IGF 2016 - Day 4 - Room 7 - Youth Coalition on Internet Governance

 

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

***

>> Hi.  I will wait another five minutes before we start.  So just ‑‑ I know that there's something going on upstairs and maybe people up there are waiting to come down.  So we will start in five minutes.

>> BIANCA HO:  Hi.  Thank you again for coming.  So my name is Bianca.  I'm not necessarily a convener.  I am a member here.  Right here so thank you so much for coming.  So, I know there are some new faces and more familiar faces that are probably faces who know much better than I do.  Because of newcomers, let me give you a background of YCIG and how you participate.  There will be a mailing list starting with the background and introduction of everyone at the table.  Again, we love new faces here.  It is super important that everybody knows who you are and then we will go to the appointment of the in term committee.  There's new criterias, which I will go through a bit later and besides the roles and committee.  We respect the mailing list and that's really where our conversation is.  So we will suggest names for the mailing list and then for the mailing list to approve.

Starting with the background of Wasaji.  We have been involved with youth and people who are really active on the mailing list, we have a mailing list that's on Google that is open to everyone.  Particularly youth how we define it is under 30 years old.  So in the past what we have done, we pull off quite a lot of things as a group.  For example, we have organized a workshop.  There's also the fact that we put together reports, but in the last year, we in terms of coordination, we had a very clear person or role for people to take on for the YCIG to move forward.  We were discussing the charter last year which had some issues on proceeding.  So that's why we think this year it's a good idea to start with appointing the interim committee here and then approving in the mailing list and have people agree or disagree to kind of get is that started and then we can start with ‑‑ we can then finish the charter review.

So before I go on, I will pause it.

>> Yeah.  Nothing much to add.  We want to welcome you all here.  And no one is ‑‑ we need all of you to take initiative.  No one is being paid to do this.  It needs every one of to you take initiative and make sure your faces were to the highest corridors possible.  Thank you.

>> BIANCA  HO:  Okay.  Does anyone have any questions before I proceed?  We will just discuss.

So let's start with maybe introducing ourselves and then we will pass on the mic.

>> EFRIN:  Hi, everyone.  Can you hear me?  Yes.  My name is Efrin.  I walk on the researching low tech human rights and I'm pushing about young people.  That's why we are pushing that young people's voices are heard to the highest level.  That's why we want to thank you for trusting us and being part of the community and being very active and keeping us in check and remaining us that we need our voices heard at the highest level.  It's an honor to solve as the youngest member in history.  My time is almost over.  Very soon, we need more young people to be one.  So we need next time 12.  A 12‑year‑old, a 13‑year‑old for the mark and I can't wait for that day to happen.

>> VANESSA:  My name is Vanessa.  I come from Hong Kong.  This is my first time to come to this IGF.

>> JENNY:  I'm Jenny.  I'm also from Hong Kong and we're youth representatives and this is my first time as well.

>> ESTEL:  Hi.  My name is Estel.  I'm from Brazil.  This is my second IGF.

>> PEDRO:  Hi.  My name is Pedro.  I'm also from Brazil and this is my second IGF.

>> ABELO:  I am Abelo from Brazil and this is my first IGF.

>> HENNA:  Hi, everyone.  My name is Henna.  I'm also from Brazil and this is my second IGF and I'm a member of the youth observatory.

>> DAVID:  Good morning.  I'm David in Germany.  I'm 21 years old.  Second IGF and I'm organizing the youth IGF.

>> JOE:  Good morning, everyone.  I'm Joe from Vietnam.  Welcome IGF.

>> Good morning, everyone.  This is my first time at IGF.  Thanks.

>> EFRIN:  Good morning.  My name is Efrin and I'm from Israel and which is my first IGF.

>> KRISHNA:  Hi, Krishna from India.  This is my second IGF.

>> FLOREN:  Hi.  I'm Floren from Austria.  I am here second time and I'm a student in Austria.

>> I'm from ‑‑ good morning.  Second time.

>> NATALIE:  Hi.  I'm Natalie from Hong Kong and this is my first time to go to IGF.

>> ELVIN:  I'm Elvin from Hong Kong and I'm 14 years old. 

>> JAMIE:  I'm from Hong Kong.  Sorry, sorry, sorry.  Hi.  I'm Jamie.  I come from Hong Kong.  This is my first time to IGF.

>> I am the coordinator of IGF chart.

>> FRED:      Good morning, everyone.  This is Fred from Hong Kong.  I'm a teacher, but today is a lit bit different because I'm a babysitter of my lovely students.

>> OLIVER:  Good morning.  And I'm Oliver from America.  And of course this is my first time at IGF and I am student.

>> I'm Ocean from the United States.  This is my first IGF.

>> JOSIAH:  My name is Josiah and I'm from Hong Kong and this is my first time here.

>> Yes.  Good morning, everybody.  My name is ‑‑ internet 26 years since a lot of you were not born yet.  I still keep my first e‑mail from 26 years ago.  I would like to see how the new generation has carried on the Internet.

>> It is my third IGF.

>> MICHAEL:  Good morning.  My name is Michael.  This is my second IGF and I'm currently based in Serbia.

>> YANIS:  Hi.  This is Yanis Lee from Hong Kong.  And I haven't counted how many IGF I've been to.  I guess four or five.

>> DAVID:  Hi.  My name is David.  I'm also from Hong Kong and also coordinator of HKYGF.  I think this is four or five IGF more me.

>> Okay.  Great.

>> BIANCA  HO:  Okay.  Great.  We got everyone.  Oh, okay.  Can we have the remote?

>> Hello, everyone.

>> BIANCA  HO:  Yes.  We can hear you.

>> I'm from Sudan.  This is my third IGF.

>> LARRY:  Hi.  I'm Larry.  I'm CEO of Connectsafely.org.  We work a lot with young people and with the United States hosts of safer Internet day.

>> PATTY:  I'm Patty Regear.

>> CYNTHIA LIVINGSTON:  Cynthia Livingston.  I do research with young people.

>> BIANCA  HO:  Okay.  Great.  Now that we have gone through the room once, it is nice to see who is here.  Sometimes you e‑mail so much on the list and finally you see a person's face, which is fantastic.

So we will start ‑‑ we will start ‑‑ yesterday a smaller group of us discussed the agenda and I wanted to see if anyone has any questions on the agenda.  So the agenda today will start with appointment of an in term committee and that we have a few criterias.  Number 1, they have to be under 30 years and now we have five people representing each of the different regions.  So that's kind of like ‑‑ a basis we'll start off with.  Again, we will use the mailing list as an approval.  And then the second would be deciding the roles and responsibility of the interim committee.  So, does anyone have any comments on the agenda?  Please, Martin.

>> MARTIN:  Just for the order, it makes sense to discuss the responsibilities of the comedy before the elect people so they know what they're running for.

>> BIANCA  HO:  Good point to switch it up.  Okay.  Yeah.  So starting with the roles and responsibilities.  Yesterday we had some ideas.  So maybe around the table, I wanted people to kind of have some suggestions towards what do you think an interim committee would do.  What happened is our charter does not have any statute for having ‑‑ a leader per se for YCIG which is much needed.  The reason it is needed is there's a lot of reporting that needs to be done.  We need to participate with other Dynamic Coalitions, which is super important.  So I think that that's in a basis of where we wanted to start with the interim committee.  For myself, I think that is super important to finish the charter review.  I wanted to open up the floor for anyone who wanted to comment on what is needed for the responsibilities for the interim committee.

>> MICHAEL:  Hi.  Michael here.  So we definitely need contact people.  We need points of leaderships.  So I think that probably the YCIG suffered most is not actually a lack of commitment or lack of involvement.  It's from a lack of knowing who is going to be kind of the final word of accountability, I guess you can say, the final authority on things.  In the past few months, I've been very impressed with how we come together and get some things done; however, had there been a little bit more encouragement and coordination, we could have even done more.  Yesterday there was the D.C session.  We submitted our report and we weren't represented at the D.C session. 

For instance, if any of you were involved on the list, I try to be as involved as I can especially with editing documents and what not.  For instance, there's a lot of points where people had invested the time in having a discussion even if it's something micro about the wording that we're using.  That's important.  These are official statutes that we should be abiding by.  With that said, it was kind of like I often would turn to Bianca as the mag member.  Since you're the mag member ‑‑ and, you know, are you the authority on this?  Is it David?  Because he was the one that started the document, et cetera.  So having that set in stone would be very helpful, but then aside from that, then being proactive.  So it's not just about being that authority.  It is also being proactive to understanding how we're going to continue to be involved through the IGF and the wider government system.  Not just youth that are in college or in young professionals, but also youth that are in not elementary, but secondary or high school, et cetera.  So that's probably the hardest part because that takes time, work and creativity.  Thank you.

>> As you go on, I want you to recognize the presence of Rafik.  Can you pass him the mic?

>> RAFIK DAMMAK:  So happy to see kind of the representation of the youth coalition.  I hope that you are not going in the same discussion we had for many years regarding what that means, what means to be youth or if youth is a stakeholder and to folks really more on the issues.  So I'm just here likely to see what you are doing, guys.  I'm happy that things are moving on.  Just want to maybe respond to Mike.  I understand we'll talk about the charter.  The charter is just to give you kind of guidance or clarification about your mission, but you should not really spend much more time on that.  My understanding is there was some ‑‑ in the beginning some kind of confusion about the process. 

So if you just set out that quickly and then move on, another comment just may be my last one.  Please don't focus just on IGF.  In the beginning when we started the youth coalition, one point we had about Intersessional work.  And also looking about others where Internet Governance issues are discussed.  So please have that in mind and see how you can use the coalition as a space for that to coordination and create synergies between all members.  Also think about recall stakeholders.  I think the limitation is hard to find young people in the private sector and the government.  But there is always possibility to have those sympathetic from those stakeholders that they can have and join you.  Okay.  That's it.

>> BIANCA  HO:  Okay.  So that was really good, good guidance that we had.  I am going back to the discussion of the rules and responsibilities of the committee.  Michael mentioned the point of contact.  And then also how can we get youth more involved with this space.  And I think, you know, getting more involved might mean intersession work.  Is there anyone who wants to comment?

>> I can totally agree with Rafik.  As we discussed yesterday, I think it's really important to do the charter review as swiftly as possible.  And make sure the interim committee so that members can focus on the Intersessional work and producing official statements, documents and keeping up the contact charter stakeholders.  So I really think revising the charter should be the main focus and then we can probably be very quickly with the steering committee and keep them working.

>> BIANCA  HO:  Any other comments?

>> As we also discussing in group about the steering committee and things, I do think they got another important point in the steering committee or steering committee should just do the administration work, but not doing the (inaudible) making work.  Just referring to what we're managing about being contact person with IGF and make sure we got session over the years.  Yeah.  And also on the papers and also sharing some information from several things.  I do think that it is some of the area focus for the working group.  The steering committee.  Thank you.

>> BIANCA  HO:  Those are great ones.  Please go ahead.

>> I would also greatly appreciate if you just focus on the official communication that is put to us, but also try to bring together more of the initiatives insights in YCIG and try to focus on sessions that we can like you did a couple of years back and try to hand the sessions together and look for incorporations with the other Dynamic Coalitions and other actors that deal with young people like ISOC and ICANN.  Try to involve young people from other stakeholders that don't necessarily are coming out of civil society.  And another point of communication I also hope that we can relay the official information also that they are reached in all the different regions and that through the representatives of the regions, we also have more direct access points of the regions they involve and up to date of what's happening.  I hope this will be a more direct and personal contact point there.  Thanks.

>> BIANCA  HO:  That's a good point.  I felt before we had organized a session with other members of the YCIG, that was very useful because that enhances a lot of what we're doing. 

And to Martin's point, I focus on the intern communication as well as external communication with the Dynamic Coalition.  And hopefully enhance our cooperation and be able to host sessions or also attracting people out the civil society.  To that point, I wanted to know if there's anyone who is not in a civil society cap here?  Okay.  So that was quite true.  Okay.  Great.  So is there anyone else who wants ‑‑

>> Just quickly to comment on that point.  I do make it clear that civil society is often the most represented here simply because especially most youth members are in the capacity usually to be in other stakeholder groups.  Especially if they're younger, they wouldn't be in the government.  They wouldn't be in the private sector necessarily or at least they'd be much more difficult.  I think that is more ‑‑ that is a reality that we need to be aware of, but that's not to say that there could not be especially young professionals from those other stakeholder groups that could be willing to get more involved.

>> Just to comment on that in our project, we also have academic and true entrepreneurs that certainly belong to the other sectors, but that have other meetings going on.  There is less overlap and I think we also need to sort of create the coalition in a way that is appealing to the stakeholders.  So once we are finished with this charter stuff, maybe people aught to be interested in discussing youth issues that are cross sectorial.

>> BIANCA  HO:  To that point, there was an interesting discussion I had.  This is so early in our careers.  Sometimes we might want to ‑‑ I think he made the point that he wants to join a different sector in the future and that I think that is very much true to mold the bowl because it is required early in the stages of our career and academic.  That's a great thing.  So just one thing I need to advertise is that we have truer doc that's available right now.  It is IGF.asia/YCIGIGF.  So yeah.  This is kind of where I've been tapping notes and everyone has a point of reference.  So does anyone have any thoughts on rules?  I mean the people who have been commenting has been active on the list.  I want to open up the floor of people that are lesser aware of what YCIG is doing and maybe you have an expectation of what you expect from the group.  Is there anyone who's outside ‑‑ outside the usual act of participants to comment?  Okay.  So no.  Okay.  Good. 

So any other points with regards to what we have so far is the administrative rules and the non‑decision making rule.  The second one is a center point of communication and let me ask the official IGF contact, but also access point for other sectors.  One thing I wanted to mention is setting out a timeline for doing this all work because I understand everyone has a different schedule and what we have seen in the past is the YCIG list and it kind of dies down.  Last year we were really optimistic around ‑‑ we will have this ongoing engagement.  And I felt like people did engage.  There's policy address.  So we put together the document super quickly, which was amazing because we had a stance that we shared as a group.  But then when it comes to things that are not, it is important for non‑urgent than people would know like let's just delay it.  So I've been setting up a timeline that's important for this committee because they would need to commit to that people on timeline and help us to push things through. 

Number 4 is to finish a charter review.  Number 5 would be coordinating sessions for next year.  Potential other shareholders and the group as well as the organizing a session among ourselves.  That's also a possibility.  And then number 6 is the outreach part where hopefully we can get more youth involved in the policy space and doing more Intersessional work.  What I have outlined so far, any comments?

>> Especially for the finished chapter review session, you are adding some information on what we have done last year.  Last year meetings for the meetings on YCIG and set up a working group working on and reviewing those chapter and things.  So there is some outcome documents ‑‑ not outcome documents, but some documents taking notes about the community, concerns on different issues.  For example, the formation of the group and also how we can run the election.  These suggestions were worked by the working group.  They can refer the documents to start the work because these were also taking (inaudible) from the communities from last year.  So it need not to start from zero to one.  You can also start from zero to five.  Thank you.

>> BIANCA  HO:  Okay.  So any more comments?  I think we will again share this with the mailing list, but now we ask have concrete ideas of what to expect from the interim committee.

>> I just thought of something.  One thing that I forgot to mention is that whenever we were putting it the report for the secretariat, I was really impressed with how many youth events were actually happening.  It ended up being like five pages long and there was something from all over the world.  That makes me think that maybe ‑‑ like you were saying that involvement is there.  We need to figure out how to translate that both offline on to online through the list and then also how to maybe collaborate more within those initiatives.  Like David, you were saying we already have to go from.  So I think that should also be a key point in terms of outreach for the committee.

>> BIANCA  HO:  That's very much true.  I felt there was a Y IGF.  Every month and sometimes you're just not aware of those regions and like our mailing list is really big and we have a lot of members and people would forward our e‑mails out.  So your people get their initiatives on.  And another thing that I think would be to ‑‑ like Michael did a great work to lead the web updates.  So I think that is essentially our face outwards.  So I would say the website is quite important in terms of outreach.  Is there anyone who else wants to comment?  Okay.

So great.  So we're at the outreach part where youth initiatives.  So we will move towards the interim committee appointments.  So not right here, but at least we will have a new structure right now.  One thing I wanted to mention is we decided we think that it shouldn't be binding especially because we don't really know who these people are and what their skills are.  We have more (inaudible) when we say this person is running for chair.  That person is vice chair when in fact they probably do exactly the same thing.  We are going to have a flat structure in that sense.  We thought about that yesterday.  I want to open up the floor to anyone who wants to comment on the flat structure for the interim committee.  Again, for the steering committee it would be decided by the charter review.  But we think that we recommend that it would be better if it's flat.  So I wanted to see if there's anyone who have any thoughts on that?  Do you think there has to be a necessary ‑‑ go ahead, please.

>> So basically I can repeat what Bianca just said.  Keep it as simple and complex and deciding on a chair and vice chair for an interim committee.  It is unnecessary work that distracts us from doing other stuff.  The other goal is to do it as soon as possible so we don't need a chair and vice chair.

>> MICHAEL:  Michael here.  I ask also say that for instance, I do a lot of work with the southeastern dialogue Internet Governance.  They work incredibly efficiently.  They work closely together and they have that kind of open executive committee structure where there's no set leader per se.  Each of them takes what they are good at or they work well together.  Kind of more like a council.  So I definitely agree with Lori and them.

>> Hi.  I wanted to voice ‑‑ yeah.  I just wanted to add my voice and say I agree to this kind of structure.  It's good given people are busy as I mentioned before.  This is a paid role.  So it is dependent on how free someone is and walk in a specific time and just to ask everyone to feel involved and don't feel intimidated by your age or your agenda.  We want more diversity for these roles.  Thank you.

>> BIANCA  HO:  Great.  Anyone who wants to comment on the flat structure?  Okay.  Okay.  So we have that.  The criteria right now is under 30 years old.  So there is a limit.  We were thinking of five people representing each region.  With regards ‑‑ under 30 years is something we already agreed on the earlier charter review when we collected all the comments.  We wanted to see what people think about how people are representing different regions.  Is there other type of diversity measures that we want to put for this interim steering committee?

>> Can you also mention the five regions specifically?  Yeah.

>> BIANCA  HO:  I'm not very good at geography.  So I think there's Asia, America, then Africa, Europe.  I mean, Asia Pacific should include.  That's a good point.  Yeah.

>> (inaudible).

>> BIANCA  HO:  Martin put up his hand.  Please go ahead.

>> Martin:  Western Europe and USA.  Eastern Europe Mina is Asia Pacific, Africa and south America.  I don't know what happens to Australia.

[Laughter]

It's Asia Pacific.  Thanks.

>> BIANCA  HO:  That's North America and MENA.  And then Africa, Asia Pacific and south America.

>> Again, I think it was basically North America and western Europe.  Eastern Europe in the miss east and north Africa and then north Africa, Asia Pacific.  So it's five.

>> Okay.  Looking at the U.N. in regional groups as of May 2014, Africa group 54 member states, Asia Pacific group 53 member states, eastern European groups with 23 member states, Latin American and Caribbean groups and the west European groups with 23 member states.  So that's how the U.N. in classified them in May 2014.

>> BIANCA  HO:  Even better so I don't need to test out my geography skills.  So is that clear now?

>> Yes.

>> BIANCA  HO:  Good.  Good.  That's a great clarification.  Yes.  Okay.  Is there any other criteria that we want to say interim committee would have?  Any diversity measures?  We're good with this people representing different regions?  One thing I wanted to ask is what if in the likelihood event that we think more people will run for this committee, what if it happens to be two people or three people who run for the same region?  Should we go through an election?  Should we just talk it out?  What do you think?

>> We also talked about it yesterday and probably read unconventional solutions or suggestions.  Talk it out.  Because it simplifies the process, if there's a real initiative to be on the same region when they run for the interim, we would have to do an election which probably takes time to set up a proper election system on the mailing list.  Just please follow the regions to talk it out before running for it.  If that's not possible, then we have to do election.  Maybe they can do it with other.

>> BIANCA  HO:  Are there people who were for the election?  Okay.  So I'll take that as a taxied agreement for now.  Let's move. 

So again, I think I know an objective we should bear in mind.  This is such a small part of the progress and we really want to actually do actual work on policy as a group and youth.  So what I really want to do is spend most of our time on the policy addressing, engaging with other stakeholders and dragging all on this charter.  So I think that is great that we have this consensus towards the different regions as well as a flat structure and talk it out among different the same people who are running for the same regions.  Okay.  Please.

>> YENA:  This is Yena speaking.  So we have a criteria that we need five people to represent each region.  I just want to raise a concern that what if we don't have ‑‑ what if the region is missing people to run the positions?  Then what we will do?  Understanding that we want to push this interim as soon as possible so that we can start working.

>> Can we also put a timeframe for talking it out?  I don't want it to stretch over and over.

>> BIANCA  HO:  That's fair.  Is there a suggestion on the timeframe for talking it out?

>> We don't even know yet if there's a need for talking out.  Maybe they have been talking out already for the people who know auto going to be about see and collect the list of willing people and if you face the issue of multiple people from one region, we can give them 48 hours to talk it out.

>> Okay.  In terms of process, one thing I'm getting concerned about.  We have taxied agreements and they might be considered transparent and accountable.  If we think out this process, we would still need to get it approved by the list.  So that's something to take into account.  The other thing is I'm going blank now.  I'm tired.

>> BIANCA  HO:  Okay.  I think the timeline should be more important on when do we get an interim committee up and running.  So I suggest one month from now.  We can go back and have enough time to recoop.  We have enough time to discuss and we have enough time to get approval from the list.  What do you guys think about the one month from now to set up the interim committee?  Okay.  Good.  Okay.  So great.

So I'm just going to briefly wrap up on this appointment of interim committee.  We have a few criterias.  On 30 years old, we have eastern European, Caribbean, Latin America and other groups.  We have sent the list.  We agreed to a structure.  We heard people can reach a consensus if there are more people running for one region.  And the timeline is one month from now.  Is there anything that I missed that we discussed that is important?  Okay.

So we have like 40 minutes left, which is great.  So we can either say there's two things.  You know, from myself one from the mag, if there's anything that we can improve next year in the IGF youth involvement, we can take notes and that's something that's interesting for me.  Or we can say start with people who want to nominate themselves for this interim committee.  You guys can discuss that.  Or we can say, you know, talk about different youth initiatives and see how we can collaborate among ourselves.  So I just wanted to open that up.

>> One item on the agenda that I would also be interested in seeing if anybody would like to explore is especially since we have, you know, very young youth members here maybe to kind of brainstorm with them ways that we can maybe solicit their involvement more.  I feel like that's a group of the sub‑group of the stakeholders that we don't really hear from very often.  I think it would be a good opportunity to capitalize on that.

>> BIANCA  HO:  Oh, yes.  So before I move on, I realize that we did miss Yanis' question.  That was not addressed.

>> YANIS:  This is Yanis speaking.  From my perspective, I think if we really are just missing one person from specific region, I think we should just let the other ‑‑ if there is any candidates that would like to run for it to go for it because I don't think we should let these criteria to delay our timeline to move on since this is just interim.  That's my perspective.  So if we only have volunteers from four regions, but there is more ‑‑ there is more than one person interested to join the interim committee, then we can just let that person to join.

>> BIANCA  HO:  Order things about this that we did not have somebody running for one region, what should we do?

>> The proposal is that if ‑‑ I know there's four people and one slot left who will be deciding and who's got the slot.  You would probably have to do an election or something similar.  Again talking out, but then it will be from all the regions.  It's also an issue to keep it at four people because of deciding something.  An even number would always be better.  I don't have another suggestion just to raise the awareness for this problem.

>> What I said earlier about the communication back to the regions, for me, it would be quite important and we see that we have youth initiatives in other regions.  So I would hope there's at least one person from each region that would run and try to reach the region as soon as possible.  I would certainly pledge that we should have five people on the board of in case of split boards and create an open process in the end piece still to forward it to the list and people on the list can also speak up and there still might be somebody from the region. 

So if you don't find people here, you can forward it to the list and see if you have people there.  In the last case, we can still have an open word because that would be a procedure we still have to figure out.

>> I just have a short note to agree the terms.  If we got five regions, it should be a very (inaudible) case.  If we just got four region representatives, it should be fine because it is just steering committee.  We would like one for one years.  You don't need to put too much limitation on the whole work.  This was the criteria is, of course, for wish list for the five people reaching and representing different groups is just a wish list, but not a (inaudible) in a sense.  It seems it is somehow consent.  I do think.

>> BIANCA  HO:  Okay.  So we will agree with that way of proceeding with the five people.  And then we will again get ‑‑ we will get more input from the people who are on the list sense you know this is a very small majority among the list.  So we will again need to go through that anyways.  Okay.  Please.

>> And any suggestion to mix of things run in a faster rate, I would like to suggest maybe we can first get the name out from this room that we would like to be the representative for the steering committee from the region that we just shared out to include the other person that would join as steering committee in a sense that first they will get a name from the group in the room at this first.  This was my suggestion to see how we think about this.

>> BIANCA  HO:  That's good.  If people are more interested, they should have kind of made up their mind by now.  Again, go back to the list to approve.  So maybe I should start with each group and then people put up their hands.  Yeah?  Or do we feel intimidated?  So, let's start with African group.  Who wants to be an interim committee for African group?  You have zero interests?  Yes, yes.  Is there anyone who wants to run for Asia Pacific group?  Okay.  Great.  Great.  Great.  Great.  Nice.  You already have one to start with.  So Samuel, you came in late, but can you tell us about yourself?

>> SAMUEL:  I'm Samuel from Hong Kong.  And I'm representative.  This is my first time to IGF.  I'm really interested in the Internet issue and also I want to promote in the Internet Governance for the world and SLA for Asia Pacific first.

>> BIANCA  HO:  Great.  Do we have volunteers?  Okay.  Instant European group.  Okay.  Great.  Great.  Great.  We have another one.  So Michael, he's been super active and he's been amazing.  The documents are ‑‑ fantastic.  Fantastic work.  Latin American and Caribbean group.  Is there anyone from that region here?  Latin America?  Latin American group.

>> PEDRO:  I'm Pedro from Brazil.  I'm not a candidate, but I would like to highlight a problem that you have three youth sessions going on right now.  People are scattered all around.  Maybe there are Latin American youth who would like to be here, but they have to be models.  I guess we may have a problem with that concerning legitimacy of whoever you choose here.  I would like to raise that question to be discussed or considered.

>> Can I say this?  That actually is a really good point in terms of ‑‑ just because we're here, I don't think we should have any preferential selection over anyone else.  I think ultimately even though yes.  I am happy to nominate myself and I would be happy to be a part of this, I would want approval from the list.  I would want people to be involved in the decision making.  I actually, you know, I actually motion that we just table this or that we just move this to the list and we ask there who would want to be involved.  Of course, we can go through this process.  If we need to have an election with statements of interest like for instance that many other internet governance‑related groups do, I think we should just do that because that's the most transparent and the most fair.

>> BIANCA  HO:  So I want to address Pedro, that's something we need to address because I think there are a lot of parallel sessions for a certain topic.  I think that's a matter of scheduling.  I am super thankful that we had one.  So there's that restriction that we have, but again, we will have everything through the less.  This is somebody putting up their hands now.  But if we put it on the list and somebody says oh, I wanted to run for it, that's totally fine.  We have one left and we can go through that and then move to of the agenda items.  The thing I wanted to lay out is a more concrete timeline than one month.  I felt it was more fate.  Go ahead, Martin.

>> MARTIN:  About we speak about transparency and we move on the list, people in the room are not on the list especially with first timers.  So I would also encourage all the groups to motivate the participants they are here with to join the Dynamic Coalition and take part on the list.  Of course they can also promote themselves and put themselves forward for the steering committee.

>> BIANCA  HO:  That's a really good point.  That's something we need to reach out.  That's a primary source of communication among all of us who are in different regions, different time zones, different everything.  Go ahead.

>> MIK:  Mik from the U.K.  Government has something to add.  Really good to have young people who are part of the government, part of the private sector listen to us.

>> I am not sure I qualify as young anymore.

[Laughter]

Terrible depression kicking it.  It's just an observation.  I can increase the participation in the U.K. and without sort of telling you guys what to do because just because some observations around your sort of processes.  So I'm on the government advisory committee at ICANN and we have been laughing because we had some elections for our GAC leadership committee and some of the issues that were coming up.  The government committee on our website we have our sort of operating principles and they set out the process for elections to the leadership committee.  As you can imagine, that is very extensive.  But it might be quite useful.  I can't see the process listed on the YCIG website.  I'm just thinking if there's people in the U.K. that might want to sort of participate, it would be helpful for them to know the process through which they can nominate themselves, even if they're not here at the moment.  I came in a bit late.  I apologize if you haven't already discussed timelines and the GAC principles, we have a clear set of timelines to have a sort of window by which people can nominate themselves and then a window by which if it has to go to an election, the other members of the committee or the (inaudible) can make their selection.  It might be something if you haven't already considered that in terms of process which will support that idea of transparency.

>> BIANCA  HO:  So we don't really have the operating principles because we don't have the charter who has that information.  So what we are trying to do is set up the interim committee to do the charter review.  I think our timeline poll is relevant.  We would just say let's do one month and people do agree.  I think setting up specific milestones like maybe in two weeks you have everyone nominate themselves and then in two more weeks, we appoint the interim committee member.  Yeah.  So that's ‑‑

>> I'll share the link to document.  It may be helpful or it may not.

>> BIANCA  HO:  We can also put it on the charter review as a reference document.  Thank you so much.  Okay.  For the timeline we just set out one month, but we will break it down in really timely comments.  One week, two weeks?  How much time do we need for the nomination for each of the regions?

>> YANIS:  This is Yanis speaking.  I think two weeks should be fine for a nomination period.  I am wondering if one month would be a good timeline because considering the holidays in December and January is probably like everyone might not be very attentive to e‑mail.  Yeah.

>> BIANCA  HO:  Yeah.  Please.

>> So we already had the point of timeline and a month was okay a couple minutes ago.  For the issue of holidays, if you don't ‑‑ if you're not working for participation full time, it is even better holidays because it is more spare time to attend to e‑mails, which is probably the bigger part of the mailing list.  That's more of an advantage for me.

>> Just ‑‑ yeah.  I think I totally understand, YANIS.  I do sympathize, but at the same time, Nick, one of our biggest problems is we're in a situation where it's the chicken and the egg problem.  We need to get a charter out, but we can't do that unless we get a leadership team and we can't get a leadership team if we don't have an interim process.  Once we have a charter set, we can then open up it for a non interrum committee, an actual appointed term and what not.  It's not this is supposed to be a charter steering committee.  I think it works for now and the sooner that we can get working on this, the better because these processees around internet governance are happening and the last thing we need is to not have youth involved.  I think we need to stay focused on what is our point and what are we trying to accomplish overall.

>> BIANCA  HO:  Anyone not on the table that wants to comment?

>> Well, if that's the case, if we have to reach the one less timeline, then why don't we set one week and everybody nominate themselves if they want to use and we'll use three week for consensus so that can talk about it if there are more candidates in one region.

>> More than three week.

>> BIANCA  HO:  More than three weeks work.

>> Yes.  One week for the record.  I have to run out quite soon, but I want to leave the issues ‑‑ I think you have this kind of interims.  So it would be great that we would know what the expectation is in the regions for participation.  You want to have the participation cross.  Otherwise you have to wait until IGF in the next meeting 2017.  So I would try my best to coordinate with the government.  The host country is coming from government and I need support for the youths specifically apart from the AIP.  So that's the main proposal I would like to hear also.  You can Connect Intercessionally what you would like to have the support from the host country.  So I will coordinate for sure with the team.  That is for sure, but I just left the issue for the other regions who would be actively working in this.  I like to hear what you like to have the support.  Do you like to have meetings then, a meeting to formalize this new IGF.  Please feel free to communicate and see what we can do there.  I hope to see you.

>> BIANCA  HO:  If people ever interested, how do they get in touch with you?

>> I will coordinate.  I still have to announce the working committee who will be here.  Because they support by the Telecom, telecommunications and if you come up with idea first, first come, first serve.  What youth is required and maybe it would be very interesting to see the youths more reasonable I would say.  We should be pushing this several times and you can see how important we have members here in government.  I don't know if it's from Sweden, UK and Thailand.  Come see the importance of youths and tell us what you need and see what we can do to really make it visible.

>> BIANCA  HO:  Thank you.  So someone is remote?  You got the mic?  I can read it. 

>> So, hi, everyone.  There was a small group and it would be good to announce this meeting and have the nomination and election of the mailing list.  I agree that it is better to have a clear timeline process in the meeting now first.  What is the detail of the upcoming month then to get approval from the mailing system to form the coalition.  Also have one suggestion.  Currently apart from the mailing list is a major communication and no place to store our documents, which is available to everyone.  That's a good point. 

So as a lot of online and offline initiatives like the meeting now ‑‑ sorry.  The document would be good to have an overall database in the Cloud to record all the documents or activities we've created.  Even the meeting minutes today would be good for online efforts to keep track of the existing one and better planning in the future.

>> BIANCA  HO:  Yeah.  I think that was a really good concrete suggestion and that's something the interim committee can put together.  Okay.  Great.  Great.  So, continuing with ‑‑ for the timeline, we haven't had any agreements so far.  Are we okay with the one week for a nomination and three weeks for consensus development?  Do we think that's sufficient?  Okay.  Okay.  Great.  Great.

>> Especially for the consensus reach part.  Of course we do agree by one month doing the consensus.  May I suggest we may have an actual date to be set up that we can have a check on which day.  So I think maybe we can set one month 10 January.

>> BIANCA  HO:  Yeah.  I agree.  That's clear.  Good.  Good.  Okay.  Are we set with the ‑‑ with the interim committee,d timeline and everything?  Is there anything that we missed?  Okay.  Okay.

You know we have 15 minutes last right now.  So again, there are a few agenda items that we can discuss and we can kind of come to an agreement to what to discuss.  How to better involve young people, maybe like teens on this, improvement of youth involvement in IGF in general this year and the collaboration we can do among this group.  Is there anything we want to discuss right now?

>> I just think of some of the logistic work we can do on coordination.  Maybe if we're in a group, we can have someone and volunteers to be the coordinators or the coordination group for the one week ‑‑ the one week we comment on the interim committee that is generalizing the list and sending e‑mails of these meetings and also (inaudible) of what should be done.  So I do think maybe we should celebrate a working group.  One person to be.

>> BIANCA  HO:  Somebody is a time keeper.  It's not that they have an interim committee position.  Just to be clear.  So I suggest David to do that because he has been doing an amazing job so far.  Is there anyone else who wants to help in that process just to keep us on track?  Done. 

So, again, near the next 15 minutes, what do we want to talk about?  How to engage younger participants?  How to improve youth involvement in IGF?  Then the collaboration among us.  Is there any specific topics that would be interesting?  Particularly I want to engage people who have not spoken yet because I think that's important to get everyone speak.  So maybe we can pass the mic to the kids over there and see what they want to discuss.  Maybe a way to start is ‑‑ young, but you're a new participant and one you have seen in IGF and maybe that's a good way to start.

>> What I see in IGF is that there are many young people like us.  In my opinion, I think we should tell the people from outside like the young people outside that us are participating in IGF and let them know that people can participate in something that's big and to let them know that if we can do it, then the young people can do it also.

>> BIANCA  HO:  That's fantastic.  I think it has to do with the promotion of other stakeholder groups.  I find it important where a multi‑stakeholder and everyone can speak.  In a lot of U.N. in conferences, most of the time you have to be (inaudible) to get outward.  This is an equal participation form.  Anyone else who wants to comment?

>> I think one of the things that can be improved and one of the things I notice is there are only youth participation in youth forums.  Some of the older youth might be interested in other issues.  But in those forms, there are let's youth speaking out because there are a lot of adults and professionals in those forms and I think that we want to involve more youth in other issues order than building capacity, we can maybe encourage them to speak up in those forms. 

Another thing is to promote youth coalition or a youth participation in these forms, education is very important even though a lot of times we think education takes a lot of time and it might not have the effect we want.  Sustaining youth participation really requires a promotion in schools and we lack that in Hong Kong currently.  I think that's a good way to do it.

>> For example, go to act concession.  There was one about the IANA post session ICANN.  So if people start talking in to try not to use abbreviations, they're using a done of abbreviations.  It is just really difficult to forward and it takes time to get into the process.  So maybe there is a lack of a good way of how to educate yourself as a young person and for the more complex topics and also maybe there is ‑‑ we have to rely on people to just speak up even though ‑‑ give them directive.

>> Always discuss some issues and we discover money problems, but without action plans or conclusions, the ‑‑ what we can do after wards.  I think youth not as complex as adults does.  So they can have more innovations and give us some point that can change the world but not adults.  So you can have more discussions of what we can change the world, but the issues that were happening mainly about youth.  Thank you.

>> BIANCA  HO:  That's a good point and sometimes I go to sessions and very frustrated because all I hear are problems and no solutions.  I think that's a very good point that was made.  I think Pedro wants to make a comment.

>> Pedro:  I vote for encouraging people to participate even though they don't consider themselves experts.  My advice is we might know more, but they can't know everything there is to know.  Win they start, you can already ask a lot of help to the conversation.  Never feel just because you're youth you can't help in a way.  Just by thinking differently and being young, you can already help.  As I said, start knowing what they don't know because they don't know everything.  You are already pretty much ahead.

>> So these are all great interventions and I completely agree.  One idea that I just had was ‑‑ forgive me if this is somebody else's, but we're obviously the biggest barrier is that many youth are in school at this time.  They obviously can't get off to come far away or to even participate remotely during the day because they obviously have schooling.  So what I'm thinking is I wonder if somehow we can work with a pilot group of teachers, for instance, especially those schools that are involved in this process to maybe have a teacher pick a digital issue that is relevant to them or to their class and then basically that teacher then ‑‑ I don't know if it would ‑‑ this is a very ‑‑ we set up a remote hub and get them participating online during a specific section relevant to that issue.  Let's say ITHA a tenth grade class about one thing, we can have the ‑‑ we can do a project about net neutrality and that teacher working with the schools and working with different aspects of the IGF, we can maybe get them involved in that discussion at the IGF.  At least they can be participating in that way.  Just an idea.

>> BIANCA  HO:  I love how ‑‑ at the end of the table, you already see a school teacher who's nodding his head.  I'll let him comment.

>> All right.  Totally agree, but one thing that I'm concerned is all are such good ideas, but when you pass this idea to school, as a teacher, we have to break it down.  That's more pieces like promotion.  Just say promotion and the students may not have any ideas, but if I break it down.  If I want to promote IGF, any ideas that you are going to do?  Videos?  Articles?  Anything?

>> Yeah.  To promote this IGF, you can do a lot more ways than just a Powerpoint and a screen.  Maybe we can share it through a video and for me, I think ‑‑ I'm not saying I'm very, very good at doing videos, but I mostly make videos.  So I think they'll also make it more interactive and fun for the children at school because they'll be bored like just with the Powerpoint just staring at the Powerpoint and a guy sharing.  Their reaction if we show a video, everyone will go wowing and then when they show a Powerpoint, they'll just clap.

>> Or maybe animation.  Then after we have that idea, we will help them to script it out or maybe as a teacher to talk about censorship or anything.  Then we can upload and share with each other.

>> BIANCA  HO:  Good point.  It's like we have very broad timelines.  It's better to break it down and make it more concrete.  So I see a few hands here.  Martin, you still want to comment?

>> MARTIN:  I wanted to ‑‑ I like the comments and I also hear a lot that young people are not experts or cannot do as complex as grown ups in the forums.  I'm a youth worker and I believe that young people do and can and that young people are experts.  They make better videos than I will and that's already cool.  Don't undersell yourselves or to believe that you can speak up or you have something to contribute because your experience are experiences simply missing in the forums.  That's why it is important to have young people here.  I would like to make a distinction of what you are talking about here and what we do in terms of youth participation because what we do here is sort of a matter discussion on how to get more young people involved and I think if you want to involve young people, the young people should come with an idea of what they want to accomplish, if they want to talk on IANA cybersecurity, whatever.  Then they should be in the forums and I don't mind if not all young people are here as long as the people here are still trying to create more spaces for people in the use IGF and try to make sure we create more possibilities to others outside of this room to IGF and get more young people here.  I think it is an important tool, but it is not necessarily the tool where young people should discuss the issues, but really more of that matter debate.

>> Yes.  Thank you.  I am really pleased you have come on to this discussion point because this is something I've been trying to work on in the UK in terms of increasing the participation.  I've been working with Flora.  Following the point, I would love to hear from yourselves how you ‑‑ what the best channels are to reach out to young people.  So I've been working with an organization called Child Net.  Our steering committee has.  I should get them in a panel.  I remember when I was in school.  I didn't pay a great deal of attention to some of those afterschool clubs.  I went down to the park and played football.  It didn't mean I wasn't interested in the thing.  I would love to hear about the best channels.  Someone mentioned to me, mentioned to IGF that youngsters these days they don't use Facebook anymore.  They use Instagram.  I would love to hear what are the best channels to reach out to young people in your regions and I will start to think about.

>> I think young people who are participant if they can have a word to a decision or being ‑‑ or (inaudible) to discuss or solve the Internet program.  We'll have more interest to started that meeting.  If we have educate children, it is not a best way.

>> Now in Hong Kong, it is only less than 1% people who know IGF.  I hope when I come back to Hong Kong I can share the information and my experience of IGF from social media to let more people know more about IGF.

>> BIANCA  HO:  I love that energy that's going around the room.  Again, you can talk to each other offline.  You don't need to talk open mic.  I am so glad to see so many people, different ages, different cultures and nationalities that speak up today.  So I will let one more intervention before I close.

>> Okay.  Thank you.  Oh.  It's okay?  Okay.  I'll do it quickly.  I am Sabrina and I come from France.  And what I wanted to say it was in France, I don't have numbers to present you, but it's very difficult to make youth in France get involved over Internet Governance issues.  What I've heard here was almost exactly what I felt.  It's very hard to go to the youth and to make them take part of IGF to make them realize how it's important for them because yes.  I used to think it was not important and it was difficult for me with all the matters to me wasn't around ‑‑ sorry.  Around internet.  So I joined the point here.  And the use is not the fact you make a video or to present them.  This is important.  You don't realize it, but I can tell you that it's important by making video or articles or so on, but just ‑‑ we ‑‑ it's ‑‑ we maybe have here everyone have to do something like activity and let them see by what we do that it is important.  I have the ID in France to create an annual open forum and at the beginning, it would not be known.  They will not be interested at the beginning, but little by little they will become to realize that it exists and know about it and maybe this time they will get involved like we want the youths to be involved this way.

>> BIANCA  HO:  That's a great point too.  So administrative items and I will send out what we discussed today to the mailing list.  For those not on the mailing list, please join.  It's a Google group.  So you can also see it in the document that we share which is IGF.asia/YCIGIGF.  So please join the mailing list and then we will convene from there.  Just as a wrap up, today we have thought about the roles and responsibilities for the interim committee and then there's also the interim committee where somebody put up their hands and we will let the list decide.  The time most importantly you will end in 10th of January. 

So the nomination is for seven days and consensus is another three weeks.  You will pick out who the five people would be.  And David would have the time keeping.  I think Michael would chip in as well.  That was super helpful.  There's a lot of energy we heard from how to engage younger participants and I bring back to mag as a whole IGF organization, but there's also more things we can do individually in our own countries or regions.  Again, I would like to congratulate all of you for a really interactive session.  It was really fun.  I love seeing everyone speaking up and we're looking forward to see you on the list and continue with Intersessional work.  Thank you.

[APPLAUSE]

Workshop ended at 10:34 a.m. CST