The following are the outputs of the real-time captioning taken during an IGF virtual call. 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, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.
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>> Good afternoon, evening, morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the virtual MAG meeting number XX which incidentally is -- I think we have broken the record now! So this is the highest we have had and it is a virtual meeting, we have had so many meetings. Yes.
As you know, this meeting is being recorded and also being transcribed. Please try and use the speaking queue if you can, if you cannot, then you can request the floor in the chat and we'll put your name up. With that, I'll give the floor over to Henriete to start the evening.
>> Good evening, good morning, good afternoon, everyone. I'm Anriette here. Do you mean this is the highest number of virtual calls any MAG has ever had.
Yes.
>> I propose we have one more next week so the record will probably stand for many years to come, which is not a bad thing.
Welcome, everyone. It is good to have and have come quite far this year, to be so close. I know it feels very stressful, I know the secretary is incredibly overworked at the moment but I think it is exciting that we're nearing the end of this work cycle.
So tonight is going to be our second to last call before the IGF actually starts. We can assess based on your feedback whether we need to have a call during the IGF, hopefully we won't, we can carry on working online. Agenda for tonight is number two, after the welcome from the chair, checking on action items from the previous meeting. We'll go through that very quickly.
Number three, updates from the IGF secretary on the State of preparations. There is a lot of updating that can be done, we'll see the landing page, we'll hear more about the training that's taken place, we'll hear about the high-level sessions and I want you to all start thinking of any questions that you have, any concerns that you have.
We'll do the poll again at the end to see how confident MAG members feel about the State of preparations and unless you actually voice your questions and concerns, it is very difficult to make sure we address them. Then we'll listen to the main session, organizing groups, so as I said last time, I would like you to focus not so much on the detail, I have looked at all of the session proposal, I think you're all more or less finished actually. What I would really like to you do, share with one another the logic, the narrative, how you approach the main session, what you want out of it. We'll look at the introductory session scripts, this is for the prerecorded video that a smaller team has been working together on planning.
A very important item, in fact, we may want to just add it as a separate item, although we can't cover it under the work of the secretary, the networking session, I posted the current outline today. Networking, it is an important component of the IGF. I want to discuss it, set a deadline for feedback and sign up for par facial. Getting input on the proposal that we have developed is particularly important.
That's the agenda.
Does anyone have any items to add? Nothing.
On that note, let's move on. Chengetai, can you take us through the action items from our previous call, please?
>> Thank you. Will do. The first action item was that MAG members from the Global South who wish to have their internet connection cost reimbursed to email the IGF secretariate and we gave a deadline, I think it was last week, last week Tuesday. We only got two MAG members that requested such funding. We assume those are the only two MAG members who require some support for the internet costs.
Then the second action item, draft communication plan, sending it to the MAG list for their information and the communication plan was sent to the MAG list.
Number three, MAG members, to share their experiences with conducting online sessions both good and bad with the MAG mailing list. If I'm not mistaken, I did see something from Jennifer, they just held their Asia-Pacific regional IGF so I'll just put that as tick, not a very strong tick but a tick nonetheless.
>> CHAIR: She definitely shared the information, a strong tick.
>> Okay.
Number four was main session organizing groups to report the content of the main sessions in the next MAG meeting. Yes, they're going to do that, it is agenda item number 4. We have seen the main sessions have posted updates on to the MAG list.
Number five, MAG members to reach out to their networks to see if anyone plans to announce funding support for IGF and the IGF +model at the IGF 2020. If so, the digital cooperation main session organizers would like to include these announcements in the digital cooperation main session. So I suspect those people who have any knowledge of such would have contacted the digital cooperation organizers. MAG chair to schedule a dedicated MAG meeting on the of discussion of the recommendations in the BPF report. So I did see emails going around on that.
>> CHAIR: Yes. I think Chengetai, you can tick that off. Thank you for everyone who has responded or closed that poll. The meeting will take place on the course of Monday, 26th of October.
>> Okay.
From the previous MAG as well we have MAG members involved in the thematic tracks, introductory sessions to work with the secretariate on developing a guide on how to make their recordings for the introductory sessions. Yes, we had a meeting last week and Ben also produced a guide, thank you very much for all of your work.
It is really great. We're following that. Yes, we have received those drafts scenarios, and yes, it is fully underway. We're supposed to get the recordings on Fridays sent with the secretariate and they should be ready next week, Monday next week.
The next is for the narrative to provide a narrative description to accompany the flow charts describing the inputs and outputs of IGF 2020 and provide some more detailed timeline on what happens when in the processed during comment periods for the high-level documents created by the secretariate.
Sam, I'll get Sam to answer for that. O.
>> Hey, it is Sam here. An update on the timeline issue. We had hoped to be able to publish the guide for public comment today for me, it is tomorrow for most of you, but we're a little bit behind. The plan now is to be able to get the draft of over arching policy questions out for public comment as soon as boss to believe get them out separately to give us a couple of extra days to finalize the premeeting guide. Hopefully those high-level questions will be out either either really late tomorrow for you or Thursday.
>> Okay. Thank you, Sam. Those are all of the action items.
Back to you, chair.
>> CHAIR: Thank you for that Chengetai. Thank you for everyone that contributed to follow-up on the action items..
Any questions on this agenda item? I don't see any raised hands.
I just want to see, I see also here we have from New York, welcome! Thank you. It is good to have you for the meeting.
Let's move on. Item number 3, updates from the secretariate. Chengetai, I'm sure you have issues you want to brief us about. I have put a list in the chat of some of the questions that I have had from people that I have been approached by, from the MAG, from other stakeholders, so it would be good if we can go through some of those as well.
Chengetai, over to you.
>> CHENGETAI MASANGO: Thank you very much.
For the first thing, because I know I would like -- we have a soft deadline, yes, you can register ten minutes before the session you're interested in, it would really help us if people do register in advance and remember you can only access the full schedule when you have registered, it is important to seen up what you have wanted to see on the schedule so people can see who else will attend that session. I would first of all ask all MAG members to please register and my second request is that could you please send it out on your various networks and mailing lists for people to register for the IGF 2020 meeting. It would really help us just planning wise and seeing what's what.
Thank you for that.
So the first thing, on the list, it is we have been working very hard, Lewis has been working as well as Serena working very hard on the IGF website. The first thing we would like just to show you is the landing page for the IGF 2020. I would like to give the floor to Serena and maybe she can take us through that.
>> SorinaTeleanu: Thank you. Hello, everyone. I hope you hear me well. I will try to share my screen if he can do it. I'm cohost now. Thank you..
I'll guide you quickly through the landing page, though I guess many of you have seen it so far, it has been shared on the MAG list.
What we have tried to do, to build a new landing page only as some sort of an entry point to IGF 2020. This is from the main website, it is built in word press A completely separate thing but all of the links you will find through the new landing page, it will take you to the main website. Keep in mind, it is just the landing page, it is not supposed to have too much changing content.
Scrolling through it, I just show you a bit of what we have here, we have number, we have, of course, the most important things which are the registration deadlines and then during the meeting, quick links for people to go to the schedule, to participate online and then to follow the live streaming if they want to do so on YouTube.
We have a quick menu, allowing people to have a general overview of IGF 2020 and the main things that will be happening and it goes from anywhere to the 2020 schedule, the thematic track, some of the high-level tracks, ways to prepare for the meeting, opportunities to meet and to interact with other people and then, of course, the last point on meeting outputs which we'll be adding during the meeting itself.
These are just a series of links, clicking on them either through to the main website of IGF or through some of the sections down through the page.
We have a bit on the thematic track, just a quick intro for people that come into this page to know what the main -- four main tracks are and the links to both the schedule and more information about the track and we have an extra theme, I don't know how to call it, but it is there, and then, a quick overview of the main session formats and that's under the main tracks and then some quick notes on the intersessional activities and also the NREs collaborative session, the same for the high-level sessions and the parliamentary roundtable and also the youth engagement opportunities at the IGF and networking on the IGF village and there is a separate point on the networking opportunities later on in the call.
Again, it is just providing quick overviews and listings and links to more information either on the interactive schedule or on some of the pages on the main website and as I have said, outputs, it is something that we'll be adding on the main website as we start the meeting. Some sort of an encouragement for people to join some of the IGF discussions and contributing to the debates with some of the high-level people and we'll have a separate page with more people mentioned there. This is a work in progress and just a short section about the IGF and links, what we could do to find more information about the IGF itself.
That's basically it. So just to recap, it is a landing page, an entry point for people that want to attend IGF 2020 but most of the links go to the main website. That's it. I will stop here.
Chengetai, back to you.
>> SECRETARIAT: Thank you very much, Serena. Congratulate Serena, she did this in a very, very short time and did a fantastic job.
If nobody has any questions we'll move on to the next -- I will give the floor to Louise to tell us more about the general website, the trainings that he did, et cetera.
Luiz, to you.
>> Luis Bobo: Thank you. I'm not -- I see that there is a question, maybe it is to the previous point.
>> CHENGETAI MASANGO: Let me see. Its in the question?
>> Luis: Yeah.
>> CHENGETAI MASANGO: Jutta please and then.
I need glass, I don't wear glasses, that's a terrible myth!
>> Timea: A quick note to say thank you to the team, a fantastic job. Maybe I missed the email of the MAG, on the MAG list, I haven't seen that there is a website, sorry about missing the emails. I was very pleasantly surprised to see all of the great work.
So really awesome job everyone that was involved in that.
Just a quick question, because so far I have been guiding everybody to the main IGF website and now I'll try to find a link between what is on the main IGF website under IGF 2020 and this page. I couldn't find one. Is this -- is this to be treated as two separate items, we keep everything on the process and all of that, let's call it on the old IGF website? Now are we supposed to direct people to this new word press site? What's -- what's the interaction?
>> SECRETARIAT: Okay. Yes. I understand your question. It is not actually a site, it is a landing page that just gathers everything to do with the IGF 2020 meeting in one place so that people can easily find information about the themes, information about the schedule, about the speakers, et cetera, all of the links to that page do join to the regular IGF website. It is basically just a if a said, a dashboard to make it easy for people who come to find information about IGF 2020 meeting. Does that make sense.
>> CHAIR: The question, it is for promotion purpose.
>> SECRETARIAT: Yes. Yes. If you want to. We have the link, we'll make it live tomorrow. We wanted to show you first in case there is something that we have missed because plenty of eyes and if you don't have any comments that will preclude us making it active, we will make it active. We wanted to show the MAG first.
>> CHAIR: That's right. Chengetai, just a few comments in the chat as well, that it would also be important for us to make it possible for people to go back to this landing page once they have navigated away from it to the main site. That's something that we should accommodate. Let's see that comment there.
Anyway, about aic to you, Chengetai, there are more people --
>> SECRETARIAT: If you have comments, yes, please just let Serena and Lois know, nothing is ever 100% complete, it is always a work in progress as long as it is good enough to make it live tomorrow and then we can add the additional as we go along because time is getting short.
People think it looks good. We will make it live tomorrow. We will make changes or slight adjustments as we go along if that's okay with people.
Jutta.
>> Jutta Croll: Thank you for giving me the floor.
My question is related to the slide deadline for registration. We are going to send out a newsletter, an email to our network of people reminding them of the IGF, of the program referring them to sessions that relate to their special interests. Of course this will go out by this week saying you should register until October 26. Still, there might be people who then are intimidated and would not try to register after October 26th. When would you make it public that you could still register? I know it is -- it's a matter of -- it would be difficult for the secretariate to receive too many registrations later during the IGF, but still people somehow need to know that it will be possible and I don't know how to communicate that.
>> SECRETARIAT: True. It is possible. I wouldn't say it is -- I use the word a soft deadline so it is a soft deadline. We'll still be accepting registrations on the 27th, 28th. It is just if people -- I know registration is -- well, I mean, stages is not that difficult on our site if you have registered before. You could mention, yes, it is not a hard deadline, it is a soft deadline, but gentle them that we really do appreciate if they would register early.
I think that's the only way to do it. We shouldn't -- we're in the trying to frighten people, no. We just are asking for their cooperation.
>> Jutta Croll: Thank you. That's good.
>> SECRETARIAT: Thank you. Gunela.
>> Gunela Ashbrink: I want to mention on the landing page, it looks very clear,, with significant heading, linking in, so forth, but I did a very quick check on the web wave accessibility tool and it does not mean the agency guidelines. I realize this was done very quickly, and you have done a great work making it look good but it does not meet the website accessibility guidelines and the Dynamic Coalition on accessibility and disability responded on the schedule and there were some concerns there and I think in the future we really need to make sure that there is an understanding of web accessibility any time some new online facility gets put on the website or landing page or whatever because we're excluding a number of people in the community.
I realize, it is very short notice to be making changes but I needed to say that and we need to find a pathway in the future, and I have some ideas, on how we can avoid this happening again.
Thank you.
>> SECRETARIAT: Thank you very much, Gunela. It is very important. We'll see about what what we can do to improve the accessibility as we go along. I'm sure there are some things we can do. It may not be perfect but we'll try.
Yes. We'll meet and -- I think it is time that we do meet with the group, in fact, I'm a member of the mailing list, et cetera, but I think, yes, we can arrange a time where the group can meet with the secretariate because we all chip in and discuss this issue.
Thank you.
If there aren't any more questions, then I will hand the floor over to Luis.
>> Luis Bobo: Thank you, Chengetai.
Just just to clarify, the idea, it is that this landing page, please anyone correct me if I'm wrong, this landing page, the idea is that we already have the current IGF 2020, the main tool that is linked to this landing page n is the entry page to the IGF and from this page everyone can access everything, registration, access the village, so this is just the landing page, the entry page.
S? You are okay with the landing page as Chengetai said, we will make it live basically meaning that instead of going directly to the IGF interactive schedule as it is now, they could go to the landing page.
That's one thing.
I'm not sure exactly what you want me to go deeper into.
I will explain a little bit about the trainings that were conducted last week and this is in the minutes -- in the agenda, sorry. Basically, we had many more people than in other similar trainings that we have had in previous years. Of course, this is because this year it is fully online meeting. In total, we have almost 300 people participating, which is a very good number considering that there is 200 sessions and we usually invite everyone but not necessarily every speaker from every session because they can spread the word of the recording. There were a lot of participants. The sessions, both were a little over time, so 5 minutes over time because there was really a lot of participation and questions, that's very good because it means that people of course had doubts but the doubts, they have been solved and people wanted to show many different notes starting from accessibility to how to join the sessions, about the rules, about the roles and technical needs. According to the meeting, we have extended our pagewithsomeFAQs,sothey'retherewithparticipants how they can reproduce or play a video online and in the meeting or how they can access the meeting, et cetera, we have it started, this is a live FAQ.
>> SECRETARIAT: Let me intercorrect quickly.
Silvia had a specific question on playing video, we checked it out and as Luis explained, there are some settings in Zoom that you can optimize when you share your desktop playing videos. I do understand what Sylvia was say, sometimes when people play videos, it is jerky, the voice and the picture doesn't sync up. When it was -- when Lu. S demonstrated it to us, it worked very version well.
Sorry, carry on. Of.
>> Luis Bobo: Thank you.
That's the main point. maybe also to note, that there were tips for the session organizers about branding the session, these things that we have in the tools for the session organizer, for example about putting this presentation with the agenda at the beginning, maybe taking a snapshot picture of the session, if they want to share it later. Things like that.
There was also the introduction of this, maybe this is not -- maybe the management is not fully aware, every session can take questions in advance from the audience. That's open. Anyone accessing the sessions, they can already send questions in advance to the authors. The authors can see the questions at all time and they can see them live. They can answer these questions or these requests and comments during the session or before the session.
The feedback, after the session, there will be a feedback also which is common for all sessions but basically asks about what's important in the session for the audience and what is the take away from the session and also the quality of the session and the quality, technical quality and also the content quality. This is as in previous year, but so far, it has not been used. This is more or less a little bit like taking the information for taking stock from the IGF. There is this audience feedback, and also it has been prepared for the reporting from the authors.
I don't know, Chengetai, anything else I can say but I'm happy to answer any questions. I see Sylvia, but I'm not the chair, back to you.
>> SECRETARIAT: Thank you very much, Luis, let's wait for questions and we can answer questions from the MAG.
Sylvia, please.
>> Sylvia Cadena: Thank you for the hard work on the landing page and thank you for the explanations. Thank you for the comment from Gunela on making the comment on accessibility.
Without sounding like a party pooper, my apologies if I do, be signed the comments on accessibility I think it is very important to just, you know, if you're asking for approval from the MAG to go with this landing page, just to have a view of how actually the functionality would work between what is the purpose in the page that will replace the landing page of the existing website and how all of the content that's behind that page will go back to that homepage because the existing website doesn't have, you know, its that many -- that gray bar, many what we have seen beneath the logo, the text description, the text engine, if you navigate from those, you don't go back to the homepage. You will lose the EC entry point at almost any given time.
My suggestion, the question that I have had about the landing page, in my mind, I was thinking if the second level page for this was going to be embedded, a header or footer on that word press design that allows pour people to go back and forth to just make sure that there is some integration between the two, it is quite different when a local host organized their own website because they have a limited number of sections that are transporting, all of the local logistics things that are communicated and then some local hosts, article, things like that, they're hosting and it was from last year but it is quite different from the integration with existing website that is in -- I don't know if the content, for example, with the interactive schedule, it is behind that login page, if you're in that login page, you lose the connection with the landing page. I'm sorry for making that comment.
>> SECRETARIAT: We understand.
>> Sylvia Cadena: It take as long time. I said them with good intentions. I hope you don't misunderstand.
>> SECRETARIAT: No. No. No. That's great.
>> Sylvia Cadena: Sorry, just before I lose my train of thought, you know, the accessibility guidelines, it was mentioned about the colors, that that's important, because it drives the contrast and when you apply those in Word Press, some will tell you which clears work, is something -- it take as little bit to actually finish it off, but it might not be that impossible to achieve at least for that landing page.
Thank you.
>> SECRETARIAT: Thank you very much, Sylvia.
Just for the colors, we did have a lot of discussion about the colors and thanks to Sam she produced a lot of tables of color compatibilities, et cetera. We did work on the colors, but we'll do another review of the whole thing and see how close we can get to the accessibility standards.
Thank you as well for your comments about the back and forth. Yes. We will try to make sure that we'll try to make it as seamless as possible of getting back and forth.
My next point, this is the IGF 2020 site. It is different from the main site. You will still be able to access our normal site through the normal way and then when you go to the IGF 2020 site you go through it this way. Just to make it clear that the IGF 2020 site is not going to completely takeover our site because there still will be other people that still want to do the Best Practice forums, do something else within the website. I'm just putting that out there. Yes.
Thank you for your comments. I like critical comments. I think it is good. We may not be able to do everything that you suggest, but at least we know which direction we should be heading towards.
Timea.
>> Timea suto: Thank you, Chengetai. I don't want to go in a different direction before people add what they want to say on this point.
>> SECRETARIAT: Okay. I don't know.
Carlos, what's your comment on?
>> Carlos Alfonso: It is really quick, just adding to what Sylvia said, it is how the functionality of the landing site works for people using a cellular phone. Word press usually has this functionality very well handled. It would be good to test it because people may cash yal or frequently connect through a cellular phone.
>> SECRETARIAT: Yes..
We will test it again -- sorry, I hop around too many things in the secretariate. It is, if I'm not mistaken, it is my understanding that what we use should also be mobile friendly. I don't know how mobile friendly but it also should be more mobile friendly and we'll go back and check it again. It should be mobile friendly, it is one of the reasons why we chose this.
Thank you.
Timea, please.
>> Timea suto: Thank you for indulging me.
I wanted to ask quickly for clarification from Luis about possibility to raise questions to session organizers before the session starts. I think that's a brilliant idea. I don't know who came up with that, I commend the person who thought of it.
I think it will be very helpful for the session organizers as well to prepare. What I wanted to know is how will the session organizers get the question, will they receive an email, do they have to go to a specific page, how will the questions be reaching the organizers? I think it is very important that they do and that people know about this. It is a nice feature.
>> Luis: I'm happy to answer. Thank you for the question.
This has been shown in the webinars and very wisely, there is included in the landing page. The landing page, there is a small section, like my IGF, a similar thing, for regular participants, people can access their schedule and there is a section for my session, everybody can access the sessions that they're managing, and there in the sessions that they're managing, you can access the questions that have been raised to your questions at the moment.
This was setting the webinar, it will be there for them to access and people will see who raised the question so that they can address the point directly to the questioner or they can -- they can just put it in the session, they can put it in contact with each other as well.
>> SECRETARIAT: Thank you very much, Luis.
I see Jennifer.
>> Jennifer Chung: Thank you. A follow-up question on what you just explained to. If you look in the my administrator sessions, these are just people who have the access rights to change session content and description of the website. I'm assuming that is possibly just one person per session, whether it is main or workshop or can you clarify on that?
>> Luis: That's the case. We have to play with the permissions and we can -- external permissions for some things and not other things easily. That's the case. There is a main proposal, the one with the access to these things, they're working and can -- they contact each other for everything that can be raised. Yes. When you administer the session, the session you directly own yourself.
>> Jennifer Chung: Thank you for the clarification.
>> CHAIR: A quick interjection there, I think we may want to anticipate there are some people who are the proposer, the person that submitted the proposal, they're not necessarily the main organizers. So I'm not sure there is a way that we can just alert people to the fact that the session proposals, those are the ones that should be looking out for these questions. Maybe it can be just included in the FAQs actually..
Back to you, Chengetai.
>> SECRETARIAT: Thank you.
The next thing, I wanted to touch upon as well, it is something that was shown to us, and we thought it was a good idea originating from our colleagues in New York, it is the concept of voluntary commitments and pledges.
There was the ocean conference, also I think the roadmap for digital cooperation, the Secretary-General's call for champion, et cetera.
What we would want to do is to get moderators, even get participants to make voluntary pledges or commitments to do something towards internet governance, strengthening internet governance, be it what may. It can be a soft page and it can be a hard pledge as well, something really substantial but it could also be to cooperate with the other stakeholders in doing something. These are the type of things that we would think it is a very good idea to get as a final thing from panelists.
I'll put in the ocean conference, they had a registry of commitments, as soon as I find the chat, I'll just put a link there in the chat so you can see a little bit of what I'm talking about. Of course, these will be aimed at internet governance strengthening collaboration, coordination, capacity building. Think you it is a good thing that we can collect these things and at the end we can have a summary of it and next year we can see whether or not these commitments or pledges have been followed through.
Was that clear?
>> CHAIR: I think -- well, this is the first I hear of this. I think it is a good idea. I think it needs to be formulated and thought through in the context of the IGF. I think it could be -- so yes, personally I think its a good idea and I think we need to think it through a little bit and so maybe you should just write-up a proposal of how you see this operating, send it to the MAG and then the MAG can comment.
Does anyone have any initial reactions or comments to the idea right now?
>> SECRETARIAT: Roman offered to help in the writing. That's good, Roman. Thank you.
>> CHAIR: And --
>> Roman Chukov: Chengetai, I'm happy to help you, let's stay in touch on this.
>> CHAIR: Corene's hand is up. I didn't know if you wanted to comment on this.
>> Karim Attoumani Mohamet: I had a question on the landing page developed with World Press, is it possible to add a plug in for translate to allow people speaking other language to have a good translate of this landing page? Thank you.
>> SECRETARIAT: Thank you very much, Karim. We'll put it on the list and see if it can be done, yeah.
>> CHAIR: And just to get back to your proposal, Chengetai, it would also be good, you know, to talk to Sam about it just in the context of IGF outcomes and the existing process for capturing outcomes. This will be adding another type of outcome and we should just make sure it is end grated into the communication strategy.
I mean, before --
>> SECRETARIAT: I see hands up. Sorry, I see two hands up.
>> Titti spays Cassa: Thank you.
More clarification on the meaning of making pledge. I had the same difficulty, when I was trying to support Hannah with a main session with the roadmap on digital cooperation. After some explanation, I understood that in this case, the first part of the session, it is just focused on making the discussion and also on making pledge.
I understood that making pledge in this case means take the availability of people just to implement some pieces of IGF Plus model or something like that. So essentially, I want to understand this case, making pledge, what does it mean? Just giving some thoughts to the IGF secretariate or is it --
>> SECRETARIAT: It is not a fund. It is an action.
>> Titti: A action.
>> SECRETARIAT: A soft action, something that they can do to further earn governance, whether it be capacity building, whether it be just --
>> Titti: Could be policy recommendation, if someone --
>> SECRETARIAT: Yes.
>> If someone gives a recommendation, it is important to understand what is the the set of mentales that could be done.
>> This is Wai Min Kwok: This came as -- through some discussion with DESA and the management. I would say that we certainly I support what's been said, we should have a more structured approach to this, but I would just like to add it was a suggestion from DESA, and this also comes from a call from many UN bodies. The terms we have used, we're more comfortable with, it is voluntary commitments, so not a pledge, but we can come to the semantics of the use of the terms. Essentially, it is voluntary, it is commitment to the agenda of the internet governance and need not be financially or to any specific, so in fact, it is quite broad. In fact, if I recall, for past IGF, we always hear from different organizations, government, even individuals on what they're doing in terms of furthering the agenda, where is it for inclusion on data, security.
This we actually have -- within the system, we believe we'll be able to mobilize commitment from the various UN agencies and contributions towards IGF and IGF dialogue, but of course we're we're not confining it to the IGF system, because it is IGF, it will be stakeholder. One strategy, it is now that as we're approaching and we have confirmation of the high-level invitations, we're going to also ask for them, the specific -- whether it is high-level organizations or individuals on the voluntary commitments. It is not to have any ambitious, not that we have to achieve X and X but it should fit to the broader objective of the internet governance this year.
We're thinking this could be good because it is hosted by the UN, that this year is virtual, and at the same time, it is the midpoint of the current mandate of IGF, it is for this multiple reason, the suggestion came late, DESA, we actually would like to strongly support this and we will be with the help of Sam and the rest of the secretariate staff, we'll come up with more structured work on this when we start to do the outreach.
Back to you, Chengetai. Thank you.
>> SECRETARIAT: Thank you very much.
Sylvia, is that a new hand up?
>> Sylvia Cadena: Yes.
Thank you for sharing this. I think this is very interesting. I really appreciate the language that you mentioned about the voluntary commitment to the internet governance agenda instead of a pledge, I think that's a lot more clear. To try to show my support, I think it will fit very well with the session proposal for the program for this year, the previous years, we have the proposed outcome, this idea about concrete actions that can happen after each session. It was not clear what people could do, then a lot of people, they were just able to say, the outcome will be just a discussion and here is the transcript, here is the video of the session which is kind of like just this one thing and not necessarily follow-up, taking the agenda forward in a local context, within IGF, things that happen anyway, people don't have a place to share them with the secretariate.
Maybe I'm not clear or I'm not remembering correctly how that section is shown on the submission proposal form for the proposal but if it could be linked to that, that may be simplified, the process giving people an idea of looking to discussions that you did at the IGF, you can take them forward and commit to them voluntarily and let us know what happened. Of course, it is not a given. To give you an example, when the IGF decided to incorporate an environmental thematic track, my personal commitment was to try to make a similar segue with the IGF and submitted one proposal on the environment, included in the agenda which Pablo took over in coorganizing and now we're working with a group of people to put together a proposal for the environment on what came out of that initial approach to submit to this MAG for consideration for the IGF next year.
There are a lot of things that can collected and colated and organized. People that have not -- that are not in government, they do not see or have the space to say how they personally are contributing to the agenda and moving on the needle with the SDGs and that's something that's very interesting.
Thank you very much. I really like this idea. I hope to make it work.
>> CHAIR: I suggested earlier, I think we need to call next -- need a call next week. I suggest if UNDESA and the secretariate can put the prom in write, explain how it links to the existing mandate of the IGF, how it will reinforce what we're trying to achieve without distracting from the proposal or establishment of DC, so on, it is -- how to connect it all at no particular time. I think to respond to the opportunity of the digital cooperation process as said. Let's discuss it next week. In fact, if you could even have a template of what the commitment and form would look like, that would be really great and then we can make a decision on that or how to move forward with that next Tuesday.
I'm kind of worried about time now.
We nearly are done with our first hour and we have quite a lot more to discuss.
Is that okay, Wai Min for you to put that proposal, Chengetai, to send it to the MAG list and we discuss it online and we can finalize how to proceed next Tuesday.
>> Wai Min: Yes. Thank you.
>> CHAIR: Good. Chengetai, if you can also just update, there are a couple of things that I have made on my list, we need to move quickly.
Luis, if you can remind the MAG members of all the tech support that will be available for session organizer, you have given them a sense of what's available online, the FAQ, it is a great idea, there will be help available, but what the volunteers that will be supporting session organizers, what they'll provide and then Chengetai, if we go through the communication strategy, in particular that part of the strategy that MAG members need to participate in implementing in order to promote the IGF. Luus, if you can tell us a bit more on what supports are available pour organizers.
>> LuisBobo: Yes. Including in this webinar, it has been told to the session organizers that there will be at least two people hosting the session and for them to be helped with all of the technical things that they may need. The idea, and this was one of the main points of the webinar, it was that the conducting of the session content, the discussion of the session moderators and organizer, they were said that they would be able to have different moderators for different times and the rest of the things would be in the territory of the IGF through the figure of this host and there will be two per sessions. They will do everything with the streaming of the recording, the interpretation, and the interpretation when there is interpretation, everything that may be needed for them and also helping them and supporting them in case of any doubt if they cannot share a comment or if they have any doubt about the session or the IGF program, et cetera. The people will have the support of the IGF behind them. It will be just basically following all of the sessions.
>> CHAIR: Thanks a lot for that, Luis.
Everyone, if you have question, let's take them at the end of this.
Chengetai, back to you. If you can just -- I'm putting it in the chat again, thank you for sharing the communication strategy. I think you or Sam sent it to the MAG. I urge everybody to look at it. It would be good, Chengetai, if you and or Sam can just outline that part of the communication strategy that's relevant to this preIGF phase.
>> SECRETARIAT: I'll hand the floor over to S
>> You should be able it see, this is a detailed version of the communication plan that I'm working on in the background (Sam) we have -- I devoted the communication -- divided the communications to before, during, after. You may remember from the two-page version I talked about different objectives from communications. In the preIGF communication section all forms of communications are on the board. This is just a quick overview to give you an idea of the sorts of information would follow. So some of this stuff, it is about presenting information and that's -- that's more specific information. This is also just generally promoting the IGF and activities and trying to encourage people to engage, participate, and as secondary communications is to help people prepare and also to encourage sharing of content.
That's particularly where the MAG comes in.
What I'm going to do, a lot of the premeeting communication, it is going to be about things like the various guides produced on how to participate. I will stop sharing this and share another document.
Just one moment.
I have way too many Google documents, Tabs open, current tabs.
Sorry. One moment.
Basically, as I'm still looking for it, the premeeting guide will be the basis of a lot of communications we produce. The information in that will -- parts of it will be pulled out for communication strategy -- for the media pack and we can use that information to create social media content that can be distributed by the MAG. I cannot find it. There it is. I think it is this one. I just went to the wrong -- this is the wrong tab. I apologize for my incredibly insane number of Tabs you see on top of the screen. Okay. Here we are. So this is a draft of the guide. It is a draft. I have to go through it. The concept is to frame why IGF is happening online, what opportunities it has presented, how to use the guide, then to help people prepare for the IGF itself, explaining that the concept of how the thematic tracks were chosen, how the session organizers have been working towards that and then help participants themselves prepare for the IGF and I'll talk about the overarching policy questions in a second. So the concept of the voluntary contributions is commitments, new to me, it goes to the clear actionable outputs, the idea of this, it is to help session organizers prepare what they will put into the report and to understand the importance.
We have new fields such as key takeaways. The field that Sylvia is referring to before, it is policy recommendations and suggested way forward.
And the thematic messages, you will be able to connect overviews for each of the things and this appears in the guide for a full document that will come out and if I swap -- can you now I hope see the over arching policy questions document? These are the draft policy questions we have put together based on analyzing the 200 plus sessions. Because they are fairly high-level, we have added context. Threes go out for public comment in the next few days. This is to give you an overview of what it looks like, a sneak peak and they'll go out for comment, so when that happens, feel free to comment.
I think that's -- oh, that's the other thing.
We will -- the IGF will have the assistance of a graphic designer from New York when he is made available we'll be able to put together some templates that session organizers can use to promote their sessions. So when that happens, we will provide that to the MAG and to the community as soon as we can.
Back to you, Chengetai, Anriette..
>> SECRETARIAT: Thank you, Sam.
Do we have any questions? If not, we'll just go to the next -- I'll try to be very brief as well since we're running out of time.
>> CHAIR: Chengetai, I just wanted to add an action item here, just looking at the chat. I think we need, the secretariate needs to send the MAG information on where they can access the tools, everything that the MAG can and should be using to promote the IGF. If we can just make that easily available to the MAG, that would be good.
Thank you for that, Sam.
Back to you, Chengetai for updates on the high-level track.
>> SECRETARIAT: Okay. High-level track series, we do have -- let me just go quickly with the parliamentary roundtable. That is going to happen. This parliamentary roundtable, it is in cooperation with the interparliamentary union and of course it will leadoff from what happened in Berlin IGF and we do have people from the Berlin -- from Berlin who helped organize the Berlin IGF helping us as well.
So the aim is to bring together members of parliaments from all over the world to discuss trust in the time of COVID-19. The title of it is building trust in the time of COVID-19. There's going to be a statement produced and the interparliamentary union is working on that as well amongst its members.
That's for the parliamentary roundtable. I think invitations are going to go around to parliaments from around the world. Some will go to individual member, the others will go to the presidents or heads of the parliaments to select somebody to be in the meeting.
We have the high license level leaders track which we're working on, the five sessions in this track and we are -- so it is the title of it, it is internet governance in the age of uncertainty. We have the health implications, the economic implications, the social dimension, the socialism indications and am I missing one? Can somebody shout out what the other one is? Please? I always do this.
>> TimeaSuto: Security.
>> SECRETARIAT: Yes. Security implications.
So we have invited a wide range of leaders and also youth. We're not forget being the youth as I said, we have listened carefully during the open mic session of the Berlin IGF, we had a lot of youth coming forward saying that they need to be more involved. We have a youth representative at the opening and we have a youth representative at the closing as well.
The youth are being represented.
We have ministers of economy. We have got somebody from WalMart. We have got a whole range. We have somebody from the Vatican. We have Civil Soci represented as well.
As soon as everything is confirmed we'll make everything public. We don't want to make everything public in this moment in time until we have all of the speakers and panelists confirmed. They will be moderated by several high-profile moderators for instance we have Jonathan Charles from the BBC and we have an editor from LaSta mpa, an Italian newspaper, we have sub from DeutchAgala and a journalist from Moroco., we want to make it as interactive as possible.
Also we would like to thank the MAG members for helping us to get some of these panelists. There will be a lot of UN representative, especially from the regional headquarters. Yes. Of course, the to secretary general will be there as well. The Secretary-General will give opening remarks. Stop me if I'm saying too much. We'll have Chairing the president of the General Assembly as well. It is still a work in progress, hope to finalize everything by next week.
>> CHAIR: Chengetai, when will information about the high-level track be online.
>> SECRETARIAT: As soon as -- we hope that we'll be able to publish everything next week when we have everything finalized.
>> CHAIR: It was -- I think it is difficult to promote the high-level track if there is no information available about the high-level track. Even if you don't have speakers, maybe just a little bit more information about the sessions and perhaps the names of the session moderators and it would be useful if you could put a little bit more up even though you haven't got all of the confirmations.
>> SECRETARIAT: Sure.
>> CHAIR: Shall we move on in? Any questions on this? I don't see any hands.
Did you want to add anything to this.
>> Wai Min: No. We hear you. We actually would like to publicize that and this will come next week. Certainly we have a number of confirmations by now n addition to the landing page, we're also seeing if we can have a special order for the high-level speakers, so not necessarily duplicating the specific speaking role but we can actually put together the landing page like what you see now, that's already been put together, that's including yourself, we have the confirmation and we have the rest.
>> CHAIR: That would be fantastic.
Thanks.
I think next, it is part of the update from the secretariate, it is the networking sessions. Chengetai, if that's okay, if you don't have anything further at this point, should we present the plan for the networking sessions?
>> SECRETARIAT: Please do.
>> CHAIR: Okay. Let me share my screen. Luis, can you enable screen sharing for me, please.
>> LuisBoBo: You should be able to do that now.
>> CHAIR: Thanks a lot.
So Ana and I will present this. I will present the general approach. I hope most of you have had a chance to look at the document that we sent earlier today.
The first thing it understand, the networking sessions will take place in those time slots in the IGF schedule that are designated as networking breaks. These networking breaks will broadly be supported in the following way: Firstly, there will be open networking sessions which all participants can sign up for. They will be -- people will be invited to sign up, to join these sessions, the specific sessions that are indicated on the schedule. Some of them are facilitated, you will see, some have specific topics and we'll go through all of those a little bit later.
For example, some of them are regional get togethers, some are meeting Dynamic Coalitions, BBPs, NRIs, and Ana will go through them. They have all been scheduled, scheduled already. We'll try to make them in time zones that are friendly for people from that particular region.
Then, innovation, it is to have the second type of networking, the open slots which people can apply to book before the IGF starts. We'll distribute the sign-up form, they'll have to book by 28, October. They'll have to say we want to schedule a town hall session on.org for example, just using that as an example because there was a lot of networking and town hall type discussions on that in Berlin at the IGF because .org, it was a very big issue. The idea is to give people the opportunity to apply to host some of the sessions. We'll be vetting them, and there are only a limited number of slots available for them.
Thirdly, we really need MAG participation for these sessions.
Sorry, I jumped up there. Ana will go through them in more detail. You will see that several of the sessions, we really want to try and run with MAG member involvement either as coordinators of for example a coffee break and language or as participants to be anchor participants and to help animate the networking sessions.
Again, just all sessions are 16-minutes long as indicated in the schedule.
Ana, can I hand over to you? We can see the -- we can keep the screen open and I'll try to be in sync with the presentation.
This is sessions we schedule sod far that we would like your feedback on.
Over to you.
>> Anja Gengo: Thank you for agreeing to help me navigate the document..
Let's go quickly through what we planned with the MAG members and see where we need to really have support if you want to implement this.
On the first page, we plan to reintroduce the newcomer track that we have for the three years, exceptionally, we didn't implement it last year because of the introductory sessions. The newcomer session will take place for 60 minutes, it is self-explanatory when I say it is for the newcomers to explain the structure of the IGF and what aspects specifically from the IGF 2020, how it fits in.
In parallel, if you could go a little bit down, yes, there is a networking session just for the session organizations, we're thinking that this could be a session for the organizations to -- organizers to have this last direct opportunity to ask if they have questions which are more of a technical nature or related to outputs. We still have to consult Luis and Sam, it would be good if some MAG members could attend some sessions.
Then on the third, on the 3rd, November, we have again two planned session, the first one, it is the session dedicated to explaining teams and tracks and allowing participants to engage with the MAG members, especially those in charge with the thematic track facilitation with the IGF secretariate, yes, on the tracks and what to expect also on the teams n parallel, there is the -- there is this lounge, it is a coffee break in your own language which was explained, participants need to sign up in advance. That's where we need MAG members to help us, especially the MAG members that speak particular languages which participants will sign up.
Then going to the next page, the 4th, November. For now we have scheduled one networking session that's related to the IGF Dynamic Coalitions, where the facilitators would be there to -- and to brief the participants more about the concept of DC, to engage, to do the informational out we hope that the facilitator also be able to join and facilitate this 60-minute break.
The 5th of November, similar to the first one, the DC networking session, focus the on the NRIs where the secretariate would work with other NRIs that are present here and it would allow participants to understand the concept of the NRIs, how the dynamics are happening in the various countries and regions and we would allow for breakout rooms. We will have to say if you want one on one communication with just -- an example, Nepal IGF, you can join perhaps the regional resume of the Asia-Pacific Nepal IGF wrinkles they would be, and this is practical, it will be challenging to put 131 breakout rooms but going per region, it is actually quite feasible..
On 6 November, we have facilitated by the IGF secretariate a joint tour of the IGF village. We'll work now closely in planning this break with all the booth organizers. After you as a couple of first minutes from this break will introduce the village and will navigate through the tour.
We will break into the breakout rooms that would correspond to individual boards and the participants, they have an opportunity to speak one on one with the booth organizers.
Parallel to IGF village and this is where we have to put it parallel, the so-called North American corner and so that would be basically a space for informal exchanges between participants from North American region to speak primarily about dynamics happening on internet governance in that region but of course it is open to everyone, it is focused more on the facilitation by those participants and on those topics, and, of course, having the MAG members from this region signing up to facilitate the session would be very helpful.
Then we're moving to the second phase. Because of the opening session and it is quite a busy day, during the 9th of November, we're not planning any breaks, organized breaks, but then on the 10th of November, it is the secondary phase, there is a space for participants to meet with the MAG chair and the MAG to have this informal friendly chat about what the MAG is doing, how to improve maybe the work, receive some suggestions for advancing the process, so on.
Anriette will take this, how to come up with the structure of the session.
And in parallel, if we have enough sign-ups for the Cafe break, the coffee break in your own language then we would organize this one and then the MAG members would be very much needed to help us to facilitate this session.
Then we have again, in the second phase, let's tour the IGF village, so second tour, it is slightly different hours so hopefully it will accommodate the America, first of all, same concept as explained in the first phase.
Inner parallel, we have the Latin American and the Caribbean corner, so the nature of these virtual gathering, it is the same, as I said, primarily we prioritized communities from the region to speak about the issues in the region that's open to everyone.
Then on 12 November, we have meet the BPF, there is no competing parallel break with the BPFs, we would work with the BPF facilitators on how to design the break. The idea would be that everyone just give an overall review of what the BPF concept is and then we would break into four different breakout rooms for BPF to have a close communication on a particular BPF.
On 13 November, there is the African corner planned. As I said, the nature of the regional corner,, it is the same. Parallel to the European corner, this is probably not the best possible solution but unfortunately we had to draw the line somewhere as we're lacking spaces. So African, European corner, it is in parallel, but as Anriette told me today, people are welcome to move from one room to another, it should not be that time consuming.
On the 16th of November, there is the Asia-Pacific corner, it is a standalone corner session here on the 16 of November and also the scope of the region, diversity there, and we'll facilitate all the regional participants to speak primarily about the regional dynamics and how can certain issues be resolved and connections established, so on.
MAG members from the region, they're most welcome to sign up to facilitate the break. Finally on the 17th of November, we have something that probably corresponds to our traditional open mic, it is sort of an interactive exchange where participants on how they found the IGF 202020 so far, their experience, what could be changed for next year and so similar then the secretariate and the MAG chair will facilitate this session as they will with the open mic if we would have had one in the traditional on site setting.
I think, Anriette, that's everything from me. Thank you.
>> CHAIR: Thank you, Anja.
I think that is it in terms of update from secretariate. I'm just checking for questions. Lu. S, put the speaker queue back up, please. Let's see if there is anyone that wants to comment? We will circulate a sign-up form to MAG members to get people to make a commitment to join us and to do it in a time that's convenient for you.
I'm checking if there are any hands. I don't see any.
>> Anja Gengo: Maybe in the chat, there was a question about -- yes. I see -- I think Sam shared again the document and it was shared with the MAG list earlier today. The document is available in the MAG list, and also in the chat.
There is a question can you explain how the North American corner can be included from Sylvia, that's a good question. I which we had honestly more space, the subregions, they're specific, we can also see that through the NRIs mostly, probably it would be useful to have the Asia-Pacific maybe represented as Asia and as the Pacific region because there are so many differences and challenges related to those regions. Unfortunately, we didn't have enough time -- enough space, sorry, enough time.
When we looked, yes, in the region, it made sense to include the North America -- it is parts of Central America, of course, there are specificities to that region on internet governance which wouldn't be otherwise included, I mean, if you would go, depending what is the criteria, if you go by the UN regional groups, then that wouldn't be really feasible because as you know, they could go by continent, then the question would be where South Pacific small islands, developing states would fall. This sounded somehow reasonable to us. Of course, we're most welcome to feedback and for your ideas. That's why we're discussing this. Sylvia, any idea on how the regional -- what would be the regional criteria for the break, it would be helpful for to us hear.
>> Sylvia: Thank you for that question. Thank you for the response, Anja (chair) there is -- we used the regions in a sense. We can change the regions. In fact, maybe a networking corner for small and developing states could be very exciting as well.
You know, I think we have enough slots actually (chair) we have three parallel sessions every day and we are not using them all up. That's why we're putting some of them out for application by people for town hall sessions.
I think let's -- Anja, let's see if MAG members want to propose even more region fall sessions or different configurations and we can see if we can accommodate that.
Let's continue discussing that, Rae respond to the proposal online and we can finalize which sessions to include when we have all next week.
Sylvia, your question, it is important to know who is behind the North American corner. I think -- there is a -- there is a North American IGF, I guess we would ask MAG members who are willing to just facilitate those sessions. As Anja said, the idea is that you can discuss governance issues relative to your particular region.
Let's move on, otherwise we are going to run out of time. Please do send your comments and reactions to the networking sessions proposal as soon as possible.
June, yes, I'll send a reminder.
I think it is time to move on to the next agenda item. I'm worried about time. Let's see if we can move quite quickly.
We have a half hour left.
Main session updates. You have all done a lot of work on that. Please let's have our reports. I think you don't need to go into a lot of detail. I really suggest that you just tell us the story of your main session, and then if you need any help.
As usual, let's go in alphabetical order and start with environment.
>> Timea Suto: Data is before environment, but happy to have environment first.
>> CHAIR: This is not the first time I do this actually! You know, I usually -- I used to be a librarian! I know the alphabet!.
Let's start with environment and then we'll go on to data!
>> Timea Suto: For sure. I'll keep it brief.
The team is on very good track. Thank you for everyone for the help. I presented last time as well on where we stand, the concept really for the session, it is to look at three different sub sessions or issue areas of the environment theme. We will be looking at how the technologies and the internet can help fight climate change and reach the Paris Agreement goals both within the digital and in this case sector but also inspiring other more traditional sectors to be sustainable.
The second area that we want to explore, it is some of the possible negative consequences of the expansion of the digital and in this case sector so the carbon footprint of awful the innovations and the strategies to address that by all stakeholders and then the third area that we want to explore, it is how the data revolution, if I can call it that, can help understand, mitigate, prevent the averse effect of climate change. How we envision this, that each section will have an expert moderator to throw the ball up in the air and introduce the subject. It will have two speakers to bring in perspectives from their stakeholder group, region, their own experience and then we want to have at least one discussn't per session to have a live voice reaction to what's been said by the panelist and hopefully to take one, two questions also from the audience, that the audience will share within the chat function of the Zoom webinar.
We're on good track for the speakers and moderators. We have all of the moderators confirmed or provisionally confirmed, we have all of the speakers but one confirmed. We're working together with the secretariate to identify a government speaker so we're hoping -- we have a few leads out, we're hoping that one of them will bite.
For the discussions, we have one identified, one interest, but the name is waiting to be confirmed and we're looking for a chairman. We're hoping to galvanize the NRIs that worked on this topic to send in discussn'ts, yeah. If either of you who are on the call have any discussness from any NRI you attended this year or if you have anything in mind, AnjA, share that with us. We're hoping to have the last call with the group to discuss organizational matters on next week, early next week and then the call with all of the moderators, speakers, while the preevents are going on and the week before the main session, ideally on the 4th of November.
I think this is it from the environment side. If you have any question, don't hesitate.
>> CHAIR: Thank you.
Are you happy with the regional balance of your speakers?
>> Timea Suto: I am. We have a speaker from the Asia-Pacific region, a speaker from the African region, a speaker from eastern and Western Europe, so we have quite a good balance of stakeholder, all of the stakeholders groups, they're represented. We have an international organization, two businesses, hopefully that one government, Civil Society and also for the moderators, they're coming from three different stakeholder groups. Yeah, I think we're quite happy with how it is. We actually I think have more women involved at this point than men. I'm also happy to report that.
>> CHAIR: Thank you. I looked at your proposal. I really think it looks very good. Well done.
>> TimeaSuto: Thank you. I want to take a moment to recognize everyone that's been helping me. It has been great to work with everyone.
>> CHAIR: Thank you for your work on this.
Let me move on.
We'll take questions at the end.
So next we have data.
>> Maria Paz Canal: Hello, I'm presenting the work of the preparation for the data main session.
So since the last call, we have continued preparing the session, particularly focusing on speakers for the session and the last time I reported before the MAG, the aim, it was to have six speakers for the session and we have then represented, of course, the diversity that's required for a main session of the IGF in terms of the different stakeholder representation, gender, region. We have now confirmed four of the six speakers that we have aimed to have and so far we have balanced represent representation of gender and we're achieving a good geographic representation, we have two pending from Africa and Asia, but we're pretty confident we'll have a representative from those areas and these are from Civil Society, academia representative and we have confirmed a representative from private secretary, from Latin America, private sector from North America, we have from the technical community one of the members of the DP3 protocol team that we're developing, creating protocol with the privacy preserving features in Europe and we have one representative from the World Health Organization that was highly involved in the implementation of the different data intensive technologies in a way that's right perspective.
We think that it will be a good discussion, and as you may recall, this main session, it has some main topic, and as a title, to talk about data coordinates and practices and lessons during the COVID-19 pandemic and it will be structured around three main policy questions when useful experiences from different stakeholders will share about how to ensure privacy and other Human Rights while leveraging the use of data for tackling the pandemic. The second one, it was what are the challenges and lessons learned in of the data content and around the world and has COVID-19 made people think about and share data in a different way, those are three guiding policy questions for our session and the format of the discussion, it is present in the description of the session in the shared document, it was to organize this conversation in separate rounds in which the question linked to the policy question will be presented to a group of three, of the six panelists and the other three, they're responding in certain ways to that and providing 15 minutes for a question from the audience. That's the format. We want to wait for the final confirmation to have an organizing call, each one of the participants, the speakers, in a way to refine finally the proposal for the session by issuing something on those lines.
I'm available here if you have any questions, concerns, questions on the session organizing.
Thank you.
>> CHAIR: Thank you, thank you to everyone that's been working with you.
Inclusion, your turn.
>> Roberto Zambrana: Hello.
Thank you very much.
Good afternoon, good evening, everyone.
We already as you know have finished our session we approached to them already in an informal manner because we were still waiting for the letters, hopefully they went out during the last days. I think they were waiting for a signature in New York office. The idea is when they receive the formal letters we'll have a meeting, hopefully by the end of this week or hopefully at the beginning of next one. As other groups were saying, it is important for us to discuss how the preparation of the session was planned, perhaps to hear what they're expecting and how they would like to provide perhaps some feedback and support for the way we're organizing the session considering how we have the idea of how the discussion will go, we have had a long discussion in the group during the last several weeks and I think we did have a good approach of the session.
Just to go very quick, but how it is going to be, we will have a quick introduction and then present with the panelist, we'll have three different rounds of interventions. We have -- we have finished the session with six panelists with three policy questions, the idea is to start the round with 15 minutes in total, perhaps asking for response to this first set of questions to many panelist, perhaps half of them at least, or if we manage to get enough time to do it, maybe we can go and ask some of the panelists to also address the initial questions, we'll do the same with the second, the third questions that we have defined and in total, we'll have at this point 45 minutes, which will be the core part of the panel. We'll ask the participants to participate in the speaking queue and we'll allow 15 minutes for this interaction, asking participants to be very short in their interventions allowing more people to participate.
Also we'll read all -- at least most or the more important comments or questions we'll receive from the online viewers or attendance, and we'll ask all of the panelists to have a final remarks, also perhaps commenting on the comments and reading the questions that may arrive from the different participants.
We'll then have the closing.
About the balance, I think we have very, very nice balance of participation. The panelists, they're from -- we have the technical community, Latin American and Caribbean region represented, we have --
>> CHAIR: Roberto, you don't have to go through all of the speakers, we're running a bit late.
It is good that you have the balance.
If you can you just comment --
>> Roberto: Yes. We have Africa, we have also from Europe, the representative of one of the telcos companies, Orange, we have people from United States and from the different sector, private sector, the intergovernmental organization and as I said before, technical community and Civil Societies. I think we're very good in balance.
>> CHAIR: Thank you very much, Roberto.
My only comment, I look -- your session looks really good. I think 15 minutes for discussion is very little. I think that's just one thing you might -- if you can at all allow more than 15 minutes, that would be good.
>> Roberto: Just to clarify, to understand the question, what I was saying, it is to have three main questions and to have 15 minutes each and your suggestion is to make it broader?
>> CHAIR: I think just -- I know in total you have more, because you have the different rounds. It is just that 15 minutes goes very quickly. That's the one thing.
People often ask questions that are not necessarily relevant to that particular round.
You will be able to manage it. I'm not suggesting that you change it, just that you need to keep in mind that it does pass very quickly.
Yes. It may actually -- it might be easier to have a longer time at the end rather than to break it into the different components. That's my only suggestion.
Let's hear all of the other presentations and we can hear what other MAG members have to say as well.
Next we have trust.
>> Jennifer Chung: Thank you.
I'm reporting back for the trust session.
There's not much to update on the trust session. I think in the last MAG call we have mentioned that the proposal itself is pretty much finalized. We have included the description of the main session in the little blurb description on the IGF website so people can take a look there. We'll update it further, of course. About the session, it is still of course split into the three main policy clusters we have identified, the first one is internet fragmentation, talking about the network of network, the second policy cluster, it is about digital sovereignty, the third policy cluster, it is on the information and fragmentation. We have had a productive call with the moderators we have invited for the session. I think it is a week and a half ago actually and they have also been added to the main planning mailing list so we have better communication between the trust main session working group as well as for the team from internet and policy -- internet and jurisdiction policy network. What we have to do is actually -- let me backtrack.
We have refined the agenda a little bit more, originally we had more question and answer time at the end but it was suggested during this call, and we hashed out with everybody that it might be interesting to have the three policy clusters and the interaction within those policy clusters as well. In terms of flow, we agreed that we would have possibly two speakers directing really much of what they're talking in the clusters and reactions from the speakers, discussants and audience within the clusters.
We have also established an overflow time and we have initially established 20 minutes for each of the clusters but we do have a flexible overrun time of 5 minutes for each one in case we have, you know, more robust communications and inputs to allow us for the flexibility.
In terms of next steps, I think we are looking really good in the fact that we have already confirmed all six of our speaker, they are from all the stakeholder groups, we have one from the government, we have an intergovernmental organization from to and we have two from the techni K. Cal community, one from private sector and one from Civil Society in terms of gender balance we have actually equal balance and we have three male speakers and three female speaker, with the discussants we can add to the diversity of voices but we think that would be on topical and important because we're putting them in the agenda according to the policy clusters.
What's happening next for the trust main session, it is we will be connecting the moderators to the speakers and the staff so we can have a logistics call sometime next week to further clarify how the session will run with the speakers sos so they're not surprised the day of, of course.
That's the report back from the trust main session.
>> CHAIR: Thank you very much for that, Jennifer.
I suggest that everyone have these call, these preparatory calls with all their speakers and discussants prior to the IGF.
Digital cooperation.
>> Titti Cassa: Thank you.
We took note of the session, it didn't change, we have still five policy questions related to the inclusion parent tis patience and cooperation and outcome, high-level engagement and the communication and financing and the agenda of the session is including four sessions, introduction to digital cooperation which takes 5 minutes, a high-level segment which will take 30 minutes, the dialogue with the audience, 45 minutes, and then the closing section, which will take 10 minutes. The chair and moderator, they're -- most speakers, they have already confirmed the participation.
we have on the high-level section people from ministers of states for facial intelligence and then we have the chief operational officer and Minister of Basic education from the government, from the government and the president and CEO of ISOC, and he may be replaced, something that we have not seen the last days.
We have had --
>> CHAIR: Sorry to interrupt, as I said, you don't have to go through the speakers. I'm going to ask everybody to share the full session outlines tomorrow so that we can put them in the schedule.
>> I don't have much, the speakers are all confirmed, there is only one pending,.
>> CHAIR: Thank you for that report.
Let's take -- we're nearly finished with our meeting. I think we'll have to go on a little bit later, but does anyone have question, comments, suggestions for the main session organizers? I don't see anyone in the speaking queue and I don't see any hands.
Roman, your hand is up.
>> Ro man Chukov: Yes. Can you hear me?
>> CHAIR: We can hear you.
>> Roman Chukov: My question, it was in the chat, all of the session organizers, if you do still have empty slots for high-level representation, I can let somebody from the Russian government, from the level of ministry, Deputy Minister, so just let me know if this is of interest or if you need help from Civil Society, on Thursday I indicated we have a meeting, our digital ministry, and there will be an opportunity on the highest level to invite any stakeholder that may be interested and this relates to parliamentary member, I would be happy to understand how we can invite Russia to be involved.
Thank you.
>> CHAIR: Thank you for that, Roman.
I would just add, I think having prep sessions with your speakers, I know some of you have already done that, I urge everyone do that. That always helps.
Please, very importantly, look at the IGF guide that Sam has shared just in case you want to draw more from it, and then to share your session descriptions with the secretariate so that they can go in the schedule. If we can start doing that tomorrow, definitely have it all done by the end of the week so that by Friday all of the main sessions descriptions should be online.
You can always change speaker information if needed.
My sense, having looked at all of the proposals today, it is that they're ready, they need a bit of tidying here and there, but they're ready to go up on the website.
Thanks, everyone. Really good work in getting this done.
The final item, it is the introductory session scripts. Paul, Ben, I'm not sure who wants to go first, you have done a lot of work, can you update everyone, please?
>> Paul Rowney: Ben, you have a better handle on this, are you able to respond?
>> Ben wall listen: Hello, everybody. So yes, it was presented two weeks ago to the MAG, the kind of outline of the introductory sessions and we have a 30-minute video with 3 minutes with the sessions being represented with each of the four tracks and one for each of the BFS, the DCs, the NIs and introductory and concluding message, nine messages up to 3 minutes.
So what we have done over the last week, we kind of developed an approach for each of the groups, the people recording the messages to take so that we can have videos to Chengetai by the end of Thursday so he can have them edited into a single video that can be used for next Monday to promote this year's IGF meeting.
The current step, today's step is everyone that's recording a video has to send a script to each other so that we know we're keeping up with the deadlines and then recording the videos by Thursday.
What else can I add? Just to say that the 3-minute interventions from each person, they are there to talk about how this thematic track, or the BPF, the DCs, for example, they fit in to IGF 2020 and to summarize the high-level policy questions that Sam and the and the secretariate have worked up to be in the IGF guide. We trust, for example, there are three questions and how does it capture the dynamic tracks depending on how that's connected to the track and we have that in a 2-minute description of the track.
That's what is being done at the moment and the videos should be up and ready by Monday. A note for the secretariate, when they update the schedule, I guess we're waiting for extra information like the main session descriptions, the individual introductory sessions can be taken out to the schedule. Currently I did notice the trust in the main session is taking place in a certain date. There is no thematic specific introductory session any more, there is one introductory video to IGF 2020. I'll hand back to you.
>> CHAIR: Thank you for that, Ben.
Paul, did you want to add?
>> Paul Rowney: To add in to what Ben said, thank you, Ben, he's taken lead on this, I really appreciate that.
I think we just need to have a quick check that all the interventions are in progress. I haven't seen some updates from some of the organizers on those individual interventions so there are four thematic areas and the BFP, the DCs and the NRIs and then we have the short intro and the closing, the wrap up of the session.
We need the recordings to be pushed forward. I saw what Sylvia has done on Zoom and I think it is quite good. I don't know whether that's what we're going to adopt. We do need a flow between the sessions, that seems to be some thought into how they lean into each other.
That said, we have tight deadlines and we need the recordings in by Thursday or Friday I think so that they can be prepared. Those that are still working on it, just reach out to Ben or I or others from the group if there is any questions or input required.
Thank you.
>> CHAIR: Thank you for that, Paul.
I think that the deadline for the script, it is tomorrow basically. I think we have to send in the missing scripts and then we'll have the whole item ready by Monday.
So quite a lot of work to do. Progress is good.
Does anyone have any questions about these introductory, the prerecorded introductory session? I don't see any hands. There is no one in the speaker queue.
On our last agenda item, any other business. Sylvia, you have asked for the floor.
>> Sylvia Cadena: Thank you. I wanted to ask a couple of questions.
I apologize if that's covered on the interactive schedule or mentioned in other meetings on the corner, the room, how they're organized in the meeting, but I think I may have missed those. Two question, if there is any news about the MAG renewal and if there is any space organized for the MAG to actually meet during the IGF, if it is norm toll do so? There are 7 studies in the MAG and I'm sure -- I want to say good-bye and see chances for collaboration and that was an opportunity to start the conversations between exiting MAG members and the new ones to kick start the process for the following year quickly but I'm not sure if the new MAG members appointments will be done by that time.
Thank you.
>> CHAIR: Thanks, Sylvia.
I'll answer the question on the MAG meeting. I think let's discuss that next week. I certainly think we could have a MAG call during the IGF or just after the IGF. I think think about what you think is best. We definitely should have a MAG call. As I said, we will have one next week which is a final IGF and call and we definitely should have this with outgoing MAG members, it may be good to have it immediately after the IGF because then we can also debrief.
As for the question about the MAG renewal, I'll let Chengetai respond to that.
>> SECRETARIAT: To remind you, we'll have the open mic session a week after that Tuesday that the IGF finishes. Maybe we could have the MAG meeting after that once we get the open mic and the full reaction and thoughts from the community.
As for the MAG renewal, everything is at the Secretary-General's office and it really depends on the workload there and we hope that the note will come down before the -- well definitely -- we certainly hope that it come down before the 17th of November and if it comes before, that will be an added plus.
It is in the hands of the Office of The Secretary-General.
>> CHAIR: Thank you, Chengetai.
Thank you for the reminder of that post-IGF session. Maybe that's when we should have the MAG call, immediately after that session, that might be a good time either after or before.
It is time to end the meeting. I apologize for us going a bit longer than planned. I don't see any other hands. So just thank you, everyone. Really, thank you to the secretariate that's been working incredibly hard. I think harder than they normally do because the high-level track, it is a huge responsibility as well as supporting the IGF. Thank you to Serena and Luis and the work on the website and for Anja and Chengetai for all of the work that you're doing and all of the teams. There is a lot of work that's not visible, I which it was more visible. I think we have reached a point where we're making the work visible actually to take -- would take more time than trusting that it is being done.
Sam, Serena as BDF consultant, they're taking on all kind of responsibilities. MAG members, thank you for the work.
I think our progress is good.
I think, Luis, this is the moment when we bring up our temperature checking poll just so that we can get a sense of whether we're growing in confidence as we close the meeting.
Please fill in the poll, everyone. 28 people have voted out of 34, Luis, you can show the result.
I think it is looking better. It is definitely better than last week.
I really hope that by the end of the last call next Tuesday that it will look even better than this. It is a collective effort and it reands challenging but I'm certainly feeling a lot more confident myself.
Everyone, on the final note, I would like Chengetai to just confirm with us that we can have a MAG call, hopefully it won't have to be a two-hour call, I'll see if we can make it a shorter call next Tuesday. That will be the final call before the IGF starts and then we can also decide when we want to have the next IGF call.
Chengetai, it would have to be in the morning, we have an online discussion on IGF capacity development in the afternoon.
>> SECRETARIAT: Rotation wise, it is on the 27th at 11:00 a.m. UTC. Is that okay?
>> CHAIR: Perfect. That's good. Good.
Everyone will send details. We'll talk next week Tuesday. Please respond online to the networking session proposal and also to all of the other issues that we need your feedback on.
We'll hear from the secretariate on the pledge proposal, please comment on that as well.
Thank you, everyone. Apologies for the meeting running late.