and-forth. I appreciate the effort to do the Doodle.
I had asked to have a couple of other weeks considered. I understand there may be reasons not to, but I think it would be really helpful for us to know if it's a two-day meeting or a three-day meeting, because some of us may be available if it's a two-day meeting and not available if it's a three-day meeting or depending on the span of the week.
I'm even happy to work on Sunday. I wish we could do this meeting on U.S. Halloween. I could bring the candy and the costumes.
>>CHENGETAI MASANGO: But let's talk about the agenda. What are we going to be discussing in the meeting? Because we sometimes have two meetings and we sometimes have three meetings.
The reason for the third meeting is basically for the intersessional work. It's one time when we can focus specifically on the intersessional work. All the workshops have been done, et cetera. So -- and then we can just have the final push from the third meeting until the annual meeting.
So do we need an open consultation or we can actually change the format of the meeting, if you feel that that's good.
I mean, we don't have to stick...
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: I'd like to put a plea in for a three-day meeting with a one-day open consultation because we will have the retreat behind us. I'm sure there will be some things we will want to follow up on as the MAG. I think it's also an opportunity hopefully we will have progressed things like this working group on -- which we can get a head start on there as well, and the intersessional work always takes more time than we think, and frankly all too often they're left a little bit too late in the program.
So I just don't see how we can do it in just a two-day meeting, and I think not having an open consultation, having had the retreat, and given the fact that I think there's a significant interest in taking whatever suggestions or ideas come out of the retreat and bringing them into the community and possibly bringing some of that to the IGF would need some preparatory time as well.
So I guess my proposal would be for a three-day meeting.
Marilyn has a quick follow-up and then Peter and Renata. Marilyn?
>>MARILYN CADE: Thank you, Chair. Marilyn speaking.
I understand that my interest in working on Saturdays and Sundays is not always enthusiastically shared, but I do take note that in fact this time those of you who are going to the retreat are working on Saturday.
So it's -- I support the idea of an open consultation which is primarily focused on the retreat and on any other immediately relative -- relevant topics. I don't think a full day is needed for the retreat because I don't think it's appropriate for us to do an open consultation and not also do an online consultation, but -- so I support the idea of an open consultation but perhaps we could agree it would be a full half day, three hours.
The second thing is that when we did the work in another group that was very related, the multi- -- the work on the high-level evaluation of the action lines, we started work at 9:00 and we took only an hour and 15 minute lunch period and we worked until 6:30, so we had elongated workdays. That is -- I know in Geneva that's not customary because people in the mission prefer to start at 10:00, but I think most of us start our working days earlier, so perhaps we could also think about elongating our workdays to get a little more work time in.
And then secondly, I really have to say I'm not sure what we're going to do for two days after the open consultation as the MAG.
I could see a full day, or maybe a day and a half, but the workshops are done. The main sessions are done and agreed to.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: I don't think the main sessions are done done.
>> (Off microphone.)
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: If the workshop is in September and we are, for all practical purposes, at the end of July with a significant portion of the MAG in and out in August, I'm -- honestly I think it would be fantastic if there had been robust discussions, the charters had been updated, they'd had discussion with the MAG, and support, but I -- I actually think that's a pretty heavy lift in the next five or six weeks.
Let me go to the rest of the queue for a moment.
We have Peter, Renata, and Liesyl and then come back to your point, Marilyn, about whether or not we need the full two days.
Peter, you have the floor.
>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Thank you, Chair. I wanted to add an item to the "any other business" part of the agenda just to make sure that gets in there. I want to just start a discussion about evaluation after workshops and things which we need to come back to.
We've talked a lot about assessing them in advance. I want to talk about evaluating them after they've been held.
Just to pick up the point about the workshop, I agree largely with Marilyn and want to push back very hard and think that the -- the necessity of the meeting needs to be well established and I'm not sure that it is.
I think starting talking about days before we start talking about agenda shows that we -- we haven't quite approached this in a strictly logical way.
I think there is some merit in that there may be something that comes out of the retreat, but other than that, I'm not sure that the case is made for a three-day meeting together. The intersessional work doesn't involve all the MAG as a whole. It's -- there's a lot of individual projects with people doing things. I can't see why they can't continue doing that on line, and if it's a question of the MAG as a whole approving work done by those subgroups, that doesn't seem to me to require a face-to-face meeting.
And without taking everything on, I think if you look through those things, I think we ought to start with the presumption that we should do it by telephone meeting or even several telephone meetings, and I'm sure we're going to have telephone meetings between now and this proposed face-to-face meeting.
So I just think we need to go through a slightly more robust justification process before -- before setting up --
As I say, I am conscious that if there's going to be something emerging from the retreat that the MAG needs to -- to look at -- and as it stands, we don't know that so a good precautionary principle would be to start scheduling this, but I'm not sure that the rest of the material justifies it. Thanks.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Peter.
Renata, you have the floor.
>>RENATA AQUINO RIBEIRO: Hi. I would like to remind us all of one important space that will probably be a hot topic by the third meeting, which is the unconference space. I think there will be -- still be some details to be finalized on those spaces, and so I would support the three days meeting and I would support the open consultations. This is a new aspect for the IGF, the idea of having informal spaces, informal activities.
And I would support further discussion on the main session and the workshop discussions as well. Thank you.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Renata.
Liesyl, you have the floor.
>>LIESYL FRANZ: Thank you. I know that the fall gets very busy for everybody, and scheduling things are really difficult, but one thing we've been grappling with this year is the -- the start -- you know, sort of the delayed start for the MAG work for next year.
So I would suggest that if we meet -- and personally, I would -- I think that besides the intersessional work, I'm -- I get the sense that we might have some finalization on some updates on workshops that needed to be fixed or that the main sessions needed to be massaged and curated a little bit more, so there might be ability to add those things to the agenda that I think would also be useful.
The other thing I would say is it seems to me that we've all got very fresh minds about ways to improve the -- the evaluation process. As Rasha already pointed out, she can start that discussion right away. I also, as I mentioned earlier on, think that there's improvements that need to be made pretty darned quickly on the proposal form itself in order to line up more closely with the criteria -- the evaluation process, because that's where a lot of the jaggedness occurred for me.
So I think that we would get a great jump on next year if we had part of the agenda for that and if we met in the fall. Thanks.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Liesyl.
Elizabeth, you have the floor.
>>ELIZABETH THOMAS-RAYNAUD: Thank you, Chair.
I just wanted to raise the question about -- actually, I'm going to channel my best Virat, because I know he's sleeping and he won't be here to do this, but he was mentioning in an exchange earlier that in one of the year -- earlier years, there were main sessions decided in February, and I know that IGF that particular year was in September, but there was a sufficient lead time for people to get speakers, and I -- and I appreciate where we are now isn't ideal in terms of timing, but I would be really reticent to see us wait for another MAG meeting, especially late September-October, to finalize the main session aspects because speakers do -- I mean, especially the caliber of speakers we're talking about for these sessions do have to decide travel and availability and all of those things, and I think even last year, people were having difficulty with the compressed time -- time frame, so I'd like to just flag that concern.
And then I -- I realized last year we had this extra meeting and we had to finish up the MAG sessions at the time and we had the intersessional work that was the new experiment of the connecting the next billion exercise, and so there was quite a lot of work for us to do together on that in terms of envisioning how this document could work out and discussing that, but I don't necessarily see us having that same level of work that could be productively done in a large room like this with a face-to-face meeting, so I'm a little bit concerned about the assumption of the need for that and I'd love to hear more about specifically what we would envision addressing.
So I'm not closed to the meeting and I like the idea of making sure that we have a clear and focused agenda before we finalize any decisions about the length of the meeting or -- or whether it's necessary to do that that way.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Elizabeth. Those were some very thoughtful comments as well.
I have two more participants -- yes, two more participants in the line, and then we'll see if we can decide the next steps on this.
I have Miguel and then I have an online participant.
So Miguel, you have the floor.
>>MIGUEL IGNACIO ESTRADA: Thank you, Chair. Regarding what Renata just said, it would be great to have a, like, I think two-hour slot in the next face-to-face meeting in order to talk about unconferences and formats, and also to decide which will be the selected lightning sessions in order to happen.
So I don't know if we can do it on line or not, but if not, it would be great to have a space there.
And also a little question -- sorry -- I forgot previously.
When are we defining the order in which the main sessions are going to take place? Because that's an important subject, I think.
[ Laughter ]
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: I'm looking for wisdom from -- from Chengetai.
>> (Off microphone.)
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Yeah. No, I think -- but I think we need to get to the point where we're confident enough that we understand what the main sessions are. I think we're quite close, although they need some work. And maybe we can look at a draft agenda and try and get that out within sort of two weeks, once we go through the next spin of the workshops. Does that work?
>> (Off microphone.)
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Uh-huh.
>> (Off microphone.)
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Two weeks from now would put us at the end of July. We could go a bit later than that, but I'm not actually sure what we need to know before we determine where the large main -- when the large main sessions are held.
>> (Off microphone.)
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: No, no, no. It was --
>> (Off microphone.)
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Sorry. It was just the main sessions.
>> (Off microphone.)
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: So in, it seems as though, two weeks we should have -- maybe even a little bit sooner -- just get a proposal out for -- we know when the main session slots are -- a proposal for how they would be filled and try and advance that pretty significantly over the next couple of weeks.
We have an online participant, Anja?
>>REMOTE INTERVENTION: Yes. Ginger reminds us that we should also return to the need for a newcomers booth, newcomers badges, and mentors coordination. Thank you.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Very good points, Ginger. Thank you.
I have Flavio in the queue as well, so Flavio, you have the floor.
>>FLAVIO WAGNER: Yeah. Just a short reminder regarding the next face-to-face meeting.
Last year we had the reports from the main session co-facilitators, so we have to have now formally defined who are the facilitators, the MAG members that are facilitators of each of the accepted main sessions. There are steps that have been defined by the working group, led by Liesyl and Virat, regarding the follow-up, now what has been done for the organization, successful organization for the main sessions, and we have to report on this during the next face-to-face meeting.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: I think those are all very important points.
I don't know, my sort of temperature of the room here, I guess -- and online participants -- is -- I would say is pretty neutral as to whether or not we need a meeting or not.
Perhaps we could -- there's been a number of suggestions for things we need to do. Some of them we could clearly do in virtual meetings. Some would be much easier to do in a -- in a face-to-face virtual meeting.
The timing comes into account here as well.
So I don't know if it makes most sense for me to go away with the secretariat, to ask all of you if there are some large topics that you think we need to address over the next few months to please send a note to the MAG list, and we can look at some high-level scheduling, both through some virtual meetings and possibly having a physical meeting, depending on the items that have come -- the items that have come in.
It feels a little bit like we're doing this a little bit too much on the fly and I -- I don't feel like I have a good sense as to whether or not there's enough to make for a substantive meeting or not.
I know I lean towards saying I think there's a lot of useful work we could do to improve things like our -- our -- this entire evaluation process and the proposals and things we could do to get a start. I'm expecting that there's some things coming out of the retreat, since most of the items there are, you know, pretty much about improvements, a la the CSTD, and there's certainly a lot of people that feel that that work hasn't advanced quickly enough.
There is no way to advance that in any substantive way, I think, if we're not actually physically meeting and doing some hard work. I think the virtual meetings are not all that successful for really deeper work. But I don't see a lot of support for people saying they're convinced that there's enough to do here to go away and schedule a physical meeting at this point.
If that's wrong, please, somebody. I suppose I could go for a sense of the room since I see a mixture of bodies. I mean, when we think about all the work that's ahead of us, do we believe that it would be useful to have a physical meeting of -- I don't know if it's two, 2 1/2, three-day duration or we try and get by with a series of virtual meetings over the next two months? I think that's sort of what's in front of us.
So, Marilyn, Avri's actually in the queue first and then Marilyn. Let me see if we can get a sense after. Avri.
>>AVRI DORIA: Thank you. I tend to think that at this point it's far too soon. For example, to assume what can come out of the retreat, anything can come out of the retreat to "We want you to do more work" to, you know, the MAG can be replaced by some other mechanism and will be done by somebody else. It's a complete black box at the moment to make any assumption that it will come out with work for us as that.
I have experienced quite frequently in the whole IANA transition, periods where we have done intense work periods of three-hour online meetings, rotating through the day where people have gotten work done. We need to get better at learning how to do remote participation work and perhaps a couple meetings where we actually use the tools and all participate remotely will find that we can get more done without spending two to three days traveling to a place, all getting tired, and learn to work online. I think it can be done, and I don't think we need to meet at this point.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Okay, thank you, Avri.
Marilyn, you have the floor. German and then we'll move.
>>MARILYN CADE: Thank you, Chair. Let me endorse what Avri just said. But I think we need to understand that's going to be require us to improve our working methods and our willingness to actually really work for more than an hour and a half and to also make sure that when we have a problem -- I'm just going to mention a number of the MAG members, some from developing countries, me, sometimes we get disabled from the MAG list and we don't actually get the notices. So we can follow up on that, but make sure that means we're reaching everybody. That's one thing.
The second thing is, Chair, I would prefer that you make a proposal for a two-day meeting versus a three-day meeting because it may be possible to dedicate two days but not three.
Then the final thing I'm going to say because I think it deserves saying, look, I'm a small business from North America. Going to Geneva, cheapest cost which I pay for myself, I have no funding, is a minimum of $2,200 to $2500. I'm not complaining. I signed up for this. But when we consider holding a multiple-day meeting, it is a huge burden on those of us who self-fund. I really support that travelers from developing countries are eligible for funding. But if I have to spend three hours online in a working session with all of you as the CCWGs have done and that allows me to save $2,500, that might mean I can come to Mexico.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Mexico.
[ Laughter ]
Oh, my goodness. I'm so sorry. Thank you, Marilyn.
German, you have the floor.
>>GERMAN VALDEZ: It's long three days. Thank you, Madam Chair.
My comment was going to be very, very related to what Marilyn said. I think one of the issue of the agenda I think is a matter of resources. Many of us are working for companies, organizations with tight budgets. And it's important that we appropriate resources in advance, in a previous year's budget. In my particular case, I was not expecting to have a third meeting in this year because it was not clear.
I think to start to improve our methods, work, we should try to establish the number of meetings that the MAG is going to have in a particular year. That will be my suggestion.
In addition to that, I -- as part of the discussion, I do feel that we might need to have this meeting. We have a strong commitment for the success of the IGF. And I think as part of my personal feeling, we have content enough for a third meeting of the year.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, German.
I think actually in the first MAG meeting, there was an assumption on those noted that there would be three meetings this year. But all your points are very relevant.
I think what I would like to do at this point is ask the MAG members to submit any large topics or subjects that they think we need to address. I'm not even asking for specificity, whether it's virtual or face-to-face. And then we can sit down with the secretariat, look back at past years' agendas for third meetings and work to schedule that out and present a more thoughtful proposal to all the MAG members in the coming weeks.
I guess that means the Doodle poll is sort of shelved for the moment. Actually, let me take that back since I think Liesyl wants to come in the queue.
Liesyl, you have the floor.
>>LIESYL FRANZ: Thank you for allowing me to breach protocol here.
I think actually in case there is a physical meeting, you might want to do the Doodle poll anyway so you don't have to start that whole thing again. I mean, even if we decide not to do it or we decide to do it remotely on those days -- I don't know. I just recommend trying to find a date anyway.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: I think there are other heads around the room nodding yes. I think that's probably a good thing. So we'll let that stand. Chengetai and I, secretariat and I, can work on possible draft agendas.
We're coming to the very end here. Before we actually do the kind of final closing remarks, I would actually like to obviously thank Yolanda and Victor earlier for their support of the meeting and obviously all of their sort of hosting interests and things. And give the floor to Yolanda for some closing remarks.
So if you could please light Mexico's mic.
>>YOLANDA MANCILLA: Thank you, all. It has been a very interesting experience in the name -- in representation of Ms. Alejandra Nunez and Victor. We are very pleased to have the opportunity to be hosting the IGF. It has been challenging, and we are grateful for all your feedback and all the comments we have received during the last three days regarding how we can make this happen in full alignment with IGF principles. That would be my message. We are very, very grateful.
And I think the conclusion of all these process have been very aligned to the subject of our meeting the fact that we have a main session on SDGs. And I was reviewing all the workshops that were in the final list, and all of them are aligned to all of the 17 SDGs. So I think that was very important. I was reviewing that while I was listening to all of you and all the proposals. So I think this being the first IGF after the mandate and after the 2030 sustainable development goals' approval for the General Assembly last year, that also provides very interesting content on what is coming next.
So we really thank you for all your comments. We would like to express our gratitude for all the support to the challenge that we have in front of us. And we look forward to seeing you in December. Thank you.
[ Applause ]
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Yolanda.
I'd like to give my thanks, again, to all the MAG members here and specific shout-out to all those who are participating online. This has probably been one of the more painful online participatory processes the MAG has experienced. And really appreciate so many of them for hanging in so long. This has been an awful lot of work. These processes are never as smooth as we would like them.
But I just really want to thank everybody for hanging in there. I think everybody worked really well. I think people were very respectful of different opinions and really tried to lean into the process even if it wasn't the most elegant process we've ever followed here. So much appreciated. We couldn't have made that progress without everybody's will to really get through the end.
So we have a number of thanks. We have to thank the interpreters for all of their activities.
[ Applause ]
To thank the transcribists because -- I mean, I can't...
[ Applause ]
I can't tell you how much I actually rely on those notes. And, in fact, they've been very useful going back to past years in terms of understanding processes as well.
Really like to thank the U.N. staff here in the room who have really helped significantly with the electronics here.
[ Applause ]
Obviously all the IGF secretariat, in particular. They worked incredible hours.
[ Applause ]
Chengetai was looking for Eleonora. No? I guess she must have stepped out of the room. We can give her our thanks afterwards.
Peter and German are in the queue here. So we'll give you a quick moment.
Peter?
>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Thank you, Chair. I'd just like -- I would like to perhaps get a sense of the room. Because if there's general agreement with what I'm going to say, then we can go ahead and do it. And that is that we need to start on some sort of post-event evaluation. This is done normally two ways by leaving a paper in the room with some tick boxes. You need to make it really, really easy because people get up and rush off.
You can also put up on the screen a link where people can go and answer the same questions, tick, tick, tick. And I think we need to give that as extra data for making the assessments for coming years.
Yes, we've got previous proposals and, yes, we've got their reports. But audience reaction is really going to be another very useful piece of information as we go forward.
So if I could just get the sense of the room, Chair, if you could take that sense. I'll put together a small drafting group or start online the drafting of that little effectively a questionnaire.
And the reason why I think we need to start now is when people are being told that their workshop or their event has been approved, they need to also be told that it is going to be evaluated in this way. I think that should be part of the information they start with, knowing that it is going to be evaluated by that process.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: I think that's a very good suggestion. So let me look around the room here. And, again, online participants, if you have a position, comment. Is there support for trying to find a way to get an immediate post-workshop evaluation? See lots of heads nodding yes. Nobody speaking against that.
Rasha, you have a comment?
>>RASHA ABDULLA: If I may just add that it needs to be an evaluation for the workshops as well as probably for the organizations so that we can learn from what they tell us.
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: I initially thought Peter was going to suggest an evaluation for this MAG meeting.
[ Laughter ]
Which is, I think, a reasonable idea as well:
Okay. So I think there's agreement to go forward and do that. So, Peter, if you could advance that on the list so we can actually get the specifics out.
German, you have the floor.
>>GERMAN VALDEZ: Thank you, Madam Chair.
I would like to start with -- as final apologies because I'm going to take the dare to speak on behalf of the whole group. I think it's good to raise also a note of appreciation, congratulations, for you work for the last three days.
[ Applause ].
The Doodle poll is a clear reflection of this group. Preference is almost equally distributed among the three options. And maybe sometime it's like herding cats. But you have done a very fine, fine job over the last three days. Thank you very much, Lynn. Thank you.
[ Applause ]
>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: I think with that, we're done. And as somebody said, I can return to you the gift of two minutes of your life. Thank you all very much. Travel safe. Travel safe.
>>CHENGETAI MASANGO: Just a quick note, those of you who left your lug began in DC2, you have to go and pick it up yourselves. It's not going to be transported to the bus. Thank you very much. Thank you, interpreters.