IGF 2016 First Open Consultations and MAG Meeting April 5

The following are the outputs of the real-time captioning taken during the First Open Consultations and Multistakeholder Advisory Group (MAG) Meeting for IGF 2016 in Geneva, Switzerland, from 4 to 6 April 2016. Although it is largely accurate, in some cases it may be incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. It is posted as an aid to understanding the proceedings at the event, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.

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5 April 2016

Geneva, Switzerland

 

 >>CHENGETAI MASANGO: Good morning, ladies and gentlemen.  We're about to start the first day of the MAG meeting.  Yesterday was open consultations so today is the first day of the MAG meeting, and without further ado, I'll hand it over to the chair.  Lynn?

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you.  Good morning.  And I really just want to thank everybody yesterday.  I thought it was a great meeting and a real kind of collaborative effort.  I think everybody is leaning into the task ahead, in recognition of the relatively short time frame we have.

 The first item of business is to approve the agenda, and I did go back and look at the agenda, talk to a few people.  I think we have time in what is now (c) and (d), MAG orientation discussion, role -- discussion on role and responsibilities of MAG and on the IGF MAG modalities, to cover the topic that was raised yesterday.

 And at the same time, I'd like to propose that we move that to the last two agenda items under Section 1, and it's just this terms of flow, which means we would start with some opening remarks from Wai-Min from UN DESA.  We would then move into the introduction of MAG members, incoming and outgoing, and then we'd move to 2015 and '16 IGF host remarks, and then move into the other meeting.

 The rest of the day is actually focused on first a -- sort of a shaping of the overall IGF program.  We'll get some more details from the host country with respect to the venue so that that will aid our planning and logistics.  And of course in that, we will cover intersessional activities, themes, and under intersessional activities of course I put all the national and regional IGF initiatives, best practice, dynamic coalition, and whatever we might decide to do for any additional intersessional work.

 So with that, I'd like to call for approval of the agenda.

 Call it approved.  Thank you.

 So the first opening remarks from Wai-Min from UNDESA.  You have the floor.

 >>WAI-MIN KWOK: Thank you, Madam Chair.

 Good morning, everyone.  Some short remarks which in a way also to reiterate the message from Mr. Wu, the under-secretary-general for economy and social affairs.  Great thanks and appreciation to all MAG members, including those outgoing who are still here with us today, incoming, and of course as what some of you have called as MAG alumni for all the past work that has been done and which had a very profound effect on the state of Internet governance today.

 Also, many thanks to Ambassador Janis Karklins for his leadership as the MAG chair over the past two years, and at the same time a very warm welcome to Lynn to accept this challenging task as the MAG chair.

 DESA and the U.N. attaches great importance to the open and inclusive process of the IGF and the MAG in the multistakeholder policy dialogue on Internet governance.  Collectively as one, we -- again, we strive to do more to ensure that the value of multistakeholder participation continues to be embraced and broadened, and in particular, to include those who have -- who are not yet privileged to join us in this important journey.  And collectively as one, we need to work harder to bring about greater roles of IGF and the Internet in driving and empowering the global agenda which is the substantive development agenda, to ensure no one is left behind.  Thank you.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Wai-Min.  It's at this point in the agenda we move to an introduction of both the incoming and the outgoing MAG members, and to show that we really are serious about fully engaging our online participants -- and I recognize that this might come as a surprise to them, so we can come back to them later -- I'd actually like to ask them to go through and do their introductions first.

 And we will come back, Anja, at the end, in case some other folks join later.

 >>REMOTE INTERVENTION: Thank you, Madam Chair.  I'm going to call the names as I'm seeing them in the list of the MAG members.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: And just -- Anja?

 >>REMOTE INTERVENTION: Yes.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: I think what we'd really like is people to state their name, the organizations they're coming from, obviously the stakeholder community they're a part of, and I think sort of a brief -- brief -- sort of statement on their involvement to date with Internet governance activities.

 So I would like everybody to be as both complete and brief as possible because this portion of the agenda still takes up a fairly considerable time.  So thank you.

 >>REMOTE INTERVENTION: Thank you.  Sorry.  

 First name on the list is Avri Doria.  Avri, I'm going to unmute you now.  You have the floor.

 >>AVRI DORIA: Hello, everybody.  My name is Avri Doria.  I'm second year in the MAG.  I come from a civil society appointment but I also consider myself very active in the technical community.  I've been involved since WSIS, was a member of the WGIG, and was once a member of the IGF secretariat in its first five years, and I'm very active in organizations like the IETF, IRTF, ICANN, and various civil society organizations.  And I'm a research consultant and independent.  Thank you.

 >>REMOTE INTERVENTION: Douglas is next.  Douglas, you have the floor.

 I guess we'll have to come back to this name.  Douglas, we can't hear you now.

 Virginia Paque, you have the floor.

 >>VIRGINIA PAQUE: Good morning.  I'm a civil society stakeholder.  I work for DiploFoundation and also work with a civil society coordination group for selection of civil society representatives, as much as we can represent part of civil society in Internet governance processes.  

 Within the IGF, I'm particularly interested in improving remote participation possibilities and multilingualism opportunities for greater inclusion.  Thank you.

 >>REMOTE INTERVENTION: Thank you very much.  

 Jac, you have the floor.

 >>JAC SM KEE: Thank you.  Hopefully you can hear me.  Hi.  This is Jac, Jac sm Kee.  I'm based in Malaysia.  I am with -- representing civil society (indiscernible) Association of Progressive Communications.  Also my second year on MAG.

 >>REMOTE INTERVENTION: Thank you very much.  Shita.

 >>SHITA LAKSMI: Thank you, everyone.  Can you hear me?

 >>REMOTE INTERVENTION: Yes, we can hear you.

 >>SHITA LAKSMI: Okay.  My name is Shita Laksmi.  I'm a second-year MAG member and come from Indonesia representing civil society.  I was one of the co-organizers for Internet Governance Forum in 2013 and I'm still very active in the regional Internet Governance Forum and also in charge for the Southeast Asia for Internet Governance at Hivos regional office of Southeast Asia.  Thank you.

 >>REMOTE INTERVENTION: Thank you very much.  Ahmed Sabir, you have the floor.

 >>AHMED SABIR: Hi.  My name is Ahmed Sabir.  I'm a new MAG member from the technical community and I'm from Bangladesh and I'm almost 20 years in the domain industry, and back home my job (indiscernible).  As a civil society person, I'm also serving as the co-chair for (indiscernible), and I'm very much involved with the national and the regional laws and also with the (indiscernible) and ISOC local community (indiscernible) community, and I think it's an opportunity for me to share (indiscernible) region to IGF, especially the technical part of it, and (indiscernible) experience for me.  I hope I can contribute however possible in the MAG community.  Thank you very much.

 >>REMOTE INTERVENTION: Thank you very much.  

 And Towela, you have the floor now.

 >>TOWELA JERE: Good morning, everyone.  Can you hear me?

 >>REMOTE INTERVENTION: We can hear you.

 >>TOWELA JERE: Okay.  My name is Towela Jere.  I work with the NEPAD agency in Africa and I'm involved with the Africa Internet Governance Forum and it's probably my last year as a MAG member.  Thank you.

 >>REMOTE INTERVENTION: Thank you very much.  I'm seeing Renata has joined us.  

 Renata, if you can speak now, I will unmute you.

 >>RENATA AQUINO RIBEIRO: Good morning, everyone.  This is Renata from Brazil.  Nice to be here with you all.

 >>ANJA GENGO:  Thank you very much.  

 Towela, you have the floor now.

 >>TOWELA JERE:  Good morning, everyone.  Can you hear me?

 >>ANJA GENGO:  We can hear you.

 >>TOWELA JERE:  Okay.  My name is Towela Jere.  (indiscernible).  I am involved with the African (indiscernible) Forum, and it's my last year as a MAG member.  Thank you.

 >>ANJA GENGO:  Thank you very much.  

 Seeing Renata has joined us, Renata, if you can speak now, I will unmute you.

 >>RENATA AQUINO RIBEIRO:  Good morning, everyone.  This is Renata Aquino Ribeiro.  (indiscernible).  I am a new MAG member from civil society.

 >>ANJA GENGO:  Thank you.  Madam Chair, if you allow, I will read the introduction on behalf of Douglas Onyango as he doesn't have audio.  

 I'm Douglas Onyango.  I'm glad to be joining the MAG as a new member representing the technical community.  I have been involved with planning national and regional IGFs in East Africa.  I'm a member of ISOC Uganda and a member of ICANN ASO AC.  Thank you.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Thank you, Anja.  And thank you again to everybody who's participating online.  Again, it's not the easiest way to participate in these meetings.  

 And, Anja, we'll come back at the very end, too, and check and see if anybody else has joined in the interim.

 So now I think the easiest thing is to just go left to right, unless we want to move from right to left in recognition of mixing things up a little bit here.  And just ask both incoming, current and -- I see one or two outgoing members still in the room as well.  I would ask them to encourage them to introduce themselves as well.  They're obviously still engaged.  We would like to keep their engagement.  And they're just a great source for mentorship and support for any of the incoming members.  And I think we need to utilize all the resources we can in this effort.

 So I'm not going to call on people.  I'll just sort of sweep left to right and let people start.  

 Slobodan?

 >>SLOBODAN MARKOVIC:  Good morning.  My name is Slobodan Markovic.  I work at the Serbian ccTLD registry.  And I'm a current MAG member, my second year.  I've been a long time engaged in Internet governance issues starting with ICANN, I think, back in 2001.  And I have been engaged in a lot of different initiatives, wearing a lot of different hats.  Among other stuff, I was -- I work for Serbian government between 2008 and 2012 as a policy advisor for the minister.  So that would be a few words from me in short.

 >> SALANIETA TAMANIKAIWAIMARO:  Good morning, everybody.  My name is Salanieta Tamanikaiwaimaro.  But you can call me Sala for short because my name is really long.

 [ Laughter ]

 And I wear several hats.  But just to -- just to say that my journey in civil society started when I was little girl, journeying with Red Cross.  

 But as far as Internet governance is concerned, my first IGF conference was in Lithuania, Vilnius.  

 And how I got into Internet governance was through a capacity-building program that DiploFoundation ran, and that was the beginning of my addiction.  Ever since then, even though I was part of the ICT ecosystem within the Pacific, I never really knew much about Pacific -- about Internet governance until then.

 I currently serve as President of the South Pacific Computer Society, and I'm also an executive council member of the Southeast Asia Regional Computer Confederation.  So I'm trying to get all the computer societies from around southeast Asia to join the APrIGF and that sort of thing.

 I'm also a member of two accredited at-large organizations; namely, the South Pacific Computer Society as well as the Pacific chapter of The Internet Society called PICISOC.  I'm also founder of Pasifika NEXUS, which is a thing I do for fun, largely a think tank in the my region.

 In my other hat, I worked in the university as well.  I didn't put it in my biography for the simple reason that I will be tendering my resignation within the next month.  But essentially the University which I work in also happens to be a country code top level domain manager for .FJ.  

 Having said that, in that particular hat, I also look after the Japan Pacific ICT Center which serves as an ICT hub within the Pacific region.  And I also happen to be the World Summit -- I mean, I'm involved in the World Summit Awards Mobile Expert Program where we sort of filter and select mobile apps and channel it through the process.  

 I also serve on the advisory council of BrightPath Foundation.  

 In a previous-previous hat, I was privileged to serve as co-coordinator of the civil society Internet Governance Caucus.  And on the ground in Fiji from time to time when my government needs me to advise them on any matters pertaining to Internet governance but more fundamentally in relation to subsecurity (indiscernible).  And that is my short...

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Thank you, Sala.  

 Let me go to Miguel first.  I went to the far right.  Me get?

 >>MIGUEL IGNACIO ESTRADA: Good morning, everyone.  Since I didn't speak yesterday, congratulations to you.  And I would also like to thank Mexico and Brazil.  I couldn't attend -- attend remotely.

 My name is Miguel Ignacio Estrada.  I'm from Argentina.  I work for government in the (indiscernible) ministry.  This is my first year on the MAG.  I've been an ICANN fellow since, I don't know, 2013, I think.  Right now I'm involved in ICANN LAC strategy, in the communications part of the strategy.

 I was a communications manager for .AR for four years.  And I'm also the secretariat leader for Argentina IGF.  

 I hope I can help here.  Thank you.

 >>WANAWIT AKHUPUTRA:  Good morning.  My name is Wanawit Akhuputra from Thailand.  I am participating in IGF since Bali and Istanbul.  I've been speaking in the session in Joao Pessoa on universal access.  This year we also running the G77 ICT expert meeting on the ICT on SDG in Thailand just two months ago.

 I'm deputy executive director of Electronic Transactions Development Agency and data ministry of ICT, so definitely I'm representing government.  And I also the vice chair in the GAC in ICANN as well.  

 And this year just been appointed as a chair for electric commerce of the regional economic comprehensive initiative programs.  So I spend most of the time on the plane in Laos somewhere.  So after this, I have to go to Perth and two weeks I have to come back here again.  

 So I do hope that I could contribute something, also incoming for 2016.  And thank you.

 >> WISDOM DONKOR:  Good morning.  My name is Wisdom from Ghana.  I work with the national I.T. agency.  It's a government agency.  I've been an ICANN fellow since 2013, and I've been a co-chair three times.  

 My focus here is Internet governance and open data.  I'm looking at this to see how we can try to use these two companies to empower citizens through job creation.  So that is my focus area when it comes to Internet governance and open data.  Thank you.

 >>AIDA MAHMUTOVIC:  Good morning, everyone.  My name is Aida Mahmutovic.  This is my second year in MAG.  I come from a civil society stakeholder group.  I'm a Diplo alumni as well as ICANN fellow.  Now I am in the working group of rights protection mechanisms in all gTLDs PDP.  

 I'm involved with national IGF, SEEDIG, Southeast European Dialogue on Internet Governance, and regional Internet forum.  And I'm very much focused also on gender equality.  Thank you.

 >>ILIYA BAZLYANKOV: Good morning, everyone.  My name is Iliya Bazlyankov.  I come from the private sector in Bulgaria.  It is my first year in the MAG.  My involvement with IGF issues is since 2012 when I organized in Bulgaria a small multistakeholder discussion regarding the Internet issues.  Then some years later, I was the local host of ICANN's Studienkreis meeting in Sofia.  And last year I got involved in EuroDIG as local host and as well in SEEDIG in the regional meeting.

 I'm also involved with ICANN since many years.  Since 2007.  I've attended many meetings and I participate in more than 12 working groups.  Thank you.

 >>ELIZABETH THOMAS RAYNAUD: Good morning, everyone.  My name is Elizabeth Thomas Raynaud and I come from the International Chamber of Commerce, which is a large organization, a world business organization, which represents the private sector from across 120 countries.

 We -- I have two roles at ICC.  We develop policy positions that we promote at an intergovernmental level and then work through our national committees in 90 countries to promote across local and regional governments.

 So one of my roles is developing the policy work with commission experts from companies all over the world on digital economy issues.  And then my other role is as project director of the Business Action to Support the Information Society Initiative, and this is an initiative that the private sector asked ICC to put forward following the WSIS -- the first two WSIS summits, as ICC had been convening the private sector voice through that process and felt it was really important for the private sector to continue its commitment to multistakeholder engagement with an active and engaged voice and cooperation.

 So I have taken on the role that I've got now, about a year and a half ago.  However, I have experience working on this team with my brilliant predecessor, right from the get-go, from the first IGF in Athens, and according to when I had children, I attended other IGFs along the way.

 So I'm very delighted now to find myself here, able to contribute alongside all of you, and thank you for that opportunity.

 >>VIRAT BHATIA: Good morning.  I'm Virat Bhatia.  I'll make it totally short.  When I was in class, second.  I'm just kidding.

 [ Laughter ]

 >>VIRAT BHATIA: So I represent the business community.  I've attended every IGF either in person or remotely since Hyderabad, so that's 2008.  I've been very fortunate to be part of the community.  I've attended several -- not all -- of the ICANN meetings.  I represent the largest ICT industry association from India, which is FICCI.  I chaired the committee, which has about 150 members consisting of both Indian multinationals, equipment service providers, Internet companies, lawyers, professionals, everybody.  

 I work for AT&T and look out for the policy portfolio for south Asia, as well as represent the company in some of the international fora, and the last three years have been -- before this, spoke at many sessions and worked with very -- many different colleagues, but the last two years, since this is my third year as a MAG, helped organize several main sessions, contributed to the intersessional work, just basically trying to move the agenda on a day-to-day basis for the IGF.  Thanks.

 >>CHERYL MILLER: Good morning.  That will go away?  Okay.  Go away.  Sorry.  Good morning.  My name is Cheryl Miller.  I'm the director of International Public Policy and Regulatory Affairs for Verizon.  Like many of you, I also wear a few other hats.  I'm also a co-chair for ISOC's Organization Members Advisory Council, very active with ICANN's business constituency, and also an ICC/BASIS (indiscernible).

 In addition to my business background, I've been -- I'm here on behalf of business, and my past stints have included several positions within the U.S. government and I also taught (indiscernible) at the George Washington University intellectual property program.

 I just want to say I'm really inspired by the -- all the talent, both on line and in the room, and I'm really looking forward to working with all of you in making 2016 an amazing year and definitely looking forward to going to Mexico.  Thank you.

 >>MICHAEL NELSON: I'm Mike Nelson.  I, like Cheryl, have several different stakeholder hats.  I've spent 10 years in the U.S. government working with Senator Gore and Vice President Gore.  I also spent 10 years teaching at Georgetown, and continue to do some of that in my spare time, and I'm here on behalf of CloudFlare, but before that worked for Microsoft and IBM.

 I provide a little bit of institutional memory, since I've been working on Internet policy since 1988 when I worked with Senator Gore to write a little bill that had two sentences that said, "Normal people can use the Internet too."  Took us three years to get that passed, but I've been working to make sure the Internet grows quickly and provides a better, more secure place for people to innovate and I'm very glad to be here in my third year on the MAG.

 >>IZUMI OKUTANI: Izumi Okutani.  I am a policy liaison in JPNIC.  I have been working for over 15 years in the number resource community, collaborating with each of the regional registries around the world.  I am also active in the ICANN community on -- especially recently on enhancing ICANN's accountability, so I'm a member of a working group representing the number -- the ASO, the number community, and this is considered as a set together with the IANA stewardship transition.

 I am also serving as the chair of a team, the CRISP team, which have submitted the proposal on the number resources component of the IANA stewardship transition.

 So these are the -- some of the key areas, but there are other things that I do within the Japanese community on raising awareness around the Internet governance issues, work closely with the IGF -- the national IGF equivalent, and work closely with network operators group within Japan such as JANOG.  Thank you.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: We'll go to Marilyn and Omar and then come back to the middle of the room.

 >>MARILYN CADE: Thank you.  My name is Marilyn Cade.  I am from the business community.  I have probably the most appropriate background for being involved in high-tech since I started my professional career as a child abuse and neglect social worker and then converted to the ICT sector.  

 I -- when I first became involved in the Internet, there were only 4 million users, and like Mike, I worked in the very, very early days in helping to engage the private sector in understanding about the phenomena that the Internet could be.

 I've been involved, like many others here, in both phases of the WSIS and was present and helped to contribute to the negotiation of the Tunis Agenda, in particular the elements that are so relevant to us in the Internet Governance Forum.

 When we first became involved in the Internet, there was much stronger collaboration with governments and with the civil society and NGOs, and then we went through a period of time where that did not exist, and I think the IGF is the embodiment of returning to an inclusive engagement, and listening to the backgrounds of everyone here is very inspiring.  

 I did help to coordinate the private sector and NGO collaboration that led to the creation of ICANN.  I helped to host and organize the North American version of the international forum on the white paper, in working with CIX, a Commercial Internet Exchange predecessor that is no longer active but was very instrumental in the early days and worked with many of the technical community that helped to launch Internet initiatives in other countries.

 I'm the past chair of the business constituency.  I continue to be very active there.  I'm a member, on behalf of the business constituency, of the ICANN cross-community working group on Internet governance.  I was a participant in the cross-community working group on accountability.  I've attended every one of the consultations, the open consultations, that the IGF has held, including the early days when the MAG meetings were all closed, but always attended the consultations.  

 And I say that because this is my third year on the MAG but I hope that all of us really are going to continue to think that we contribute before we come to be appointed to the MAG and long after.

 I acted as the chief catalyst, with others, to launch the IGF USA in 2009 and continue to be an active member there.

 I'm a member of the IGF Support Association executive committee, along with some of the other folks who are here.

 I'm also a board member of a new initiative called WAVE, the Women's Alliance for Virtual Exchange, which focuses on addressing the challenging issues of access for women and girls in regions that have cultural and social barriers in a number of countries.

 I've been very actively involved in the Commission on Science and Technology for Development, having attended meetings there since 2004 when I previously worked for a global ICT communications company before I left to found mCADE llc, that I participate as now, and I was one of the business representatives at the CSTD Working Group on Improvements to the IGF and the first enhanced cooperation working group.

 >>OMAR MANSOOR ANSARI: Good morning.  My name is Omar Mansoor Ansari.  I'm from Afghanistan.  I'm presiding over TechNation, which is a technology and management company based in Kabul.  We engage in creating technology, helping startups, doing community tech, and also some policy and regulatory activities advisement.

 My company's a member of the ICANN business constituency and it's a member of the IGF Support Association.  

 I'm sitting on the board of directors of World I.T. and Services Alliance, WITSA, and I'm chairing the national ICT alliance of Afghanistan.  

 I first started working in the ICT sector.  That's where my professional journey starts with.  That was in 1999 when I cofounded the Afghan Computer Science Association and tried to engage with the Afghan technical communities from across the globe.  That was a time when Afghanistan was ruled by the Taliban.  We didn't have many people in the field, but we tried to work with the Afghan diaspora in other countries who were doing the computer sciences and technology education.  

 I first participated in 2003, the WSIS in Geneva, and then participated in a WSIS forum in 2005 and then 2012 and 2013.

 My first IGF was 2012 in Baku and then Bali in 2013, and the last one in Joao Pessoa.

 Okay.  And I'm also working with Marilyn on a couple of things that are in formation.  

 One is the national Afghanistan IGF and the second one is the regional IGF for central Asia.  And we are also working on the ISOC Afghanistan chapter, which is formation.  That are like in the final stages.  We're just waiting for a final approval by the HQ.  Thank you.

 And I'm private sector.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Omar.  Hossam, we're coming back now.

 >>HOSSAM ELGAMAL: Okay.  In brief, my name is Hossam Elgamal.  I'm a private sector representative.  I'm a partner in several companies in Egypt.  At the same time, I am a board member of Africa ICT Alliance.  It's a business association for Africa representing more than 20 countries.  And I used to be the vice chairman of the largest ICT association in Egypt.  Along with that, I have some other hats, so currently I have an assignment with the Egyptian government as well, and I have been doing some NGO activities for the last 25 years.  Thank you.

 >>MOURAD BOUKADOUM: Good morning to all.  Hi.  I'm Mourad Boukadoum from government.  I'm Deputy Director in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in charge of issues related to planning and foreign policy.  I've been a member of the MAG since 2014 so I am in my third term.

 Previously I was based here in Geneva for five years at the permanent mission and I have been involved in IG issues since 2009.  Looking forward to interact with fellow MAG members and the overall Internet community.  Thank you.  Nigeria.

 >>ZEINA BOU HARB: Good morning.  My name is Zeina Bou Harb.  I represent the Ministry of Telecom, the government sector, in the MAG.  I have a small, let's say, experience in the IGF.  It started with the -- last year with the preparation of the Arab IGF which was held in Beirut in December 2015.  I was a member of the -- of many subcommittees working on the preparations of the themes discussed and following on the coordination with the umbrella organization, ESCWA, and League of Arab States, for the -- for this IGF.

 Currently, I'm working with the government, with my ministry also on the preparation of the -- on drafting the laws regarding the domain names administration and the electronic transaction.

 I have experience in regulation, drafting regulation, and I follow on the issues related also to consumer protection, to ICT projects, and I was the head of commercial affairs for the third mobile operator, which was being established in Lebanon.  And I'm looking forward to work with you all for the IGF.  Thank you.

 >>JULIAN CASASBUENAS: Thank you.  Good morning.  I'm Julian Casasbuenas and I'm very pleased to be a new MAG member from civil society and to have the opportunity to work with all of you.

 I'm the director of Colnodo, a not-for-profit organization based in Colombia since 1993 working in ICTs for development.  Colnodo is an Association for Progressive Communications -- APC -- member, and I'm currently the chair of the board of the APC.

 I have been involved in the IGF process in 2006 when I participated in the first IGF in Athens, and since then, I was able to attend to six global IGFs, mainly participating on issues relating to access and diversity, Internet rights, and net neutrality.

 In two opportunities, I participated as well as Internet Society ambassador for the IGF, and I was Diplo alumni for a couple of times.

 From the APC, I was involved in the organization of Latin American IGF meetings and participated actively as reporter and speaker in these events, and in 2012 my organization was co-organizer of the fifth IGF Latin American meeting that was held in Bogota.

 Currently I am involved in the local IGF Colombian initiative, and I had the opportunity to present our results of the discussions we had in the local IGF related to Internet to reduce poverty and connecting the next billion during the interregional dialogue session at the IGF in Joao Pessoa.

 I think this was the first time that I participate on a space where we had the opportunity to share and present directly in the global IGF the results of the national discussions.  In our case related to connectivity issues, ICT policies, aspects where the cooperation of the multistakeholder approach is required, and proposals of future actions in the multistakeholder dialogue.

 I believe that it is necessary to keep and strengthen these spaces on the global IGF to ensure that the national and regional priorities are reflected in the global agenda of the IGF.  Thank you.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Julian.  Juan?

 >>JUAN FERNANDEZ: Well, my name -- my full name is Juan Alfonso Fernandez Gonzalez.  Juan and Alfonso are given names, Fernandez my father's last name, and Gonzalez my mother's last name.  As you know, in Latin countries, we use both surnames, you know, from father and mother.  It's not that the rest of the world doesn't remember the mothers, but -- well, that's our tradition.

 [ Laughter ]

 >>JUAN FERNANDEZ: But you can call me just "Juan."

 I'm a physicist but I've been working with computers since those things were bigger than refrigerators and took a whole room, so when the personal computer arrived -- even before that, when smaller computers came from Asia, from Japan, I and a group of Cubans started working with all that.

 Maybe you don't know but even before that, in Cuba we design a minicomputer totally Cuban from the ground up with its own operating system and own language.  It was similar to the PDP-10.  You can see that in history books.

 So we have development in that since the early stages.

 I began being involved in networks internally, and in those days, I don't know if you remember when Internet began to be -- become international.  At the beginning, it was called electronic commerce.  The first international organization to take interest in that was the World Trade Organization.  In 1997, 1996, 1998, they began to try to create an environment for what they called the global eCommerce and those words, and I was involved in that.

 Then the eCommerce was handled in UNCTAD -- do you remember -- by Bruno Lanvin. He's the husband of Anne Miroux.  She is one of the specialists, very senior specialists in UNCTAD in those days.

 Then ITU took electronic commerce -- it had a program that was called ECDC, electronic commerce for developing countries.  I was also involved there.  

 Then came the World -- no, the United Nations ICT Task Force that was created in 2001.  I was involved in the United Nations ICT task force.  Then came the first phase of the WSIS.  I became involved in that.  Then it came before the first phase and the second phase.  

 Do you remember Internet governance was not a great anything?  So the WGIG was created, the working group on Internet governance.  I was involved in that as well.  

 Then came the second phase of the WSIS, the ICT Task Force final mandate.  So the global alliance for ICT and development was created.  I was involved in that as well.  

 And then time has passed on and of the things that were agreed in Tunisia, do you remember related Internet governance was two tracks?  The IGF and the enhanced cooperation.  The IGF is here.  Enhanced cooperation is a group that's going to be created to ten years after keep doing that.  I'm supposed to be involved in that as well.  

 And IGF, it's going.  I think that -- IGF is not perfect but it's good enough.  I'm here to try to make it better.  That's it.

 I think I mentioned I'm from Cuba.

 [ Laughter ]

 I mentioned I'm from Cuba, from the government, ministry of communications.

 >>RAFAEL PEREZ GALINDO:  Good morning.  My name Rafael Galindo.  I work for the Spanish government in the secretariat for telecommunications and Information Society.  I have been involved in Internet governance issues since 2010, mainly in the GAC of ICANN, the cross-constituency group on ICANN accountability, in Spanish and global IGFs.  And I am very glad to be here and have the opportunity to contribute to this wonderful multistakeholder group.  Thank you.

 >>JUUSO MOISANDER:  Hello.  My name is Juuso Moisander.  I'm a second-year MAG member.  I work for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Finland.  I am the desk officer for WSIS follow-up and Internet governance.  

 I have been attending all IGFs since Hyderabad, and I think I have only missed only one or two MAG meetings since then as well.  I have been following the MAG for roughly seven years.  

 I have a background in trade policy, and I'm very interested in questions related to digital economy.  And I'm also the chair of the Finnish National IGF.

 Thank you.

 >>XIAODONG LEE:  I'm Xiaodong Lee.  First of all, congratulations to Madam Lynn to take the position for chair to improve the success of multistakeholder and continuing the multistakeholder process.  And also congratulations on IGF to go to the next ten years.

 I'm sorry.  I'm Xiaodong Lee.  I'm a renewed MAG member, served my three years in MAG.  I'm from the technical community.  But I'm listed as a private sector this time.  Maybe I look like the businessman when I dress in my suit.

 [ Laughter ]

 I'm just kidding.  I have told the secretary to correct that.

 So I'm the research professor of Chinese Academy of Science and also the CEO of the National Engineering Lab of Naming and Addressing Technologies, leading search and development that the end product including software and hardware product are improved against infrastructure of the world.

 And I'm also the CEO of CNNIC, which is the registry for .CN, .CHINA.  We achieve to be the largest ccTLD in the world and also largest Chinese IDN TLD in the world.  Now, we have over 18.7 million .CN registrations.

 I'm also the VP and board member of the Internet Society of China, including the member of the (indiscernible) and also some members from academia area and industry.

 I think somebody know I used to the VP of Asia for ICANN since 2011 to 2013.

 I think in the past few years I am active in IETF, ICANN, ISOC.  I'm a former member of the working group chair of email address internationalization of IETF.  And also I'm a member of the ICANN SSAC and also ICG.  And I'm working together with Madam Chair and also Hartmut in ICG.  It's a very nice memory.  Good luck for the next step for the U.S. government.

 I'm very happy to renew my membership in MAG to continue to work together with MAG members and also to contribute my knowledge.  Thank you.

 >>ARNOLD van RHIJN:  Good morning to you all.  My name is Arnold van Rhijn.  I work for the Netherlands government at the Ministry of Economic Affairs, Telecommunications Market Directory.  

 I'm involved in Internet governance since 2012.  Among other duties, I also coordinate the national Dutch IGF.  I'm a new MAG member.  And I would have stayed longer in Geneva, but unfortunately I have to leave at the end of today as I have other responsibilities to fulfill in the context of the E.U. presidency, which my country currently holds until the 1st of July.

 More information about my professional experience can be found on the IGF's Web site.  Thank you.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  I think I see Ana back there as well.

 >>CHENGETAI MASANGO:  She is not a MAG member.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Ana, we had actually asked if outgoing MAG members would just briefly introduce themselves as well because the fact that you're here shows your continued interest in the IGF and you're a resource and could perhaps help support some of the incoming MAG members as well.

 >> ANA NEVES:  Okay.  Thank you.  So I'm covering MAG since 2008.  So my first IGF, it was in 2008.  And since then, I'm covering all these issues, ICANN, IGF, you name it.

 So I was covering the open consultations and when the MAG was started to be open, I started to be -- I started to participate in the MAG meetings.  And eventually I become a member of the MAG.

 So what can I say?  It was very, very interesting.  I think that now we are in a different layer that we were in the last three years.  So if I would be of any interest with my experience, it would be great.  But I think that these new members of the MAG -- well, I must say that it's very promising.  So I'm here to help.  But good luck.  Thank you.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Thank you.  We'll come back to you, Cristina.  We'll come back to the intergovernmental organizations and their special role at the end.

 >> ALEJANDRA ERRAMUSPE:  Good morning, everybody.  I'm Alejandra Erramuspe from Uruguay.  I would like to say thank you for your warm welcome to the MAG.  It's my first time here.  And congratulate you as the new Chair.

 I'm very pleased to participate in the MAG.  I represent the government of Uruguay.  I work at the agency of eGovernment and information society at the office of the President (saying name).

 I also -- I represent Uruguay in the steering committee of LAC IGF since 2014.  I also am representative of the government in the GAC, in ICANN.  

 I would like to tell you THAT the following month on the 17th of May in Uruguay will take place the first local IGF.  We are very excited.  In July, we are going to have our regional IGF, LAC IGF.  In these days we are deciding which country will be the host country.

 We still have a lot of work to do here, the IGF having (indiscernible) since the beginning but as we are discussing these days a lot of work to do -- a lot of things waiting to improve.

 I hope we can work all together to enhance the multistakeholder participation.  I think we have a lot of work to do.  I trust we can do it.  Thank you.

 >> SUSAN CHALMERS:  Good morning, everyone.  My name is Susan Chalmers, and I'm an outgoing MAG member.  I had the honor of participating in the organization of the Bali, Istanbul, and Joao Pessoa meetings.  Most of my work, when I was on the MAG, focused on the workshop selection and evaluation process.  So I can be a resource there, if people have any questions.

 My first IGF was in Nairobi in 2011.  I was -- and then I joined the MAG two years later.  I was appointed by the technical community.  I have since joined the Office of International Affairs at the NTIA, the U.S. Department of Commerce.

 Best of luck to everybody this year.

 >> LIESYL FRANZ:  Good morning.  My name is Liesyl Franz.  I'm with the U.S. Department of State, and I'm a new incoming MAG member.  Happy to be here with all of you.  I started my work in Internet governance by coming -- the first IGF I went to was in Rio, so I have only missed one.  And I have been to many of the MAG and open consultation meetings.  

 I've worked with many of you and many of my colleagues not only at the Department of State where I joined 3 1/2 years ago; but prior to that, I worked for Tech America which was a trade association representing high-tech companies.  And I often worked with them in organizing workshops for IGFs, not only for workshops but also working with many of you on organizing some of the main sessions and other work during the preparatory meetings.

 So while I may be a new MAG member, I'm hopefully not new to the community.

 Thank you all.  And I look forward to working with you.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  I think we'll come back to the Brazil -- well, we have Flavio as the current MAG member.  And then, Brazil, you could also have a second shot at this at the very end as an outgoing -- the host countries always have a special place in the mag.

 >>FLAVIO WAGNER:  Good morning, everybody.  My name is Flavio Wagner from Brazil.  I represent the technical community here in the MAG in my second year.  I have a background on electrical engineering and computer science.  And I am a professor for computer science and engineering at the University of Rio Grande do Sul in Brazil for almost four decades now.  

 Since 2011 I'm the director of the science and technology park at the university, which among many other things also supports startups in the I.T. area.

 I have been president of the Brazilian computer society in two terms and held various other positions in its board.  I am a member of the board of CGI.BR, the Brazilian Internet Steering Committee since 2008 representing the scientific committee.  And I am now in my third three-year term in the board.

 So I have been involved in many national, international Internet governance activities mainly since 2008 such as, for instance, the Brazilian IGF which CGI.BR organize since 2011.  

 I have also been a member of the executive multistakeholder committee of NETmundial, which was really a wonderful experience of a true multistakeholder process.  So thank you.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Thank you.

 German, can I ask you to do a brief introduction?

 >>GERMAN VALDEZ:  My name is German Valdez.  This is my second year as a MAG member, and I'm part of the technical community.  

 I have been part of the technical community since 1998.  I have performed different positions in the domain name industry and with the regional Internet registries.  

 My current role is the executive secretary for the NRO, which is comprised of the five regional Internet registries.  And the role of the NRO is to push the global agenda of the RIRs.  And I have been involved in IGF since inception, since the first meeting.  Thank you very much.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Now we're going back across the room here.  And this is where it gets a little bit difficult in terms of the ability to see people.  I actually see Rasha there.  I think you are the next.

 >> RASHA ABDULLA:  Good morning, my name is Rasha Abdulla.  I'm an associate professor of journalism and mass communication at the American University in Cairo.  

 This is my first MAG meeting.  I'm very excited to be here.  Very new experience for me.  I come at this mostly from an academic background.  I have been interested in Internet policy since, well, the last '80s, actually before it was officially called the Internet.  And I was a student at the time.  But I have been in that line of research almost for my entire career.  I think my Ph.D. dissertation was the first large-scale academic study of Internet use in Egypt.  That was back in the early 2000s.  I have since authored three books on the Internet in the Arab world and several technical reports including mapping the digital report for Egypt.  

 I have spoken at numerous conferences on this, of course.  I am here representing civil society, which I have become heavily engaged in since 2011, since the Egyptian revolution.  So I'm looking forward to working with all of you.  Thank you.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  I think the next would be Mark Carvell as an outgoing member.  And then I think, Segun, we will come to you after.

 >>MARK CARVELL:  Thank you, Chair.  And good morning, everybody.  My name is Mark Carvell.  I represent United Kingdom government.  My ministry is the Department for Culture, Media, and Sport.  I'm an outgoing MAG member.  I have been involved in Internet governance policy since 2008.  I have attended every IGF since then and have been on the MAG for three years.  So I'm coming off now.

 I'm a member of the U.K. IGF's steering committee.  I represent the U.K. government at the Council of Europe in Strasbourg.  That's 47 member states.  We've just agreed on Internet governance strategy for the next four years, which includes support for multistakeholder processes.

 I also advise the commonwealth institutions on Internet governance policy; in particular, the commonwealth telecommunications organization which is relaunching the Commonwealth Internet Governance Forum.  So watch this space.  

 And I'd be very pleased to continue to be a link to the commonwealth membership on IGF matters for the MAG and for promoting participation by stakeholder communities in all commonwealth member states in the IGF in years ahead.

 So best of luck to the new membership at the MAG and to you, Lynn, for taking over the chairing.  Look forward to the outcome of these preparatory meetings and helping in any way I can.  Thank you very much.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Thank you.  And thank you for your very generous offer to continue to support the MAG as well.

 Segun?

 >>SEGUN OLUGBILE:  Good morning, everybody.  My name is Segun Olugbile.  I'm from Nigeria.  This is my second year on the MAG.  I actually represent the business community under the (indiscernible) of AfICTA.  Also, I'm a member of the Nigeria Internet Governance Forum, a co-founder and a member of the board of trustees.

 Also, I'm the president of the Global Network for Cybersolutions.  That is an organization that has been advocating for cyber solutions in Nigeria in the last 15 years.  And, furthermore, I have been in the Internet governance space in the last close to ten years.  But I really want to appreciate the fact that I joined the MAG last year.  And that has broadened my knowledge and actually exposed me to international diplomacy on Internet governance.

 At the same time, I was recently appointed as a member of the National Cybercrime Council in Nigeria.  And, currently, I'm also an advisor to the EcoWest community -- economic community of West Africa because we are trying to reform the West Africa IGF forum.  And I think we're very soon going to make announcement on the day that we are to have that regional forum.

 So much for now.  Thank you.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Thank you.  I think if I'm looking back, Laura, you are the next.

 >>LAURA HUTCHINSON:  Thank you.  My name is Laura Hutchinson.  I'm a new MAG member representing the technical community.  I work for Nominet, which is the country code TLD for U.K.  And we also run the gTLDs for Wales and Cymru.  

 I attended my first IGF in 2007 which was the one in Rio.  I think I have just missed one since then.

 I have also participated in the open consultations and MAG meetings -- previous MAG meetings as an observer.  I also participate in the regional and national group coordinated by Anja that organized the main session at the last IGF.  

 I also participate in ICANN, and I'm on the working group for the use of country and territory names as TLDs.  

 I'm very pleased to be on the MAG and look forward to working with you all.  Thank you.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you.  Constance as an outgoing.

 >>CONSTANCE BOMMELAER: Thank you.  I'm Constance Bommelaer, Senior Director of Global Internet Policy at the Internet Society.  

 Before joining the Internet Society, I worked for the French government specifically on information society issues.  Part of my portfolio comprises the organization's, the Internet Society's, engagement with the IGF.  I served on the MAG for several years until 2015.  Last year I also served as advisor to the chair of the MAG on intersessional activities to accelerate the process and work towards IGF outcomes for IGF 2015.  And as many colleagues, I'm very happy to help any newcomers on the MAG towards a successful IGF 2016.  Thank you.

 >>GIACOMO MAZZONE: Hi.  I'm Giacomo Mazzone from EBU, European Broadcasting Union.  I'm here representing the World Broadcasting Union.  That is nine unions in the world in each region and we have members in all the countries of the world recognized by the United Nations and beyond.  

 We, as WBU, are in ourselves a multistakeholder organization because we have a private sector, we have civil society organizations and state organizations within us, and some of our members are also international intergovernmental organizations, so it's a little bit confused, the separation there.  

 We have been partners of the World Summit on Information Society in 2003 in Geneva and since then we have been involved in all the activities.  I've personally attended all the IGF meetings and all the IGF preparatory meetings and MAG meetings since the beginning.  As organization, we have been ECOSOC member (indiscernible) at the U.N., we are partners with UNESCO, sector members of the ITU, observers to the GAC, founding members of EuroDIG, member of the ICC, and you can name all the rest, and we have been pleased to participate in NETmundial in Brazil, et cetera, et cetera.

 As a person, I have 33 years of experience in journalism and media.  I'm one of the founding members of Euronews.  I've been board members of Eurosports and I'm founding member of the (indiscernible) IGF.  Thank you.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: The transcribers are doing an excellent job, but just to note for the transcribers that that wasn't, in fact, Julian Casabuenas who was speaking but Giacomo Mazzone.  

 I think we're done with the incoming and outgoing and current MAG members, with a few sort of exceptions in a moment here.  Let me just check and see if there are any more on line, and then we have two other categories of MAG members to introduce, and that is the -- there are representatives from Internet -- intergovernmental organizations that have a special role in the MAG.  We've got four or five representatives here so we'll ask them to introduce themselves as well.  And then of course each host country also has a representative to the MAG as well, and there are three or four of them here as well, so we'll ask them to do a brief introduction as well.  

 But Anja, are there any more online participants?

 >>REMOTE INTERVENTION: Thank you very much.  We have four current MAG members that have joined us.  Peter, the floor is yours now.

 >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Thank you, everybody.  Can you hear me all right? 

 >>REMOTE INTERVENTION: We can hear you.

 >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Thank you.  So I'm appointed by the technical -- my name is Peter Dengate Thrush.  I am appointed by the technical community.  I'm a second-year MAG member returning.  I'm originally from New Zealand, but now based largely in the United States.  I've had a long connection with the Internet, mostly through the DNS, going back to 1995 or earlier, but I'm familiar with the birth and the growth and fortunately the extension of the IGF.  

 I've attended, I think, seven of the 10, including the first and the last, and in the middle have attended many regional IGFs all over the world, including in Russia, for example, and New Caledonia.

 I'm the former chairman of ICANN, the former chairman of the Asia-Pacific Top-level Domain Association and the former chairman of InternetNZ, the country code manager for New Zealand.  

 I'm very sorry I'm not there in person.  I'm very much looking forward to the work of this MAG and delighted to have heard all the extraordinary talent that's joined us and look forward to working towards the meeting in Mexico.  Thank you.

 >>REMOTE INTERVENTION: Thank you very much.  

 And Bianca, the floor is yours.

 Unfortunately we can't hear you, Bianca, so we might come back to Bianca later, maybe.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: And I think, Baher, on the original pass, you're an outgoing MAG member.

 >>BAHER ESMAT: Thank you.  Thank you, Lynn.  My name is Baher Esmat.  I come from Egypt.  I'm an outgoing MAG member.  I joined the MAG back in 2012 as part of the technical community representation.  

 I work for ICANN.  I'm part of the global stakeholder engagement team at ICANN and have been involved in Internet policy and governance issues since WSIS.  I was part of the WGIG, or the working group on Internet governance, that was formed in 2004, and then, you know, I attended all IGF meetings and I've also participated in a number of working groups related to Internet governance including CSTD working group and IGF improvements.  I'm glad to be here today as an outgoing MAG member and I look forward to working with both incoming and outgoing MAG members in preparation for IGF 2016.  Thank you.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you.  And now I think as I look around the room -- and, please, if I'm missed anyone, raise your hand.  If not, then we'll actually go to the representatives from three of the intergovernmental organizations and I think we have Cristina, Despoina, and Lee.  So Cristina?

 >>CRISTINA MONTI: Good morning, everyone.  My name is Cristina Monti.  I work for the European Commission.  I work in the Directorate General for Communication Network, Content, and Technology, and in particular, I am a member of the Internet Governance Task Force.  The European Commission has been a convinced supporter of the IGF since the beginning and also an important and committed donor, providing stable and continuous funding to the IGF and to the IGF's trust fund.

 And our plans are also to continue to do so in the future because of the value we see in the IGF as the open multistakeholder forum for dialogue on Internet governance issues.

 The European Commission has a particular interest in the Internet governance issues because of the importance of the Internet for Europe's economy and society, but also because we have the .EU top-level domain name which is administered by a nonprofit organization called EURID on behalf of the European Commission, and I am glad to announce that this week the .EU will turn 10 years old, so it's a -- we are going to celebrate this anniversary later this week.  Thank you very much.

 >>LEE HIBBARD: Hello, everybody.  My name is Lee Hibbard.  I'm from the Council of Europe, an IGO based in Strasbourg with 47 member states.  

 I think you all mostly know things like the Budapest Convention on Cybercrime and the European Convention on Human Rights, and my job has been over many years to sort of interface with governments and liaise on matters regarding human rights, the rule of law, democracy, and how that intersects with Internet, ICTs, et cetera.  

 So I find myself in many spaces.  The IGF.  I'm the observer to the GAC in the ICANN, for example, where we trigger debate on human rights in ICANN's work, which is now unfolding.  

 I very much -- I've spent quite a lot of time in developing policy documents with the governments in the Council of Europe on a range of issues from Internet governance principles to the integrity of the Internet to children's protection to freedom of expression, et cetera, so my portfolio is rather large.  

 I've been facilitating support for multistakeholder dialogue for quite a long time, supporting national and regional IGFs.  This week we have colleagues going to the Russian IGF in Moscow on the 7th of April.  I was -- I was -- we -- last year we -- we agreed upon -- the member states agreed upon a declaration in support of WSIS+10 review, which actually agreed upon a proposal for a 10-year extension of the IGF.  I very much hope that that helps why we're here today for the next 10 years.  

 So, you know, we're very great supporters of this forum.

 As Mark Carvell said earlier, we -- just last week, we -- the member states adopted a new strategy on Internet governance, a four-year strategy, which brings together all the things that we do and some new things as well, but mainly about actions.  There are too many to mention here, but what's important is that, you know, it's not just about the issues of the day regarding what human rights issues are happening now, but it's also about -- we're talking about issues regarding the law and about human rights that you all know about, but it's also about democracy.  It's about -- it's about sustainable approach to democracy and participation and citizenship and all these issues which are sort of coming in now through the outcome document, which I think is also important and telling.

 In that new strategy adopted last week, there are -- it's written down that we seek partnerships and synergies with U.N. agencies, with the IGF, with other stakeholder groups, so we have a mandate to be here.  We have a mandate to work together on these issues.

 So, you know, it's very clear, written down, that this is supported by all those countries.

 I've been involved in the Tunis stage of the WSIS back in 2005.  That's how long I've been around.

 I've been involved in almost all IGFs since 2006, organizing a range of events.  Last year we organized a joint open forum with the OHCHR on privacy issues and the U.N. Special Rapporteur on privacy was there.

 I'm also involved in the WSIS forum and WSIS action line implementation with the U.N. agencies.  I was -- I was part of the setting up of the EuroDIG back in 2008.  And recently -- but this is a secondary activity -- I've also been involved in coauthoring a paper for the global commission on Internet governance on education 3.0 on Internet governance, together with the author, Divina Frau-Meigs.

 So I'm steeped in Internet governance.  I'm very supportive of this work.  I think I have a lot of expertise to share with you, and certainly I'm a focal point for other expertise and colleagues that you may wish to contact.  Thank you.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Lee.  

 Makanye?

 >>MAKANYE FAYE: Yeah.  My name is Makanye Faye from the U.N. Economic Commission for Africa, also the African IGF secretariat, (indiscernible) African Union, both (indiscernible) based in Addis Ababa.  

 We're leading the participation of the African countries in the WSIS.  That is the first phase.  And we organize in 2000 the first regional conference on (indiscernible) in Bamako which came up with the Bamako Declaration.  And then in 2004, we organized the Accra African Continent (indiscernible) which come up with the Accra commitment.

 We also are involved in the -- leading the follow-up of the WSIS action lines implementation from the Tunis summit, including African Internet governance, where we have been leading also throughout the years with the African Union Commission.  We are organizing our African Internet Governance Forum in the months to come.  The date is not yet fixed.  But I'm calling upon our African MAG members for the meeting tomorrow here in the same room at 9:15 to start (indiscernible).  Thank you.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you.  Despoina.

 >>DESPOINA SARIDAKI: Good morning, everyone.  My name is Despoina Saridaki.  It's written kind of differently so I think it will be a challenge for the scribes.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Apologies.

 >>DESPOINA SARIDAKI: No problem.  So I'm with the ITU and working in the area of Internet policy and cybersecurity since 2013.  The ITU has been very actively involved in the IGF since the very beginning, also bearing its role in the WSIS summit and organization of WSIS forum, as well as -- every year as well as its involvement in different action lines, WSIS action lines.  My colleague has also briefed you on ITU's work on WSIS so I won't be getting into that.

 So I'm the IGF focal point, a coordinator for within the ITU only since last year, so I got to know a bit more about the work of IGF since the Joao Pessoa event.  I did attend last year.  I'm hoping to do so this year.  And I'm also always excited to attend the MAG meetings because they're very informative, especially on how the IGF works and different developments in the area.  So thank you, and look forward to engaging with you further.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you.  I think the -- we're getting down to the end of the introductions which I just find very, very helpful and very interesting, not only because it shows the wealth of sort of talent and expertise in the room, I think it actually showcases quite well a lot of activities and initiatives that are taking place around the world as well, so I think that's excellent.

 Again, the host countries also have a special role in the MAG and I think we have three here.  I see Christine from Egypt, and then we'll go to Thailand, and of course we have Brazil.

 >>CHRISTINE ARIDA: Thank you, Chair.  My name is Christine Arida.  I am with the government of Egypt.  I work for the National Telecom Regulatory Authority, and I'm here, as you mentioned, Madam Chair, because Egypt was a host for the fourth IGF.  We hosted the IGF in 2009 in Sharm El Sheikh, and ever since the WSIS and the very start, I have been involved, and I've attended all the IGFs.  I'm happy to be attending.  I stand to help any new MAG members that would need any support, so please turn to us if you need and I really wish Mexico all the luck and all the best, and the MAG and yourself under your chairmanship for a successful event in 2016.  Thank you.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you.  And of course it was Indonesia, not Thailand, who was the next host country to address us.  Moedjiono?

 >>MOEDJIONO SARDJOENI: Yeah.  My name is Moedjiono from Indonesia.  I'm a MAG member since 2006 and I was a GAC ICANN member from Indonesia.  I was involved in the WSIS forum 2003 and also 2005.  I was in the ministry of ICT Indonesia and now I am a professor in (indiscernible) Jakarta, and I was organizer of IGF 2013 in Bali, Indonesia.  That's why I'm the special MAG member.  Thank you.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you.  And Jandyr, are you going to be the representative from Brazil?

 >>JANDYR SANTOS: Thank you.  My name is Jandyr Santos and I work for the Brazilian government, Ministry of External Relations.  I'm the head of the Information Society Division.  This is the unit in the ministry that is responsible for following and coordinating Brazil's position in all Internet governance negotiations, be it in the United Nations, in ICANN, in the regional initiatives, so on and so forth.

 I work under the leadership of Ambassador Benedicto Fonseca.  Thank you.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you.  And I think we -- we'd like Victor to introduce himself as an incoming MAG member and then maybe we'll go to an online participant, if there's a new, and begin to wrap this up.

 >>VICTOR LAGUNES: Thank you so much, Madam Chair.  My name is Victor Manuel Lagunes Soto Ruiz, so I beat you for one name, Juan.

 [ Laughter ]

 >>VICTOR LAGUNES: I have a couple of maiden name -- mother maiden names, so in Mexico we tend to recognize, of course, our mother's maiden name, but we also tend to not forget all our heritage so we just add up all our last names.  

 Anyway, so I'm an engineer by trade, electronics and systems, I do have an MBA, and most of my life I have been in the industry side, telecommunications sector, and also in the entrepreneurial ventures.

 It's only the last three years that I've been part of government.  I find it enthralling and very, very exciting, very different from my past life.  So I only had a suit, and that was for weddings, and I was used to just wearing T-shirts and jeans and I was very, very happy.  

 And I find it very interesting how Internet governance definitely has -- is shaping today and the future for generations.

 I'm learning, so I -- I actually believe it's a little bit unfair that I'm co-chair at the same time that I'm for the first time a MAG member.  So I'll be looking forward to -- to getting support from all of you at the same time that I will be very open and very -- and I'll have an ear open always for your contributions and taking advantage of your expertise.

 We -- in Mexico in the last three years, we have taken a very active role in terms of governance.  We've hosted many events including regional IGF and, of course, ELAC, which is the World Summit on Information Society, Latin American version.  Of course, we are very interested since Bali and then Istanbul, then Brazil to host the IGF.  I don't think we really knew where we were going to get into.  That's the reason why we probably asked for it.

 And I say so because of the (indiscernible) of just the time lines around, of course, being very vocal around getting the mandate renewed.  And now that we have it, now we are in the fast lane towards getting the event organized, very thankful for the support of Chengetai's team.  They've already made their trip to Mexico a couple of times.  They understand and they are very sensitive toward the time lines and, of course, the use of budgets.  We're in a different situation in Mexico than we were two years ago, mainly because of the oil prices.  

 So we actually are organizing this event in a very creative way.  And that actually means we're going to be activating the whole ecosystem in a way that I think we have to.  A multistakeholder approach to me means exactly that.  We cannot overly control the agenda.  

 At the same time, we have to give opportunity to the different holders of each stake to really contribute towards that.  

 In Mexico, we have a very vocal but a very small ecosystem, a proactive ecosystem, if I can call it that.  So we are looking forward to activating all of that and all of your expertise and all of your help.  So thank you.  

 >>REMOTE INTERVENTION:  We have Cedric that would like to speak on behalf of UNESCO.  

 Cedric, the floor is yours.

 [ No audio ]

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: We can come back to Cedric.  I'll do a quick introduction for myself and then we can come back to Cedric and see if he's -- I mean, UNESCO is obviously a key organization in this space.

 So my name is Lynn St. Amour.  I've been involved in WSIS and IGF activities since the very earliest days.  In fact, as president and CEO of the Internet Society, we were invited to one of the earliest planning meetings back in 2001 in (saying name), and we've been -- myself personally has been involved in all the WSIS 1 and WSIS 2 PrepComs.  For those of you that know, those were weeklong meetings, several of them, in advance of the PrepCom Summits, which were also weeklong events, so very formative time for everybody.  It gave us a set of shared experiences, shared values, principles, a common language, just incredibly, incredibly helpful.

 I've attended every IGF since.  The first nine were, of course, as a part of the Internet Society in my role as CEO there, but last year I attended as well, and last year was, in fact, my first year on the MAG.

 I spent 27 years in Europe, though I am American, and I have both a significant amount of time in business, so 16 years with Digital Equipment and a few years each with AT&T and General Electric, back in the earliest days, but computing programming at that time, and laterally, with the Internet Society, where I was the president and CEO for I think 14 years.  I left there in very early 2014.

 So this Internet governance area is just critical to me.  I think it's critical for the advancement of society, for a much more equal and just society, as I think Virat said yesterday, and, you know, I really want to work to get the next 10 years of the IGF off to one of the more robust starts that we can.

 So I look forward to working with everybody.

 I'd also say the Internet Society, when I came to the MAG, was part of the technical organization.  In fact, in every other environment, we're a civil society organization.  In this organization, in order to give those organizations that have a specific role over managing key pieces of the Internet's infrastructure, this sort of fourth category was created.

 And I say that to all my civil society colleagues because I think we share many, many principles and values and I feel that as an individual and I certainly feel that from my ex- -- my old working life, despite the technical classification here of this organization.

 So I think with that, I'll -- we'll see if Cedric now has voice and we'll hear from UNESCO and then we'll move on to the next part of the agenda.

 >>ANJA GENGO:  Cedric, can you please try to speak?

 >>CEDRIC WACCHOLZ:  I don't know if you can hear me now.  My name is Cedric Waccholz.  I work for UNESCO.  And as we take for the first time the floor, I would like to take this opportunity to congratulate you, Lynn, on your appointment and be assured of UNESCO's full support of you as the Chair.  And, of course, also welcome to the new MAG members and all the entire IGF community online and in Geneva.

 Just a short note to say that UNESCO has taken specific note of the meeting, and we are not allowed to travel during this period.  We will certainly be with you at the next open consultation and MAG meeting.  And also we look forward to participating and contributing to the IGF in Mexico.  

 In UNSECO, I coordinate UNESCO's WSIS work across UNESCO's five sectors and this includes their regional Internet governance work.  We look forward to strengthen participation in the IGF.  

 Perhaps many of you know, we just had a new appointment of the assistant director-general Mr. Frank La Rue.  Many of you know (indiscernible) for freedom of expression.  

 And UNESCO has always participated in all IGFs from 2006 until the Brazil meeting, very successful Brazil meeting last year.  And we organized 50 workshops and joined other sessions.  

 Internet governance, last year was an important year for us.  Many of you attended the CONNECTing the DOTS conference with the multistakeholder recommendations which were then later in 2015 endorsed by UNESCO's government in the general conference.  

 And the work, the recommendation focused on access to information, freedom of expression, and privacy and ethics.  And UNESCO looks forward to contributing particularly in the upcoming and following IGFs since I think (indiscernible).  The opportunity to plan ahead for the next ten years is really an opportunity I hope we will use in our planning in the upcoming work.  Thank you very much.  (indiscernible).

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Thank you, Cedric.  And thank you, everyone.  

 I thought that was very informative and very interesting and I hope really supports our work going forward well.  It certainly would enrich it in terms of understanding more about individuals' interests and background.

 So this is the first day of the MAG meeting.  Yesterday, again, was an open consultation.  So at this point in the agenda, we first turn to the 2015 host country for some remarks from them on last year's IGF and then we will turn to the 2016 host country for some additional remarks for the IGF.

 So is it Benedicto?  

 Benedicto, you are very welcome.

 >>BENEDICTO FONSECA:  Thank you, Madam Chair.  Just as we have done yesterday, I'd like initially to express our -- that we were very honored and proud to host last year's IGF in Joao Pessoa.  We would like to thank all those who contributed to this.  We think Joao Pessoa made a very important contribution, and we'd like to see those meetings, IGF meetings, make incremental gains.  So we think in Joao Pessoa, we were able to move ahead with regard to some areas of work that we have -- that the MAG has set for the meeting, and we were very pleased to host the meeting there.

 But as we have done yesterday, I'd like to -- with your indulgence, to turn to Flavio Wagner and Jandyr who represent Brazil in the MAG for further comments in that regard.

 >> FLAVIO WAGNER:   Thank you, Benedicto.  

 We think that we have many good lessons that we have learned during the organization of IGF 2015 in Brazil.  And many MAG members and people present in the open consultation yesterday reflected in their statements this satisfaction with the community with the results that we had there.  

 I think that many of those lessons, the MAG should try to keep these in future meetings, in future IGF meetings.

 We know, of course, now that IGF 2016 is already being organized.  A venue has been chosen.  And, of course, we are sure that our friends from Mexico will do the best possible event there.  And maybe this -- some of these considerations I make should stay for future IGF meetings as kind of a set of requirements in regard for local arrangement, logistics, and so on.

 So many people mentioned yesterday the fact that the localization of the IGF village was very important in the middle of the event, so together with the coffee break area, so all people between sessions were all together there which was very important for networking.  So we think that this should be kept in mind when organizing future events, that we have this central place for the IGF village.

 Many people talked yesterday about free lunch in a large common area.  This is also very important.  We remember from previous IGF meetings that this could be a problem if people have to leave the venue to find food or if the area for lunch is outside the main venue area.

 So we think this is important.  We know that this can be very costly if we offer free lunch to all attendees, but this should be an effort that is worthwhile to think how to provide this for the attendees in an area which is large enough so that people can also use this as a networking area.  And this is very close to the main venue premises.

 Also rooms for bilateral and multilateral meetings also very close to the main area are important.  And this was provided in Brazil, maybe not with a large number of rooms but this should be also kept as a good requirement for future IGF meetings, the easy identification of rooms.  

 It's not only food that people need to be in good shape for all discussions.  It's also excellent WiFi connection.  We made a very large effort in Brazil for doing this.  And I think this is important, is food and WiFi.

 There was -- I think that when we started organizing IGF last year, here in the MAG and organizing the schedule of the main sessions and workshops, we had a discussion on the extension, the duration of the schedule each day.  And there was a problem with the translator that were usually hired by United Nations in this event, in the IGF meetings.  And, in fact, the decision was to extend the duration so that -- of the activities until the evening, or beginning of the evening, late afternoon.  And this put some requirements on the duration of the activities of the translator during the day.  This is also important that we have this flexibility as a MAG to organize the sessions and extend activities on a daily basis depending on the requirements.

 So, of course, maybe Hartmut should be the right person to talk about all those aspects because it was mainly his duty to do this.  And he did it very well.  Was an excellent organization by Hartmut and his team.  

 But I think this lesson should be kept for future events, kind of requirements that MAG would set for -- to the local organizers of future events.  So thank you.

 >>JANDYR SANTOS:  Thank you, Chair.  And I had the privilege of making some preliminary comments yesterday during the open consultations on the IGF Joao Pessoa.  And I do not intend to repeat everything I said.  And I just want to be brief and say -- and reiterate that the Brazilian government is ready to help to the best of our capacities our Mexican friends in organizing the Guadalajara meeting.  Thank you very much.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Thank you.  And, again, thank you to Brazil to CGI.BR, to the Brazilian government, to the Brazilian Steering Committee for all the work you did.  It really was just a tremendous, tremendous IGF and very much appreciated.  And certainly your continuing support to the IGF and your show of force -- (laughter) -- is certainly much appreciated.  Thank you.

 So I think with that, we'll move to the IGF 2016.  And, Victor, you can feel free at this point in the agenda or later on to -- at some point today, we're going to have to get a little more specific about the venue and the facilities so that it actually aids our planning around workshop size, numbers, and format, and that sort of thing.  That would normally be done in probably an hour or two in the agenda, but I'll leave the flow up to you.  

 So welcome.  And we look forward to just as successful an IGF in 2016.

 >>VICTOR LAGUNES:  Thank you, Madam Chair.

 So I would like to start by thanking you all for your feedback regarding the Brazil IGF.  I think the comments were very enlightening.  They are very logical, or most of them are very down-to-earth, which is we need to have a very comfortable forum, everything from the agenda itself all the way into food and so on.

 There are some comments that I would like to capture and underscore around the IGF village.  Of course, to me, it's very, very important that the networking aspect of it is protected and it's not only protected but actually risen to a level that we are comfortable to talk to each other, to discuss practices, to share our own experiences within our countries and, of course, within our regions.  So on our side, we will be, of course, focusing on creating that environment.  

 Of course, I captured as well the agreed comment that Virat and Cheryl made around scheduling and agenda, around, I guess, workshops versus main sessions that have to be working to those four days.  The workshops supporting and in conjunction to strengthen the main sessions.

 Food and coffee, I think there was a comment around an espresso Mexican coffee.  I will do my best.  If not, we so have very good coffee in Mexico.  We definitely need it at times.

 We have organized these events, so we feel comfortable that we'll be able to make a very successful one around technology, for example, infrastructure all the way from the WiFi connectivity into the Internet connection to the outside world.  Just to give you how I think around the engineering aspect, if we give one gig of connection and we're 500 people downloading the streaming channeling to our phones, we'll just completely take over that bandwidth.  And that's how we think about it.  So in these events, we deploy around two gigabits-per-second connections.  And sometimes the bandwidth we deploy is the bandwidth that will be used.  Nonetheless, without connectivity, this event I think will be losing some of the value.  So on that side, we will be working with technology advisors within the U.N.'s group who already have been in the country, already saw the venue, and, of course, presented their comments and their feedback.  Nonetheless, we feel comfortable that we'll be able to present a very comfortable technology environment.  But that's logistical, I believe.

 The main value I would like to open for discussion is the content.  The one that I captured is around long-term thinking.  So, of course, it's the first iteration or the first IGF after the mandate was renewed.  So within that, we really have a very good opportunity to present to long-term strategy, what we want to create and how we want to position IGF for the next years, what type of topics we want to touch upon or strengthen.

 And, of course, how to engage the different groups.  There was many a conversation around how to engage developing countries, bring them or invite them to have more participation.  

 Of course, I think it works against us meaning -- coming from Mexico, I know this by heart.  It's more difficult for developing countries to go to an international event more than, of course, developed countries.  On the other hand, I think it's a way richer event if we're able to gather as much presence from many countries.

 Of course, how to engage our youth will be, of course, taking their first experience as to create a stronger event and really engage with our younger generations.  I believe their voice needs to be heard, and their concerns need to be addressed fully.

 Gender gap is a very important, of course, topic in Mexico and elsewhere.  I think it's taken a very high priority level in everyone's agenda to (indiscernible) the gender quality issue or topic.

 And how to engage remote participation, I think that's technology based.  And, also, we need to support the other national and regional events in the agenda towards the Mexico IGF.  

 So really if you do have an event that we are not recognizing today -- so I was hearing that some of the national and regional IGFs, we need to have certain presence either remote or face-to-face presence in your events so that we work towards a stronger global Mexico 2016 IGF.

 Certain topics that were risen, of course, around cybersecurity, human rights online versus, of course.  Cybercrime and the persecution of cybercrime are high on the agenda.  I think those topics are touched upon many of the different international forums.  Yet, I believe there's a big area for opportunity to (indiscernible) them better.  They're higher and higher in criticality.  Yet the ecosystem (indiscernible) in a stronger way.  That's my personal opinion coming from the experience within the areas of government that I work with.

 Others, the digital divide, so many -- how to connect the next billion as well as how to capitalize on the fourth industrial revolution.  I think those are the key -- those words that were touched upon over the last year, yet they're very true.  So we need to take them and gather all the information on all the lessons learned and bring them over into the forum.

 Net neutrality and zero rating are just a couple of items that we need to focus on.

 So the value proposition that we are starting to build upon -- and I know it's a work in progress still -- is to have a technology-infused event to facilitate collaboration, either in place, so within the venue, but bridge that gap into the remote participation.  So have the ecosystem itself, the global ecosystem, in Mexico even though they're not physically present.  I think that's a challenge, of course.  For those of us who have remotely attended, sometimes it's easy, sometimes it's hard to really get the experience via a channel that is just streamlined or Web streamed or Webcasted.

 The promise or the position that we want to have in Mexico is to deploy even a mobile app -- and I will be putting that forward for your feedback -- to engage better in forums.  Mobile apps have been very successful into triggering more networking and bilateral meetings and really making a richer -- truly a more richer event.  So I believe we should consider it in order to engage the larger community.

 As well, understand what we were going to do around the zero day -- day zero.  Of course, we would like to position a high level ministerial, a high-level VIP community, to understand those topics at higher levels.  Nonetheless, I've been looking into your input to strengthen that day and really bring forward the right information to the right groups so that we have a richer day zero event.

 I would like at this time to present -- as I said yesterday, we're working very hard towards launching the Web site.  There were some comments yesterday as to having the Web site ready in time, so Yolanda here, a critical part of our team, and I were working towards having that launched and it's ready.

 If you can help me -- I don't know if you can bring it forward, but the IGF Web site is ready.  It's igf2016.mx.  

 The information that I shared with you yesterday is posted on line.  Of course it's a work in progress.  You can be overly critical, because I think the faster we can get the best information up there, it's -- it's better.

 But mainly it's around, you know, Mexico, Jalisco, which is the host state, and of course Guadalajara, which is the city, how to get there, the type of venue, the type of airport that we have, and of course the area and neighborhoods surrounding the event.  

 There's some contact information in there that I'm changing because it's actually from one of my teammates and I believe we should have a more formalized communication channel instead of just one single person's email being up there.

 I don't want to overwhelm my own team, but we'll be responding to those -- that contact information fully.

 So Israel, I don't know if you know him, many of you do already, he's a foremost expertise in the Internet governance topics.  He's currently in Argentina and is actually working full-time in the IETF and in this forum supporting us.

 If you do have some comments or questions around the Web site or any other topics that I mentioned, please bring them forward.

 Madam Chair has given us the opportunity to present the video that we presented yesterday with sound, and of course I'm always thankful and always happy to share a little bit of Mexico with all of you, so thank you.  Thank you.

 [ Video playing ]

 >> (Off microphone.)

 [ Video concludes ]

 >>VICTOR LAGUNES: Thank you.  So in essence, and with this, I close on my remarks.  We believe that Mexico presents a very good example of how the governance -- the Internet governance topic can be addressed.  Mexico is a very rich country in many, many ways, yet it presents its own challenges in many others.  We're -- everything from -- well, we range from either the 10th largest to the 15th largest economy on the planet, depending on how you measure it, yet we still have 48% of our people not connected.  It's a very strange balance.  And this comes also from the ecosystem that our own telecommunications industry works within the country and also from the different approaches that the government has had over the last years.  We're very proud that the telecommunications reform launched a couple years ago is dramatically shifting the landscape in Mexico and is rapidly bridging our digital divide.

 Still, there's many, many challenges to be -- to be worked upon over the next years, yet with events such as this one and bringing awareness to our higher-ups or to our executives, we can definitely connect Mexico better and bring those opportunities to our most vulnerable groups.  Thank you.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you.  Thank you.  Very, very excited to be going there later this year.

 At this -- we'll come back to some more of the specifics around the venue and the planning probably just after lunch.  

 At this point in the agenda is when we do a quick review, MAG orientation, so a discussion on terms of reference, roles and responsibilities.  That doesn't normally take all that long.  This is also the discussion point in the agenda where we will talk about any of the other IGF MAG modalities.

 I would like to hold that discussion to this side of lunch, though, so people should plan their remarks accordingly.  Keep them as brief as possible.  And when we come back after lunch, we will actually start with the planning of the meeting.

 So at this point in time, we're on what was Agenda Item (c) and (d), MAG orientation and discussion of IGF MAG modalities, and with that, I'll turn the floor over to Chengetai.

 >>CHENGETAI MASANGO: Thank you very much, Chair.

 I'll try and be as brief as possible as well, because I know we're going to be pressed for time at the end.

 So just to start off with, with the MAG, the Tunis Agenda gave us, the United Nations secretary-general, to -- in an open and inclusive process, to convene a new forum for multistakeholder policy dialogue called the Internet Governance Forum, and so this was done in 2006 when the IGF was formed.

 And the United Nations secretary-general decided to form a Multistakeholder Advisory Group to advice him on the program and schedule of the annual meetings, so -- and which you all are members of that group.  You've been appointed by the United Nations secretary-general, as you know.

 So the main document of reference that I'm referencing to now is the MAG terms of reference, which we've come up with after discussions with the MAG and also with UNDESA, all of us, and it's available on the Web site and it's under the MAG tab.

 So I'm going to go through this document actually starting from I think the most pertinent part here, which is the term duration.  

 So you all know that you've been appointed, first of all, for one year, which is renewable for up to a maximum of three years, and so every single year, the MAG is rotated by at least one-third in order to enhance the diversity and also to bring in new ideas.

 On very exceptional circumstances, a MAG member can serve for a longer period of time, but I don't see this happening from the time onward, because I mean there's a lot of interested people, interested individuals, that can be in the MAG.  

 Also, in terms of the renewal process that's one-third, we usually concentrate on those people who have been on for three years.  We also keep what we call a MAG scorecard which we just take down, for instance, attendance and engagement in mailing lists.

 We are aware that some people may not be that active because MAG members have got different type and different levels of experience and also different comfort levels in speaking out in meetings, but if a MAG member just makes the effort, you know, to attend, to listen.  And we know that it takes maybe a year, may take two years for people to actually engage, but we just need an indication that that MAG member is interested in being on the MAG and things should be fine.

 Some basic assumptions of MAG members that we assume that all MAG members are willing to commit to the work on a voluntary basis and to follow through on that work as well.

 So we do assume that if a MAG member joins a group, that they will follow through from the beginning to the end.

 We are aware that of course you do have other jobs to do.  You do have day jobs and sometimes there are times that you may be busy with your paid job but you can always come back in and we do take that into consideration.

 You have ability to work as a team member.  

 You want to actively participate in the ongoing IGF process and also have extensive linkages between the MAG and also your stakeholder groups and other stakeholder groups.  There are some MAG members who are, you know, very active in more than one stakeholder group and we expect that these MAG members will impart information that they have received or the information of what is going on within the MAG in the IGF process to their various stakeholder groups.

 One thing to mention as well is that you may come from your individual stakeholder groups but once you're in the MAG, you do serve in your personal capacity, so we have some MAG members who, after a year or in the middle of the year change stakeholder groups, and I have questions are they still on the MAG because they came in from one stakeholder -- 

 The answer is yes, you are still on the MAG.  

 So you may change stakeholder groups, you may change jobs, but once you're in, you're in in your individual capacity and you are not bound to follow the recommendations -- I'm saying this carefully -- of one stakeholder group or one position.  We expect that you are giving advice from your own personal experiences and your own personal views, and that's how we try and increase the diversity and point of views.  We just -- we don't want bloc views.  We want your personal views as well.

 So generally speaking, for individual members' responsibilities, there's generally three face-to-face -- two or three face-to-face meetings each year, and we would like all MAG members to attend either virtually or physically.

 The -- we do provide help, funding, travel support for MAG members from developing countries, least-developed countries, and transitional economies, provided that they have fulfilled the requirements of the last time they were funded, and this information is available on the MAG tab on the IGF Web site, the funding criteria and how you can apply for funding.

 Last year and in previous years, we've had virtual meetings every single two weeks, and I think we are going to continue having regular virtual meetings just to carry on the work forward, and we would like that the MAG members, if they can, please attend those virtual meetings.

 We do send out Doodle polls and we try and make it so that -- we know MAG members come from all over the world so we will not have it at 3:00 Geneva time every single time because we know that people in L.A. and people in Asia, it may be, you know, 3:00 in the morning, so we try and have it in different times each time, referencing GMT time, of course.  Yes.

 We would like MAG members to engage in outreach activities to the wider community.  We are also a little bit careful about this.  MAG members should try and tell people, inform people, of the work of the IGF, the MAG processes, the intersessional work, try and get people involved and to participate in this work, but not to purport that they represent the MAG, as such, but they are just informing people of the MAG work, and also in regional and national IGFs they can advise.

 Also in the workshop submission process, we would expect that MAG people can offer their help to workshop proponents on how the workshop organizer can formulate a good workshop proposal.  

 We also expect MAG members to participate in the annual meetings if they can.  I've already touched upon intersessional work.  And also, the other way around, to bring comments from the community into the MAG.  So you can act as a conduit both ways.  To the community and from the community.

 Identify emerging Internet governance issues and bring them into the MAG.  I think this falls under the previous statement that I made.

 Facilitate in the organization of workshops.

 Coordinate panels in the workshops.  

 And also one very important thing is that we ask MAG to help evaluate the workshops and mark the workshops.  It is -- I mean, sometimes we have over 200 workshop proposals and I know it is a very tiring process.  We might find other ways to do it, but it's very difficult to have -- to divide the workshops up because MAG members -- well, individuals have different ways of rating workshops, so if 50 easier graders grade 50 workshops and then the hard graders grade 50 workshops, it's not really fair to the workshop proposers, so at the moment we haven't found a better method to do it and we ask MAG members to grade all the workshops, but we may find other ways.  I'm not too sure.  I mean, we're always very open to suggestions.

 And I think that's all that I have in my notes for MAG responsibilities.

 If anybody's got any questions or seeks any clarifications, please, I'm open to questions.  Back to the chair.

 >>CHERYL MILLER: Thank you, Chengetai.  I had one question with respect to the -- if someone changes a stakeholder group, is it the case that they remain listed as the stakeholder group they've come in under or do they then have the capability of switching groups?

 So in other words, if I moved from business to civil society, am I then counted as civil society or do I remain counted as business?

 >>CHENGETAI MASANGO: On the list, we state the stakeholder group that the person came in as, but then again, as people are acting in individual capacity, once they enter the MAG -- this is the question -- does it really matter which group they switched to when they are serving that year's term?

 >>CHERYL MILLER: So my answer to that -- the only answer I would have for that would be, just because we have a certain allocated number of seats for each group, that may be an issue.  

 I'm not saying it is, but I'm just saying in the future if there was a lot of movement, it might be an issue for groups, say, if they lost three seats because three people left to go to another group.  Because I don't -- you guys don't reallocate seats then, correct?

 >>CHENGETAI MASANGO: No.  But then there is a reallocation on the next renewal when that will be taken into consideration.

 >>CHERYL MILLER: So that's when that would be considered?

 >>CHENGETAI MASANGO: Yes.

 >>CHERYL MILLER: Okay.  So that answers that.

 >>CHENGETAI MASANGO: But not during that term.

 >>CHERYL MILLER: Got it.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: So we have Michael Nelson and then Segun and Arnold.

 >>MICHAEL NELSON: I just wanted to thank Chengetai for clarifying that and also to indicate that I think it's very important that we have people on the MAG who might be wearing two or three different stakeholder hats at the same time.

 Both Cheryl and I have been in and out of government and done other things, so I think we have a better understanding of how the other different groups are seeing some of these issues, and that is something that I think the MAG does better than some of the other multistakeholder groups where you tend to have people who are all in one or all in the other.  So thanks again for clarifying.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Segun, you have the floor.

 >>SEGUN OLUGBILE: Okay.  Thank you.  I just want to raise a concern about the manner in which the -- the MAG is announced.  Sometimes when we are appointed we discover that we are announced just on the U.N. press release, and even when your appointment is concluded or terminated, you -- there is no formal letter of appreciation from the IGF secretariat, so I really want the secretariat to look into it.  Thank you.

 >>CHENGETAI MASANGO:  Understood and point taken.  Usually we do do that.  This year was a special year because everything was rather rushed.  We couldn't do anything before the mandate was renewed -- sorry.  And once the mandate was renewed, it was a rush to get everything into order.  But usually these emails do go out.  So if people didn't receive them this year, it's unfortunate.

 Also, the timing of informing people, as we said, we were all rushing to meet this date because we couldn't really push it any time back because that was the other option, is to wait until the MAG was announced and then set the meeting date.  Then we would be meeting in June for the first meeting so that wouldn't have worked.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Just one note.  And that it seems fairly important.  It wasn't a letter of opposition.  It was a letter of appreciation that should be noted in the scribe.

 Arnold, you have the floor.

 >>ARNOLD van RHIJN:  Thank you, Lynn.

 Thank you, Chengetai, for clarifying the role and the tasks of the MAG members.  You mentioned that the MAG is meeting two to three times a year.  As we are in the time pressure this year, we are planning our own schedule, I think it is necessary to have the dates of the additional MAG meeting as quickly as possible.  Thank you.

 >>CHENGETAI MASANGO:  Agenda items, we do have proposed time lines which will be discussed before the end of the meeting.  Yes.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  So I have Mourad, Jivan, and then Virat.

 Mourad, you have the floor.

 >>MOURAD BOUKADOUM:  Thank you.  Just to want to focus on the fact that the MAG membership is quite heterogeneous so -- in terms of professional expertise and IG experience.  So it goes without saying we cannot expect the same level of active participation from the whole membership.  

 It is also true that as MAG members, we have the responsibility to honor the confidence put on us by our respective constituencies and by -- also by the U.N. system.

 I would like also that we have to -- as MAG to reflect on the issue of the renewal of process of the MAG membership in order to make it more -- in terms of the timing, to make it because I noticed, for example, for this year, it was done -- the call was done in February.  So it was a bit late.  So thank you very much.

 >>CHENGETAI MASANGO:  Yes, as I said, please do not take this here as what usually happens.  Now, the mandate has been renewed for ten years.  We can even set automatically the timing for the MAG announcement, et cetera.  Everything will be much more smoother.  It was just that this year is an exceptional year.

 We have noted and we do take into consideration that there are different levels of participation from the different people.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Jivan, you have the floor.

 >>JIVAN GJORGJINSKI:  Well, I just wanted to take the opportunity to introduce myself since I didn't have that this morning.  And I apologize.  I was in my country's mission.

 And I had my ear plug in one hand.  I was listening to all the introductions.  And it is a pleasure to meet you all, those I have not met before.  

 And thanks to Arnold's -- or the Dutch Security Council's, its nice orange and conspicuous ear plug so everybody could see that I was doing that.

 Anyways, I'm the director of communications in the foreign ministry of Macedonia, which has made my position quite challenging as a MAG representative over the past year, given the circumstances in Macedonia at the moment and at our borders.  

 But I've been involved in IG issues since -- on and off since about 2002, 2003.  I was then an advisor to the President of Macedonia during WSIS Geneva.  And then during WSIS Tunis, I was working with Diplo on the capacity-building program that they have.

 Then I've been working for the UNDP and for the government of Macedonia on and off.  

 I look forward to working with all of you, and I'm sure it's going to be a great MAG and a great ten years ahead of us.  Cheers.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Thank you, Jivan.

 Virat?

 >>VIRAT BHATIA:  I just want to make a quick comment on the rest of the MAG -- one or two meetings of the MAG that are to be held.  I think they would have to be a combination of when is the calendar, overall global calendar, on IG looking good, which is getting tighter and tighter.  But also has to link to many other things such as holidays -- big holidays that sort of come in the way.  

 But I suppose the most important element should be our work schedule.  Our next meeting is about clearing workshops.  Our meeting after that is putting final touches to the program.  So really the dates of the MAG meeting should be delivered -- should be driven entirely by our mandate.  And I think to that extent we should discuss and get some options out there.

 And, again, I don't want to emphasize too much.  But just as a reference point last year this time, three working groups had completed their work of four months each and had submitted very detailed recommendations.  This year, whether it's workshops or main sessions which is the core of our program, we will have to, I think, work from those benchmarks and try to improve it in this discussion, which is post-lunch today, and sort of try and close it so we can move on and make the calls, the public calls, that are required to invite workshops in quick succession after this.  And then it's really day-to-day for us rather than weeks and the kind of luxury we've had in the last year.

 I had a question for the host country, but perhaps later because -- on the presentation that was made or whenever the Chair desires.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Virat, I couldn't agree more.  And the secretariat has looked at a couple of time lines.  In fact, we spoke last night, and I know you have looked at a few time lines.  I think we'll come to a really quick agreement because, frankly, there's not a lot of choice.  And I think the first item to do that is the most pressing is to get the call for workshop proposals out.  That should go out no later than next week, and the secretariat and I have a stretch goal this week, in fact.  So that should give you an indication of the sort of work we need to get through in the next day or two.  

 The good news is we have a really good base of work that was done in previous years to work from.  And, honestly, I think the timetable will become so evident that I think there will be relatively little discussion compared to certainly last year perhaps, time being sometimes such a forcing factor that it forces collaboration.

 We have an online participant?

 >>REMOTE INVERVENTION:  Yes, one intervention.  Renata, you have the floor.

 >>RENATA AQUINO RIBEIRO:  Renata Aquino from the MAG.  I would like to second Virat's comment about the meeting.  It would be great if we could already establish that we would be having a certain amount of meetings to come, like two more meetings to come, and the expectations for the preparations for this meeting.  But, also, most importantly, the countdown.  

 And I would also ask that we try to focus on building the outreach with hashtags as they were used in the IGF 2015 program.  There were specific hashtags for human rights, for (indiscernible) sessions.  This could be a way of planning the event and already getting feedback.  Thank you.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Thank you.  Thank you.

 Next in the queue is Cisse.

 >>CISSE KANE:  Thank you, Madam Chair.  Thank you, Chengetai, for your presentation.  I have two questions.  One is:  What is the balance between competencies and regional representation for being appointed in MAG regarding civil society?

 And the second question is -- we are very happy to have this team.  And I think about 55 persons.  And we trust you in the way you are trying to conduct issue of Internet governance for the whole world.  My question is:  Is there any evaluation of the participation, active participation, of MAG members?  Are they evaluated if they did participate, if they did do something valuable?  It's just -- is it just they enter into the club, if I may say, and they stay three years and then it's okay?  Thank you.

 >>CHENGETAI MASANGO:  Thank you.  I'll try and answer the balance of competencies.  I'm not too sure if I get it exactly.  

 But with the MAG, it's more of an art; it's not a science.  We don't have an exact set and come up with the MAG because you have to look at the whole and how each individual affects the whole and also the stakeholder groups.

 From year to year, the makeup of the MAG may be different depending on the people that have been nominated and depending on how, you know, the whole is evaluated throughout the selection process.

 So there's no one set that I can say, This is it.  Does that make sense?  Okay.

 [ Laughter ]

 Wai-Min.

 >>WAI-MIN KWOK:  I would just like to add on to what Chengetai just said.  So what he said is absolutely right.  There's no particular formula, per se, but it's essentially what we all know as a multistakeholder group, including MAG itself.

 So far MAG, since its inception in 2006 for the 55 members, plus or minus, 40% coming from government and 30% each from the civil society, the private sector, and the technical community.  Again, these numbers are not absolute but more of a gauge.

 And in terms to look at the balance, whether it's a geographical balance, which includes both regional and country level and gender and stakeholder group -- not stakeholder group, putting stakeholder group aside, this balance is to actually look at the entire MAG as a group.  

 So that means we cannot really say we can let civil society -- there needs to be -- because if we achieve geographical balance or country balance in, say, civil society, it may not be possible for other stakeholder groups.  So far the balance-wise is we have to look at the MAG as a whole just to clarify on that point.

 >>CHENGETAI MASANGO:  For the evaluation, we do in the secretariat have a table.  We do mark people who attend the face-to-face meetings, people who attend the virtual meetings and people who volunteer for the working groups or to do things on the MAG.

 We are fully aware that there's different comfort levels, and there's different expertise out there.  And in the MAG, we do -- I mean, we have people who are relatively new to the IGF process and also people who have been there since pre-WSIS.  I mean, that's the whole point of the MAG, is to have a whole range of experiences.

 So we try -- well, we don't really try and mark people down for non-active involvement as such.  But what we are looking for is that people are attending, people are listening, people are engaging.  And engagement may just be attending the virtual meetings or coming and listening because eventually people will feel confident enough or will see a space where their individual qualities will help the MAG.  I mean, that's what we're looking for.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  I would also hope you note who completes the rating evaluations.  And even though the secretariat is being quite gentle with their criteria here, I do hope we have full support, active participation, and significant effort every year.  But in particular, this year it's really critical.

 We have quite a queue that's actually forming, so we'll get people to go forward.  And if they could just be as brief as they possibly can.  

 Sala, you were next.  And then I have Izumi, Cheryl, online, and Omar.

 >>SALANIETA TAMANIKAIWAIMARO:  Sala here.  Pardon me, Chair.  Withdrawn.  Thank you.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Excellent.  It's difficult to get more brief than that.

 [ Laughter ]

 Izumi, please, you have the floor.

 >>IZUMI OKUTANI:  Thank you, Madam Chair.  I would like to follow up on the point that was raised yesterday during open consultation on transparency.

 So based on the feedback from some members of the technical community, it was observed that it would help to have clarity on some of the key decisions made around the IGF such as a selection of the MAG IGF Chair or any other important decisions around running of the IGF.

 And, first of all, I very much appreciate that UN DESA yesterday has expressed that they are willing and open to hear our feedback for improvements.  And I also heard the earlier statement by Mr. Kwok that the selection process is not just on the diversity of a particular stakeholder group but it should be considered across different stakeholder groups.  It needs a lot of balance and difficult decisions.  So this is very much noted.

 At the same time, I think it helps to have further dialogue and consideration on this because this was one of the recommendations that was listed on the CSTD working group on improving the IGF.  And I also believe transparency would help encourage participation in two aspects.

 First, that it would help build trust that transparency not just on the physical IGF meeting itself but then including its process would make stakeholders comfortable that they can trust and be involved in this process and make contributions.

 Second -- on the practical point to, first, help any members who are interested in applying for the MAG to understand what would be the process and the criteria.  The second is to help each stakeholder make better our recommendations to the UN DESA to meet what are the requirements that would help in your selection.  So I would like to make some practical suggestions.  So maybe as a start, it would be helpful if the UN DESA could possibly review whether the information that is already published -- I understand the criteria is already published and open today.  If there is any additional information which would be helpful to share with the community, which is not listed at the moment today.

 So, for example, just to list some examples of information is publish the list of those people who nominated the individuals who were actually appointed to the MAG.  

 Work on clear selection criteria.  So the NomCom from each stakeholder group can work efficiently.

 U.N. to provide feedback on rationale for selecting MAG members.  

 Launch public consultation beyond the MAG to collect feedback from the community on the future working modalities of the IGF.  

 In general, consult the community beyond the MAG on any new developments regarding the future of the IGF including the role of responsibilities of the MAG, the future of IGF outcomes, the role of the IGF secretariat, et cetera.

 So these are just a list of examples to consider.  And I don't intend to be fixed or finalized.

 So, in essence, we believe that it's really important for the community to be consulted on our key decisions around the IGF.  So, I would like to suggest that the MAG work on CSTD recommendations to improve the IGF, including addressing transparency of our selecting MAG members, MAG chair, and any other key decisions around -- made by the UN DESA about running of the IGF possibly in the form of a working group also open to non-MAG members and including consultations with the IGF community.  Thank you.

 >>WAI-MIN KWOK:  Thank you, Izumi, for your questions.  Let me again address in a more general way.  The points you shared are all very valid.  As I mentioned, UN DESA certainly calls on your guidance of all of you to see how to push the agenda of IGF forward.  And, of course, the MAG plays a very much as a (indiscernible) role in terms of both the program, the schedule, and also the working modalities.

 The CSTD Working Group on Improvement of IGF I think is an important document.  I think all of you look at, of course, DESA including.  

 Like one of the recommendations is to enable a wide range of diversity within the MAG.  The -- so this is actually one part, and I think we discuss and some of you also observed that we have actually increased the number of countries represented in the MAG as a whole.  Currently, this 2016 MAG, there are 46 countries represented, as compared to 38 countries in the 2015 MAG.

 So a question is -- could be asked like should we have 55 countries, but 55 members, so that is something to be pondered over.  

 Another point to note also, that we receive a total of 182 nominations so it's a very good point, and we did discuss between the secretariat ourselves perhaps the nominations should be announced once we receive them, so that everyone would know it's not just upon (indiscernible) but upon -- upon -- upon -- upon the reception we should just put it on line, so that everyone know who are the nominations.

 The -- what is actually also worth perhaps to consider is that in highlighting in the CSTD working group recommendation as well, the contribution of list of proposed candidates for each stakeholder group should not be restricted to one particular body.  

 Now, again what constitutes stakeholder representation, that is like what represents technical community, (indiscernible) any one of them.  What (indiscernible) including what we discuss and how we can actually get more of the development actors in the picture.  Of course those who also understand (indiscernible) Internet governance.  So to what extent we should do that and not just -- not just the technical community.  Including civil society as well.  Even the private sector.  

 Like the private sector, should it be just private sector working on ICT but also in development but they strongly reliance on Internet -- on online development.  

 So there are a lot of questions that we need to think about.

 I think what we have heard, possibly we have to think of what are the different -- different improvements that (indiscernible) process.  

 As Chengetai mentioned a few times and you all know we are work- -- we have a very compressed time line so this is not ideal but as a group we can think of how we can put into a time line of the MAG selection, which typically starts in December, so that everyone know, including, like, new interested parties, they will know exactly where to find information and what is it exactly about.  And perhaps contribution of MAG members to be in the Web site, in IGF Web site very clearly, so it's not just a scorecard or report card but also to recognize the contribution by MAG members.  All of you have done a lot of work but (indiscernible) you be very, very important to the community to know that you have left a legacy as part of the IGF.

 So these are some -- some of the suggestions that we heard, and certainly we would again like to invite all of you to give your -- to give more of your thoughts, your views, and not just during this session but anytime.  Thank you.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Wai-Min.  I think that was very helpful.  

 We have four or five people left in the queue and I'm going to close it at that because I think that will take us right up to lunch.  

 Cheryl, you're next, then an online participant, Omar, Rasha, and Virat.  

 So Cheryl, you have the floor.

 >>CHERYL MILLER: Thank you, Madam Chair.  

 I wanted to just very quickly share a very brief reflection as a new MAG member to the other new MAG members.  

 The workshop evaluation portion took me a long time, and I used to grade papers as a professor.  So just book a couple days where you're going to really focus on that because it does -- it involves a lot of reading, and I think we had over a hundred-something proposals last year, so -- or maybe it was over 200.  I don't even --

 >> (Off microphone.)

 >>CHERYL MILLER: 270-something, yeah.  It's -- it's just a lot, so I just put that out there for your knowledge.  

 And I just wanted to really briefly -- I'm a New Yorker so New Yorkers are always anxious, and after lunch, we're only going to have a day and a half of this meeting left, and so I really think we need to focus on the things that we're going to need to complete before we're able to leave here.  I think under workshops, we should all make sure that we're in agreement on the criteria for workshop selection, the criteria for the evaluation, tips -- tips on how to write a good proposal I think would be great, the intersessional work, if we could close out on the broader themes for the meeting, I think that would -- I think it's -- these are all must-dos in my mind.  People may disagree with me.

 I also think that we're going to need to have agreement on the numbers and the structures of the main sessions.  

 So after lunch, I think we really have to kind of get really, really super into high gear.  Thanks.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Agree.  An online participant.

 >>REMOTE INTERVENTION: There are more online participants that would like (indiscernible) three comments and we have two interventions (indiscernible).

 All right.  I'm going to read -- I'm reading a comment from Ginger Paque.  

 Knowing that we have a long queue, I will limit myself to appreciating the complexities of UNDESA's job but support Izumi's statement on a focus on increasing transparency.

 Second comment from Peter Dengate Thrush.

 My support for a Working Group on CSTD Improvements with a focus on increasing transparency and that this working group could be open to membership from the IGF communities.

 And third comment from Shita Laksmi.

 With monitoring/evaluation process of CSTD on the role of IGF, it is important to be more transparent and accountable on the process of selection of MAG members.

 Now we have the intervention from MAG member Jac.  

 Jac, you have the floor now.

 >>JAC SM KEE: I also wanted to support Izumi's proposal and input around transparency, supporting trust, clarity, and participation, and also to appreciate some of UNDESA's ideas in helping to take these forward.  In particular, around information sharing but also I wanted to say that it shouldn't -- it should also include not just on appointment of new MAG members but also for renewal of existing MAG members, if there could be information sharing on who is currently serving, what stakeholder group, what the current (indiscernible) are, the criteria for renewal, (indiscernible) announcement.  This would also help to cut the participation in meetings, for example, and recognizing the needs of accessibility (indiscernible) diversity but some clarity would definitely help strengthen the process.  Thank you.

 >>REMOTE INTERVENTION: Thank you, Jac.  

 Avri, you have the floor now.

 >>AVRI DORIA: This is Avri speaking.

 Yeah.  I want to also quickly endorse a lot of what Izumi said.  I do believe we need that working group and such.  I believe one of the things we need to look at while we're going back here, while we're looking at the terms of reference in terms of some of the CSTD recommendations and the work we need to do, is that while the U.N. and UNDESA initiate this process, that it really is supposed to be much more of a bottom-up process than (indiscernible).  

 Now, I'm hearing that we all get graded by the secretariat for how we work.  I do think there needs to be some transparency in that.  Especially when we hear that we have grades that we know nothing about.

 In terms of the work, you know, Virat mentioned, well, that we had done a lot of work on how to write present- -- I mean, how to write proposals and how to grade and such last year, and I think that the work that we did this year, we should take those recommendations and build on them, modify them based on last year's experience, but not try to recreate all of that anew this time.

 So those were the ideas that I really wanted to add, and just conclude with saying:  And it's very important that while the MAG members be the core of many of the working groups that we put together, that they have to include a much wider part of the community.

 One of the things I lament from yesterday is that we lost so much of the dynamic of the community in the consultation.  There was a time when the MAG didn't speak during the consultation day but it was all other people.

 From what I saw from yesterday, it's almost as if the MAG hadn't spoken, it sounds like the MAG has been silenced, so we have to do something to bring the community back into the work we're doing.  Thanks.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Avri, I think that's a good point.  I have to say looking around the room there are less non-MAG people in the room than I have seen in past years as well, and that may just have something to do with some conflicting meetings but also the relatively short notice around the timing, but it is an excellent point.

 And Chengetai just reminded me that everybody should say their names, and probably stakeholder group as well, when they take the floor.

 So again, cognizant of the time, if we could move forward, we have Omar in the queue next, Rasha, and Virat.

 >>OMAR MANSOOR ANSARI: Thank you, Madam Chair.  

 I have a couple of questions.  Number one, does the MAG have or can it have committees, working groups, specialized?

 And second, what if there are workshop proposals by the MAG members?  How are they dealt with?

 >>CHENGETAI MASANGO: Yes, the MAG can have working groups set up by the chair.  If the chair sees it fit to set up a working group, then, yes, we can.

 If a MAG member has a workshop or is involved in a workshop, then they can recuse themselves from grading that workshop, and we have -- we have a formula to take that into account that -- so that the grade is not affected when it's graded by the MAG.

 >>OMAR MANSOOR ANSARI: A follow-up question.  

 For the working groups, do the proposals come from the MAG members to the chair and then she decides or how does...

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Yes, that's -- that would be the normal way.  Of course the chair has a prerogative to suggest a working group as well, but I think in the past most of them have actually come up from the MAG members themselves.  

 Rasha?  Not yet.

 >>RASHA ABDULLA: Thank you.  I'm Rasha Abdulla from the American University in Cairo.  

 I just wanted to clarify.  Did I understand correctly that all MAG members grade all workshops?  Because that sounds like a --

 >>CHENGETAI MASANGO: Correct, correct.

 >>RASHA ABDULLA: That sounds like a tremendous waste of time for me.

 >>CHENGETAI MASANGO: It's very important.  That's correct.  As I said, it's -- we haven't found a better way of doing it.  If you can come up with a better way --

 >>RASHA ABDULLA: Yeah, if I may propose one -- 

 >>CHENGETAI MASANGO: Yes.  We are all ears.  

 >>RASHA ABDULLA: -- because I come from the academic community so I -- we do this all the time, you know --

 >>CHENGETAI MASANGO: Yes.

 >>RASHA ABDULLA: -- and, you know, maybe what Cheryl said, I'm not sure if there was something proposed in the past that we can work from, but we can easily establish some criteria with operational definitions whereby members of the MAG do not evaluate workshops based on their personal opinion but based on established criteria, and therefore minimizing subjectivity in the process, and that would basically -- 

 If every workshop is evaluated let's say by a committee of three members, that would cut the process down to about 10 workshops per member, rather than 200-something.  Because you can't really --

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Rasha, if I may, I think this is a very good topic.  I --

 >>RASHA ABDULLA: You can't really give it your all if you're grading 200 --

 [ Speakers are overlapping ]

 >>RASHA ABDULLA: Yeah.  You can't give it your all if you're grading 200 workshops.  There's no way people read these --

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: I think it's a very good topic.  I don't think it's on the critical path for today.  I think we should move it to one of our virtual conference calls and determine that going forward.

 Again, I'm just conscious of the interpreters and the time, so next in the queue is Virat, and I did add Marilyn and Juan but that means everyone needs to be quite brief.

 >>VIRAT BHATIA: So very quickly, Chair, a couple of things.  

 One, I think about two years ago, the MAG decided that they will not submit workshops.  That was a decision that we took.  I think Susan can help clarify, but I think that did go out as one of the recommendations of the working group and was reaffirmed by the working group.  And if it was an affiliate of the company that -- or organization that the MAG member belonged to, then they will certainly recuse themselves, but there was certainly clarity that we will not start submitting our own workshops because that became a menace about four years ago when some 20% of the workshops were coming from the MAG members.  But we can relook at that.  I just want to say that.

 On the criteria point that was made by the professor, there is a criteria, a score of 1 to 5.  To be very clear, before we leave the room day after tomorrow, we have to have the criteria because that is part of the public announcement, which is what my colleague spoke about.  That's also available from the excellent work that Susan and Fiona have done.  We can put it up on the screen and look at it if we have to modify.

 So there is actually an evaluation criteria.

 So just very quickly before we close on the issue of improvements on DESA, I just want to leave us with some of these things because the objectives outlined in the improvement document is about diversity, geographical distribution, et cetera, and I think we should take great pleasure in the fact that the current MAG -- as I said yesterday but very briefly -- 60% of the MAG is developing countries.  Half the MAG -- well, 45% -- you know, it has almost perfect gender balance.  45% of women.  70% of the new MAG is developing countries.  

 As was said, there used to be 38 countries represented in the 55.  Now it's 45 represented in 55.  So we could go up a little bit but we're almost there in terms of improvement.

 Africa represents 15%, Asia-Pacific 30%, Europe 30%, Latin America 11% -- Asia is Asia-Pacific and Pacific Islands -- and North America is 14%.  So slightly higher numbers for Europe and North America, but they're coming down sharply, and the distribution is kind of reflective of the population and the participation.

 And finally, in terms of stakeholder groups, right now about 35% government, civil society is second at 23%, technical community is 16%, private sector 21%, and the others are 2%.  That's media.

 So I just wanted to make sure that we all recognize the fact that the current MAG in its structure meets the 20(a) section of the improvement that talks about diversity before we sort of move on to deciding what kind of work the working group needs to do.  So thank you.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: No, I think they are very encouraging stats and very helpful.  Thank you, Virat.

 Marilyn?

 >>MARILYN CADE: Thank you, Chair.  My name is Marilyn Cade.  As I mentioned, I -- this is my third year of being a MAG member and I will take credit for initiating the proposal when I -- in my first inaugural meeting as a MAG member when I asked the MAG to put itself on the diet and to ask the MAG members to return to being the planners and the coordinators of the program.

 We had a very serious situation in more than one IGF.  The -- all of the co-moderators and moderators of the main sessions were MAG members.  We had MAG members who took two or three of those slots.  We spent a lot of time with -- and Virat mentioned this -- where 20% of the proposals -- where 20% of the proposals came from MAG members and MAG members rated proposals.  This -- there was a huge credibility problem.  I was not a MAG member.  I was a member of the community.  There was a huge credibility problem.  We were affecting the respect of the community.

 We also were affecting a situation where instead of MAG members spending time looking for new voices and recruiting new participants, they were writing their own speeches.  I do not mean to come across -- we were in a building phase here, but we have a lot more resources and I think adhering to the abstinence principle is really, really important.

 One of the things we agreed on, though, was that a MAG -- that we should also limit ourselves -- if we're asked to be a speaker, that we should limit ourselves to no more than three events.  

 We had MAG members who spoke in seven to eight sessions and sometimes had to leave one session so that they could go to another session to participate in part of a session.  

 Again, I want to say that was perhaps in an era when we didn't -- we were not rich with resources, so that's my -- that's a major point I would make.

 Then I will also say that in my view, creating a working group of the nature that's been proposed so far at this time is premature.  I would like us to complete our work on the program and to consider what kind of working groups are needed to assure the development of the best program ever, since we want to continue to build on the excellence of each of the past IGFs, and to remember that we have a new requirement that I want to take us back to because I think it would be easy to lose it.

 We were invited by a letter from the U.N. to pay attention to the linkage with the sustainable development goals.  We need to spend some time thinking about that and how that's going to affect our design of our program.  

 And, Madam Chair, in my view, I think the priority as I read the terms of reference and as I understand the appointment to the MAG, the priority for me must be the program.  We can work on improvements.  Perhaps we can wait until the project description is published by the secretariat and consider at a virtual meeting or even in our next face-to-face meeting what other working groups might be necessary that would focus on self-improvement.  Thank you.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Thank you.  

 Juan, you have the penultimate comment because I will make just a short comment before lunch.

 >>JUAN FERNANDEZ:  I'm going to be brief.  Some of you who have been in the mailing list for sometime, maybe not the new one, can recall that this discussion around that was aroused when the former MAG member Patrick Ryan some months ago touched about this topic.  And I send a comment that more or less is this.  

 Well, Chengetai already explained the origin of this advisory group because it is a group to advise the Secretary-General.  This is a common happening in United Nations around many years.  There have been -- many expert groups been appointed for different tasks.

 Some of them are appointed, for instance, if it's like this case for the Secretary-General, by the Secretary-General itself or his advisories.  Some it's in a more democratic way.  Maybe ask the original groups to present proposals.  But this happens that this at the beginning was like that, an expert group.  

 But then because this is multistakeholder, the IGF and all that, so it was supposed -- and this is what is for me is fascinating, that this issue of the MAG itself is a reflection of the difficulties of multistakeholder processes in general and Internet governance in particular because then it came to the task or the aspiration that the MAG should be multistakeholder and bottom-up as it was said.

 And then it came the problem because, for instance, the regional -- the government part has no problem in selecting because it has process that has been established many -- for many years, you know, through regional groups and all that.  

 But then it came the situation with the other stakeholders.  For instance, business, maybe they have an organization like ICC-BASIS that makes their proposal and now for the Working Group on Enhanced Cooperation it has been selected to do that.

 But in civil society, they have this problem.  Who selects the representative?  If there's a global civil society -- I know there's some, but there's some that have not been recognized and so on.

 What I can say, this is a work in process because it reflects the difficulties that a truly multistakeholder process has.  And one of those difficulties is representation.  It's not easy, you know, because government has an easy path of representation because a government represents the whole country, whether they voted for this government or not.  It's their -- it's the definition of a government.

 In civil society and in other stakeholders, it's not so clear-cut.  So this is a work in process.  And I think that we should not worry so much in the sense that it's not perfect.  We should try to improve it.  

 And having said that, I can say from the statistics that Virat said -- and also I send some statistics through email a few days ago -- that I think that UN DESA have done a fairly good job because this is very balanced.  Only, I think, six countries has more than two -- more than one representative here.  The U.S. have five, China that have three, and Argentina, Egypt, and some other country that have two.  So the rest is very balanced.

 But we don't have to feel bad that it is not perfect because it's the reflection of a very difficult thing; that is, how to create a really multistakeholder process that is bottom-up and it's totally fair.  We still have to work on that.  

 And I said in that email that's the thing that some day maybe we should reflect, not now because we have much work to do, concrete.  But maybe online, you know, and offline we could have a thread to discuss some philosophy behind this.  Thank you.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Thank you, Juan.

 Just one short comment -- two short comments maybe.  Thanks to the interpreters for staying for a few minutes late here.

 I think this room understands the shortness of the timetable and our need to turn immediately after lunch to focusing on the agenda.  And I think we all feel that deeply and probably no one more deeply than the secretariat themselves.

 So we actually have a plan to go through that.  And we do have an awful lot of good work to build on from last year.  So I think we'll get through some of the component pieces quite quickly this afternoon.  That does need to be our priority.  

 And I'd like to echo some of what Juan just said.  I think this discussion has been very good.  I think it was needed given what I had heard coming up through a number of the communities.  I think it was quite respectful.  

 I think it is more a matter of improvement and improvement in processes, possibly something in, obviously, transparency as well.  But I do think we've made good progress, and we should feel good about that.

 I think we can perhaps park until we've made adequate progress on the program the discussion of what we do with this particular topic.  

 So that would be where I would leave this particular discussion on creating a working group at this point.  And if we have time at the end of tomorrow, we can come back and revisit how we move that forward or we do that on one of our future calls.  

 I do think in light of -- I don't think it's a crisis situation.  I think good progress has been made.  I think it's been a really good, constructive dialogue between all the parties here.  But it's really time now for us to focus all of our attentions and cycles to the program.

 So I will leave you for lunch.  We should be back at 3:00 sharp given the time that we have.  And are there any other comments from the secretariat?

 >>CHENGETAI MASANGO:  Yes.  There's a meeting here at quarter past 1:00 and it's a meeting on --

 >> ANJA GENGO:  Thank you, Chengetai.  It's the formal meeting for the representatives of national and regional IGFs.  We will stay here at this room.  And we promise, we're not going to take the whole break from you, just maybe 40 minutes top.  But we want just to have the opportunity together.  Thank you.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Thank you.

 >>MARILYN CADE:  Sorry, Chengetai?  Chengetai, is it true we can't bring food -- is it true we can't bring food into the room?

 >>CHENGETAI MASANGO:  Yes, that's correct.  Please no food in the room.  No food or drink in the room.

 Thank you.

 >> Can I request the secretariat to take Liesyl's email?  It has three or four attachments to it on the workshops.  If we could have them ready for display for our discussions, that will really help speed up the process.

 >>CHENGETAI MASANGO:  She sent it to the list?

 [ Lunch break ]

 [ Gavel ]

 >>CHENGETAI MASANGO: Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen.  We are starting the afternoon session of Day 1 of the MAG meeting.  I will hand it over to the chair.

 Madam Chair?

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Chengetai, and thank everybody for coming back very promptly, too.

 I want to take one moment and just, maybe in a slightly more relaxed, close out the last session.

 Obviously, there was a lot of context and a lot of content shared, and no closure on the proposal for next steps, so all we simply said is that we would come back and revisit that after we are well enough advanced in the more immediate pressing need of dealing with the planning for the next IGF.  

 That will probably be in a virtual meeting and we can certainly continue the discussion on the MAG list.  I suppose for good behavior, if we get through absolutely everything we need to in the next day and a half, we could come back to it tomorrow but I have to say I think that's unlikely, given the task ahead of us.

 So for those of that were on line and in the room here, it was pretty obvious that there was a difference of opinion in terms of what the next step was and I think we all know that those conversations don't close down quickly and I think we should give it the time it deserves and set aside proper time for it.

 So with that, I think we've had two more online MAG members -- or two more MAG members coming, that are participating on line, who would like to do a quick introduction.  We'll do that and then we'll move to the next portion of the agenda.

 So Anja?

 >>REMOTE INTERVENTION: Thank you very much.  

 We have Giacomo.  Giacomo, if you could speak now, although it doesn't seem that he's connected to audio.

 I guess -- I guess we'll have to come back to Giacomo later.

 There is also Silvia, so Silvia, you have the floor, if you could speak now.

 I think we'll have to come back to this.  Thank you.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Okay.  And please do have them come in.  As I said, I'm appreciative of anybody who takes the effort to participate on line because it just is not the best, so I do want to make sure that we're aware of who they are and they get a chance to introduce themselves just as we all did.

 So at this point in the agenda, we need to move on and start to get some of the specific modalities of this next IGF meeting.

 I'm going to do something a little bit out of order.  I mean, normally we would have had a high-level discussion on general shaping of the meeting, main themes, and that sort of thing and then we move in in a layered approach into a more detailed discussion later.

 I actually think we had a lot of good discussions yesterday, and some this morning.  I think our process is evolving a little bit in that we are hoping to rely -- and I think are going to be able to rely -- a lot more on a lot of the intersessional activities, so whether that's the national and regional IGF initiatives or it's best practice or dynamic coalition work or, in fact, the connecting the next billion, and I want to make sure that we give time for some of those inputs to come in a little bit later in the afternoon when, hopefully, we'll be in a position to move into some of the sort of themes and subthemes.

 What I thought would help at this point would be to -- 

 Let me just talk a little bit about what I would like to get through today, and we can open that up quickly for kind of comments or agendas.

 I think it makes sense at this point in the process to talk a little bit about the time line we're facing because there are some natural constraints here, given we're starting quite late in the year and we're going into, in a few short months, the summer vacation period in the northern hemisphere, and I think we need to take that into account.

 So when -- if we can look at that, get a sense of the time line that we're talking about, if we can close on some of the key things such as when we would be looking to evaluate the proposals that have come in and when we would have our physical meeting to do that, and then I think there's a need for a third meeting as well.  If we can get those things agreed quite quickly, then that's great.  If not, at least we have the overall frame in mind and we can come back and start to look through some of the other components, which I think at that point would then be to start to get some discussion on workshop formats, guidelines, and criteria, and at which point I would ask, I guess, Victor and maybe Chengetai to give us a little bit more insight into the facilities that are there, so that we understand what, if any, impact they actually have on our planning, whether it's main session, workshop, types of workshops, or what's facilitated.

 I know that Virat, on the basis of some discussions with various people the last couple of days, has kindly put together some tools.  They were tools that I think we developed a little bit on the fly last year.  So the good news is, we're bringing the tools forward in a more systematic manner this year.

 But again, I think for those that are new to the MAG, seeing some of those graphics will just help people understand kind of the overall frame that we're actually working with in here.

 What -- another thing we need to do today is to get the workshop criteria guidelines, possibly agreement on the format, agreed, if we can.  We have a great body of work from the past years that we can use as a basis.  If not, I might ask a small group of people to go away and look at that tonight or tomorrow morning and come back into the room tomorrow morning with a proposal.  Because the one thing we do need to have agreed before we leave tomorrow is the workshop proposal format guidelines.  We need to be clear enough on the guidelines for our -- the criteria for our review of the proposals.  I think we can stop short and not have the specific discussion yet on how that review is actually done and some of the specific rating criteria.  I think we can actually do that as a -- as a part of a virtual meeting off line.

 So I mean, I think there's a couple of really kind of core pillars, if you will, of the work we need to do that we could actually get through today, and if there was a really good wind behind us, we could even start a discussion on sort of themes and subthemes and main sessions, but I think there's enough time to get through a lot of that tomorrow.

 One of the -- and this is my last comment.

 One of the other things we looked at in the secretariat on the basis of discussions with many of you in the room but also a lot of the participants that have supported all the intersessional work is, in the past we've had themes, subthemes.  In fact, last year we went out for a public comment review, on luxury of time, came back in, finalized it, and then put out the call.

 We obviously don't have that luxury this time, so if we can get strong enough agreement on it now to go forward, we can go forward, perhaps plan on making some minor adjustments after the workshop proposals come in.

 Another alternative that we looked at would be to do some partial framing.  There's probably a couple of areas that we would all agree are absolutely areas that we want to focus and really feature in the -- in the conference, and we can be quite clear on those.

 We may want to leave some flexibility for some other ideas to come in through the submissions of the proposals and we finalize some portion of those themes at our next meeting.

 So I think we have some flexibility and some leeway and, yet, we will still be in a position to give enough specific guidance and direction to manage the call for workshop proposals which, as I said -- I think you'll see in a few moments our goal really is to get that out no later than next week.  

 And the secretariat and I had a real stretch goal of this week, in fact.  Stretch goals are good.  Having a fall-back is probably even better.

 Let me just see if everybody -- if that seems sensible and if it -- if you could follow it.  Does it make sense as an approach?  I'm sure there will be no reluctance to object later on if it's less than -- less than helpful.

 [ Laughter ]

 So maybe at this point, Luis, do you have the time line I think is probably the best one.

 >> LUIS BOBO:  Sure.  Thank you, Chair.  We are going to project it on the screen.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Virat, did you want to introduce it?  You have the benefit --

 >>VIRAT BHATIA:  I sent one.  I don't know which one they are pulling up.

 Yeah.  So if we could just move it up a little bit.

 So given the very compressed time line, this is after discussion last night, just a proposal for us to look at how we can try and get this thing going and we also need to remember we need to give workshop organizers about four months, three months to get -- after the proposal submitted to get everything in order because usually what they have is names of speakers and structure and all of that stuff.  But it makes about two months of work to finally nail it down.  There are some last-minute changes, et cetera.

 If we can finalize broad themes, not specifically but broad themes, one of the recommendations could be going back to four broad themes and we could do more subthemes under that.  As you know, IGF has always had broad themes:  Security, accessibility, diversity, and -- there's one more.  So we can pick those and sort of agree on that.  But that may or may not be that easy.  But you need to have basic broad themes indicated for proposals to be made out and submitted for surveys.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Virat, just a quick comment.  I saw a few people taking pictures and things.  It is actually posted on the Web site under the "documents."

 >>VIRAT BHATIA:  It is just a proposal.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  At least people will be able to see it and move back and forth.

 >>CHENGETAI MASANGO:  Just go to the front page under the tab with the "documents," input documents.

 >>VIRAT BHATIA:  And, please, remember it's only a proposal to the MAG.  We can change it, shift it around depending on what everybody thinks.  Can finalize the criteria, as the Chair mentioned earlier.  That's absolutely necessary, otherwise we can't -- we won't have our work finished.  

 The evaluation procedure, this is basically for us to understand how to rank it one to five.  And tips for finalizing a great workshop, a fantastic document that was done last year by the working group.  

 Chair, I would recommend, when I finish, that we actually put up some of these documents.  I know Susan would be reluctant because she's a former MAG member, but we should really invite her for a short period to present those documents because she's really the lead of the working group.  Did some outstanding work along with Fiona.

 So after we leave here, then we hope to put out the open call for workshops on the IGF Web site like each year on the 15th of April.  We have nine days after we leave here to do that.  Given the squeezed time period, we're looking at giving six weeks to proposals to be submitted.  Normally, we give up to two months.  I know the secretariat would be happier if we gave two months.  But less is better.  So six weeks is what is being given as a proposal.  We could bring it up, down, whatever we feel like, decide to do, what is appropriate.

 Secretariat then organizes and sends proposal to the MAG for evaluation.  They need about -- well, about a week, per ten days just putting some margin everywhere.  So that's June 9th.  MAG has 11 days to complete its evaluation, the process of evaluation, as the Chair mentioned, could be discussed.  But we do have an established process for evaluation right now where all the members rate the proposal.  And based on the rating, there is a cut-off for the first hundred and then we look at those when we come back on the face-to-face meeting.

 The evaluations are sent back.  Then the secretariat takes about a week, ten days to take all the evaluations.  And then rank the proposals from one to, whatever, 240, 230.  And then a cut-off is organized.  There could be an extra step here.  Maybe they need some extra time.  We can discuss that.  

 And so after that is done on 1st of July, then given the 4th of July weekend, was recommending that people could try and be here 6th through the 8th.  The ICANN meeting as well, which is in the week of -- I think in the week -- last week of June, which means the members of the MAG who were involved at ICANN would have done the evaluation before the ICANN meeting begin. 

 Again, just recommended dates and trying to finish it in the first week of July so that Europe then goes on vacation starting second week and so that kind of becomes a difficult phase to work through.

 This will give us and our workshop organizers -- well, firstly, it gives us nearly three months to complete the process, and it gives the workshop organizers another three months to get everything nailed down.  This is just for the consideration of the MAG and open to comments.  Thank you.

 And I haven't shared with Chengetai, so he might have some comments.

 >>CHENGETAI MASANGO:  I would just like to say.  My staff may groan, but we can do the sortings and the rankings much, much quicker.  It's basically automatic and then we just do some manual checking.  We don't need ten days.  We can compress those times.

 >>VIRAT BHATIA:  Okay, good.  If we can, then we can give more time back to workshop organizers.  I think six weeks should be enough.  Unless the MAG feels otherwise, six weeks should -- well, let's have comments.

 >>MARILYN CADE:  It's Marilyn Cade.  I just have a very quick comment.  This is extremely helpful.  And I want to thank Virat for doing it.  

 I just want to make a comment about the experience that I had.  And I think in the past occasionally we've had an extra day or two built in for flexibility in case something catastrophic happens and we need to give an extension.  

 So I just would say even though I know the secretariat is being extremely generous to all of us, I think that building in a day or two safeguard here and there if we can do it would make me feel more comfortable.  

 And I don't know what I think the catastrophic event would be, but I'll use as an example the time I got ashed in in Brussels and wasn't able to be online or anything else because I was living at the airport for ten days due to a climate event.

 So a little flexibility here and there.  Otherwise, this looks really good in terms of it's very sequential.  But I think we would need to really make commitments as MAG members that we're going to meet these deadlines and do our virtual calls.

 >>VIRAT BHATIA:  Can I just make one more point before you invite the next comment.  I have worked in one or two days into each of those deadlines for providing space and, yet, tried to finish it in the first week of July.  

 Now, I remember last year the MAG asked for more time, I think, twice or at least once or twice.  So the MAG itself was the reason to ask for more time.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Luis, could I ask you to put the table back up?  I think there were two -- at least two critical points on it.  One is:  How does the MAG feel about the time for workshop proposals, which in this timetable is six weeks?  And how does the MAG feel about the evaluation time of two weeks?  And at some point you need to note exactly when those two weeks are and look at your own calendars and make sure you're committing to it.  

 So those are the two things I'd like to hear from the floor at the moment and maybe we'll take first the six weeks for workshop proposals.  

 Andrea, with exception, okay.

 >>ANDREA SAKS: Thank you, Madam Chair.  I just -- from experience, having started organizing workshops for IGF since 2007, there is never enough time, and the thing is, the -- I just -- from my specific experience of running a dynamic coalition, I run a democratic group.  I have members all over the world and we work by reflector, and we have conference calls which have to be captioned and paid for in order to get everybody to agree to one thing.

 Six weeks is making it very tight, and I'll just go -- only I can go from my experience and I've always had to ask for extra time because of the fact that I run a democracy.

 So I would prefer this habit we had last year, which I believe was eight weeks, was it not?  I think --

 >>VIRAT BHATIA: I think it was about eight weeks and we also had about 11 months, so, yeah, that was the difference.

 >>ANDREA SAKS: Thank you.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Maybe we could split the difference and go for seven weeks, if we can actually get the call out this week and not require all of next week.  I'll put that forward in the spirit of a compromise.  Sala you have the floor.

 >>SALANIETA TAMANIKAIWAIMARO: Thank you, Chair.  This is Sala, for the record.  

 I would just like to say it would be a different -- I suppose the -- I suppose two of the documents that are supposed to be hyperlinked in there -- are there two documents that were developed from the workshop last year?

 >>VIRAT BHATIA: Those are different, but these are just deadlines so that's a different document.

 >>SALANIETA TAMANIKAIWAIMARO: Right.  But it's sort of related.

 If they had been handed to us prior to this meeting, then the April 6th date would be justified, so I would submit that -- I know that we need to finalize it and wrap it up fast, but just given the nature of the exhaustion, and even though work's already been -- work has already been done on it from last year, but to do justice, you would need at least, say, maybe 48 hours to look at it and to allow remote MAG participants who are not here to sort of consolidate it and say, "Okay, this is fine."

 So I would suggest instead of the April 6th that you move it to April 8th, enough time to allow for our remote MAG members who are not here to consolidate the criteria, so that in the -- so that in terms of moving forward, that we don't -- you know, you don't get backlash.  That's just sort of one suggestion.

 The second thing is, I'd like to commend Virat for the excellent work in actually putting together the table.  It really cuts down time.  So that's really awesome.

 Yes.  That's all I wanted to say.  Thank you.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Sala.  

 Liesyl, you have the floor.

 >>LIESYL FRANZ: Thank you.  I really would leave it to others to talk about the time periods between the 6th and the 8th of July based on the experience of continuing MAG members, so I really appreciate their guidance there in the considerations that we have.

 But one thing I would like to react to is number one, on finalizing the subthemes, I have been -- that has traditionally taken quite a bit of time from the MAG meetings and the intersessional MAG meetings to finalize the subthemes, so along with that and the conversations that we've had, I think the comments that have been made over the course of the last day and a half are that perhaps the subthemes could be more developed from a bottom-up process by the workshop submissions based on topics or tags or some mechanism for devising the -- deriving the subthemes from the submissions we actually get, rather than dictating them in the next day and a half.

 Hope perhaps the context of the bottom-up and saving us a little bit of time in the next day and a half, we could possibly take one off and put it to the subtheme development along with the -- the evaluation of the workshop criteria -- the workshop -- workshop space and then putting them into subthemes that make sense at that -- at the appropriate meeting.  Thank you.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you.

 >>VIRAT BHATIA: Could I just -- I just wanted to explain the point on subthemes.

 So you're right.  Every year we take time to develop subthemes, but usually it's done during the course of a MAG meeting.

 In this case, what is being suggested is to go back to the four broad subthemes that have existed with the IGF since its inception, and everybody can then submit their proposals, as you've said, and use that to build the final subthemes under the four broad subthemes.

 Now, almost all topics are usually covered under those subthemes.  

 Not indicating anything by way of subthemes makes it difficult to put out a call by the 15th of April because then you'll have 40 different types of topics which can't be clustered unless they know how to -- under which broad theme they have to put in.

 So a safe space for us is to play with the four broad subthemes that have existed since the inception of MAG, and you're absolutely right, then once the -- once they come in under those four heads, then we can put them under sort of sharper themes and develop that order over the call period.  That was the submission as it was prepared.  That's all.  But the call needs to give some indication, I think, of where the especially first-time proposers should put in.

 The people who are professional at writing this stuff, have done this before, will know "Go under cybersecurity," "Go for net neutrality."  They understand this stuff.  Those who haven't done it, first-timers, which is the ones we are trying to encourage, need to have some broad idea.  So that was the point.  Thanks.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: So we're kind of doing a tour de table, I think, here of themes, timetables, workshop guidelines, and that's possibly a very good thing for everybody to get a sense for what's in front of us and then we come back and close.

 Just to stay with the themes and subthemes for a moment, we've actually had a lot of indication from the letter from the U.N. Secretary-General and the support in this room for linking it to the SDGs.  We had some very good input this morning from the host country.  We've had input -- some and still more to come -- from some of the intersessional work.  

 So I think we've got some broad themes there.  As soon as we settle into that conversation, that will help us advance quite quickly to a good portion of it, even if not all of it, and should give us guidance and maybe leave a little room for flexibility.

 When I look at the timetable here, I think I've identified three possible points of maybe extra capacity in terms of moving around.

 I don't hear anybody saying there's some component piece of this that just doesn't work.

 I think we've said possibly we don't need quite so much time in the secretariat for some of those steps.  If we had to, we could probably move it out to the third week of July.  I'm not sure if that makes an awful lot of difference for many of the MAG members.  It's something we could test.

 And then we've got a little bit of time here on the front end if we made good progress the next two days on.

 So there's three more people, I think, in the queue, or however many.  We'll come to those and try and close on this session for a moment, and then maybe we can come to a discussion on -- I'd like to get to some of the workshop guidelines criteria and proposals, let people look at those and get a sense of what's there already, what exists, and how much work we need to do to finalize that, and then we can possibly come back.

 But -- so let me -- we've had a list here.  

 Mourad, you're next on the list.

 >>MOURAD BOUKADOUM: Thank you.  I have two comments regarding timetable.  

 The first one is regarding the evaluation by the MAG members of the proposals.

 I'm wondering if 11 days are enough, supposing the case we have hundreds -- not 200 but a hundred or so proposals.  Would it be enough for us, and how to proceed.

 The second comment, in regard to the projected -- the prospective meeting scheduled in July, it's a bit confusing for me.  We are talking about three days meeting, but for the duration it was noted five, seven days, so it's a bit confusing.  Thank you.

 >>VIRAT BHATIA: The seven-day period is the period ending when the secretariat submits the final workshops and you will have it in your hand for seven days, but the duration -- I'm sorry, it should say -- 

 The duration of the meeting is three days, but the MAG will have seven days after the listing of one, two -- 243 or whatever is done, to read that, because when they come back in the room, there is then this face-to-face discussion, especially with regards to areas which are missing.  For example, last year intergovernmental proposals were disproportionately lower and so work had to be done to bring up some of those proposals.

 So that's -- it's -- you're right.  I'm sorry.  It should have been three days and seven days (indiscernible) .

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: It may be easier to just look at the deadline column.  I'm a little confused myself on the duration, so --

 Hossam, you have the floor.

 >>HOSSAM ELGAMAL: Yeah.  Just a suggestion.  If we can move the meeting, the MAG meeting, for a few days to start like 11th of July, because we have -- for Muslims, they have fasting that will be ending on the 6th or 7th of July.  Thank you.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Hossam.  Zeina, you have the floor.

 >>ZEINA BOU HARB: I just want to ask about the -- we mentioned that we might ask some proposals to be merged together.  At which stage it will happen to inform the people proposing those workshops to merge two or three workshops together?  At which stage?  

 And then maybe we -- we should review the timing because we have to give them time to contact each other and decide.

 And my second question is, how many workshops can the host accommodate during those two days?  We have to take this also into consideration when we want to set the evaluation criteria.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: I know.  That's true.  And we'll come to that point in a moment.  Main sessions falls somewhat into that discussion as well.

 To your first question, it's as soon as the MAG has finished their work and selected them.  As a part of that process, they identify which workshop proposals they believe are potentials for mergers, and then the secretariat goes away and facilitates that.

 So in this model, it would be mid- to late July.

 >>VIRAT BHATIA: If I could just -- so when we meet on -- let's say it was 6 to 8 July, for argument's sake.

 The MAG will identify clear -- let's say there's a space for ninety- -- a hundred proposals, let's say, for argument's sake.  Hopefully less, but let's say a hundred proposals.  

 The MAG would say "90 are absolutely clean, must go ahead.  10 proposals are looking really good.  And there are another seven or eight which are also looking good but didn't score high, so now we're going to have facilitators bring these proposals together."

 So it happens at the end of our meeting, and we have four months, but what you have to do is try and do the merger in about -- about a two- or three-week period, because if there is a cut off of a hundred, so you've got 10 and then another six or seven that need to be merged, usually it's about 10 to 15 that have to be merged together to get down to, let's say, nine.  That's the normal experience.

 But that will start on 8th of July in this case.

 >>ZEINA BOU HARB: In this case, we have to review another time the merged proposals, no?

 >>VIRAT BHATIA: No.  No, I mean, those -- then what we could do this year, we haven't done in the past, and that was a good suggestion, was that a working group can be formed because mergers don't happen easily.  It's very difficult.  People don't want to change speakers, they don't want to dilute their point.  Their proposal is cybersecurity and cybersecurity which the MAG sees are similar but the proposal submitters see it totally different.  So what we could do is form a working group at that stage who would help facility the mergers, but it will have to be after you've done the cutoff.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: So thank you.  In the queue, we have Marilyn, Cheryl, and then Michael.  Marilyn, you have the floor.

 >>MARILYN CADE: Thank you.  Marilyn Cade speaking.

 I'm going to ask -- I'm going to take 30 seconds to ask everybody a really big favor.

 You may not always notice this, but if you could pay attention to the transcript and whether or not your name is reflected, it's really very helpful because later when you're reading the transcript and it says "woman speaking," somebody else may get -- be getting credit for your great comment.

 But seriously, because we have so many new MAG members, it would be really helpful if people could just pay particular attention to that.  Not why I took the floor, however.

 I -- prior to becoming a MAG member, I had each year worked with or coached different groups, including new groups who proposed workshops, and last year I found the work that the MAG did to try to provide guidance and a template approach, almost, really, really helpful, but I also found that brand-new proposers really benefited from having at least a little structure to fit into.

 They were confused, "Well, do I -- is this -- does it fit in privacy?  Does it fit in security?  Does it fit here?  Does it fit there?"  And in some cases, they confused -- they became even more confused because we weren't clear in setting limits from the very beginning by being very honest with people, "We only -- there will be no more than 101 workshops," hypothetically, "or 79," hypothetically, and we incented people to spend a lot of time drafting workshop proposals, going out and contacting speakers, giving us two- or three-page well-developed proposals when there was no chance that we were going to be able to accept 270 workshops.

 I experienced a lot of negative feedback from the brand-new proposers, a lot of frustration.  Phone calls with someone who was in tears over being --

 So here's what I would say:  The more we can set the limits up front and make them clear, set the expectations up front, allow perhaps a track of more flexibility, do things like a fact sheet, do things that help people to assess ahead of time, but also be clear that we aren't just filling those rooms with workshop proposals, we're also filling them with open forums, and so we have to take that into account in our total -- in our total space allocation.

 I'll just say one other thing.

 If we're going to talk about experimenting with new modalities, it's really important we understand what the venue can support.  We could, for instance, look at the experience that the WSIS forum is experimenting with on the TED talk approach, see how it works by observing it from some of us who will be there during the -- during the WSIS forum, and see if there's a way to use, you know, kind of a different approach to letting people who cannot -- who do not make it into the workshop slot still have an opportunity to participate in a unique way.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Marilyn.  I think those are good comments.  

 I'll take the few comments that are still here and then maybe at this point it would be appropriate to go to Victor so that we get some sense of the size of rooms, types of rooms, and what would be facilitated before we go into the workshop proposals and guidelines.  Because if we really are in our mind thinking of TED talk-like thing or other innovations, I think it would be helpful to have a better idea of the facilities before we enter into the workshop proposals, criteria, and types of.

 So with that, I have Cheryl, Michael, Jivan, and on line.

 >>CHERYL MILLER: Thank you, Madam Chair.

 I think what we have in front of us is very workable and I definitely want to say thank you to Virat.  It's quite organized.  I think perhaps you should have been an accountant in a former life --

 [ Laughter ]

 >>CHERYL MILLER: -- because I certainly couldn't figure out all those dates.  And I also think that the 11th, looking up there, it looks like that could definitely work, to Hossam's point.

 On the subthemes, I agree.  I talked to a lot of first-time proposers last year and I think having subthemes is helpful.  Especially -- you know, the sky's the limit with respect to what issue you can try to tackle, and so I think that will also help to -- you know, we want to get good proposals and we want people -- to help people submit the best proposals that they can.

 Marilyn's comment about having resources is spot on.  I mean, that was going to be my comment.

 I don't know -- I don't think we did this last year, but I would also suggest -- and I'm not trying to make more work -- but perhaps having either a Webinar or even a conference call where the community could call in and talk to MAG members and ask questions.  

 They probably are questions that, you know, we know the answers to but it might not be obvious for someone who's not gone through the process.  It might help us with transparency as well.

 I also agree on the merger point.  I think we definitely need to spend a minute discussing how we'll handle that because my first year kind of within this process, the mergers that were left to happen on their own didn't really happen, and I think that it would be really useful to have almost someone kind of Sherpa the mergers along.  Because you may have two people, while they may be the same theme, they may have completely different ideas of the approach to what they are hoping to get out of their workshop or their flash session or what it might be.  

 And that complicates the mergers as well because we had some people who had a panel; some people who had a roundtable.  How do you merge two different ideas in that way?  I think also once we are done with this, if we can come up with some really clear simple, online instructions so that once people go to the Web site, it's very -- you know, it's very basic and nothing is very confusing in terms of what we're looking for.  

 And I think also perhaps if we think about for those who don't make it -- and I know it's tough when you put so much work into something and you get rejected.  Perhaps we can have a little bit -- some resources around why no.  I don't know if we can do something such as like a follow-up Webinar or something along the lines of giving feedback in terms of if you were to resubmit this next year, what would help it to get it across the finish line.  Thank you very much.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  I think the last point is a good suggestion.  If I remember correctly, I think last year we did actually have some categories which allowed us to give some feedback, which is a very important point.

 >>VIRAT BHATIA:  May I also make a quick point?  We did do Webinars, I think, so we would be able to explain that.  But we did have this sort of top sort of ten tips for submitting workshops, and a seminar was held inviting.  And also the call went out in ten different -- or, sorry, six different languages.  That really helped people.  So I think that was done last year.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  And we must repeat those this year.

 Michael, you were next.

 So, under your -- I just saw your hand go up.  This is meant for MAG members, but I have got four or five other people in the queue as well.

 Michael, you were next.

 >>MICHAEL NELSON:  Thank you.  Just a couple of quick comments.  I would really urge us to shorten the period that we allocate under Number 7 for the secretariat to evaluate the proposals.  I think the MAG is going to need more than 11 days.  Eleven days would be fine if we didn't have any other jobs to do.  But I note the time period includes EuroDIG, includes some other important meetings that are going to take people away.  As I recall last year, the secretariat didn't have to spend that much time because you're mostly just eliminating duplicate proposals from the same person who submitted a second better one or ones that are just so clearly deficient, it takes five minutes to see that.  So if there was a way to shorten that so that the evaluation by the secretariat was done by June 4th or June 3rd so that all of us could work the weekend, that would give us more like 17 days.  And I think that would be much more reasonable.

 I really concur with Cheryl's comment about the importance of doing the Webinars both before and after.  And I think we could probably do a better job of publicizing the Webinar for people who haven't done it before.  It's really hard to reach people who we don't know are going to propose.  But we do hear a lot of complaints every year about, "Well, if I had only known" about some aspect of the proposal process they would have been able to do a stronger proposal.

 The other thought I had was about getting people to propose earlier.  And one -- I'm trying to remember -- I never had a reason to check.  But when people propose two weeks before the deadline, did we post those at that point or did we wait until all the proposals came in before revealing any of the proposals?

 >>CHENGETAI MASANGO:  I think we wait for all the proposals to come in.

 >>MICHAEL NELSON:  An option we might offer people is to have their proposal posted and shared --

 >>CHENGETAI MASANGO:  As soon as they submit.

 >>MICHAEL NELSON: -- as soon as they submit.  Give them an option.  If they have got a really cool proposal and they don't want anybody else to copy it, maybe they don't want to share it.  But sometimes people put a really strong proposal out but they're missing one or two slots.  Sometimes they say, "We're trying to get somebody from Africa."  That would allow people who were interested in the topic to jump on that proposal.

 The other thing that I've seen a lot is we'll have three great proposals on a particular topic, well-thought out but only really two panels' worth of good people.  And that forces us to merge them.  

 But if instead somebody puts a proposal out there and people who are interested see that, they might merge themselves so we avoid it.  So it's a great way to get people -- it's also a great way to show people a good proposal because most people who are proposing early probably know what they're doing.  So I've seen this work well in other cases.

 The last point was that I have a question for Victor really which is I do think we want to explore new formats.  I love the TED talk proposal.  I have in the past advocated for debates.  Another thing that we tried last week at RightsCon, CloudFlare organized a unpanel.  So rather than having a bunch of people sit in front of room, we introduced our seven or eight panelists and we sent them into the room.  And you had all these small group discussions.  It's something that the World Economic Forum does as well.  You could do this if you set up the room differently.  But it would require having a room with 10 or 15 tables and having a lot of ten-person discussions.  And then at the end of the session, everybody comes back and gets their two minutes.  But that's a great way to engage people on topics, but it does require planning.  It's a question for Victor about the space.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  So I have Jivan, online participants, and Arnold in the queue.  And then we will come to Victor for some more insight into the facilities.  And then we'll come back and pick this conversation up.  I think that's a natural segue for that.

 Thank you, Michael.

 Jivan, you have the floor.

 >>JIVAN GJORGJINSKI:  Thank you.  I think that a lot of organizations apply for workshops because they want to promote themselves; and that's understandable and okay, especially if they have something to say, a new idea or a new issue to raise.  But at the same time, I think that the most interesting workshops, at least for me, are the ones where there's a great debate, not just one person, or perhaps, like, two people or two groups kind of going around, give an issue, and presenting both sides of the policy -- possibilities.

 So I think that perhaps we should even make time or make space out of the workshops, perhaps a quarter or something like that, to organize them around questions that we formulate ahead of time.  So if we go from the theme to the subtheme level, at the level of subtheme, for us to shape three questions that need to be answered and then to invite people with positions on that.  So that would take away the need to curate afterwards or merge workshops because the merging would have been done ahead of time with the concentration, with the focus of the questions that need to be answered.  So that is just one recommendation.  I think that perhaps we can afford to give a quarter of the number of workshops to something like that, that kind of a format.

 Then -- and in that, I think that there's two types of issues that are raised.  One are very generic issues that keep on being raised perhaps at every IGF since the beginning.  As you've said, the core infrastructure, resources of the Internet, et cetera, et cetera.  And those are good for people coming into the debate to get a hold of where things are.

 We mentioned, I think, last year we had some experiments with it where people, experts, are put in a given space to answer some questions.  So it means some workshops -- or space, it doesn't have to be workshops, can be framed in that kind.

 But others are where the new ideas, the new issues, the new problems need to bubble up.  And for that, I think that we keep on discussing involving the national and regional IGFs.  And perhaps this is the opportunity to allocate another quarter to really have a structure already of the issues that are arising at the national and regional IGFs and for a space for them to debate them, to be put into one group and then, say, you know, the continental or the national or the regional IGFs present and then we'll compare notes.  You have these kinds of problems.  Have you solved these kinds of problems?  And for that to be moderated in some form, perhaps by the MAG, perhaps by experts.

 I think it is good for us to think of different kinds of formats.  And having said that, again, for the third year in a row, I would say let's reduce the number of workshops.  I think that, you know, even 60 -- I keep on mentioning this number 60.  Sixty seems like a good number of workshops.  More than that, just like it's just too much.  And people are coming and they are lost in the sea of what all is being discussed, so...  

 So much for now.  Thanks.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Thank you, Jivan.

 Anja for online participants.

 >>REMOTE INVERVENTION:  Thank you.  Avri, you have the floor now.

 >>AVRI DORIA:  Hello, this is Avri.  I guess we're supposed to always give our affiliation.  So I'm CS with a strong TC affinity.

 First of all, I want to give a comment against going back to the themes from last decade.  I think those are well-worn.  And what happens when we use those themes -- in fact, what happens when we use any theme is people take what they want to do and they try to stuff it in that box.  And so we end up with things saying that they belong to a theme that really don't.

 I really like the notion of things by induction that Liesyl gave us.  What it sort of does is it compresses both the bottom-up effort of going out the community and say, "Give us themes" and then putting together and say, "Give us workshops."  It's basically ask them to give us workshops, identify a theme -- and we can even say look at previous themes if you don't know what kind to go, but basically identify.  

 And then, basically, taking that work and sort of finding out what are the themes, the actual themes, that people want to talk about and pulling it together from there.  It sort of expedites the work given our short time and, yet, still allows for strong community participation.  So I would really like to argue for that.

 I really do like the idea of having multiple Webinars before, after explaining things, putting ourselves on the line with the members of the community.  

 I'm sort of nervous about the idea of putting together strong ones first.  You get the strongest getting in line first.  And that has the effect of very much taking the air out of the room.  "Oh, I couldn't do anything as good as that person did, they are experienced."  So it can actually have an inhibiting effect.  So that I have a nervous feeling about.

 I truly do not believe that we should limit the workshops by anything other than time and available room because we have to remember that what we're building is a very rich resource, that even after people go away, those things are there for them to listen to.

 So if we can sort of educate people that you go to the workshops where you feel you have something that you want to say, you can listen to all the others afterwards.  And so I would like to argue that.  

 So as I say, let themes emerge from the workshops.  Let them suggest.  Let's not force everybody to pick a box and pretend that their workshop fits that box.  Thank you.

 >>REMOTE INVERVENTION:  Thank you, Avri.  

 Jac has one intervention, if you allow.

 Jac, you can speak now.

 >>JAC sm KEE:  Okay.  Thanks, Anja.  This is Jac.  

 So I have several interventions because I have been collecting them throughout while we were discussing.  So I hope you will just bear with me a little while.

 Firstly, I think two weeks is definitely not enough for evaluation.  I think recognizing the tight turnaround, it's definitely going to be too difficult to try and do all of the workshop assessments within that period of time.  Four weeks was half of last year.  And I guess at a push with different kinds of approaches to workshop assessments, it might work.  

 And also to take into account and to take into consideration intersessional work for the MAG meetings, which will have an impact on the meeting.  So, for example, there might be meetings for intersessional groups as well so that's also to bear in mind that planning for how do we make good use of the time for our next meeting.

 Then moving on to themes and subthemes, I think that actually having some sort of subtheme might be useful to train the workshop proposers, especially for people who are new to the IGF process.  I think if you sort of ask them to take a second run, I think it might be a little bit difficult, although I'm not entirely opposed to the idea.  But I do think it might be -- it's probably a little bit useful to have at least some.

 And I do support the idea of subthemes from -- I mean, I do think that subthemes from at least last year will be better than trying to pick subthemes from the beginning incarnation of the IGF, which might possibly be no longer be relevant.

 But I really love the idea of themes emerging from workshop proposers themselves.  And I think that -- I think Janis also had the same proposal as I saw in the comment box, which is using tagging as a way to self-identify what you think your workshop is about.  It's a very accepted and usual user-generated content convention online.  It would be very workable.  So it is recommended as part of the submission of your workshop proposal.  What tags would you put?  And maybe also through not just tagging in terms of content or topic tag but also based on the level of the workshop.  So, for example, is this a beginner, medium, advanced kind of workshop that's being proposed?

 And then also supporting the idea of different formats, I think that's really great to try an experiment.  I think it's great to think about this idea, and I quite like the idea of the unpanel that was raised.  

 And maybe the flip side of that is also to restrict speakers to numbers of sessions.  So, for example, either two or three at the maximum.  You cannot be in six different workshop sessions plus two main sessions speaking.  I think that's a little bit much.

 And then partly it's about responding and giving opportunity to respond to questions for workshop proposers.  I think that's fantastic.  But maybe to either accompany Webinar -- instead of Webinars, which might be difficult because you have to find people with the same time zone or to be able to have that kind of technical capacity to be participating in the Webinar, to have a period where you have -- you can ask questions.  So like maybe, you know, a week where all kinds of -- any questions you might have about the workshop proposal, around the process, et cetera, et cetera, collect all of this and then take the time to respond to them all and come up with a kind of FAQ that people can refer to even if you miss Webinars.  This also can be as a (indiscernible) Webinar.  It could be a little bit text friendly and more archived in that sense.

 And, finally, to bring up again the need to consider space (indiscernible) express their concerns in the organizing of the IGF, so what kind of space or platform, not necessarily a workshop.  This happens usually at the closing session.  But maybe we should think about this in a much more formal way, I guess.  And that's it.  Thanks.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Very complete set of comments.

 Is there another online participant?

 >>REMOTE INVERVENTION:  I have been asked to read one comment from Ginger Paque, which is a comment made by former MAG Chair.  So if you allow.

 Maybe with four additional subthemes, MAG would like to introduce the text that would help organizers and end users describe the sessions in more details.  Just a thought.  Moreover, text would be descriptive and would not be negotiated.  

 That's end of comment.  Thank you.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Thank you.  Since last time I closed the queue, more flags have gone up.  I will take those flags that are up, but then I'm going to draw a hard line understand them for the moment because I think at this point before we go deeper, we really do need to get some more insight from Victor with respect to the facilities and host.  I think that will perhaps further inform our discussions.

 So with that, Arnold, you've actually been very patient.  So, please, you have the floor.

 >>ARNOLD van RHIJN:  Thank you, Lynn.  And thank you, Virat, for this useful time frame proposal.  I'm not going to comment whether this is all feasible, whether we need as a MAG 11 or tendays to evaluate.  However, I have a problem with Number 10, the dates -- the proposed dates to select the final workshops.  As this is the holiday season in the Netherlands, at least in the Netherlands -- at least I will be in the beautiful country of Portugal to celebrate my summer holiday, Ana.

 And it would be a pity if I wouldn't be there to help select the workshops.  If I'm the only one in the room of the MAG members and the others don't have a problem with it, that's a fact.  I can cope with that.  But, again, it's a pity.

 Suggestion whether it is possible to postpone that until the beginning of September, I don't know, because we have postponed the IGF with a month compared to the IGFs of previous years where it took place in the month of November.  But it's up to you to comment on that.

 And my second point is:  Is this only one meeting as a MAG to finalize the program or should we need another one.  Perhaps in the second half of this year.  Thank you.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Okay.  Let me just give a quick comment on the other two.

 I think to postpone it to September is quite difficult and I'm not sure it's fair to the workshop proposers, because it leaves them hanging for quite a long period of time.  I'm not actually sure it buys us better evaluations because if everybody's on holiday for August, they're not likely doing it in August either.

 And I think what -- if -- I mean, I think we're faced with July for the workshop proposal evaluation, almost no matter how we cut it.

 If we cannot find a date that gives us most of the MAG in the room -- because don't forget, you actually do your evaluations outside the proposals, so we will have your input -- what we might do is come out of the physical meeting with the work proposal done, give two weeks for those people that weren't able to be in the room to evaluate what the final outcome is, raise any final comments or concerns, and then we address those by exceptions.  Which does at least give you another check-in point after having completed your evaluations.

 And I'll also just remind people that the way we do it is there's some fairly large number that are accepted because they've met criteria and they were scored so high.  There's equally a number on the bottom that usually are not accepted.  And there's some portion in the middle which is where the MAG spends the bulk of its time.

 So, you know, I think if we -- if we don't have enough people or we have some strong objection to the date and people not being able to be in the room when the evaluation is done, I think at this point about the only fallback I can see is that we make the output of that physical meeting known and we give some additional time for those MAG members that weren't in the room to take a look, comment, evaluate, and we deal with any concerns or questions by exception.

 I'll leave that there and continue going around the -- you know, it -- it is unfortunate but I don't know how to take back time and I don't think pushing it to September buys us anything and we're likely, though, to have another meeting, probably in the September time frame, which is probably when we finalize some of the other component pieces, some of the perhaps intersessional work, main sessions, and some of those things.  Or at least advance some of those even further.

 So with that, Iliya, you have the floor.

 >>ILIYA BAZLYANKOV: Thank you.  My name is, for the record, Iliya and I'm a new MAG member from Bulgaria.  I have a small suggestion that we might want to consider.  

 We can publicize the call for workshop proposals prior to the actual opening.  This way people can start organizing themselves now while we still finalize the process.  Something simple as "Coming Soon, IGF 2016 Call for Proposals" can help -- can be posted on Facebook, Twitter, on the Web site, and then each one of the MAG members can amplify via their own circuits.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Iliya.

 Omar, you have the floor.

 >>OMAR MANSOOR ANSARI: Thank you, Madam Chair.  

 This is about Hossam's comment about the Ramadan holidays.

 I think on July -- 5th of July, the Ramadan will end and it's going to be the Eid holidays for three days, and that might cause some absentees, possibly, so if it could be -- if it could be moved behind Eid, it would be good.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you.  I did see some support for moving it with heads nodding around the room, but we'll finalize this later.  Thank you.

 Marilyn, you were next.

 >>MARILYN CADE: Thank you, Madam Chair.  Marilyn Cade speaking.

 I just wanted to make an informative -- informational comment about the national and regional -- the informal national and regional IGF coordinators meeting that took place at lunch today and kind of position a request to other MAG members about some of the views that were expressed by the -- those who are very directly and heavily involved in the national and regional IGFs.

 So one of them -- and I will say I want to make a comment.  Last -- there has always been a substantive session at each of the IGFs, but last year the approach to organizing it was very different.  I was invited by Janis Karklins, the MAG chair, to serve as the substantive coordinator.  We put together a planning group.  We did a survey.  A group of the coordinators planned the substantive session.  There are people here who were actively involved in it.  

 It ended up with concrete recommendations and proposals for improvements which are publicly available and were reported on.

 The coordinators called for a similar session that they would self-organize, so I just want to park that as something that I think we all want to be aware of because we keep talking about bottom-up and there's probably nothing more bottom-up than the fact that the coordinators are so directly engaged.

 But secondly, historically there have been other ways that in -- I believe it was Sharm El Sheikh -- there was a -- there were 30-minute time slots set aside in a meeting room where any of the national or regional sessions -- and remember, there were many fewer then -- could do, in essence, a very short brief on what they were doing as a way to build visibility.

 I'm not trying to in any way dictate.  I just want to report on some of the ideas that the broad group -- and it is a very broad group -- is talking about themselves, but I want to mention a -- an area of sensitivity for us to be aware of.

 Last year, we identified, as the MAG, connecting the next billion as a priority intersessional working issue, and Cheryl, I think, actually was very instrumental in catalyzing and working with other MAG members to get that concept identified.

 We made a voluntary call to comment from the national and regional IGFs, and a very significant number of them took that up.

 Because of our timing, I ask us to keep in mind that if we are going to be looking to the national and regional IGFs to perhaps conduct a special consistent session or to provide comments, that we should keep in mind that they are going to need to have flexibility, because of the timing of their event, on how they then participate in that intersessional work.

 Secondly, they did a survey of their own and they have a list of topics that I think it would be important for us to respectfully listen to about some of the ideas and interests that they have.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Marilyn.

 And there's never a good time to say this, but if I could ask everybody to make their comments quite brief, we could get more speakers in as well.

 Juan, you have the floor next.

 >>JUAN FERNANDEZ: Thank you, Lynn.

 Three things.  Two of the things -- well, first, the new one.

 I've checked at least last week in the Web site that the description of the formats for the workshops was not available anymore.  I think that -- that it's important to have that -- that description because it helps the groups that are proposing the workshops to have that.

 And even, I had some suggestion that maybe that could be even more streamlined, because I think it was seven modalities.  Maybe it could be reduced.  But I -- it doesn't matter.  But it has to be an explanation in order to guide.  That's one thing.

 The other two things, I am totally in agreement with Avri that, for instance, the -- that the number of workshops, it has to be -- it should not be arbitrarily lowered.  It has -- it depends on the facilities and the times that we have.

 Of course if we have infinite facility, we want to have infinite workshop.  We could have the number that we had last year.  Maybe it could be the maximum.

 But not push it down, because you have to put ourself in the place of the people that want to have their workshops and, you know, to deny a workshop is always traumatic for the people.

 And then finally, the things about the themes.  What Avri said is actually true.  I think themes is something that has to be what is really of interest right now.  We can discuss that ourselves because we live in this world and we know, more or less, what is trending in this, and that could be the topic, but another way would be to extract it from the proposals of the workshops themselves or maybe some sort of survey or something like that in order to be bottom-up.

 In this sense, I will tell you a little anecdote of a very important architect in Cuba.  He designed a campus, you know, that it has different buildings with, you know -- that connect through grass and he was thinking where to put the path, to pave the path, because, you know, sometimes (indiscernible) you pave the path this way and people walk some other way and, you know, and they kill the grass.  

 So what he did is that for the first month he didn't make any path, so after he found the way that people walk, then he paved the path.

 I think that -- well, sorry that the Spanish colleague is not here because that's what the poet said -- (speaking in a non-English language) -- well, everybody understands that.  You don't have a path, you make path and you walk.  So that's my recommendation.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: That's a great anecdote.  Thank you.

 We have just three more speakers.  I will ask them to be brief.  And then we are going to the Mexican presentation because flags still keep going up.

 So we have Izumi, then Mourad, and Cheryl.

 >>IZUMI OKUTANI: Thank you, Madam Chair.

 So first to touch upon the theme, since it was mentioned by Juan.

 So I also like the -- I agree with both the points that you need some guidance to the new people who are proposing workshops on what will be the kind of topics that they should cover, at the same time make this workshop submission to be bottom-up based on what people are willing to propose.

 So I like Virat's idea on giving reference to the past subthemes that were covered to -- so that people would have a rough idea on what were the topics that were covered in the past, but leave it for people to propose and tag later, and if there are any themes that we actually find is substantial which were not covered in past workshops, maybe we can add that as a theme.  That's just one thought as a way to balance the feedback from both sides.

 And I really want to support the idea of continuing the Webinars and the idea of FAQs suggested, and as an additional suggestion on when we -- how we organize the Webinar, maybe we can really reach out to national and regional IGFs as well, so that they would know and can help us reach out, and I think if, in the Webinar we can cover the concept of this year's IGF, not just on the details of submitting the workshop, that might give the national and regional IGFs on how they actually can plan their meeting.  For example, if there's a common horizontal theme like we did last year, then they can actually add that as a topic for discussions in their local IGF.

 So some thoughts.  Thanks.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: So I think we've heard a number of times there's a lot of support for Webinars and other supporting activities.  If I could ask people to refrain from kind of commenting on that and perhaps put some additional new ideas forward again, that would just help us to move forward.

 Mourad?

 >>MOURAD BOUKADOUM: Thank you.  On subthemes, I think that it was rightly mentioned by some, submissions made prior to our meeting, we should divide them as a group, to duplicate what has been done in the past, in the sense that some themes have been overwhelmingly discussed where others have been less or even never discussed.

 I think that a mapping of all themes of previous IGF meetings would be extremely helpful for us.

 The objective is to avoid redundancy and giving the impression to the broader community that we are lacking imagination in terms of designing the agenda of the IGF and thus having the risk to make it less attractive in the future.

 Another issue I forgot to mention before is related to workshop criteria and guidelines.  I think that we need to -- that good work was done in the last two years, and thus, we need to set once and for all definitive criteria and guidelines that are not really discussed each year.

 Finally, I am of the view that we need a reduced number of workshops, as mentioned by some previous speakers.  Thank you.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Mourad.  

 Cheryl, you have the floor.

 >>CHERYL MILLER: Thank you, Madam Chair.  I promise this will be 30 seconds, if I can.

 I think this has been a really thoughtful discussion and I heard a lot of support on both sides under subthemes for a little bit of guidance and then some freedom and I actually agree with both.

 I was thinking maybe to kind of strike a balance we could list a few themes and then just leave open kind of an "Other" box, the box I usually always have to check on forms and things, so if people have any other subtheme they want to suggest, they can go ahead, the more experienced people who want -- who can do that, and then for folks who just aren't sure or would be more comfortable checking something, they have that option too.  Thanks.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: So we'll come back to that discussion afterwards.  

 I'd like to move to Victor now and then those people that were still in the queue -- Mike, Flavio, and Sala -- we'll open the queue back up.  

 And thank you, Flavio, for being so accepting.

 Michael, thank you, too.

 [ Laughter ]

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: He's --

 >>VICTOR LAGUNES: Thank you, Madam Chair.

 So I -- I actually passed a couple of slides to our technical support so I'm going to be showing you a couple of the slides.  I don't think they really depict, you know, the whole venue, yet it can guide the conversation as to what type of event we want to have and what type of sessions we want to host.

 Also, we've been using this layout to get already some quotes for infrastructure and some production companies that can help us build on top of the venue itself.

 The first one is really a listing -- thank you.  

 It's a listing of the bigger spaces that we have available.  Everything from the main -- the main venue, the bigger one for inaugural speech and the closure.  We can actually have a layout of around a thousand to 3,000 people.  It depends what we want to do with it.  It's an open space.  We can close it.

 Of course, you know, in November/December, it's lower chances of rain.  I would love if you can actually have an open, you know, skies, but in Mexico you never know, so it can be one of those crazy days that there's monsoon happening for half an hour and you completely destroy the venue.

 But the bigger one, it can host 1500, 2,000 people.  I think that would be comfortable enough.

 And then we have a couple ones that are smaller for the main sessions.  We still have to build around them, so -- some of them are patios, some of them are actually closed spaces.

 And then we have the (saying name) chapel.  It has some frescoes inside.  I don't know if you remember the picture that we have on one of the previous slides.  The photograph.  We took it just last week.  We can build certain things on top of it and we've already been given the type of events that can be hosted there, but we cannot change dramatically the chapel itself.

 It can host around 150 up to 300 people.

 There's also a movie theater.  160 people can host -- can be hosted there.

 And mainly those are the bigger spaces.

 From there, we start to go down into kind of the smaller working group sessions or workshops -- workshop groups, and surrounding the area, we have the museum itself and also the school.  We have a large school on the back side of the institute, of the cultural institute.

 Can you go into the slide that I just sent you?

 >> Sorry, I did not receive that.

 >>VICTOR LAGUNES: Did you get that -- you didn't get the email?

 >> Right now.  Yes.  Sorry.  One moment and I put it.

 >>VICTOR LAGUNES: Can you help me out, Yolanda?  

 By capturing a couple of comments -- well, some of the comments that you mentioned, I think it's on us to really put forward the type of environment that we want to create.  I think today, we can actually make it more so engaging.  There's new formats.  I mean, newer formats.  Everything from the TED Talks which we're all familiar with in the smaller venues, single talks, shorter conversations, bigger screens, and so on.

 Which I think can be accommodated in some of the smaller spots, the 300 to 200 -- 2- to 300 people.

 Also Virat mentioned the unpanel sessions.  I have seen it executed in a way that it may sound funny but kind of a speed dating-type format which then everyone has an opportunity to ask the questions in kind of smaller spaces and roundtables.  And then it can be actually very active, very engaging.

 I do believe part of the challenge would be to truly engage remote participation and to bridge the physical into kind of the virtual worlds of all the people who will be connected and all the countries who will be connected who will not have the opportunity to join us in Mexico.

 For those, what we are proposing -- and I put this on the discussion table -- is to really work around everything from simple online polls that we can bring forward and give feedback and serve as feedback to even the speakers or the panels in more of a realtime manner.

 So the way that we've executed that in previous events is even when we are doing Webcasting, we do have specific and specialized teams listening to whatever is happening on in the forum and putting that forward in the online Webcast, so not only the transcript itself but also references, additional information, the conversation that can actually happen online and feed that into the Webcast itself.

 In our opinion, it has actually fueled a lot of the conversations to have that transcribed and the conversation to be done in realtime as part of the main -- of the Webcast itself.

 We have social media users in Mexico.  I think that's commonplace in the world right now.  But, of course, we understand that the younger generation, it's basically where they live and spend a lot of their time.  They'll be expecting that we will have a very heavy, I think, strategy towards social media.

 We understand -- I think we will need to assess how to use -- make the best use of Facebook, make the best use of Twitter now and also newer tools, for example, Periscope that are actually quite strong today in terms of video -- videocasting and so on.

 In my opinion, we could build incentives or ask speakers on certain panels to actually via Periscope share some of their insights and so on.  We've tried those on several occasions in Mexico, and we've actually got a lot of attention and a lot of engagement.

 Is it possible to go inside some of the rooms?  I'll be asking Yolanda to help me guide part of this discussion and to share with you some of the spaces.  This was up with of the proposals that so far has been changed a little bit around how to make the best use of spaces.  I'm not sure whether you can actually zoom into --

 >> It's not possible at the moment.  Sorry.

 >>YOLANDA MANCILLA:  We can definitely share the first approximation to meeting the requirements.  This is basically based on what we received from the secretariat as minimum requirements to have the conference.  

 What we did during the planning mission is to actually go around the entire venue and review all the spaces.  And the next steps will be to actually refine this first proposal in order to make sure that we meet all requirements.

 So, so far we can guarantee that we're going to have a conference hall that can host up to 2,500 people.  We can guarantee 12 workshop rooms.  We can also guarantee between eight to ten bilateral areas, and all this requires -- including media space.  And that's just considering the school area within the Institute.

 We can also use the exposition rooms which are actually very well maintained, I believe air conditioning.  So that is going to be analyzed as we move forward to analyzing each requirement in a more specific manner.  But so far this is the first assessment.

 It might change according to the final requirements in terms of the agenda and the workshops and the number of sessions.  But because of the facility and the venue, we definitely can expand and use more rooms, if necessary, because we have the entire venue given to us for the event.  So I think it's an interesting venue in terms of meeting the requirements that the max sets for the agenda.

 And as soon as we have a narrow scope on the sessions and the schedules and the type of activities that is expected to happen during the conference, we can narrow down to more specific room number or bilateral meeting spaces since we have the opportunity to expand, if necessary.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Thank you.  And maybe I'll just ask Chengetai at this point to jump in and ask him if there's anything else he wants to translates in terms of the sorts of questions that the MAG usually has with respect to the rooms, number, and size.  Is there anything additional that you understand about the venue that you would communicate?

 >>CHENGETAI MASANGO:  Yes.

 So sorry.

 Just for our consideration, when we're talking about types of room configurations, I think we'll be a little bit limited to basically classroom size or we have to come with some other types of configuration.  But hollow square configuration I don't think we can do in this venue item.  

 That doesn't mean that we can't become inventive and use the patios as meeting points as well, which would be quite interesting especially since it is December and most people will be coming from very cold climates and would like to be outside in the sun.

 [ Laughter ]

 Yes, and the workshop rooms from what I estimated, guesstimated, it will be like 60, 80, to 120, 80 to 120 people fitting in the workshop rooms.

 >>VICTOR LAGUNES:  That's correct.

 >>CHENGETAI MASANGO:  Yeah.

 That's all.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  So they'll hold from 60 to 120 or some were at 60 and some were at 120?

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Some are at 60.  So to err on the side of caution, I would say 60, 80, maybe 100.  But then, again, I do encourage everybody just to look at it, and we can do stuff with that room.  We don't have to just stay at theater setting, for example.  We can do other stuff with the space that is available.

 >>VICTOR LAGUNES:  So I'm going to give a comment that may not be -- I'm trying to structure in my head.  I joined the World Economic Forum in Bali -- in China just this last October, November.  

 If you were, like, two minutes late into any session, you would not get in.  And it was very frustrating for a lot of people.  So it was structured in a way that really there were, like, 80 to 100 people in every session.  And there were, like, 200 people interested in going to those.  So, of course, there was a demand problem there.  

 Yet, one of the things they did well, besides a lot of things, was they actually put a room so we could actually jump in, connect via actually a mobile app listen to the Webcast.  And, then, of course, not be physically present in the room but you could actually look for any space available, sit down, and then just connect via Webcast either on big screens or even on the phone or a iPad or whatever.

 What I'm trying to say is we can find ways to make a full experience even though you are not in the room.  There may be people who actually don't want to be in the room that either they're not in the venue itself.  We can present some opportunities for people who want to actually jump from room to room virtually as well, right?

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  If there's nothing more at this point in time, I would go back to the three we had in the queue and there have been a few more requests for the queue, and then you would be able to guide us here as questions come up.

 So, Mike, you have the floor.

 >>MICHAEL NELSON:  Thank you, Chairman.  Thanks for getting back to this topic of how to provide some sense of what the IGF is about through themes and subthemes.

 I think Avri really got to the core of the question.  It's how can we give some guidance without being really top-down.  I think in the past, we've done that pretty well.  Jovan mentioned the idea that maybe we need to allocate parts of the program for different types of sessions.  I would argue that that would be far too top-down because we might not have quality sessions to fill those designated slots.  But I do think we have to have at least themes.  They're not paths.  They're really fences.  They're the boundaries that we show people so that they know whether a topic they're thinking of submitting is anywhere close to the kind of topic that would be accepted by the group.

 Juan's point is really good.  At the University of Pugent Sound where I grew up, they also design their sidewalks by letting people walk but they do have fences around the campus so people know where the campus is.  And that's what the themes do.  The themes tell people, yes, this is a good place for me to submit.

 If we don't have themes at all, we're going to get 50 or more proposals from people who are just completely off target and then we're going to have 50 people mad because they weren't told that they were off target ahead of time.  So I'd strongly urge that we at least have the high-level themes and provide that.

 I'd also like to say that if we allowed people to post their proposals online before the deadline, that would also provide some sense of what this conference is about and, I think, in the end lead to higher quality proposals.  

 I do that for my classes.  All the homework is posted on our class blog so all the classmates can see it, and that provides a push for everybody to do a particularly good proposal.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Thank you, Michael.

 Flavio, you have the floor.

 >>FLAVIO WAGNER:  Thank you, Lynn.

 I would also like to voice my support to the bottom-up approach as already proposed by many MAG members.  I think that we will hardly arrive at a decision on subthemes during this MAG meeting here.  It will be very hard to arrive at a decision.

 Virat, for instance, proposed the four subthemes of IGF 2006.  They are really overarching, but they do not capture all the richness of the relevant issues we have to date ten years later.  So I think that in a bottom-up approach, the proposers should tag their proposals with the subthemes they suggest themselves, up to three tags, for instance, for each proposal.  So that after we have the proposals, we can easily cluster the workshops, identifying -- we can give guidance, for instance, with this kind of description of list of all overarching themes and subthemes of all ten best editions of IGF, just as a suggestion, but which does not exclude any other subtheme that the proposers may want to add.  They just give the tags.  And this may help us to identify and cluster the workshops afterwards.

 There is one point in the agenda, Lynn, I don't know if we will arrive at it today or tomorrow, which is the definition of the main theme.  This is on the agenda.  If we're really -- yeah, the overarching theme.  If we really will discuss this overarching theme, then this would be our guidance in the call for workshop proposals.  And then the proposers should write at least one paragraph in their proposals stating how this proposal fits into the overarching theme.  So this would give some focus to the proposals, and I think we could combine the two ideas.  Having the main overarching theme, having a bottom-up approach, and having the tags to help us cluster the subthemes.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Thank you, Flavio.  It is key that we  actually do get to the main theme before the end of the day tomorrow.

 Sala, you have the floor.  Again, if we could all be as brief as we could in our comments, there's quite a queue building.

 >>SALANIETA TAMANIKAIWAIMARO:  Thank you, Madam Chair.  Sala for the record.  I'd like to thank Flavio for what he just circulated on the MAG list.  Because of that, I would like to withdraw my earlier comments and say that, yes, we can finalize the theme by tomorrow.

 And having said that, I'm going to -- because of time limitations, I'm going to send the portion of the survey that's relevant to the theme discussion, and I'll just stop there.  Thank you, Madam Chair.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Excellent.  Thank you, Sala.  Look forward to getting that.

 Marilyn, you were next.  And then we have Virat and online participants.

 Marilyn withdrew.

 Virat?

 >>VIRAT BHATIA:  I'm going to quickly respond with some clarifications to some points that were raised so we can try and consolidate the points that we are at.  

 First, on the point of formats that was raised, by the way, last year we did have not -- not only did we have formats, we had scores for formats.  So when that thing comes up, you will see in the criteria for rating this panel, roundtable, flash discussions, debates, breakout discussions, bird of the feather, and others.  Not only is there -- was there a score that was a higher score that was recommended by the working group last year for innovative panel sessions but, in fact, the panels that we dislike, by and large, at least the MAG last year disliked, which is the most popular piece that the workshop wants -- organizers want, so there's a contradiction there in terms, there was an extra barrier created.  

 So we do have a format.  Not only when you see the next chart, you will see options for formats but, in fact, there are scores for formats and innovative formats.

 With regards to themes, I just want to make a quick point because that's been discussed a lot.  We can go either way.  We can have broad themes -- I've sent something to Chengetai to have circulated with what Flavio has out there -- or we could do bottom-up.  But if we do bottom-up, which is what has been recommended now by Liesyl and Flavio, then we need to know that you cannot do scoring on themes because still last year we have scored on themes.  Like, how close are you to the theme?  Are you matching the theme under which you are submitting this?  There is an actual score that is allocated for coming to the theme.

 If you don't have that, I just want to say it's a perfect approach.  But then it is a bit of a nightmare as well on scoring because then it's 240 proposals with many themes which then becomes your responsibility to try and cluster them together.

 Remember, the agenda that appears in the program for IGF has color schemes to indicate your area of interest which flows from the themes.  So if you're building it bottom upwards, which is a fantastic idea, there is extra time required and a lot of effort required.  And you can't score people on being on a new theme.  So that will change our evaluation process.

 On the point -- just on the point that Jac raised and Andrea raised about extra time, eight weeks on one side and four weeks on one side, here's what we could do because I want to go back to the timetable because I want to close that part.  We must try to close the timetable at least.

 If we were to expand instead of 11 days -- let's say 21 days and not 30 days for evaluation which is what Jac was asking, we need more time, and we were to take about five or six days back from the extra time given to the secretariat and add a week to the extension, we could then shift the meeting to 13th, 14th, and 15th.

 But go anywhere beyond that, then we're in the middle of July and then everything starts sort of into holiday season.  So the only other way we can do this by giving extra time that we require -- but if we add the extra two weeks that Andrea has requested, then we move into August.  So if you want to give some more time, we'll have to do one week extra and take some time back from the secretariat which has already been sort of -- cushion was there.  And we'll have to -- and people can look at their calendars and tell us if 13th, 14th and 15th of July work better.  That's one way to resolve this problem.

 The last thing I want to say in terms of the space allocation, the highest number of visitors we've had onsite is 2,400 Istanbul.  On average at any given point in time, never more than 1200 people are onsite, maximum 1300 people onsite, which means if you have -- I'm just giving you ideas so you know how the formats are done.

 If you have ten workshops and one main session running parallelly, we require about 12 rooms.  So the fact that you have 12 rooms is perfect.  And that will accommodate on a -- given that out of 1200, 200 in the cafeteria and some in the -- in the toilet, you have about --

 [ Laughter ]

 >>VIRAT BHATIA: -- you'll have about -- well, I just want to --

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Those are called bilaterals.

 [ Laughter ]

 >>VIRAT BHATIA: Yeah.  So I just want to be clear about -- so what you need is about 12 rooms, and you have -- and that is what you require, that's been our require- -- we've done, on average, 10 parallel sessions, and by the way, that accommodates in turn a hundred -- up to a hundred workshops and about 14 or 15 or up to 20 other things like, you know, the other parallel sessions we have.

 So it roughly is similar what we have done in the past.  I just want -- maybe I'm off by a little but I think that's where.

 >>CHENGETAI MASANGO: Sorry.  I just had another thought.  Also it's a great place to have -- we wanted like a speakers corner.  It's a great place to have a speakers corner as well --

 >>VIRAT BHATIA: That's right, yeah.

 >>CHENGETAI MASANGO: -- so -- and it's great for networking -- so -- but, yeah.

 >>VIRAT BHATIA: I'm just limiting my comments to the rooms required.  

 If you run 10 parallel workshops, which includes other types of sessions and a main session, 12 would actually make perfect sense, with the capacity that's been demonstrated.

 I think that's -- those are the -- those are the points I wanted to address.  That's it.  Thank you.

 >>CHENGETAI MASANGO: Okay.  Also about the themes, there was a comment about the themes.  One of the ideas was that we select the main theme and the main theme can be in line with the SDGs of the 2030 agenda and we can still keep scoring how closely the workshops align to that theme, but then of course under that theme there can be subthemes can be evolved out of those.  So we have the main theme but we decide the subthemes after the workshops have come out.

 >>VIRAT BHATIA: I'm saying we can -- we can do that.  Just that you can't score them.  I mean, then you can just score on the linkage to the main theme, but in the last years we have always scored on the -- on the proximity to the subthemes.

 So you'll have to change the scoring --

 >>CHENGETAI MASANGO: So change it to the main theme.

 >>VIRAT BHATIA: Well, everybody will justify linking it to the main theme.  Main themes are very broad.  It's -- all I'm saying is that that score goes off.  I mean, that's fine.  And it can be done.  And it's a nightmare for us to bring it together and then cluster them, because you remember you do the -- when you do the program, there are color coordinations of saying "Access is in all blues" and "Diversity is in all green" or "Privacy is in all" -- that's how your program appears on the Web site, right?  So now we'll have to make this the other way around.  That's all I'm suggesting.  Yeah.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: So Flavio has --

 >>FLAVIO WAGNER: Yeah.  Just a small comment.  I have the evaluation form here in front of me.  There is no really scoring regarding the subtheme.  There is scores for relevance of topic to Internet governance, specificity in the problem/question/challenge to be addressed, and things like that, but it's not really a score, if you -- if you see the form, evaluation form.  There is no really direct scoring regarding the subtheme.

 >> (Off microphone.)

 >>FLAVIO WAGNER: It's in the evaluation form, yeah.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Flavio.  

 And I think maybe we can just set this aside just for a moment.

 I'm going to go to the online participants, but when I -- I come back, Virat -- and I think I have a question for you, Anja, first.  

 At some point, can you tell me how many MAG members are actually on line?  

 And Virat, if you could just get the four or five key dates out clearly.  Sort of when the call would go out, if we're allowing seven weeks for -- because the -- obviously the table that we have now doesn't work.  I'd like to just get -- 

 >>VIRAT BHATIA: So reworked.  Okay.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: -- a clear picture in front of everybody, and if we can close on that today and there are enough folks on line to make me feel comfortable that they've been able to have a look at it as well, then we'll see if we can close.

 Anja, there were some online participants?

 >>REMOTE INTERVENTION: Yes.  Thank you.  

 Silvia, you have the floor now.

 >>SILVIA BIDART: Thank you, everybody.  Thank you, Chair.  Can you hear me well?

 >>REMOTE INTERVENTION: We can hear you.

 >>SILVIA BIDART: Thank you.  My name is Silvia Bidart.  I'm a MAG member and (indiscernible) worldwide I.T. mutual alliances.  I also this year am director of ALETI, Ibero-Latin American ICT Federation.  I'm also vice president of the (indiscernible) task force and if you don't know (indiscernible) is the WSIS process of Latin America and LACNIC U.N. secretariat where Mexico chairs the (indiscernible).

 I am (indiscernible) proposal to the reduce the number of workshops (indiscernible).  (indiscernible) have more than 5 or 10 participants (indiscernible) very good quality.  Intersessionals and (indiscernible) seem to be (indiscernible) as well (indiscernible) is also a good idea.  On the other hand, main theme (indiscernible) can help us to see the past as (indiscernible) mentioned.  On the other hand (indiscernible) of this year, I would like to raise the importance of the Internet (indiscernible) development, jobs creation, social (indiscernible) and (indiscernible).  Therefore, (indiscernible) MAG members to dedicate a space to have capacity building sessions about the opportunities, challenges, best practices to identify policies and strategies to open opportunities for economical and social development.  Also (indiscernible) for the MAG to work together to focus on increasing the participation of all kind of stakeholders from developing countries.  

 Also just to let you know that it's not a very easy task to gain the attention of small business participants and that we need to increase their participation.  I would like to congratulate the organizers for the good quality of the meeting and all LAC members.  (indiscernible) my presentation.

 >>REMOTE INTERVENTION: Currently we have 10 MAG members on line.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: 10 members on line, which is (indiscernible).  We're obviously (indiscernible) you and us, if we were all in the same room, but really appreciate everybody hanging in there.

 I think Virat's gone out to rework the timetable so we could all get a clear idea of where we are.

 I did think it was actually coming together reasonably well in terms of the key components, which is the amount of time the workshop proposers would have to submit their proposals.  I think we were coming to agreement on a reasonable time for the MAG to do their evaluation.  And it feels like we've come to a reasonable time period for the physical meeting as well, but I would certainly -- and I can see that through the body language in the room.  

 For those online participants, I'm sorry, I can't see your body language, but we'll have Virat come back and put a clear timetable up and we'll take one more comment on that.

 I'm also, I think, hearing that with respect to the venue and the number and size of the workshop rooms and spaces that are available to us, that there's a fairly good match between that availability and the number of workshops we'd expect to have over the period of time.  

 Is that a fair statement as well?

 There's two things we need to move forward on next.  One is, of course, the discussion on themes and subthemes.  The other one is the workshop components, which is both the sorts of formats we might be looking for or encouraging and then of course the supporting documents with respect to workshop criteria and guidelines.  

 I'm looking at the time.  I actually would like to take sort of a half hour or so, see if we can get -- make some progress on the main theme.  When Virat comes back, we'll look at the time line.  And then I think in a quick sort of 20 minutes at the end, if we look at those workshop documents and proposals that are out, either I think we're going to say they're good and they work well or we may want to ask a small group of people to go away and look at those and then get something back out to the MAG for tomorrow morning's meeting.

 As I said, I think those proposals were actually quite complete and much of the work is done.  I think it's more of a matter of is there anything that we've learned over the last year that should be reflected or should be updated, so I'm hoping we can get really close to closing that out by tomorrow morning as well.

 Which would then allow us to come back tomorrow, spend some more time on the main theme and the subthemes.

 Is that -- somebody should also tell me if I'm forgetting any major pieces here.

 Marilyn, you have the floor.

 >>MARILYN CADE: Thank you.  Marilyn Cade speaking.

 I just have a quick question.  And perhaps I missed this discussion, but the -- and I'm so sorry.  The area where we had the small booths and we have sometimes a speakers -- et cetera, did we talk about where that would be and how much space we have for it?

 And the reason I ask is that if we were to do something like -- in Hyderabad, we had a situation -- we had a space that was sort of artificially built with a -- what looked like a false wall behind it and a curtain and three chairs in front of the wall and 15 to 20 seats that people could schedule for 20-minute, 30-minute -- they weren't called TED Talks, but that really provided -- we did something -- some of the pavilions did something like that during Tunis as well.

 So if the space were large enough in where we're going to put the -- I don't want to call it the exhibits.

 >>CHENGETAI MASANGO: We call it the IGF village.

 >>MARILYN CADE: Thank you.  Where we're putting the IGF village and we could know that before we start thinking about alternate approaches, I think that would be helpful.

 >>CHENGETAI MASANGO: The space is there.  There's no worry about that.  There's going to be enough space for the IGF village and there's going to be enough space for the speakers corner.  I don't think we should worry about exactly where it is, but there is enough space for that.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you.  Omar, you have the floor, and then Cheryl.

 >>OMAR MANSOOR ANSARI: Thank you, Madam Chair.

 I wanted to propose what -- with regards to the themes and subthemes.

 If the themes can be identified, a list of themes, and then subthemes, by the MAG, and it's available to the workshop proposers, at the same time if we can give them an option to suggest another subtheme, you know, or a maybe main theme, but since they're broader topics, we might not need to give them an option with the main themes, but with the subthemes, because, you know, technology is evolving and there might be some other topics people would suggest as subthemes.

 So a list of themes and then with an option of adding or proposing another subtheme.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Omar.  

 Cheryl, you have the floor.

 >>CHERYL MILLER: Thank you, Madam Chair.

 I just wanted to clarify with respect to what you said what we'd focus on tomorrow as well.

 Will we still budget time for the intersessional discussion and main session --

 Okay.  Just wanted to double-check.  Thanks.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Sorry.  I was shaking my head yes which doesn't do anything for those who are participating on line or those of you that are looking at your computers.

 So I mean, at -- at this point if we wanted to start entertaining a discussion on main themes, we could get -- I've exhausted the queue at the moment.  We could kick that discussion off and again I think probably put sort of 25, 30 minutes to it, which ought to be enough to get us some -- some part of the way there.

 So with that, the floor is open.  Anja?

 >>REMOTE INTERVENTION: There is an intervention from an online participant.  Peter Dengate Thrush.

 >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: I'm not sure if now is the right time but I wanted to pick up on a point I think raised by Virginia Paque yesterday, and that is, with a 10-year framework ahead of us, we might be able to avoid one of the problems of previous -- of all of the MAGs which is this sort of fact-laying exercise.  We don't have to have the same things turn up or just miss out when we run the same program or the same thing year after year.  Always very happy to plan a couple of years out, but if we could plan for more years, we could both please those that are available this year and make it clear now that a different set of themes will be available in future years, and that way we can concentrate on this particular MAG instead of trying to have to cater to everyone.  Thanks.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Yeah.  Thank you, Peter.  That's an excellent suggestion and I think, you know, it's trying to make a tradeoff between that and of course making enough progress on this.

 There were, at a couple of different points yesterday, the point made that said that given the I think enthusiasm in this room for tying some portion of what we do here through the SDGs and the fact that there are 17 SDGs, that one sort of simple road through this might be to agree that this year we're going to focus on a couple of specific SDG goals, and, you know, I'm not sure in this meeting we need to schedule out the next, but if there was a commitment that over the next three, four years we would actually address some number of the SDGs.  And I think that's, you know, maybe a reasonable way to move forward, so I'll put that there, and maybe -- maybe this is a good time to talk a little bit about SDGs and what we might actually see in terms of their linkage to IGF for a moment.

 So I have Elizabeth and then I have Marilyn in the queue and I have Wisdom.  I love saying that.

 [ Laughter ]

 >>ELIZABETH THOMAS RAYNAUD: Thank you, Chair.  

 So just on that point you've just raised, I think there is a solid interest in tying what we do to the SDGs.  A suggestion that came in through -- came to me that I think has merit for us to consider and I've heard the host country use the buzzwords a couple of times around the digital divides, was the theme of bridging the digital divides, and this could be something that focuses on the different divides.  Not the typical single focus on that, but perhaps looking at issues like gender, youth, accessibility, language, literacy, skills, content, and the associated sustainable development goals that might link under that broader topic.

 So I put that out there in response to your question.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Elizabeth.  

 Marilyn, you have the floor.

 >>MARILYN CADE: Thank you, Chair.

 I wanted to take the floor -- Marilyn Cade speaking.

 I wanted to take the floor to make a general proposal about how we might address the SDGs, referring back to comments made by Virat Bhatia yesterday and referencing the WSIS+10 main session that I was heavily involved in, as well as Ambassador Fonseca, yourself, Lea -- yes -- in organizing it.

 And I guess rather than thinking that we would arbitrarily pick a couple of the 17 SDGs, I would propose a consideration of a slightly different approach.

 And that is to consider organizing -- and I would love to collaborate in helping to do that -- helping to organize a session similar to the WSIS+10 session that we held.

 It was both highly informational to parties that weren't familiar with what WSIS+10 was, it helped to link WSIS+10 directly to the Internet Governance Forum and other Internet governance issues, and it was highly interactive.  

 If you will remember, Madam Chair, as you and Ambassador Fonseca were assigned the whip-and-chair approach of no more than two minutes per speaker, we could address the -- and we could decide in the end if we do address all of the 17 goals.  But I think if we park that as an idea and maybe -- I know that Makanye is particularly interested in this.  Some others are.  Maybe we could do a little off-line work and come back with a rough design.  

 If there was broad MAG support for that, the benefit to that would be we would actually be able to then make a call to action to the national and regional IGFs:  (a) we know this session is going to take place on day one at X time; (b) if you participate -- if your national -- or regional IGF decides to address this issue, you can plan ahead.

 So it would help us and it would only take up one of the main sessions.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: I think that's an interesting suggestion.  Thank you.

 Wisdom, you have the floor.

 >>WISDOM DONKOR: Thank you, Madam Chair.  

 I have been listening and I am following, but I have some few things to read here.  I'm going to make a reference.

 In reference to the Reaffirmation Resolution 71 of the United Nations entitled "Transforming Our World," "The 2030 agenda for sustainable development in which it adopted a comprehensive, far-reaching, and people-centered set of universal and transformative sustainable development goals and targets."  

 Now, it's commitment to working tirelessly for the full implementation of the agenda by 2030, it's recognition that eradicating poverty in all its forms and dimensions, including extreme poverty, is the greatest global challenge and in this, principal requirement for sustainable development.

 It's common to achieving sustainable development in three dimensions:  Economic, social, and in environmental.  

 Now, in a balanced and integrated manner and building upon the achievements of the millennial development goals and sticking to our (indiscernible) on finished business.  And then in paragraph 55 of the Tunis Agenda says, in this regard recognize that the existing arrangement have worked effectively to make the Internet the highly robust, dynamic, and geographically diverse medium that it is today, with the private sector taking the lead in the day-to-day operations and with innovation and the creation of value at the edges.

 Now, however -- however, almost 4 billion representing approximately 2/10 of the people residing in developing countries remain offline.  In recognition to that, there is a need to promote greater participation, engagement in the Internet governance discussions of government, the private sector, civil society, the national organizations, the technical and academic communities, and all of the relevant stakeholders from developing countries, particularly African countries, least developed countries, land-locked developing countries, and small island developing states, and middle-income countries as well as countries in situation of conflicts, post-conflict countries, and countries affected by natural disaster.  We call for strengthened, stable, and transparent (indiscernible) mechanism to this end.

 Now, I want to view that looking at this, the import of the theme should come from within this, a theme that would attract a larger population of people that will come to the conference.

 Now, if governments will come to this conference, it would depend on the theme that we are putting out there.  

 Now, the theme that we want to put out there should actually revolve around the sustainable development goals, and then the subthemes should connect with this.

 An example of that could be, let me say, open data.  Now, governments are looking at using open data to create jobs.  And then we should see all this that we are going to solve a problem.  The problem we are going to solve is eradicating poverty from least developing countries so that people who are going to submit proposals should be solving a problem.  I think that is what we should be looking at.  Thank you.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Thank you, Wisdom.

 Makane, you have the floor.

 >>MAKANYE FAYE:  Thank you, Madam Chair.  Yes, I think the suggestion by Marilyn is quite appropriate.  And at the global IGF as SDGs are not so many, I believe that we could tackle them.  And in the regional and national IGFs, the countries may choose which one they want to tackle this year and the next year and so on.

 And in this, the connection of tackling the SDGs also, the partnership for measuring ICT4Development is working on each SDG and has put in place some measurebles of how to achieve them.

 On the African side, as I indicated earlier, we are mainly focusing on SDG 5, gender equality and empowering all women and girls.  Thank you.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Thank you, Makane.

 I have Juan in the queue.  Juan, you have the floor.

 >>JUAN FERNANDEZ:  I'm sorry that maybe I'm the -- I don't know -- a little bit pessimist.  I think that we don't have the time to get into this discussion of what themes we prefer.  This could be an endless discussion.  And I'm sure that all the proposals will have a lot of merit.

 I think that -- now we're going to make the proposal.  The sustainable development goal is really a big issue.  It's really the hope for at least what the international community agreed as the way -- maybe it's not perfect, but it's the way it's been agreed to try to make this world a better one.  

 And as you say, it's very wide, 17.  So what do I propose?  In the call for workshops, put -- to say that this year IGF is to support with this technology the sustainable development goals.  And let them make proposals.  And then we -- maybe of some of the sustainable development goals like, for instance -- I don't know -- life below water, maybe we don't get any proposal there.  So that would not be there.

 And maybe there's some other proposals that for us is very difficult to fit here because I want to remind our colleague -- my colleagues here that when Internet governance -- this is Internet Governance Forum.  It's not ICT4Development.  But what is it that the Chairman pointed out last time, when the Working Group of Internet governance was trying to define Internet governance, there was two views:  The narrow view which is only technical aspects of the function of the Internet or what was considered the wide aspect in which all this developmental part, human rights, gender, and all that, it's part of Internet governance.  

 And that is why a lot of this SDG can fit there.  The gender is there.  The inequality, you know, the human rights can go there and all that.

 And I think that will cut the discussion short.  And as I was telling before, maybe we will have some hard time where to fit.  For instance, if there is some workshop on the IANA transition, I don't know where we put it but maybe in industry, innovation, and infrastructure.  Maybe it is in that sustainable development goal.  Maybe we can put it.  Maybe it's a little bit artificial to put it there.  

 But at least this gives us an agreed set of themes that maybe, if I would do it, I could put some that are not here.  But at least it's the one that is agreed.

 And we will cut all the discussion and (indiscernible) with this.  Thank you.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Thank you, Juan.

 Liesyl, you have the floor.

 >>LIESYL FRANZ:  Thank you very much.  On the discussion of the main theme -- I mean, I still, you know, sort of evolving the conversation about the subthemes and whether or not we need to finalize them here.  There may be a hybrid approach, as we've heard discussed, between at least giving some indication of the themes that have been around the IGF in a general way and having another box.  I kind of like that idea.  So I think there may and hybrid to the bottom-up and existing sort of themes for the subthemes that we've had.  So I value the discussion that we've been having here.

 Moving to the main theme, I'm finding myself and agreeing with my distinguished colleague from Cuba that this is the Internet Governance Forum.  And while the SDGs is very important and the agenda for 2030 is a priority program for many of us -- and there's certainly room and call for stakeholder discussions on those issues -- I hesitate to think of it as a main theme for the IGF at this stage perhaps.

 I think that there is a way, though, if we want to use the tagging mechanism or a question in the workshop proposal forum for how -- you know, how does this proposal or this issue that you want to discuss contribute to the SDGs, I'd feel more comfortable with an integrated approach to that kind of lower-level integrated approach to tracking how these things might contribute to the SDGs.  Keeping in mind, though, that this is the IGF and we have our own sort of topics to discuss that may have some -- that likely have important contributions to SDGs but it's its own forum as well and has timely topics to talk about each year.

 So I would hate to lose that insight of this agenda that we have for 2030 right now out of the gate in the first IGF in the new mandate.  So I just put that out there for additional consideration.  Thank you.

 Oh, and just to add -- to add to the consideration of main themes, the U.S. did put forward a suggestion in our submission to the taking stock and looking forward call for input.  And our theme that we put forward is -- for consideration is "Fostering knowledge, forging connections" which we thought would be have broad-based applicability to many of the things that we discuss in the IGF and the topics that can be raised each year.  So just put that out there for thought -- food for thought as well.  Thank you.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Thank you.  Thank you, Liesyl.

 Let me actually just check here for a moment.  

 And then, Michael, I have you in the queue.  

 We need to make sure we are not confusing main sessions with main theme, just for those that are new.

 I know Virat actually has a chart, but I think it's simple enough that we can describe it.  There are four days in the IGF, not counting day zero.  Typically that's left eight slots of three hours each for main sessions.  Two of those are taken up with the opening ceremony and the closing ceremonies.  Those remaining six slots, we can, of course, keep as three-hour slots which allow you to do much more substantive things.  Perhaps the SDG WSIS-like process we did -- an SDG process following a WSIS-like process we did at the last one.  You can, of course, split them up into two sessions.  There's lots to do.  It's just that we've typically reserved those three-hour blocks.

 Those are meant to be fairly substantive topics.  And there's quite a small list, I think, that people would probably already agree.  I think SDGs is one that people would probably say is a reasonable topic.  I don't think I heard people say the main theme for the IGF ought to be SDGs.  So I just want -- I want to -- a quick kind of comment in terms of am I reading that right.

 And Liesyl is looking for the floor again, and then there's Mike, Flavio, Sala, Juan.

 Liesyl, you have the floor.

 >>LIESYL FRANZ:  Thank you.  I'm well aware of the main theme/main session distinction.  So thank you for pointing that out because I think that is important.  And maybe people were using the wrong terminology with regard to what they were saying.  But certainly -- certainly people have referred to SDGs as a main theme.  So I just wanted to clarify for my purposes, main sessions is another matter.  Thank you.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Thank you.

 Mike, you have the floor.

 >>MICHAEL NELSON:  Yeah.  I do think we're suffering a little bit from confusion about the terminologies.  But I did want to pick up on what Liesyl said about the overarching theme which, as you said, should not refer back to the SDGs because that really is the ultimate top-down approach.  Governments of the world coming together and saying here's what our future plans should be for development.  That would not make sense to be our overarching theme.

 I do like Liesyl's suggestion that we focus on the knowledge that will come out of a more connected world.  But I also think we should focus a little on the culture.  And Mexico I know has done a lot of interesting things in this area.  We should think about what is unique to Mexico.  What will be different this year than past years?

 And then if I could also just stress that having a few main themes is something that every international Internet conference I have been to has always had, whether it's the OECD ministerial meetings or World Bank meetings or just that this is -- you have to have some framework around which you can organize.

 Those themes should, I think, be designed a little bit to attract the attention of the people who aren't coming to IGFs right now.  I'm one of the few people here from a Silicon Valley startup.  And I can tell you that there hasn't been a lot of interest in IGFs in the past from our community because there hasn't been a lot of talk about innovation and the future.

 Usually we're looking at the fights that we're fighting today and not looking ahead.  So if we can be very future-oriented as we pick our overarching theme and some of our main themes, I think we would benefit a great deal.  Thank you for making time.

 >> VICTOR LAGUNES:  Thank you, Madam Chair.  Because I'm new -- and I apologize in advance.  I'm learning about the themes for the last ten IGFs.  To me they appear very similar in wording.  I'm just going to read them out loud very quickly.  

 Athens:  Internet governance for Development.  

 Rio de Janeiro:  Internet Governance for Development.  

 Hyderabad:  Internet for All.  

 Sharm el Sheikh:  Creating opportunities for all.  

 Vilnius:  Developing the Future Together.  

 Nairobi:  Internet as a Catalyst for Change:  Access, Development, Freedoms, and Innovation. 

 Baku:  Internet Governance for Sustainable Human, Economic, and Social Development.  

 Bali:  Building Bridges, Enhancing Multistakeholder Cooperation for Growth and Sustainable Development.  

 Istanbul:  Connecting continents for Enhanced Multistakeholder Internet Governance.

 Joao Pessoa:  Evolution of Internet governance:  Empowering Sustainable Development.

 The reason why I'm reading these is because to me they're very similar in a nutshell.  In summary, they talk about sustainable development.  They talk about human rights and economic development per se.  So I don't think we're actually going away from that topic.  

 I capture the comment of Juan in there that we're talking about Internet governance, not ICT4Development.  So for me to draw a straight line from SDGs into IGF, it can be bridged.  Yet, it's a little bit pushing to hard.  "End poverty," what does that mean for IGF?  Hunger, health, education, gender, water, energy, economy, employment, et cetera, et cetera.  

 So to me one of the larger opportunities that we have today is to tie it into the time itself, which is the first IGF of the next ten years.  So what changes do we want to bring and what do we envision for the medium and long-term?  And bring that forward to create kind of the first IGF of the next ten years.  Of course, it has to be tied down to the human aspect and, of course, touch upon the legislation, touch upon the geographical bridges that we have today in terms of enhancing international cooperation.  

 But bring it back into an overall plan, that would be my take right now.  Of course, I cannot put into ten words.  I defer that to our marketing folks or smart people than me.  But I would like to tie it up to a medium to long-term perspective.  Thank you, Madam Chair.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Thank you, Victor.  Very helpful comments.

 Flavio, you were next in the queue.  You have the floor.

 >>FLAVIO WAGNER:  Thank you, Lynn.  Just to remember that it has been read right now by Victor the main overarching theme of IGF 2015 was "Evolution of Internet Governance:  Empowering Sustainable Development."  And it shows this overarching theme because of the sustainable development goals that were being defined by the United Nations in 2015.  So we had already chosen this overarching theme last year.

 So if you are thinking of choosing something similar, we should try to modify it a little bit because it was exactly the main overarching theme last year.

 And if we look at the main sessions, in fact, only one of the main sessions had a direct relationship to the main overarching theme which was Internet economy and sustainable development.  

 The other were on classical subjects such as neutrality, zero rating, and the WSIS+10 review process on human rights and so on.  Direct relationship to the overarching theme was only Internet economy and sustainable development, just to remember.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Very helpful comments as well.

 Sala, you have the floor.

 >>SALANIETA TAMANIKAIWAIMARO: Thank you very much, Chair.  This is Sala, for the record.

 I've just circulated something on the mailing list.  I apologize if I've been spamming the mailing list these past few days, but if you open the document, you'll see the pop- -- in terms of popularity of themes based on calls for input in Asia-Pacific.  

 What is interesting is that topmost on the list was access -- issue of access, availability, and affordability of ICT and bridging the digital divide.  

 Now, this is at 30.43%.  ICT for development, maximizing efficient use of ICT to achieve sustainable development goals was at 21.74.  Critical Internet resources was at 4.35%.  Multilingualism was at 4.35%.  IANA stewardship was 0.  Human rights, issues of privacy, child online protection, intellectual property rights, freedom of information was at 8.7%.  Cybersecurity in terms of national strategy, CERTs, critical information infrastructure, protection plans, cybercrime legislation and standards was at 30.43%.  Trade and eCommerce and taxation was at 0%.

 Now, I'll go back to what was the most popular, being bridging the digital divide, and I'd also like to draw your attention I've put it in a document for you.

 In 2014, within the Asia-Pacific region, we facilitated extensive regional dialogue and discussion and preparation on this particular issue, bridging the digital divide -- government ministers, private sector, civil society, technical community -- and what we discovered was from the conversation, the on- -- and it's an ongoing conversation, as you see, from back in 2014 and we're now in 2016 and it's still a prevalent issue.  

 The list includes the following:  Urban and rural, old and young -- meaning like the divide between the urban and the rural -- old and young, men and women, rich and poor, persons with disabilities and those without disabilities, the literate and illiterate, those who participate in policy development processes and those that do not participate.

 Now, if you look at the last one, those who participate in policy development processes, I'll draw your attention to the WGIG working group document.  For the life of me, because I have jet lag, I can't remember the year, but meaningful participation was certainly something intrinsically woven within that particular document.

 Now, if you look at -- if you look at old and young or men and women, issues of gender, obviously you can include children and youth and that sort of thing.  And in terms of persons with disabilities and those without disabilities.  And if you -- and somebody had already within the audience referenced discussions within the WSIS.  One of the competitions that's currently being managed right now, the World Summit Award Mobile Apps competition, is encouraging youth and developers to develop app -- applications along the SDG focal areas.

 And so in terms of the comment that was made by -- one of the comments made earlier in relation to the lack of interest from Silicon Valley and also with reference to a comment made yesterday by Marilyn in relation to the potential to harness the business and the technical community that already is within Mexico, and from a corridor discussion also with Cheryl yesterday about how there have been, you know, potential synergies in terms of experiences within the U.S. of how they run innovation competitions and also with reference to ISIF, even within the Asia-Pacific community, ISIF and Sylvia Cadena is not here, but there are already mechanisms in place not only within Asia-Pacific but across the globe where we could synergize these sorts of things.  

 So we're not just having the policymakers but we're having like the innovators on the side, you know, and that sort of thing.  And giving awards, maybe.  

 And so even as we're looking at time lines related to WSIS, potentially looking at calls for competition in terms of innovative things that can actually be given just to spike up interest and that sort of thing.

 So to conclude, my submission for the main theme would be "Bridging the Digital Divide" and the subthemes would be the layers that I've already outlined and for those who would like more reference, it's in your mailing -- it's in your emails.  Thank you.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Okay.  Thank you.  

 We have some online participants, Elizabeth, and Juan.  And Jivan in the back.  

 And then Virat, were you able to update and rework the --

 And so we'll come to that and then I'll try and see where we want to go with this discussion for tomorrow.

 So Anja, you were next with online participants.

 >>REMOTE INTERVENTION: Thank you very much.  We have three interventions.  

 Jac, you may take the floor now.

 >>JAC SM KEE: I just wanted to support what Victor said about (indiscernible) and relevance of the SDGs.  Considering that this is like the kickoff period for SDGs (indiscernible) global agreements with a common goal, it seems to make sense to link IG policy concerns with the stated goals.  

 It's important to at least speak about it for this year and to recognize that, you know, each year's IGF conversation and theme also builds on each other.

 So it can be presented maybe as the leading long-term perspective just as the co-chair (indiscernible), now that we have a 10-year mandate for the IGF.

 If not as a main theme for following years, but at least this year's theme will inform the following years (indiscernible) system.

 So the suggestion for a main theme is -- it's not -- it's a bit long but for now, "IGF and SDGs toward human rights, social, economic, and political inclusion."

 Having political, social, and economic inclusion is able to encompass a diverse set of issues, so for example, Internet economy and (indiscernible) justice also links to relevance to developing countries (indiscernible) IGF conversation.  

 And then as Sala just pointed out, access (indiscernible) participants in developing countries and this theme will also build from last year's discussion and there is great interest in the IGF community continuing this conversation but perhaps to link to what -- SDG goals as a way to kind of broaden it up so it's a concrete objective.

 And there is a way to link up inclusion in a comprehensive way.  Also economic, social, and cultural rights.  I.e., to support -- sorry.  I'm a bit tired because it's kind of late so I'm sorry if I'm not being complete coherent, but this will support IGF's work to link with other policy processes, and IGF is a key state where the discussion on Internet policy and human rights is (indiscernible) mutually informs each other's policy framing (indiscernible) of this issue.  So to broaden the conversation on human rights from a focus on civil and political rights with emerging emphasis on economic, social and cultural rights also given by the SDG.

 >>REMOTE INTERVENTION: Thank you, Jac.  

 Peter, you have the floor now.

 >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Thank you, Chair.  

 I've been breathing the same air or drinking the same Kool-Aid, I think, as Victor and Juan and Ginger and a number of others.  Just at the risk of repeating the point, this is an opportunity that I think we should take for IGF to stake itself out -- stake out its own clearly distinct role for other organizations, and we've got 10 years to make the IGF now particularly relevant on Internet-related issues.  And you become relevant and you stay relevant by being authoritative and providing expertise and being comprehensive and accurate on your topics.

 And so for me, Internet issues or the clear aspect of an Internet-related issue has to continue to take priority and I'm -- I'm alerted, not terribly -- not concerned, but I'm alerted by the fact that Mike is reporting that a significant community like Silicon Valley -- not the only community, but a significant community like Silicon Valley feels that its issues aren't being addressed, and I'm sure there are -- there are others.

 So I'd like to just introduce or maintain this focus on some long-term planning so we're not always reinventing our entire IGF wheel at the first meeting every year, and so one suggestion is, could we reserve a meeting strand or create a meeting strand and each year deal with some of the SDGs.  And of course I mean the Internet-related issues of those SDGs.  

 If there's 17 of them, can we break them up into five or six per year, and so that everyone knows that that strand will be available for the next two or three years, we're going to be addressing the IDGs or Internet-related issues of the SDGs, and look for other ways of setting out a longer-term sort of a mandate than having to do this?  

 And I -- I think a really significant point is the point that Flavio made very politely, which is that we are setting up these themes often and then not rigidly applying them to the actual sessions that we do.

 So if we can bring those things slightly more together, we will -- we will address those points that I made about being authoritative and expert and comprehensive and accurate.  Thanks.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Peter.  And if I could (indiscernible) to try and be brief because one thing we do want to come back to -- and Virat's now back in the room -- is with the reworked timetable because I think we should take a look at that today.  

 So let's go back to the queue, but really ask everybody to be brief.  If it's been said several times before, it's probably not necessary to repeat it.

 >>REMOTE INTERVENTION: Thank you very much, and Renata would like to make an intervention.  

 Renata, you have the floor now.

 >>RENATA AQUINO RIBEIRO: Hi.

 Renata Aquino Ribeiro from Brazil from civil society.  I would just like to support the theme "Internet Governance Sustainable Development Goals Towards Human Rights, Social, Economic, and Political Inclusion."

 Also, I would point out that the themes (indiscernible) which can be used in a hashtag.  Supporting also comments from (indiscernible).  And the IGF 2015 use of (indiscernible) hashtag.  

 It is also important to have a long-term focus which the theme supports.  So that would be my expression of support for now.  Thank you.

 >>REMOTE INTERVENTION: Thank you very much.  And I've just been asked briefly to say that (indiscernible) supporting the -- and endorsing Jac's theme, while Ginger is saying that she's saving Mike time by supporting the SDGs in IG and long-term strategy as presented by Jac and Renata.  Thank you.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you.  Thank you, Ginger.

 Right now we have Elizabeth, Juan, Jivan.  I had to close the queue after that so we can come to the time line.  This is obviously not the end of this discussion, so if anybody is left --

 >> (Off microphone.)

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: -- looking for comment, we'll come back in.  But Juan -- or sorry.  Elizabeth.  You've had your flag up for quite a long time.

 >>ELIZABETH THOMAS RAYNAUD: Thank you.  And I will try and be brief because a number of people have come in with ideas that align with some of the thoughts that I wanted to share.  

 So I thank Sala for your analysis and suggestion.  I support that.

 I also like the idea of the continuity and something that we can build on in the future.  Somebody mentioned the Internet economy and sustainable development session that we had last year, co-organized by Hossam and Ankhi and some other of the MAG members.  This was a session that was so meaty and rich.  There was so much substance.  Even though it was the full three-hour session, there was much more that could be done, and what strikes me in the discussion that we're having now is that that is -- that is a good place where we could continue that, that that kind of a frame for a session would be where we then pull in those different elements of the SDGs.  Perhaps not as titling them, "We're dealing with SDG 3, 4, and 5," which I think will probably repel a whole community of people who might not want to get so what might perceived as sort of academic or theoretical about it, but to actually get into cases and elements that we will treat over time, over our duration, and so that we could pull in -- 

 At the time, I think we were looking at practical examples, but we could make those practical examples oriented towards some of the aspects of the goals.  

 And I'll -- in that, I'll mention that last year at the WSIS forum, a lot of mapping was done to look at how the sustainable developments relate to ICTs and the Internet.  We've also done some work on that at ICC, so perhaps there's some elements of that that could facilitate that work, that could facilitate our selection of those pieces that could come into this.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Elizabeth.  

 Juan?

 >>JUAN FERNANDEZ: Thank you, Lynn.

 I agree a hundred percent with Victor, the host country, that this year that this has been renewed, we have to give a message of -- a powerful message, and that is the objective of the main theme.

 If you put a main theme of -- powerful, that does not mean that you could have a workshop I see in spam or other things like that.

 And the main theme should be not a paragraph.  I'm sorry, all these suggestions that have a string of words, because it's like just put in there all the concepts that you want.  Maybe you can leave that for the subthemes.  

 The main themes have to be short, have to be elegant, and, getting back to Flavio, what he said of last year, last year there was the mention for sustainable development, but it was the evolution of Internet governance because it was sort of a recount of the first 10 years.

 Now we have to project to the future.  And gentlemen -- or -- and colleagues, ladies, last year there have been two historic agreements.  The agreement of the agenda for sustainable development is a really historic thing.  And the other was the Paris agreement in climate change that you know it's going to be high-level ceremony in 20th of April that a lot of head of states are going to New York to sign this agenda, so that will peak again.

 So I think that we, in a way, have to get into that movement.  And that does not mean that we will curtail the initiative of the workshop.  Then it will be our job to classify the workshop proposals and to fit in that movement.

 So I will propose I think that the host country also has to have a prerogative in the main theme because it's the countries' -- the message that they want to give to the world.  And I suggest to be something short.  

 For instance, in the -- I would just put an example of how to do this.  In the page where you have the sustainable development goals, they have a limit.  They say "17 Goals to Transform Our World."  

 Maybe we can get the cue there and say "Internet Governance to Transform the World" or something like that.  It's wide enough.  Below that, in the subthemes, we could have anything that we want, but we are getting ourselves in this -- this historical -- 

 It's a pity that we could not have agreed the world in a nuclear disarmament, because otherwise the future will be bright, but the two agreements of late last year, of developing goals -- more than developing goals, because the development goals is the method to go there.  It's a development agenda.  It's a commitment to try to end poverty, hunger, discrimination, in a world that already has sent probes to Mars, that if you think about that, that still have that, and we have Internet governance, and Internet fortunately is so transversal that can happen many things.  

 As Salanieta knows in Fiji, Internet it's a powerful tool now for disaster recovery and assistance.  Internet has become a powerful tool for -- in domestic violence, for reporting that and getting things done.

 So we don't have to be afraid of that.  We can just let and see how -- what proposals we get.  

 But I repeat:  The main theme has to be elegant, has to be short, and has to be future-oriented because this is the first of the next 10 years of the IGF.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: (indiscernible) we can be short as well.  

 I have at least seven more speakers in the queue and we have 15 minutes left in which to do the timetable.

 I think we've had high agreement on the need to certainly take advantage of the fact that this is a 10-year view we're looking at.  I think everybody would completely agree with the short, simple, and elegant.  I do think it needs to be something that incites people and gets them excited, and I think, you know, a number of the points that were made by Victor and others are, I think, well taken and well supported across the room here.  If we can for a moment, I'd like to just set that to the side, come back tomorrow, we'll pick up some of the theme and subthemes.  I'm sure there will be lots of discussion over dinner and that sort of thing, and as usually happens, probably some -- what's the word I want? -- merging -- a burgeoning agreement or something on a small number of proposals that we can come back and review tomorrow.  

 Because I do think it's important that we all take a look at the time line right now, and we're clearly not going to close on themes or main themes now.

 So I'm happy to keep the queue and we can start with that queue tomorrow morning, but I really do think we need to go to the timetable.  

 So if I understand correctly, I think Virat submitted a new --

 >> (Off microphone.)

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: -- a one new here to Luis.  

 You want to just walk us through it quickly, Virat?

 >>VIRAT BHATIA: Thank you, Chair.  So just so it comes in, taking into consideration three main comments:  Extra time for -- Andrea has requested extra time for workshop proposals, extra time -- Jac's requested extra time for MAG to evaluate, and the great, gracious offer by the secretariat to give up their time.  

 So using all that, here's where we are.  So finalizing the subthemes is out, overarching theme is there, and yet there's a question mark.  So we hope we can do that before we leave.

 Finalizing criteria, evaluation procedure steps, this must be done before we leave.  We still go with nine days to formalize this.  The announcement has to come in a certain format, et cetera.  Everything has to come together.  We might need a couple of days out of this room to get comments into the final -- add a great tip, take out an evaluation situation.  

 Open call for inviting is 15th of April, nine days from the day we end.  Last date for submitting, 6th June.  That is seven weeks.  Could get to eight weeks but seven weeks.  So that's an extra week.  Secretariat organizes proposals now down to seven days from nine.  They will need a little bit more time now than five days because we're not going with themes.  So they will need an extra day or two to get this thing going.

 MAG completes evaluation now three weeks instead of the two-week period.  It is 4th of July, but my friends from United States can do it by the 3rd and then go on vacation.

 [ Laughter ]

 Secretariat analysis, evaluation of the workshop, one week.  That's what we agreed to.

 And MAG meets three days after.  So the list of 200 is ready.  You have three days to just glance once what you have.  When we come in here, we start the process.  

 Two comments I would make, Madam Chair.  One is if we can organize ourselves slightly better this time in terms of the first three or four things, then we don't have to look at 40 proposals and review them.  We can instead look at 20 top proposals to fix the real problems that we have, stuff that is missing.  We can start slightly higher and save the time; and, therefore, three days should be enough for looking at this.  

 We can look at the top 20 rather than starting at the top 40, which we have done for the last decade.  We should really move on that.  And everything else is sort of in front of you.  

 If 13th, 14th and 15th of July work now for our religious reasons, the holiday reasons, the 4th of July reasons, I think this might be a best option.  It is also the last week that we can find Europeans at work.  

 So I submit to you the joint wisdom of the MAG and the colleagues who had commented on this.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  One of the other comments on this is it's not significantly different from the timetables we've had in the past.  So it's not as though we've cut significant, you know, corners with respect to the individual blocks of time.

 So let me echo Virat's comment.  Is there support for going forward with this timetable?

 [ Applause ]

 Excellent.  Thank you.  Thank you.  Thank you, Virat, for your work.

 >>VIRAT BHATIA:  Thank you, Chair.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  I know you built it off some of the earlier work that the secretariat had done.  So thank you to the secretariat.

 We have about eight minutes left.  The other -- I'll come back to you in a moment, Virat.

 There's one fairly significant piece of work we need to get done that I'm not actually sure is a lot of work and that is your first three, four line items there.  We can ask everybody to go away and look at them.  They're all online.  

 And, frankly, ask -- Susan is looking a little puzzled.  I thought they were all online or at least available to the MAG.  We can make sure that they are certainly.

 And we can ask everybody to take a look at them tonight or tomorrow morning, come in with some specific comments for where they might be improved on the basis of any experience we had over the last year.  

 I suppose the other alternative is we get a small working group to go away tonight, tomorrow morning to look at them and come back in.

 But I would like to find a way to address those fairly efficiently so we can spend time on main sessions, intersessional work, and themes tomorrow which, I think, is doable for a day but is a fairly busy day in that sense.  So right now I'd like kind of comments on any other proposals for how we might move forward on the first four.  Again, there's quite a bit of documentation on them already.  I think this is more of a minor edit.

 Susan, you are looking for the floor as you were instrumental on them last year.  Please.

 >>SUSAN CHALMERS:  Thank you, Chair.  I would just suggest that both colleagues Virat and Liesyl have circulated on the MAG list information regarding all of this documentation.  So that might be an easy place to find reading material in the event you cannot locate them online.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  I suppose one other alternative is we ask everybody on the MAG to look at them online, send their comments in, and we try to manage this through an online process as I think it's actually fairly administrative and not take up valuable face-to-face time here if people didn't want to go away and look at them this evening and tomorrow morning.

 So, Virat?

 >>VIRAT BHATIA:  I was actually going to close -- give a recommendation for the first -- well, two, three, and four, not the first one, which is if we could circulate these three specific documents so that people are not in a maze of online searches, look at it tonight, post their comments overnight or by tomorrow morning.  Then a working group can meet tomorrow morning at 9:00.  Some of us have meetings, but we could form a working group.  Consolidate the comments that are coming in and present it to you, Madam Chair, along with the MAG at 10:00 so that we know what we are changing in each of the three documents.

 The only request here would be in the absence of time is to make very specific comments in case you are adding something or you are changing something.  Try and avoid giving long, sort of directional comments which becomes difficult for working groups to incorporate.  That goes into a spin.

 If we can agree to that, then you would both have the advantage of an online consultation overnight and so no dinner for anybody and sort of no break for the working group tomorrow.  So that is how it would look.  But at least we would have then this closed out.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  I think that's a good suggestion.

 And we say it's online overnight.  But it's actually been a topic in front of the MAG for the last week or so.

 So can I just get a reaction or support for that proposal from Virat?  Again, what he is suggesting is that the secretariat will submit those three documents so you have them all in one place.  People should review them, specific comments in terms of suggestions for changing text.  

 I expect Virat's probably looking for some volunteers for his working group at 9:00 tomorrow morning.  I expect it would be here.  

 You have got Flavio and Mike Nelson.

 >>VIRAT BHATIA:  I would like to volunteer Susan to lead this.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Flavio, Susan and Mike Nelson and Virat and Slobodan.  Thank you.  And Cheryl.  

 So if we can close on that and everybody meet here -- and Sala as well.  Okay.

 So let me just -- unless it's on that topic, Slobodan, just to make sure we are closed.  Was it on that topic?

 >>SLOBODAN MARKOVIC:  Just a point of clarification.  I just want to make sure that this work does not preclude us actually from commenting tomorrow further, just to give space to people who perhaps are participating online or don't have the possibility to comment overnight.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Maybe the price of entry is you comment overnight showing that you have read it.  And if you can't get it addressed, then we can comment on it verbally here.  I think we need to ask people -- it's been in front of the MAG for a week or so now.  It's actually what we operated off of last year.  I think it's a quick read and a quick edit.  If we could --

 >>SLOBODAN MARKOVIC:  I mean, I don't personally have any problem with this, but...

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  If we can just get that done and get that in before 9:00 local time here for the working group, then I think we should be able to move forward quickly.  It's not a new piece of work in that sense.

 >>VIRAT BHATIA: Chair, the working group can meet here in this room, it would be nice, at 9:00.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  I have Rasha on this point and then apparently an online participant, Anja.

 >>REMOTE INVERVENTION:  Just a question whether there is an option for the online participants to be involved in the review process.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  So I think you could set up a Skype chat, Skype working group or something if an online participant wanted to join your working group.

 >>CHENGETAI MASANGO:  We can make a WebEx room.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Make a WebEx room or something, yeah.

 >>VIRAT BHATIA:  Thank you.  So somebody from the secretariat will be here at 9:00 to support the working group?

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  I think they're here earlier than that as a rule.

 >>VIRAT BHATIA:  Thank you.  Just so everybody is clear, the working group meets in this room at 9:00.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Rasha, you have the floor.

 >> RASHA ABDULLA:  Thank you.  I am just wondering if the suggestion of the work is on the table or if people are vehemently opposed to -- not having every single MAG member go through the 200 something.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  I think we said there was a discussion for probably a virtual meeting as the next stage.  How we actually rate and review the proposals I think is something we can push to the back end of this discussion as long as we get the criteria out in terms of how we're going to look at the workshops and what we're looking for in terms of the proposals.  

 I think everybody would love to find a way to not have to go through all 200.  So in fact, if you have some suggestions and want to start that discussion on the list, I'm sure we could.

 >>RASHA ABDULLA:  Sure.  I'm happy to join the working group tomorrow as well.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  We're all very excited actually about your proposal to do that.

 Wai-Min, would you like the floor?

 >>WAI-MIN KWOK:  Thank you, Madam Chair.

 I would just like to offer from UN DESA two points of information really for your consideration.  

 First is on the theme.  There's been a lot -- I mean, referring to SDG as a whole, because the SDGs is in the preamble of the document, the adopted document, that is universally integrated, also interconnected, it is the message to all member states, to all countries, to all local authorities, and all stakeholders that no one goal is higher priority.  It is actually up to the country, the national authorities to decide -- the national and local authorities to decide which they should focus on first.

 Also, in that view, the ECOSOC is going to have the first high-level political forum in July, this coming July.  And based on that, which is the same consideration that you had earlier, there was a lot of discussion.  And it was adopted in much recently that the theme would be ensuring that no one is left behind.  This is the theme actually for this year, but it is also carrying forward for the future years.  So this is the first point.

 The second point is that some of you have been involved including Ambassador Fonseca, Liesyl, and among others in the negotiation of the WSIS+10.  In there, in the preamble, there is a lot of ICT4Development Internet governance including should be connected, integrated to the SDG.  

 At the same time, there's also a specific section on Internet governance in this document A/70/125, the outcome document, paragraph 55 to 63, which, of course, I will not read here. 

 This particular paragraph has been negotiated, discussed, also taken into consideration of multistakeholder on the focus embassies of Internet governance, not necessarily the gaps but this appears to be the most important tool to member state in this outcome document.  I would just like to highlight these two points.  Thank you.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Thank you.

 We are actually at 6:00.  I don't think there's anything useful more to say in terms of wrapping up for today, only the discussion on themes or subthemes.  I mean, I think we probably closed that about as well as we could 15 minutes ago.

 Tomorrow when we come back, I will meet with the secretariat and we'll figure out exactly how to sort of best structure the day.  But I think one of the first things we'll do is look at the work from the working group, see if we can progress and close that.  

 And then the major items in front of us are themes and subthemes that specifically will have to address what we're prepared to put out in the call for proposals.  That's a discussion that I think is best had face-to-face in here so we can go away and complete that in the coming days.

 We also have discussions on main sessions, possibly a short discussion on day zero, perhaps as day zero impacts opening ceremony or what we might do to create a bit more of a difference in terms of format and structure there.  I think the key points we heard yesterday.

 I think that's primarily the work that's left ahead of us.  We're coming close on kind of the preparatory calendar here.  I think we need to have a discussion still on location for those.  And if I'm correct, these meetings have to take place in U.N. premises.  Is that --

 >>CHENGETAI MASANGO:  A place where we have a host country agreement.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  Or a place we have a host country agreement.  So we will probably need to do some quick footwork to see if we can find appropriate venues and places and things like that.

 I mean, is that -- it feels like this last bit has been fairly rushed, and I don't like leaving people hanging at the mic at all.  But I actually didn't know any way to move forward and close that.  Most of the interventions have actually been quite long, so it means another seven or eight interventions would have been quite some time.

 Lee is just dying.  He can barely sit in his chair over there to say something.

 >> LEE HIBBARD:  I will be very brief.  Thank you, Madam Chair.  Just to say in terms of reflecting on the themes, et cetera, tomorrow, we should also look at what's been done.  I mean, the Global Commission on Internet Governance has issued a series of publications on very, very sharp themes about Internet governance, both in a macro and micro.  Very, very interesting, very dynamic.  

 I think these are things which have great reflection should be thought about in the context of the next ten years.  I'm they are really something not -- I mean, I don't know how they intersect with here.  These are publications addressed to Internet governance.  So how they're being considered here, that must be part of its purpose.  Thank you.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  I think we need to have a distinction when we talk about themes as well.  I think sometimes we're talking about the title of the conference and other times we're talking about what's the guidance that we actually give when we go out and look for workshop proposals.  

 And maybe we'll just end with that.  I think they're both important.  I think they're both needed.  But I think we should be careful in our comments tomorrow to try and pull those apart where appropriate.

 With that, again, I'd like to thank the interpreters.  We went over four or five minutes here.  I thank you.

 [ Applause ]

 And I have to commend as well the scribes.  Some of us -- and I'm probably one of them -- speak very, very quickly.  And I think they have done just a tremendous job.  

 I have been in many, many meetings where there's transcription.  And this, I think, has been the highest quality transcription I have seen in quite a while.

 [ Applause ]

 Thank you to the secretariat.  And let me turn to my co-chair and see if there are any final words.

 >>VICTOR LAGUNES:  Just a final comment.  Thank you all for your participation.  I would like to just plant a seed in here as to who's going to host 2017.  And to me, it's actually a conversation that needs to happen today or yesterday, meaning we're struggling with the time lines.  So I believe we should start focusing in how to engage the next countries as to continue the planning sessions.  Thank you.

 >>CHAIR ST. AMOUR:  I think we would all support that.  Thank you, everybody.  Have a good evening.  We'll see you back here at 10:00.