The following are the outputs of the captioning taken during an IGF virtual intervention. 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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>> We all live in a digital world. We all need it to be open and safe. We all want to trust --
>> And to be trusted.
>> We all despise control.
>> And desire freedom.
>> We are all united.
>> MORGAN FROST: Hello, everyone. Welcome. I'm just going to give a few more minutes before we go ahead and get started, so please bear with us, and then we'll be with you in a moment. Thank you.
Okay. Well, hello, everyone. Welcome to the IGF Networking Session titled Connecting Democracy and Internet Governance Advocating. For those of you that are participating online and also those of you that are on site in Katowice, welcome! We're absolutely delighted to have you here with us today.
My name is Morgan Frost and I'm a Program Officer at the Center for International Private Enterprise or CIPE and this is organized by the Open Internet for Democracy Initiative co-organized by my organization, CIPE, the National Democratic Institute and Center for National Media Assistance. The Open Internet for Democracy initiative is a grassroots-driven initiative that really tries to connect democracy advocates as well as economic reformers representing the local private sector, Civil Society, independent media and a number of human rights defenders across fragile and declining democracies to really counter the wave of efforts that restrict Internet freedom, preserve and open an inclusive digital space, and also to defend digital rights. More information about our initiative and also the three organizations that I mentioned can be found in the Google Doc that's part of this session, and that should be linked in the Zoom chat as well.
For those of you that are participating on site, you can locate that same Google Doc by visiting the IGF Session website and the link should be found in the description of our session.
As efforts to restrict Internet freedom become more sophisticated and easier to deploy, there has never been a more crucial time to connect defenders of democracy together to really brainstorm and examine how we can best collaborate with one another to really ensure that Internet governance initiatives as well as digital rights advocacy projects more broadly, really foster an open, inclusive, and democratic digital space. And that is exactly why we're here today.
In a few moments, we will be breaking into small breakout group discussions. For those of you that are participating online, this will be done through the breakout group function in Zoom. We will have these breakout group discussions last approximately 10 minutes, and then this process will be replicated again.
For those of you that are participating on site, we invite you to follow a similar format by dividing yourselves into small groups or perhaps just one small group to really try and connect with one another. The opportunity is to try to connect with as many IGF participants as much as possible.
In the Google Doc listed in the Zoom chat, you also notice these instructions are listed in the document, and we've also provided a list of guiding questions for you that you're welcome to use throughout the breakout group discussions.
Once we've reached toward the end of the session, 10 minutes prior to the end of the session, we will all come back together for a brief group discussion and wrap-up. So, without further ado, I would like to invite our IGF Technical Moderator to please divide us into small groups. We will -- for those that are online, we will do five small groups, please, based on the number of participants. For those of you on site, please feel free to divide yourself into small groups. I hope everyone enjoys connecting with one another. Again, please reference the Google Doc listed in the Zoom chat as well as the description of the IGF session for any connecting questions. Thank you, and we'll see you soon.
>> SARAH MOULTON: Hello. How are you. Good morning. Whatever time it is. Where is everybody at? I know where you are Radhika.
>> RADHIKA: I'm in India and it's approximately 5:22 here.
>> SARAH MOULTON: Why you keep going with the introduction, I know there are some instructions from the -- for the session with some questions. Which now I need to try to find where that document went. Let's see. Here we are. I guess I can start if you want. So, I'm Sarah Moulton. I am based in Washington DC. I work for the National Democratic Institute and I'm one of the session organizers. So, let's see. I'm going to go with the instructions. What is one fun or interesting thing I've read or watched lately?
I just started watching Money Hist a Spanish show, which I feel like I'm behind on because everyone else knows about it. So far so good. It's very intriguing. I don't like suspense, but this is manageable. I will pass it on to someone else.
>> SALMA: I will go next. I'm Salma from Sri Lanka, I share the same time zone as Radhika, so same time here. I work for UNDP, and in terms of a fun thing, I actually based on a friend's suggestion, I'm watching Avatar, the cartoon, which I'm really enjoying and I didn't really think I would enjoy cartoons again, but yeah 6789.
>> RADHIKA: I'll go next. I mentioned earlier that I'm in India. I work with the organization called (?) Law Center based out of New Delhi. One thing I'm joining right now is (?) Box. I don't know how I missed them before but now I'm reading. It's really interesting and highly recommended. I'm also rewatching The Office because I could not think of starting anything new with the workload.
>> SARAH MOULTON: I watched that as well over the entire pandemic.
>> RADHIKA: So. Fun.
>> SALMA: Thanks for the recommendation. I read Normal People. I'm going to take up Beautiful People.
>> RADHIKA: Really a beautiful book.
>> YINGCHU: I am from Taiwan and I'm sorry I'm late, so I don't know how this session will be group discussion. So, I hope we can have a happy discussion. Thank you.
>> SARAH MOULTON: Okay. One last person? Now we can -- yeah. I guess we can maybe go through some of the questions, and again this is just an easy format and some of us know each other already. But always worthwhile and always good to get a chance, even though this is not in person, to talk further. I just lost my document. Hold on.
Yeah. Does anyone want to start with any kind of, you know, what you're working on specifically on Internet governance? Some fun part about it? Anything you've attended at IGF recently that you want to share? I will admit that this is my first session. It's very hard with the time zones to attend it as much as I would like. But, yeah?
>> RADHIKA: It's my first session too. I've been looking at the schedule and trying to find a session that doesn't conflict with everything else, so but I really wanted to attend this even though it's conflicting with other things. Because we have a session (?) so looking forward to that. The country that I'm from, India, they're neck deep in all sorts of digital, disruptions, everything is going on for us. Organizations are on their toes. They're not very well funded. I mean there are just too many things to work on, not enough expertise, lack of understanding on how you move forward, a lot of government pressure living in an authoritarian regime. Like the regions in India, they're so diverse from each other, so Internet -- a digital rights issue that might impact one part of the country, the other part of the country doesn't even know. And because it's a poor country, nobody really cares about privacy. Even though it is important and weapon just come up with like all sorts of extremely funny things to do, like from health IDs, we don't have money to feed our people, but we have money to create health IDs, so yeah. Just struggling with all of that.
>> SALMA: I think, yeah. Sri Lanka is a lot smaller than India, but we are also in a bit of an authoritarian regime, and we are struggling with a lot of digital authoritarianism, which kind of extremely became evident during COVID because on one side, we have this increased use of like Facebook and like rocketing of hate speech and violence resulting in sharing of things and fake news within communities, especially because there is already lots of tension between the majority and Muslim minority following the end of the war. And then you also have this other side to it where government agencies are not good with technology. They don't even know how to read emails. So when COVID happened, getting access to information is extremely impossible, and as of recent, we've also seen an increasing trend of denying information through the Right to Information Act with no care on consequences, and also I think the major problem is also that though this is like a big issue that really needs to be addressed, there is so many other issues because economically we're doing bad, we don't have foreign exchange reserves, high debt, and as of recently, we have been having lots of gas explosions because there was a change in the percentage of the gas which wasn't regulated, so places have just been blowing up with fires.
So, because of that, I think these issues are slowly being shut down while focus has been given to a few other random things. Yeah. I think that is where Sri Lanka is at right now.
>> RADHIKA: This is something observed, we recently had a couple of workshops across South Asia, the issues across South Asia are so similar. Everybody is talking with the data protection bill, struggling with the government trying to trample rights left, right, and center. It honestly feels like countries are learning from each other. Oh, they did it worse, let me know.
>> SALMA: I think even the Sri Lanka politicians that go to, it's always like the Chinese laws or Indian laws which are currently also problematic, I don't feel like okay.
>> RADHIKA: Very problematic. Like let's learn from each other.
>> SALMA: Yeah.
>> SARAH MOULTON: It looks like we have 37 seconds left. So there anything quickly?
>> YINGCHU: I speak quickly. As I know there was the first India IGF recently and in Taiwan, recently we have issue about the Internet soldier, like used to use language or post to make negative posts to attack women or other parties. So, this is an issue in Taiwan recently. Yeah.
>> SARAH MOULTON: Yeah. Taiwan's -- yeah. In terms of the bigger Internet governance concerns, I mean Taiwan has been very good with participatory government from citizens. Are there any major bills that are happening that are a big concern?
>> YINGCHU: In time is not enough, but recently, there will be usually still discussing now in Taiwan.
>> SARAH MOULTON: Yeah. I would say it's very hard for the average citizen to really understand what's going on. I mean most in the U.S., nobody would really pay attention to something that's happening with data privacy, like you just hear about it broadly.
>> Recording in progress.
>> MORGAN FROST: We will anyway transition to the second breakout group. In case you were not able to see the link to the Google Doc, it is listed here and I'll go ahead and put it again in the chat for everyone. Wonderful. I will now invite the technical moderator to please move us back into a new breakout group discussion. Thanks so much, everyone.
>> SARAH MOULTON: I don't think they randomized it. Not that I don't want to see you again. Well, we can -- I guess we may end up talking to each other again unless they reconfigure it. I'm not sure what they were doing, but they didn't randomize it. Technical difficulties at IGF.
How many -- is this -- have you all -- you've attended IGFs before?
>> RADHIKA: I've attended local but not the international one. Because I don't think before it was remote. I think maybe last year but I don't think before that it was remote. I have a very hard time catching all the IGF organizers, you know, to get technical difficulties sorted.
>> SARAH MOULTON: Yes, like the one -- yes, well I don't know if anyone else had trouble registering in the first place, but I tried and then it was just this loop of, well you need to register to sign up, but you've already signed up so you can't -- so anyway, it was too bad. This would be my -- the first one I went to was in 2017 in Geneva, and it was definitely a different experience. But, yeah, I guess working on Internet governance issues in the time of COVID, it is a lot more challenging.
How do the -- I've never been to a -- well, I guess the U.S. has them too and I've been to a couple of sessions here. But they're not -- I don't know. I'm curious about how the local IGFs function or run? How they're tied into the broader, the bigger global IGF? I mean is it, in terms of the issues that you're addressing, are they tied into the bigger picture?
>> YINGCHU: Let me talk about Taiwan IGF. It will be December 10 and 11, so it will be as I said. But we have discussed Internet governance issue from 2016 or 2015 maybe, and we have one, the Director is from the -- or I should say he is the Chair of the TW-IGF and is associate in Taiwan, and he is from -- he was the ICANN Board, so he brings a lot of issues and Internet issues in Taiwan. Also, we connect with APNIC to have more -- to have more discussion. So, I think it is quite widely -- the issue is broadly. But mostly the application there about some Internet application and new technology, and it's difficult to talk about it with general people, so that's my observation about Taiwan IGF.
>> SARAH MOULTON: Salma, have you been to an international IGF.
>> SALMA: I don't know if Sri Lanka has it to be completely honest.
>> SARAH MOULTON: Maybe you should start one.
>> SALMA: We have two main digital rights associations here, it's not that big. Random think tanks do work on some stuff and but it's still very niche and even if I talk to people about my work, they sometimes still get a bit confused.
>> SARAH MOULTON: I think that is normal if you work in the space. I think my parents still don't know what I do exactly. (Laughing). I can't explain it to them either. But, yeah, I mean in terms of, you know, collaborating with others, are there any particular ways that you found, especially over the last two years, you know, connecting with other people in this space and working together. Have there been any successful efforts? How do you find the online conferencing situation? Like, for example, am Rights CON has now gone virtual which makes it a lot easier for everybody to go, but it can also be very hard to make connections and to do the kind of collaborative work. I don't know if anyone has had success, you know, making new -- the purpose of this session is like also to do that.
>> RADHIKA: I think RightsCON now has social circle, they invited us to host for Asia-Pacific. It's a very cute little platform that they're using, but definitely it's very hard to make connections online. Definitely. Here I mean I would definitely, you know, prefer in person.
>> SARAH MOULTON: Yeah, I'm over it. I'm definitely over it. I'm over the pandemic. But, yeah, we'll see. I feel like everyone else is traveling more than we are in the U.S., but maybe --
>> RADHIKA: Yeah, it doesn't look like there is a ban. People are not even wearing masks anymore.
>> SALMA: Sri Lanka is the same. I was down south. No one is wearing masks. It's a beach, so at least there is some wind. Yeah, like it's very different in some area but at a beach area, everyone is like what pandemic?
>> YINGCHU: People still go everywhere in Taiwan. We have beautiful views and hotels, so people are still traveling around on the island, and but last year or last two years, I attend all Internet governance related meetings all online, so it is crazy and too tired, and I can mostly I always listen to the meeting and did some record for myself, but after meetings, I always feel tired. They said that it -- they said Zoom fatigue. This is my first time to hear the words. But last year or this year, yeah, I have a project with Vietnam people and we have collaborated with Internet and we have meeting online and we -- we did a document together. So, I think it is quite success. We didn't see each other physically and we have never met each other before, but we still did a project about cybersecurity research. Yeah. This is -- I think this is successful cares for myself.
>> SARAH MOULTON: That's great. It's good to find some successes in the midst of all of this. Radhika, didn't you have a session yesterday?
>> RADHIKA: No, it's today, at -- I have such a hard time translating time zones now.
>> SARAH MOULTON: I don't -- everything with the UTC, I cannot figure it out. And with the time change that we have with daylight savings time it makes things more confusing.
>> RADHIKA: I never understood daylight saving's time.
>> SARAH MOULTON: Well people in America doesn't either. It was designed for farmers, and I would say that's not the majority of what most people do here, so yeah. It's been a thing. That's great. Yeah. I first met Niche at the IGF in 2017 as well, so love everything that SFLC does.
Okay. Now we'll see if this works again. Apparently, the co-host has not been responsive, so we've been unable to reach them. But what would an IGF be or online conference be without a technical problem? I think it's just part of the territory now. I'm curious what's happening in the actual room on site. It looked like there were some people there.
>> YINGCHU: Yesterday, there was no one looking at the chat room. I posted a question, but no one sees that.
>> SARAH MOULTON: Oh, another thing to pay attention to.
>> Recording in progress.
>> MORGAN FROST: Hello and welcome back. We're coming back from the second discussion. I'll give everyone a minute to join us. Wonderful. I believe we're all back and we'll proceed to one more breakout group discussion. I will kindly ask our IGF technical moderator to move us into newly assigned breakout groups with randomized people in the online space, so please move us into new breakout group discussions, and then after the last breakout group discussion, we'll come back together as a group. Thanks, everyone.
>> MORGAN FROST: Hello.
>> YINGCHU: Hi.
>> DANIEL O'MALEY: Great! Some new people this time. I'm excited. I don't know how the other sessions went but we went around with our name, organization or country, fun thing we watched, we tried to do that quickly and then we jumped into the next round of like what we're working on now, so I propose we do that. I'll just jump in and go first. My name is Daniel O'Maley and I am based in Washington DC at the Center for International Media Assistance where I work at the intersection of digital rights and media development. And you know it's really bright and early here in DC so the first thing I can think of I watched recently is the Great British Bakeoff, it's not Internet related but it's what came to mind. I'll throw it over to Yingchu who I can see is next to me.
>> YINGCHU: I am from Taiwan, and this is my second time joining the IGF. In the other group we talked about how our experience in Internet conference and the collaboration of work. I just shared about my project with Vietnam people and we all collaborated online and haven't met each other before, and we finished the cybersecurity research this year. So, this is my first experience with online and we don't see each other, basically, but we use online meetings, and we also talk about the Internet Army in Taiwan, recently this is an issue to different parties argue with the Internet Army, because they hire those people to attack different opinions, so and sometimes they attack women online. So, this is an issue recently in Taiwan. That's what we just talked about. Please, Morgan.
>> MORGAN FROST: Thank you so much for sharing. Yeah. Cybersecurity has been a major issue, not only in Taiwan but across different regions, so I really appreciate hearing a little bit more about your work and hoping to hear a little bit more about that in this group discussion. So, as I mentioned, my name is Morgan. I work at CIPE, the Center for international private enterprise based in Washington DC. One interesting thing that I've watched, I mentioned I started to get a little bit more into documentaries which I typically haven't done in the past, so I was just mentioning a new documentary that I was watching on Greek Mythology, not digital rights related, but in terms of digital rights, I would highly recommend a recent report that I read which is from an organization called the Collaboration on International ICT Policy in East and Southern Africa. Every year they put out a state of Internet freedom report looking at the number of different sort of Internet freedom trends as well as violations that are happening in different countries across the continent, so although you may be based in another region, it's really interesting to look at those trends and also see how they sort of correlate or relate to your local context. So, I would highly recommend that report as well.
I will pass things off to Mohammad, I believe you were perhaps in my other breakout group and I'm not sure if your microphone is working, but would love to hear from you if it is.
>> DANIEL O'MALEY: Looks like Mohammad might not be -- might not be there or having technical troubles. What about is the other participant, is that? Sarah?
>> DANIEL O'MALEY: Sarah might be the captioner. Yes! Exactly. Okay. Just want to make sure. Just don't want to exclude anyone. Okay. Thank you. Well, since Mohammad is not here, I'll talk a little bit more about kind of some of the work that I do on digital rights, and I'm thinking about recently, and that is the fact that a lot of the small independent news outlets around the world, particularly in developing countries, aren't what I would say are visible to tech platforms, so this is a problem that we face and I can just bring an example of something that happened somewhat recently in Serbia. But basically what I mean by not being visible by tech platforms is that tech platforms understand that like organizations like the Washington Post and the New York Times are news organizations and you know the big mainstream ones in our country are recognized by those platforms, but you have a lot of smaller organizations, a lot of investigative reporters that are doing reporting, but for example in this case in Serbia, a small investigative reporting outlet did research on or reporting on corruption by a government official, and they did a video that documented it and then posted it on to their website and to Facebook and on to YouTube. The politician who was mentioned said, oh, you know that's not true, that's fake news. And also said oh, you used my likeness and that's where I have copyright. And so using those excuses, they had YouTube and Facebook pull it down.
So, this is a really big high-profile story of great public interest. There was no recourse for this small outlet to say, hey Facebook and Google wait, you know, this is actually news and we need to keep this up. Whereas a larger organization, you know, a national newspaper might be able to make those connections and have something. But there is a whole ecosystem of independent news reporters that don't have that access and that's a real problem, and I think something that involves, you know, lots of different stakeholders, but primarily these organizations and big tech companies. That's one of the challenges that I'm working on.
I'm just really fascinating by what you're talking about with the Armies that are -- you know, these are real people, right, that are kind of given their marching orders to like attack other politicians or other people, I guess, even? You said like online harassment of women is a horrible thing that's happening all around the world all the time, so what are your thoughts about what's the best way to address that? Because it's hard because they're actually real people, right, the armies?
>> YINGCHU: I think they are real people, yeah, but before the Internet Army, these were out in Taiwan, there are many people that do these similar things to -- we used to say watch the common evaluation and add the stars in the auction platform to have a good reputation to sell more things and to have more -- to have more customers. But am if they use these people, this behavior, to attack with the harassment to women and there will be another issue, but this year we didn't talk about a lot in Taiwan IGF because Taiwan IGF will be this weekend, so not many people know -- the Internet Army is very popular in Taiwan now, but our issue didn't have that in our discussion but sometimes we hope that it is a small group and we want to keep the freedom of expression in Taiwan, but some parties -- some people think they shouldn't exist. I don't know how to say that. How should we regulate those people or this behavior, I think that will be good to discuss?
>> DANIEL O'MALEY: Yeah, I mean it sounds like a really challenging thing, right. You want to preserve freedom of expression, so that allows people to have differing opinions, but at the same time, you know when people are harassing people or attacking people, that kind of chills the entire space and my female of journalism, the attacks of female journalists to such that many women where not going into journalism, and that's an even worse problem that has long-term impacts if we don't have diverse face, so it's really challenging. I really look forward to meeting with you at the next IGF. I hope we'll be in person because I would love to learn more about this.
>> YINGCHU: Okay. If I can be IGF --
>> Recording in progress.
>> MORGAN FROST: As it happens, we have time for one more breakout discussion. I hope the discussions have gone well and you are getting information. I invite the IGF technical moderator to sign us to breakout groups and then come back together. Thanks so much.
>> ELIZABETH SUTTERLIN: Great to meet you all. My name is Elizabeth Sutterlin, I work in Washington DC, I'm based there currently and yeah, I kind of work on our open Internet initiative that's coordinating the session that runs our Open Internet for Democracy Leaders Program, and something that I've read or watched recently, our icebreaker question, I'm currently reading the sympathizer and enjoying that a lot. But, yeah, looking forward to getting to know all of you.
>> YINGCHU: Hi, from Taiwan. I'm from Taiwan and I'm international affairs committee in Taiwan -- I'm sorry, Taiwan Information Network Center, TINC, that is for me. I'm also a researcher in -- researcher in Internet governance in Taiwan Institute of Economic Research, that's my daily job there. And I do Internet governance issue collection, I collect those topics and (?) will invite some people to talk about cybersecurity or regulation about or cyber norms in Taiwan. And recently, there was a -- there is a popular issue about Internet Army in Taiwan. Yes. Some people use words to harass females online, and or attack different parties of different opinion people. We want to keep our freedom of expression, but how to regulate people not to use those -- attacking words to each other, that will be a good discussion. That's all from me.
>> MONIKA: Hi. I'm a journalist. Normally I'm lurking in the sessions. I have been working on Internet governance issues for I think 20 years now looking into how technology develops and how regulators more and more try to govern. I'm from to the IGF, I normally go because -- just because of this session like this where you have such a wealth of experience that you can -- that you can use. I asked in the other breakout sessions like what activists, like you, hope to achieve at an IGF. Normally perhaps even better at a face-to-face IGF, but even at such a hybrid format. So, what do you think activists can do? Are they really -- do they get to any results in such a meeting? I that's it from me. Oh, I'm based in Germany, I think I forgot.
>> JONATHAN: I'm John from Canada. This is my first IGF. To answer Monika's question, I'm here to learn mostly because it's my first one. I'm with the UNESCO Meeting Information Literacy Alliance specifically for Working Group number 1 synergies with the SDGs and I'm also a former UNESCO Global Action Program Member for ESD, so focus on education for sustainable development and Sustainable Development Goals, and I'll trying to combine that with media and information literacy, and that's why I'm here because of the group that sent me a email and link to come here to learn, so I'm here to learn from the governance experts of Internet because our world is slowly crumbling -- or I guess because the Internet, our world could swing disastrously to like a different way with fake news and QAnon and all of that stuff and we need to stop that, and we need to come up with some rules for the Internet or else it's just going to be the wild west.
>> ELIZABETH: Yeah, definitely. Thanks for sharing, everyone. Yeah, definitely. Sometimes sharing that sense of impending doom, Jonathan, so very relatable. But, yeah, I mean Monika, kind of to your question, as the Open Internet for Democracy initiative, part of why we organized this session and we have a panel session later today, and a lot of what we hope it achieve at IGF, you know, is also learning, whether it's face-to-face or kind of through the screen like this. But just really, you know, seeing IGF as an opportunity where, you know, so many different voices from around the world, from a multistakeholder and multilateral opportunity to hear what other people are working on, to kind of see where the Internet governance space is going, and so that's kind of a big part what have we're hoping to get out of it.
I don't know if in other breakout sessions you've been able to meet some of our open Internet leaders, but they're a big part of kind of the work of our initiative. They're all super impressive, amazing, really great fantastic people. But, yeah, a big part of that program is, you know, getting them plugged into broader networks and trying to facilitate a larger community of open Internet and Internet governance, you know, advocates and experts.
But, yeah, I would love to if any of you have like links to resources related to your work, into both your -- the work that you've been doing you mentioned on kind of online violence and online speech against women and other political parties, and I would be really interested in reading about that. And Jonathan, you as well with some of the UNESCO media literacy work you mentioned, I would be really interested to read more.
>> JOHNATHAN: I'm dropping a link for the ESD stuff and then I'll find another link for you all.
>> ELIZABETH: Great. Thanks so much. Is this your first session? Have you been able to go to other sessions? Anything you're looking forward to for the rest of the week?
>> YINGCHU: I think this is maybe -- this is the first time today, my first session. And yesterday I attend some sessions, some other sessions, but mostly open forums for the event for Polish government. Yeah. And I can find English news about report for Internet Army -- I can't find English report -- but I will try to post it because I don't think they will post that on the Internet. That's my Twitter. I will try to find that news. But because we still try to figure out that is Internet Army or only want to fight themselves, I don't know, some politicians -- some politicians go for themselves. But actually, there is one woman, our officer was attacked by the other people, so the other men, so that's why we found the Internet Army in Taiwan and people maybe there will be more news maybe these days. I don't know. I don't know how the government to deal with that.
>> ELIZABETH: Yeah, no, thanks for sharing. Yeah, it's -- yeah, the online violence against women in public life and women in politics in particular, is such a big problem it seems like everywhere. I know NDI has done a lot of work in that space, and one of our open Internet leaders, Lordis, who is in the sessions, in another breakout group. I don't know if you've all had plans to meet her. But she's yeah, working on trying to educate and prepare and train women journalists and politicians in Kenya, who face this problem on such a massive scale. But I think we're going to pull out of the breakout group but thank you all it was so great to meet you and hear about your resources.
>> Thank you.
>> ELIZABETH: See you back in the main session.
>> Recording in progress.
>> MORGAN FROST: Hello, I will pass it to Sarah.
>> SARAH MOULTON: Thanks. It was great to meet several of you in the sessions that we had, and actually I think this worked out a little better than I was expecting, so that's great. As Morgan mentioned we have an initiative that we try to use as an opportunity to build community with everybody else working in the space and wanted to make sure that we invited you and you knew how to contribute or stay in touch with us. A lot of our information is in the document, and again I'm not sure if we want to post that as well. And if you want to add any of your contact information in the chat, we welcome that. I don't think you're able to add it to the document directly, but for others here, yeah, I see a lot of some LinkedIn contact information, so that's a great way to stay in touch.
And just you know for us on the Initiative, we really do try to use it as an opportunity to connect with others. It can be very hard, especially now in the online space, but please follow us on Twitter. I would say that is a great way. Probably the best way is to tag us. We're happy to retweet, to broadcast, to you know share things that you're working on if you tag us. That's a great way I've found to learn most -- to easily learn about what everyone is working on in this space. We also have a blog and we invite others to reach out to us, you know, if you have something that you want to post someplace and you don't have anywhere to but the it, you know, we definitely welcome any kind of blog submissions. If you're working on something. And then finally we have a newsletter as well, there is a sign-up on the list. Great. I see all of these links. I hope we can save them all. I hope someone is copying them from my side and we're getting them.
Yeah. Please sign up for the newsletter. We promise that we do not spam you. It only comes out maybe four times a year, but it's just an opportunity to share what others are working on in the space. I would invite you also to take a look at a couple of the resources that we have on the website, including the democratic principles for an open Internet, which we use as a framework to really look at why, you know, and how we need to preserve the Internet as a democratic space and particularly how it impacts democracy.
And the other one being our advocacy playbook, which we try to outline some strategies for when you're working on digital rights advocacy and to give some resources, recommendations, templates to help on that process. So, for that document in particular, we also welcome submissions and recommendations, the Advocacy Playbook is a living document, so that's available for comment and we really -- there is contact information on the site, so please do, if you have a resource that you think should be included in that, we really welcome submissions. So, I think I covered all of the items, but oh, one last plug, you know, we have fortunately a couple of our open Internet leaders here on this call today, so I will just say that this is an annual program that we run. The next round will be almost a year from now in June, and I just wanted to flag that because it's one of our favorite programs that we work on and really a great chance to work with the community, so if you see that call for applications come up again next June, please think of us and it's a great chance to meet a wonderful group of people. So, I think that's everything. Again, please leave your contact information in the chat. I guess that is everything. Anything else, Morgan or Dan or anyone that you want to add?
>> MORGAN FROST: No. Other than just to echo, thank you so much for participating in this session. It's really valuable to find some ways to connect with other democracy advocates from across the globe, so really appreciate your time and I hope you enjoy the rest of IGF. Thank you so much, everyone.
(session completed at 6:44 a.m. CST).