IGF 2016 2nd Open Consultations and MAG Meeting July 12 (2024)

The following are the outputs of the real-time captioning taken during the Second Open Consultations and Multistakeholder Advisory Group (MAG) Meeting for IGF 2016 in New York, USA, from 12 to 14 July2016. 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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12 July2016

New York,USA

>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you. Good morning, everyone. And apologize if this seems a little unusual for such a timely, rapid start for an IGF MAG meeting. But we're very honored today to have the Under-Secretary-General for UN DESA here with us for the first half-hour or so. So we really wanted to be able to maximize his time here.

I'm very pleased to see so many people here. This is our second preparatory meeting for IGF 2016. And happy to see so many people for the open consultation specifically. And I'm also very hopeful that we have a lot of participants online as well.

So, as I said, this is our second face-to-face meeting in the preparatory session. Specifically it's the open consultation day which is when we really want to hear from the community. So in that sense, I prioritize contributions from non-MAG members. And they will probably relax that rule fairly significantly for the session this afternoon on the retreat, since that clearly impacts everyone and it's a substantial amount of time. But for most of the other sessions, I really want to prioritize comments from all the other community participants.

Our first order of business is adoption of the agenda, which I hope will be up on the screen soon. It was published a few weeks ago as a draft. There were some very helpful comments that came in. The agenda was updated and republished approximately a week ago.

We don't have it there.

But this morning is actually focused on -- as I said, the first item of business is a welcoming comment from Mr. Wu, Under-Secretary-General. And then we'll have a welcome from Victor Lagunes, the host country chair for IGF 2016.

We then quite quickly go into a briefing on the state of preparations from both the IGF secretariat and the host country, covering workshop proposals, the open forums, dynamic coalitions, other proposals, discussion on the status of the day-zero events, and the main thematic sessions overview.

And then later in the morning, we'll actually have updates from the best practice forums and the major intersessional project called "Policy options for Connecting and Enabling the Next Billions." We will conclude the morning with updates from the national and regional IGF initiatives and then the dynamic coalitions.

And in the afternoon, as I said, we'll come back and have quite a lengthy discussion on the retreat on advancing the ten-year mandate of the IGF.

We'll then -- we do that for about an hour and a half. And then we have requests for a series of other briefings from other intergovernmental organizations specifically. As you know, one of the goals for the IGF is to increase collaboration and participation with many other types of organizations.

And we've got five or six requests for specific brief speaking slots to talk about some of their activities and, of course, the floor is open for comments from other stakeholders as well.

And then we left the last 45 minutes, basically, as an open discussion. So we can continue on with the retreat discussion or any other topics the community would like to bring up.

With that, I would love to move for adoption of the agenda, and we'll look to see if there are any comments against. Seeing none, I call the agenda adopted. And with that, I would like to introduce Under-Secretary-General Mr. Wu. Thank you.

>> HONGBO WU: Ms. Lynn, chairperson of the Multistakeholder Advisory Group, distinguished members of MAG, ladies and gentlemen, on behalf of the Secretary-General of the United Nations, I would like to extend a warm welcome to the Multistakeholder Advisory Group, MAG, of the Internet Governance Forum. A warm welcome also to IGF community representatives who are here with us at the opening consultations either in person or through remote participation. Remote participation through Webcasts or live transcript demonstrates IGF's inclusiveness, which is part of the IGF's mandate established in the Tunis Agenda. I would like to take this opportunity to reaffirm the United Nations' commitment to strengthen the multistakeholder engagement in Internet governance.

In this regard, I would also like to applaud the efforts of MAG in seeking to increase participation of all relevant stakeholders, especially from the developing countries.

Let me take this occasion to say a few words about the Department of Economic and Social Affairs, also known as DESA. DESA is the secretariat department and headquarters about the mandates for servicing U.N. intergovernmental bodies and the processes such as the General Assembly, the Economic and Social Council and its functional commissions and expert committees. Our analytical and capacity-building work covers a range of areas including microeconomic analysis, financing for development, population dynamics, statistics, public administration, social development, and sustainable development.

DESA is also the secretariat for many processes including, as many of you recall, the General Assembly, WSIS+10 review last December. As a headquarter base secretariat's department, DESA is often asked by the Secretary-General to manage and administer support for a number of initiatives of the Secretary himself including the Internet Governance Forum conveyed by the Secretary-General in response to the mandate of the Tunis Agenda.

One of my predecessors, Mr. Nitin Desai, chaired the MAG meetings face-to-face and helped establish the working modalities of the MAG. We have helped foster the growth of IGF in the past ten years, and we will continue doing so together with you in the next decade.

We embarked on the IGF journey together, and we are ready to work with all of you to further strengthen the IGF while continuing to improve its working modalities as called for by WSIS+10. We are aware that the MAG is by its very nature a diverse community representing different perspectives in my view. This is a key feature of IGF.

This diversity can also be reaching as seen in the 260 workshop proposals received for the 2016 IGF featuring 66 topics. The theme that the MAG proposed for the 2016 IGF, namely, "Enabling Inclusive and Sustainable Growth," is timely and forward looking. Last year world leaders adopted the 2030 agenda for sustainable development anchored in 17 universal and interconnected sustainable development goals and 169 targets. As you know, the 2030 agenda underscores that the Internet and information and communication technologies can play enabling roles in implementing the SDGs and the associated targets.

More specifically, one of the SD targets calls for efforts to significantly increase access to information and communication technologies and strive to provide universal and affordable access to the Internet in least developed countries by 2020.

Here I would like to draw your attention while we talk about agenda 2030. We have taken for granted all the targets or goals should be reached by the year 2030. Still some 40 years away. However, some of the goals and targets have a deadline in 2020 or 2025 which means we do not have that luxury of a 50 or 40 years. There is a strong sense of urgency.

As it happens, the high-level political forum which is the central platform for follow-up and review of SDGs is taking place here this week and the next. You're welcome to follow the discussions. It is also timely that the retreat will be held later this week to explore ways to enrich the IGF. As a part of the ongoing process in advancing the IGF mandates, the 2016 IGF marks the first IGF following its ten-year renewal by the General Assembly at the WSIS+10 high-level event last year.

For the past ten years, MAG members together with the various stakeholders of the IGF community have contributed tremendously to IGF's dialogue process. Your efforts have made profound impacts on the state of Internet governance today. We need to think how the IGF can further enhance its role as the global forum for multistakeholder policy discussion on public policy issues related to key elements of Internet governance.

Are we thinking aloud? What would happen next 50 years? If you look at agenda 2030, it is the first time that human beings throughout the world realized one reality. Our current way of consumption, current way of productions are not sustainable. This is the common ground for reaching consensus by 193 member states of United Nations. Each has its own domestic priority.

So I would imagine it would wonderful if the priority for Internet governance in the next 50 years could have a focus on promotion of the implementation of sustainable development goals. That would be very significant, and we welcome by the international community as a whole.

And secondly, if you look back the last 10 years, we have been discussing a lot of issues. Some of them are very sensitive. The positions of different stakeholders are really far apart. Are we repeating the same discussions with no conclusion in sight for the next 10 years? Is there a better way to do it, to do something meaningful for the international community, for multistakeholders, and for everybody?

I would say that not all the areas, that we differ. There are areas, positions and views of various multistakeholders, that are very close to each other.

Is it possible for us to start with the easy ones, to have some early harvest by producing some policy recommendations to the governments and to the business so we could guide the Internet governance in the next 10 years?

So just some ideas for the retreat. I encourage all MAG members and IGF stakeholders to contribute your inputs to guide the retreat discussions. Any idea or suggestion coming out from the retreat will, in turn, be shared with the broader IGF community for further consultation.

Ladies and gentlemen, we are less than five months before the 11th IGF meeting in Guadalajara, Mexico. I'm glad to know that the preparations for this meeting are well underway, joined on good lessons learned from the past IGF meetings.

The intersessional work of the IGF in various tracks, such as the best practice forum, dynamic coalitions, and the policy note on connecting and enabling the next billion have been well received by the IGF community.

Here I would like to thank the MAG chair, Lynn, and the MAG members, and also the host country of Mexico for your leadership, commitment, and for the solid preparatory work done so far.

But I'm also aware that the MAG has very challenging tasks ahead, including the need to evaluate over 260 workshop proposals and 45 open forum proposals, the most that the IGF has ever received.

I'm confident that you will adopt a balanced approach on the wide array of topics on Internet governance, taking into account the diversity across stakeholder groups, geographical representation, and agenda.

The remarkable growth of national and regional IGF initiatives also speaks well on the global relevance of the IGF.

We should explore concrete ways to enhance linkages and the leverage of synergies among them and with the IGF.

We'd also like to extend capacity development efforts to reach out to those in need. Let us aim for another great year for the IGF in Mexico in reaching policy dialogue for the Internet to empower sustainable development for all on this shared planet.

I look forward to your active engagement and a productive outcome.

Thank you very much.

>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Mr. Wu.

We had thought we would spend the next 10 minutes with a high-level update on the preparations for IGF Mexico, as that was a topic of interest to the under secretary general and then we will come back and hit some of those same topics in a little more depth later.

So with that, I'd like to introduce Victor Lagunes, who is the honorary host country chair, and he's the chief information officer, the head of unit for innovation and technology strategy, in the office of the president of the Republic of Mexico.

So Victor, you have the floor.

>>VICTOR LAGUNES: Thank you so much, Madam Chair.

I'm very fortunate, very thankful, under secretary, to be here presenting the development of all the work that the MAG has been doing. Thank you, Mr. Masango, as well, and thank you, Madam Chair.

I would like to first -- I would like to recognize the work of the MAG, and it's been quite an impressive journey so far, and looking into the last months, we still have some way to go yet. We're feeling very comfortable that this is going to be a very strong and very open governance forum.

The dates in Mexico have been set. We're looking into December 6 to December the 9th in the city of Guadalajara. And as the date approaches, we are definitely considering all the topics from the technical to the human rights.

We're very excited to know that the workshops, the number of workshops submitted, has an all-time record, so that means that the interest of continuing the discussion is there, and in countries such as Mexico, this comes -- this cannot come at a better time.

Mexico has -- it's a country of a little bit more than 120 million people, slightly more than 50% connected. We're taking strides towards connectivity and bridging that digital divide. We're a very young country, still, with a median age of 27 years. We're trying to take advantage of connectivity and really the use of the Internet to give our young the opportunity to be -- to access the global knowledge network.

Within that, we recognize, as you said, under secretary, that access to ICTs is the great differentiator and also as well as sustainable development goals. It underlines the relevance and the importance of being connected towards being able to achieve those goals set out in the 2030 agenda.

We even sent out, in Mexico, the access to Internet as a constitutional right. This aligns all the different -- the different ecosystem and the multistakeholder ecosystem towards a single goal, which is, give our country the access to Internet.

Our focus going into the 2016 governance forum is to host an inclusive and focused on sustainable development. What we want to achieve is really activate our young people and also our industry, as well as the academic and technical sector, in a way that hasn't been done before.

In a country such as Mexico, the voices are loud, yet the ecosystem is still under development.

We want to have an open forum, an open discussion, and we believe this forum actually presents the great -- a great opportunity for us to not only strengthen the ecosystem in Mexico, but present a good opportunity for all of us to discuss those topics that are necessary.

Thank you so much, under secretary.

[ Applause ]

>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: So I'd like to just thank again under secretary general, Mr. Wu, for making some time this morning. As many of you know, this is a very busy week here at the U.N., with the HLPF and obviously all of its normal activities as well, so we'll just take a moment and thank you again and --

>>MR. WU: Thank you.

>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you.

Okay. If you just give us a moment while we get settled here and I guess you just saw the -- one of the interesting elements of having a nongovernmental person as the MAG chair trying to understand U.N. protocol.

[ Laughter ]

>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Okay. So are we all settled here then?

Let me just go back to a -- maybe a slightly less breathless pace here for a moment, and before we continue on with the presentations from Victor and then from the IGF secretariat on the preparations for IGF 16, I just want to address a couple of comments I heard with respect to the place cards here in the room.

I mean, I think they're very nice and they're electronic. Everybody is seated according to alphabetical order. There evidently is no way to do anything different unless we take the nametags down entirely, which would certainly allow people to sit where they want to sit, but then we lose what I think is a very great advantage of identification for those that don't know everybody by name and voice.

So I checked with a few people off line, because they said there was some discomfort with this arrangement. I leave it to the room. If the room would prefer not to have the automated place cards and freedom to sit where you'd like, we could certainly do that. I'd suggest taking a -- kind of a straw poll in a moment. Or we leave it as it is. Which, again, there was no ulterior motives here. It's by alphabetical order.

So any comments from the floor with respect to that since they said it was quite a point of concern, so...

And just, again, Chengetai is going to keep the queue. For those people that are participating on line, Chengetai will be informed when there's an online -- request from an online participant, and those participants are slotted into the queue at the time the request is made.

It might not always be obvious that there are five, six, seven folks ahead of you in the queue, but we are absolutely not holding those comments to the end. They are slotted in the queue at the time the request comes in.

So I'm not sure if Chengetai caught the current queue, but I saw Marilyn, Chip, and Michael. Marilyn, you have the floor.

>>MARILYN CADE: I welcome the opportunity to meet here and thank you, Victor, for the update comments, and also to Under Secretary Wu for his comments.

I actually would like to welcome the seating arrangement because it means that we are more widely distributed and probably sitting next to people from other stakeholder groups, rather than sitting with our own stakeholder group.

So I'm looking at this as a great opportunity to get further acquainted and to create more of a horizontal conversation than a vertical conversation.

I also just want to reinforce to me the importance of having the names.

Some MAG members are relatively new, and while this is my third year and I know many of the experienced attendees, I am still meeting the new MAG members and getting acquainted with them and I think that it is important to have the name identification, regardless of whatever, perhaps, innovations we are struggling with. Thank you.

>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you. I think Chip was next in the queue.

>>CHIP SHARP: Thank you, Chair. Yes. Chip Sharp with Cisco Systems, and I thank you very much for the opportunity to speak and look forward to a good discussion today.

Might I suggest that for the consultation day, that we have no nametags and no seat reservations, so that we can all kind of sit, you know, at the same level, I think you might say.

Having the non-MAG members, you know, kind of move to the back of the room is not, you know, conducive to their input, so I'd just like -- I don't propose we do that now because I think it would be too disruptive to get up and move everybody around but maybe in future consultations you consider an alternate arrangement. Thank you.

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

Mike Nelson, you have the floor.

>>MICHAEL NELSON: (off microphone) -- the thing that Marilyn just said, which is that I really welcome having the nametags. The only recommendation I would make is that perhaps each of the three days we can shuffle the names around so that different people are in different places so that we maximize the opportunity to talk to different people. But as somebody who does not memorize names easily, I really appreciate having the names in front of me.

And I take Chip's point, but I think a lot of us actually prefer to be in the back of the room, which is another reason I'd like to be shuffled around.

[ Laughter ]

>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Michael. The gentleman in the back of the room, I can't see your name tag.

>> RICHARD JORDAN: Thank you. Richard Jordan from the Royal Academy of Science International Trust. As someone who has been here at the U.N. every day for 36 years, just let me make a comment about the electronic signage.

The electronic signage today reflects more of the science, technology, and innovation forum that was held under the aegis of ECOSOC on June 6th and 7th here in the building. And it does not mean that member states are all in the front and then programs and agencies and then observers or MAG members.

So, actually, this signage reflects more an innovation that the Economic and Social Council has put forth. Thank you very much.

>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you. I don't see anybody else in the queue, and I think at this point, I'm assuming that people are happy enough with the situation as is, even if they didn't speak up.

Chip, if it is really concerning for you, I know there were a couple of MAG members that weren't able to come. You can certainly come up front and maybe just drape a piece of paper over their name plate and feel like you are more a part of the conversation, if that works for you.

Apparently, we can change the name sign if you choose somewhere else. But I thank everybody for their comments. And I'm glad we managed to get through that administrivia quite quickly so we can move back to the agenda.

I think with that, we'll turn to Victor again. Victor actually has a lengthier update on the preparations for IGF 2016. We'll go through that, and then we'll actually hear from the IGF secretariat on the preparations as well.

So for those following online, we're now moving to the agenda Item Number 4.

Thank you, Victor. You have the floor.

>>VICTOR LAGUNES: Madam Chair, I was told the presentation couldn't project. So is that something we can fix quickly or could we...

So could we jump into another topic and come back?

>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Can you give a verbal update. Why don't we have Chengetai go first then.

So Chengetai has volunteered to move the IGF secretariat update forward, and we'll come back to the continuation of the presentation from Mexico.

Thank you, Chengetai.

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

First of all, just a few housekeeping things. In the IGF secretariat, we have brought on board three consultants to help with the -- two to help with the best practice forum. So we have Anri Van der Spuy. She will be dealing with the gender and access and also connecting the next billion.

And then we have Wim over there, and he's dealing with I.P. version 6 and also IXPs, correct? Right.

To my right, we have Anja who is going to be the IGF focal point for national and regional initiatives. Just wave your hand so people can see you. Thank you very much. So we have more staff, and that's good right up to the annual meeting and also for the intersessional work. Thanks.

Last night, thank you all for those who did their evaluations. I think this year we've had the most people -- most MAG members who handed in their evaluations. I know it's a lot of work. And especially for some of you it was during a holiday weekend, July 4th. And thank you very much, doubly thank you for the efforts. I think we had -- how many? 40?

>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: 43.

>>CHENGETAI MASANGO: -- 43 MAG members that actually handed in their evaluations which I think is much improved from last year.

As you know, there were 260 -- roughly 260 proposals. I sent out an email last night with a breakdown of the proposals and also of the marks. I won't get into the actual details where we are going to choose the top 65, 85. We'll leave that for tomorrow for a more in-depth discussion on how we're going to proceed and also for your ideas. We just give you some time for you to go through the Excel file and also through the PowerPoint presentation that we attached to it.

But just generally speaking, for the proposals, I'm starting on Slide Number 8 for the general proposals here. Slide Number 8 just shows you the thematic tags. This year we did it differently. Instead of choosing the themes, we said that people can put in thematic tags. And the highest one was the -- the most chosen was human rights online and then came access and diversity, Internet and ICTs for sustainable development goals going down.

For those who aren't MAG members, we are going to put these three slides up on the Web site so you can also view it. But it wasn't overwhelming majority. I think 19% -- you can say a fifth of them chose human rights online as a descriptor for their workshop proposal. And then access and diversity, 15%. Internet and ICTs for the sustainable development goals was 15.4%. I won't go all the way down. You can read them in your own time.

for the session types, that's slide number 9. We had a big majority for others, which is 26%, others. Breakout group discussions was also 20%. Panel, that's a normal panel, 18%. Debate, 14%. And birds of a feather, 13%.

I would like to reiterate that for this year, we do have a constraint in how the rooms are shaped, so we can't have that many roundtable discussions. We can have quasi roundtable discussion room layout but not a full-room table room layout.

Depending on the results of the workshop selection process that we're going to do tomorrow and the day after, we'll see how we can assign the workshop to the rooms. But we should be able to do something. That shouldn't be that much of a problem.

For Slide Number 10, we can see that for proposers -- I'm sorry, but we can't really show the slides at the moment but it's fine. Developed country was 54%; and developing country was 46%, which is also a marked improvement from last year. So we are making progress in encouraging people from developing countries to propose workshops.

And returning, 47%. So we had first-time proposals is 43%. So this is first-time new proposals. Of course, people may try and game the system a little bit and be the second proposers and have the first time in the first proposer. Still that's fine because the first-time proposers are learning and next year they can propose by themselves. So it's not actually a bad thing as such.

And as usual, we have -- civil society is 49%. So they have the most number of proposals that have been proposed. And then the technical community is 20%. Private sector, 10%. Government is 6%. And intergovernmental organizations, 5%. I would hazard a guess in saying that these are an improvement from last year. The percentages are a little bit of improvement, but the numbers are low. And we are still trying to encourage government participation in the workshops. And that's why we are also bringing in the open forums.

For the open forums, as we said, we whittled down the open forums to 30 from the -- 44 we had -- 46 we had. Now we've got it down to 30, and this is mostly governments and intergovernmental organizations to encourage them so that the numbers even out a little bit more.

We have also the five best practice forums and the seven main sessions that we've put into the current draft schedule that we have at the moment, which we'll be trying to fill out after the selection process has come.

At the moment, we envision -- this is just to start, of course. The numbers may drastically change -- after will change slightly depending on what happens in the next two days. We have 110 workshop proposals we can fit. So these are 18 90-minute workshop proposals, five 60-minute workshop proposals, and 25 30-minute workshop proposals. We've taken these numbers from the top 85 or top 65 workshop proposals as they've been graded. But looking at the data, we may want to make some suggestions and some modifications just so that we have a more balanced number of workshop proposals according to theme and also according to stakeholder group and developed or developing country proposals.

I think that's all I can say for the proposals. You have the workshop sheet with the standard deviation and the variance. We can get into that discussion tomorrow. That's what tomorrow and the day after is for.

The other update from the secretariat is we've opened up for the bilateral rooms. So if you wanted to have a bilateral meeting, please sign up and send an email to the IGF secretariat as the instructions are on the Web site. And also the village booths, if you want a booth at the village, please send us an email and we'll put you in on the list. And, remember, it is a first-come, first-served. So if the room runs out and you haven't sent us an email, then it will be too late. Thank you very much.

>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Chengetai. I think that was an excellent update.

I think there was one item as well which is that we believe we actually have a room in the venue which would actually support other formats, pop-up groups or some of the other sessions we're looking at that would have the same facilities as all the other workshop rooms. So I think we need to determine how best to use that and what to do. That's also work over the next couple of days. But I think we're all very pleased to hear that we were able to find an extra room that was a proper workshop room and that will have the same streaming facilities and that sort of thing as the other workshop rooms.

I saw a couple of requests for the floor. Marilyn and Cheryl are the two that I see. Again, this is the open community participation day. So we really do want to hear from those non-MAG members. I do hate anything that starts a descriptor as a "non." It's a short way of saying we want to hear from the community other than those that are currently serving as MAG members.

With that, Marilyn, you have the floor. And then Cheryl.

>>MARILYN CADE: -- some of the non-MAG members to also express questions.

Two questions. The first one that I have has to do with flash sessions. I welcome your mentioning that there's a room where perhaps unusual formats could be taken into account. There were several flash sessions as well as several birds-of-feather sessions. And many of the flash sessions were sole speakers or reporting out on research or interesting projects or initiatives that are very worthwhile. But they certainly do not meet all of the criteria such as providing all views, including all stakeholders, et cetera.

So I wonder if we might come back and talk about treating those flash sessions uniquely, piloting perhaps putting them in a track, and seeing whether that also relieves us a little bit in our limitation of space. So that's question number one.

And then I think question number two, I wanted to see when we would have more information about the flexibility of the room design because many of these workshop proposers took our recommendations to heart and provided very creative formats, including starting with a panel, moving to breakout session, coming back, doing a summing up. That's takes a lot of flexibility in the room. And so I would just like to park that for when we might come back and talk about it because when we prioritize these workshops, I think it's unfair to not give someone a slot if our rooms can't accommodate and I think we have to go back to them and offer them a readjustment. Thank you.

>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you. Those are good points. We will have more information from the Mexican host as well which will partially answer that question.

Cheryl, you have the floor.

>>CHERYL MILLER: Sorry.

[ Laughter ]

Mic issues. Thank you, Madam Chair. I just wanted to thank Chengetai for the update and also to really thank everyone within the community who submitted proposals. I read through all of them, and I know that is takes a lot of time and effort to put forward new ideas. And I really appreciate that. We have so many new people who are contributing and that we have been able to improve some of the developing country participation as well.

I would encourage folks in the room, who are throughout the community -- and I don't like the word "non-MAG" either -- if there are things that you saw with the process that we could be improving or if there is anything that we could be doing on our part to make it clearer and easier to submit proposals, I would just encourage a dialogue on that or to somehow raise those issues now while you have us all here together. Thank you.

>>CHENGETAI MASANGO: Just a slight update on the system. This is a new system for me as well. If you want to speak, just indicate on the panel and then it will -- your name will come up here on our panel so that we know which order it is. And if you press the mic to speak, it will flash green first. Just wait. And then it will be red, and then you can speak. Okay.

>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: I'm just asking, how do we insert the online participants in?

>>CHENGETAI MASANGO: I think we will just -- she can just press hers. Yes. That would be fine. Just like I'm doing so she can come in.

>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: I think -- is Miguel in the queue next? Still working off the paper here.

>>CHENGETAI MASANGO: I will get someone to come and help you out.

>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Okay. So we don't have anybody else in the queue. Sorry, there is somebody in the far back. Could you introduce yourself as well? I can't see the...

>>RITU SHARMA: Thank you, Madam Chair. Ritu Sharma with SDG Nexus and Social Media for Nonprofits. Thank you for the opportunity to be here and participate.

I would like to propose to the MAG Internet Governance Forum to consider an opportunity for the first-time attendees, people of color, women, and traditionally underrepresented people, to participate at the conference if you have a space available in an un-conferenced format where they can potentially identify and nominate a session there.

The rigorous submission process can be daunting for some people and they may not have the confidence and the knowledge to feel empowered to come forward and say, "I want to speak and I can pull it off," but if you have -- if you have some sort of mechanism for moderating where you have expert moderators available and you encourage people who haven't spoken and sort of primarily first-time speakers who have never spoken at the conference before and make an open invitation, "If you have expertise in this area, we will have moderators supporting you, helping you," I think you'll have a greater diversity of voices.

Because in the last six months that I've been engaged in this community, from WSIS forum to ITU forums here to ISOC, ICANN, everywhere, it's the same people speaking, speaking extensively, and at the expense of an opportunity for underrepresented voices to have the confidence and preparation to represent themselves and their voices. Thank you.

>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you. We have Nigel in the queue, and I think after Nigel speaks -- these are all good comments. I think they would also be helped if we were informed a bit more on the specific venue and some of the other considerations for the Mexico IGF, so after Nigel's comments, we'll return back to Victor. Thank you.

>>NIGEL HICKSON: Good afternoon -- ah.

[ Laughter ]

>>NIGEL HICKSON: Good morning. Nigel Hickson from ICANN. First of all, thank you very much for the invitation to attend this open consultation session and I think I've mastered the technology, but not sure.

The comment I had was in relation to the excellent response that we had in terms of the workshop proposals. It's great to see such a diverse range of applications for workshops. But I think it would be very useful, indeed, to be able to discuss this in more detail and I'm hopeful that we might have some time on our agenda when both the MAG participants, which of course have done all the work on this -- not necessarily the work in applying but certainly the work in assessing, which I'm sure must have been a resourceful issue -- if we can have a discussion with both the MAG members and the non-MAG members to better understand how this assessment is carried out and the sort of things that are being looked at.

Because I think there is a great deal of opportunities which I think we can perhaps discuss also this afternoon when we look at the wider strategies that are going to be discussed at the retreat and how we can broaden the participation of the IGF in terms of the people that take part, whether it's virtually or in -- physically in the annual sessions.

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

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

Before we turn to Victor, maybe we could move to a terminology which is "community" or "community member," and if somebody's -- obviously MAG members are part of the community as well, but if you're speaking in a MAG member role, identify yourself as a MAG member, and maybe we can get away from the non-terminology that way.

So with that, Victor?

>>VICTOR LAGUNES: Thank you, Madam Chair.

Very happy to share with you the progress that we've been making within the venue.

As I mentioned before, a very challenging one, yet we strongly believe it's the right one to host such an event.

An historical building, UNESCO heritage building, that's made very interesting challenges for us to deploy even the engineering side all the way into the audio conferencing and video, yet we are complying with all the requirements from UN DESA and from -- to host the IGF.

I take into account, Marilyn, your comments around the flexibility of the rooms. We'll try to put that into perspective and make that venue work.

I'm going to blaze through the slides in a swiftly manner. We put a lot of photographs for you to actually start living the venue itself, seeing the place, and of course giving ourselves the opportunity to put forward more feedback around the type of layouts that you would like to see within the venue.

Go ahead, please.

So we're not only going to be using the inside of the venue itself, but it's actually located within a very big square, so we're going to tent -- we're going to build a tent in front of it, so in that square that you're actually seeing, we're going to build a tent for the lunches and for -- to build the entrance.

If you want, Yolanda, you can -- you can skip every 5 or 10 seconds the pictures, because there's a ton of them and I don't want to linger too much on some of them.

We took into account the room requirements and we're complying fully, yet of course the venue itself is not a conference center. It's an historical building.

So with that, I really ask from you your sensitivity around, you know, the type of space -- the type of spot, the type of place, and what we can do with it.

Within that, it's actually quite a big venue and we're making the best use of it.

>> (Off microphone.)

>>VICTOR LAGUNES: Yeah. I know. It's not sliding. That's fine.

What we can do is -- I apologize for this, but we can share the layout and actually share with you the -- how we're building the place from bottom up.

We're going to have some -- for example, on the main stage, it's going to be flexible, so we're going to do the opening and the closing ceremonies to host around 2,000 people. Then we'll actually change into a smaller session group.

>> (Off microphone.)

>>VICTOR LAGUNES: We're back? It's good? Thank you, Yolanda.

Go forward, please.

So those are the requirements, as I mentioned, and hopefully you're able to see, on the next slides --

So it's very -- it's a little bit difficult to see from the slide, yet on your left you see the entrance, and on there, we're actually building the tent to have additional flex space, more so to -- to be able to host sponsors and sponsor events.

We're really trying to activate the industry in a different way, meaning it's a challenge, as you would imagine, to invite sponsors and then don't open the place for branding.

Within that, we're already in talks with most of the global ISPs companies or most of the global telcos. They're very interested and they've made themselves -- they potentially accept -- or they accepted in- -- the invitation. So we're working towards that.

One comment. We've finalized the funding from the government side, so we're quite happy with that. More so in these times. You know, Mexican government has taken a hit budget-wise because of oil prices, so I just mention it like that because it's taken, you know, triple time the work just to be able to fund from the government side.

Now, the next steps is actually to build the sponsorship program, to invite the industry to be really active into that, so what we're doing here is not only, of course, having the normal, I guess, presence from the industry but select some of the venues in neighboring buildings to be able to open those for the industry to present their cases and of course to share with us what they're doing around Internet development.

So of course you've seen what Google and, you know, companies such as AT&T has done before. We would actually -- we are seeing more of an active engagement within the industry that will not, of course, overlap with the agenda that we're setting up towards -- for the IGF.

All right. We're -- as I mentioned, we're making use of this square as a flex-type space, so on your left, you'll see on the red side the tent that we are going to be building there, so that will become the entrance and that's where the village is going to be hosted, as well as the food court.

So I give good news but I also like to advance on some not good news, but we haven't been able to secure free food yet. We're working very hard, as I say, but -- and it's in our best, of course, interest to be able to provide us with food within this spot.

Nonetheless, it's going to be very, very cost-efficient to be able to stay within the venue, don't move around that much, but of course as you would imagine, everything -- every peso or every dollar of cost, we're very sensitive around that.

That's the main entrance to the building, and we're proposing the MAG have a slightly different registration process. Of course we're inviting ourselves to preregister so we can actually preprint the accreditation IDs and the packages and we'll have them ready to go.

The experience that we have in many events, even IGFs, is that of course in the first four hours or three hours of the event there's a big bottleneck, but really the registration or the entrance is not used that much afterwards.

We would like to focus a lot on those hours via some newer accreditation and printing mechanisms. We'll be testing those out and of course asking for your feedback as to how you see this happening in the most efficient way.

Of course it has to -- this has to be approved by the U.N.'s security detail.

So you can see the village area. Once getting into the building, the venue, there's the registration, so you -- we're already inside the building itself.

Now, we're very -- the building from the inside, on the first day we can actually get lost. It's big and it looks the same, we call it. So the east wing or the west wing, it actually looks exactly -- it's like the same. It's very symmetrical. So we're putting a lot of signage around the place and also for inclusiveness with Braille signage as well.

We're going to be putting some signage on the floors.

This is the main conference area, so it will -- on the opening and closing as I mentioned, it's going to be -- it could host up to 2,000 people, and that's an actual photograph of a similar event hosted just last year.

We're going to be putting some cover. Mexico is a strange country. It's really monsoon country, so it doesn't matter rain season. It's all year long. So even though the weather is actually quite -- quite warm and quite nice, it could actually rain at any moment so we cannot avoid that.

That's the main -- proposal for the main conference hall. The layout could change, so please don't -- so we would like to put a bigger screen, of course, to allow more things to be projected, and this one can actually -- will actually change into the main meeting room shortly afterwards.

So as you can see, we're trying to make the best use of the space, and of course without compromising the content itself.

Within the museum section, we build the bilaterals. We believe it's actually going to be gorgeous. We're thinking about putting an exposition or an exhibition at the same time, so we'll be able to hold bilaterals at the same time as enjoying some contemporary and historical Mexican art.

So on the orange, on the top left, you'll see the bilateral meeting rooms.

Each of these hosts different size rooms, from 16, 24, 39, 40, and 47.

I deeply apologize because we should have put the U.N.'s flag, yet my team put the U.S. flag instead, so --

[ Laughter ]

>>VICTOR LAGUNES: -- Mr. Masango already mentioned that, and of course he's right, as always.

[ Laughter ]

>>VICTOR LAGUNES: There will be a lot of U.N. flags and things everywhere.

[ Laughter ]

>>VICTOR LAGUNES: It has some patios throughout, so we're going to be using those for workshops. Go ahead, please.

And of course accommodating different size rooms.

So as you can see, the layout is not the best one, and I say it with those words, yet the venue itself will present a very good opportunity for us to blend what we -- what we perceive, you know, the historical with the new.

Nonetheless, we're going to be able to hold all the IGF requirements for those rooms. The acoustics, we're working on that. We've already tested some of the rooms, so -- so that we can absorb some of that echo.

Nonetheless, there -- it's actually quite big, so it's not going to be a noise pollution in between the rooms, that we know.

To the media center.

So media center, we're really thinking about to use this place either for press or also to be able to sit down and see everything that's happening in the concurrent meetings and select from different audios.

So we're going to -- our idea here is to have all the screens that are from the -- so from CCTV and being able to select audio.

Of course the press can actually be here.

We've used this format in many of our international events and it's worked very well so far.

Coffee throughout. Very important.

[ Laughter ]

>>VICTOR LAGUNES: And that's going to be complimentary. Coffee and...

So as you can see, in summary, the venue itself, it's beautiful. We're very proud to be able to have the opportunity to use it to host it and to -- in this international event.

We believe it's even -- it presents a bigger case than even a conference room because it's a big differentiator, but really in here, my ask is for your feedback as to how we can make the most out of this layout.

With that, I return it to you, Madam Chair. Thank you.

>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Victor. We have a few people in the queue, and I think we should save this for any sort of specific comments here. And then if we need additional, more specific information, we can perhaps get that offline, share it, so we have it in advance of our more detailed discussions tomorrow morning.

But, Peter, you have the floor.

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, Victor, for the update. Two quick point. One, I just want to encourage you in the statement you made in your opening comment about using the meeting to enhance the local community activities. The voices are strong, but there's a lot of development work.

I've had a long relationship with ICANN which deliberately positions its meeting around the world to do just that, to bring Internet governance issues to communities against some opposition from -- some members of the community thought the meetings might be better if they were constantly hosted in major centers. But we found over the years that the advantages to the communities where the meetings go. So I want to encourage that, too. It will work if you can do that. There are advantages from having that.

And to offer any kind of help that you need with that. One of the things that, again, looking at the ICANN experience, the chairman, the CEO, luminaries from the technical and business and intellectual property and social civil society members that come to those meetings are used to go and give presentations, talks, et cetera, in the local community. And if we can help do that so we don't just all come and go to the meeting, then go home. If there's other contributions that people can make in the community, I'm sure you'll find people are very willing to do that.

The second point is one of the things IGF's done, I think, is establish a very high bar with some of its programs, like the meeting, the agenda, and keeping track of the sessions. Can we add to that and move to a GPS or near-field technology, particularly if you have a region -- a space that's confusing. There are developing software programs for conferences where members can find out where to go, what's happening near them. The GPS and near-field technology is available.

Can you look at those sorts of programs? They are very helpful not just for the people attending the conference, finding their way around. They're also very helpful to the organizers. You get records that track where people went, how long they stood. There's useful organizing data as well. If you could look at some of that software, it's available. You can get it for conferences. And if you have got a venue which is confusing, it might be a big help.

>>VICTOR LAGUNES: Definitely. So I appreciate your willingness to support. Of course, I recognize ICANN's role globally and the way they set up their conferences is definitely a best practice.

Within that, of course, we not only welcome the support but also my ask here is in different ICANN meetings -- incoming one from Helsinki, we were active there -- to be able to bring the Mexican IGF story and be able to invite more and more people, really engage more.

The way that we are looking at really giving ourselves more of a value -- value prop around the use of technologies, we're developing an application for the venue itself, for the event itself.

Of course, we're hopeful that it can include NFC. If not, I think WiFi would be able to give us a lot of that value.

Also, what we have seen is a lot of consumption for live stream, even within the venue itself, which actually consumes a lot of the bandwidth which you can get. I used to say that if you get 10 gigs, 10 gigs will be used. So in this case, we're thinking ahead, trying to set up in-house CDNs, content distribution networks, so we will be able to -- even from the app itself, be able to see what's happening in other places, in other meetings, workshops, without going to Internet and back because that definitely would choke the bandwidth. So we're thinking about all these things.

The other project that I would like to mention just because we're very conscious around the use of the budget and the budget towards the event itself, is that we're thinking of the infrastructure built towards the event. It's going to be a permanent infrastructure to the venue itself. So we're going to be tendering that to a potential sponsor to really deploy a state-of-the-art WiFi network that not only serves, you know, for those four or five days but can actually serve for the longer term. This will allow us to actually deploy a bigger, stronger WiFi network and really think about what else can we do with that infrastructure.

Thank you, Peter.

>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you. We actually have about four or five people in the queue. And if these questions are specific to kind of MAG responsibility for doing the workshop in terms of venue, I would actually request that we keep those to tomorrow and we maximize the open consultation time on issues that really are in front of the community.

I also need to apologize to Douglas because he's been in the queue as an online participant, but Chengetai and are trying to work out a system here to merge the online and the -- this speaker system here in front of us.

Douglas, you have the floor and we will come back to the few people in the queue.

>> ANJA GENGO: I'm sorry. It seems Douglas is not connected to audio. Maybe I can ask to type in the chat and then I can read it. Can you give me two minutes?

>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Douglas is going to put his comments into chat, and Anja will read them out in which case, I'm going to the queue. I have seen a few people raise their hands. But you should try and do that through the system here so he weave everybody in.

I have Cheryl in the queue just now.

>>CHERYL MILLER: Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you for the presentation. I had a specific question because I was a little bit confused. I know the word "sponsorship" was used. I don't know that IGF has had sponsorships in the past. I know companies contribute to the trust fund and really try to prioritize that to make sure that we keep the trust fund healthy. There are a number of donors in the room.

So I just wanted to better understand because I was looking at the brochure, and it looks as though you have to pay to go to the gala. I don't know. Has the secretariat changed the whole format of the meeting where now you have to pay to attend certain things or have certain speaking slots and things? I'm newer than most people, but I have never seen that done before. So anything that you could clarify on that would be appreciated. Thanks.

>>CHENGETAI MASANGO: All the meetings are of a noncommercial nature, so you can't sell workshop slots or whatever. I mean, the only thing you can sell inside is, basically, food and drink.

But that's within the U.N. territory, within the venue -- within the U.N. security perimeter. Let's put it that way.

Whatever happens in the sovereign territory of Mexico is up to them. But for our purposes, nothing commercial goes on within the U.N. security perimeter.

>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Cheryl, you have a follow-up?

According to my screen here, it has just put you at the bottom of the queue. I guess it you turn your mic off, I guess there is no immediate follow-up.

>>CHERYL MILLER: Okay. It just came on.

I guess then just as a follow-up, just so I understand, so then the gala is open to all. So day-zero events -- I mean, you're not selling speaking slots for that? Like, I think that's my question. I don't know if you answered it fully or not. Or I don't know...

>>CHENGETAI MASANGO: Everything controlled by the secretariat is of noncommercial. So all the workshops, or the GigaNet or whatever happens there, nothing is being sold.

Where people -- I think there's no preferential treatment at all within anything that's organized by the United Nations.

>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Chengetai and Cheryl.

Jim, you're in the queue.

So it happens when you indicate that you want to be in, your lights turn green on your microphone. And then they should turn red, I'm guessing, trying to find the pattern sitting up here.

Can somebody actually help Jim with the mic?

>>JIM PRENDERGAST: Ah, there we go. Thank you very much, Chair. Jim Prendergast with The Galway Strategy Group. You talked about the registration process. My experience has been that the registration process itself has actually gone fairly smoothly. It's the security getting into the venue. And I don't think anybody at the dais or in the room has control over that.

But I would ask that we communicate to those who do to have more than four metal detectors for a crowd of over 4,000 people, three of which are only available general attendees and one is dedicated to VIPs. I think that was a serious chokepoint last year.

Hopefully we would -- as a pasty white person standing in the sun for that long, it was quite difficult.

Secondarily, just to pick up on a point earlier and to relay a story to those who are new to the IGF and to the MAG, I do like the idea of having a multipurpose room, so to speak, for new and innovative sort of formats that could be decided on the spot. If you go back to the IGF that was held in Nairobi several years ago, there's a story told of a workshop that didn't happen because the organizers didn't actually show up to the room. Yet, it turned out to be one of the most innovative, engaging, and exciting workshops because the people who did show up for the workshop in the room sort of made it happen on their own.

So I think that's a lesson to build on and certainly would look forward to that type of outlet for folks who want to organize on the go. Thank you.

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

I'd like to close the queue with the remaining three speakers that are here and then move on to the next item so we ensure that we get to activities during the IGF week.

So I have -- unfortunately it's just listed as Access Now, and I can't actually see who that is in the room. So if you would take the floor and introduce yourself.

>> NICK DAGOSTINO: Hi there. Thank you. Nick Dagostino from Access Now.

I just want to start off by saying I really admire the selection of the venue that reflects the kind of cultural heritage and the character of the host country. I mean, the Internet is a very globally diverse place. And so I think the venues of the IGF should reflect that. So I think that's really great.

Given the fact that 20% of the proposals that were sent in were breakout group discussions and another 25% were others, I would ask the MAG to consider this when selecting and accepting workshops to kind of look at what rooms are available and what sessions really flourish in the formats of the rooms that are available to them.

I think that there's a really good chance to really accept a lot of more innovative formats which is what -- through the process of the workshop proposal system this year was encouraging. So I would like that to be continued throughout the whole process and acceptance.

And, lastly, I think in terms of the registration process, I just want to echo what the gentleman earlier said about the main kink point is generally in, like, the security. And as somebody who worked IGF registration in the past, I think that one of the -- that's generally the main sort of kink point, is through the security and not necessarily on the printing of the registration process. Thank you very much.

>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Nick. One of the -- my next speaker is Number 83. Now, I have no idea who 83 is, and I am assuming 83 doesn't know who 83 is either. If your mic has just turned red --

>>ZAHID JAMIL: It just went red, so it must be me. Hi, Zahid Jamil from Pakistan, business law firm. I just had a question. I think it's -- seeing that a developing country like Mexico stepping forward to do this, it's hosted many other events like ICANN and others before. So I'm really grateful to the Mexican government to do that. Especially the venue also looks like an interesting venue, especially focusing on the culture and diversity that exists in Mexico.

But I had some questions about the sponsorship information that's circulating. What we received as packages is that apparently you will have dinner slots. You need to buy dinner slots for three people or two people if you want to have it -- that's what the brochure says. And there's a branded bus process outside. And there's a speaking panel on day zero. And so I was a little confused about which aspects are going to be part of the -- sort of, as the secretariat described, would be inside and not branded and ones outside might be branded.

And what it raises a question about is: Does that create two competing markets for sponsors: One who wish to give money to the trust and not be branded and not be seen versus an opportunity for sponsorship outside a certain parameter? To some extent, I think many of the sponsors may choose to do the other and not the first. And creating that competition between the two -- I think we always have tried to promote funding the trust fund as opposed to some other things. So getting some clarification on how that's going to work would be helpful because I think at the end of the day, some businesses are going to ask why would I contribute to a trust fund when I can get better visibility on the infrastructure. Outside I can have the branded bus and everything else. So some clarification would be helpful. Thank you.

>>VICTOR LAGUNES: Thank you for your question. I think it follows Cheryl's comment and question as well. So the basis for the packages that we built really came from the perspective that the government could not sponsor it all, not because we as government couldn't afford it because -- and we cannot. But the reality is being a stakeholder event, we thought it has to be a multistakeholder approach into everything.

Now -- so we're asking for support. Yes, it's framed in a sponsorship package because we need to sell it down that way. But we have the perspective to really activate the industry in a different way. We know the global players. We know they are interested in supporting the trust. We know who they are. We know who they bring. And that won't change. That's part of the MAG itself. That's part of even the way that they are interested in contributing towards the MAG.

Our effort towards day zero is really to bring in not only high-level ministerial people that we are used to seeing in day-zero events, we would like to bring in as well high-level industry specialists as well.

The way that we've been able to do so before is with a lot of caution around brand usage and a lot of effort into really what those companies think around Internet development and employment and so on. So you are familiar with Facebook's Internet.org. There is one project that's an answer towards certain gaps that they see. And if they're interested, they can come and share with us their experiences. You've seen what Google does as well in terms of not only sponsoring or supporting the event itself, but they have spin-off events or cocktails later on that they bring in where they can bring in the usual suspect/Vint Cerf to let us know how the Internet is developing.

So I don't -- we don't see it as a competing mechanism. We see it as enriching and also activating the regional and national landscape. We usually don't see the local players. And by "local," I mean, for example America Movil, which is one of the largest communications company on the planet, owned by one of the wealthiest people on the planet who also is Mexican. But they are not active in the conversation itself. So we are making those inroads.

And we have been today successful in approaching those companies and really activating the conversation because Mexico really needs that debate to happen nationally and regionally.

>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Maybe you can try turning your mic on and off again. Looks like we're losing an awful lot of time to a sophisticated mic system.

>>ZAHID JAMIL: Oh, okay. Just -- just a quick follow-up and I know we've lost time already. There's a difference, I guess, between corporate events which corporate companies can host versus branded events which are sponsored events which is where a government or some other group is having an event that has been sponsored. I think that distinction is very important. And I do think that still the multistakeholder model would require priority and here it seems like then sponsors will get priority, which is not necessarily multistakeholder. I mean, I could be wrong but it's just some thoughts that are churning. Thank you.

>>VICTOR LAGUNES: Yeah. That's not the case. Really, the agenda will be set here. The -- and you'll have complete visibility.

The other parties, we're really asking for support from the industry because we believe it's definitely valuable.

Am I getting an echo or someone else?

>> (Off microphone.)

>>VICTOR LAGUNES: Still, you'll have -- even if you want to, you'll have -- we can share with you the percentages in which we're contributing towards the event itself. I don't know if that will help alleviate your concern, in a way, but we've been very, I guess, conscious around how much should government even contribute towards this event.

And not only because we're hesitant to do so but also because in events of this nature, if we try to overreach as government, we get a backlash from civil society groups and so on that we're doing too much. I don't know if I'm being blunt enough, but -- or candid enough, but the reality is that we should only do so much and then everything from of course what you're familiar with, which is the agenda creation, all the way into how we interact with the industry should be said -- we perceive should be said in that way.

>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Just one comment as well. In the last MAG meeting, we did agree that the MAG would actually see the list of open forums as well, to ensure that they were complementary, and that was based on some experiences we had last year.

That call for open forums is still open and as I understand it actually remains open for quite some time, but we will check in on it periodically which would also perhaps be another step to reassure some of the folks here based on the comments.

I have four people left in the queue and then we're going to move to the next session so we can get through.

I have Marilyn Cade, number 131, Ginger, who is on line, and Zeina, and we're closing it with Zeina. Thank you.

>>MARILYN CADE: Thank you. Thank you, Chair.

I'm just going to speak very quickly. My name is Marilyn Cade. I'm going to speak very quickly about some of the things that have happened in the past because I think if you haven't attended all of the IGFs and sat through all of the planning some things may appear to be very new.

Let me, first of all, thank the Mexican government host for all the work that you're doing and for the innovation that you're showing in reaching out to the multistakeholder community to develop the necessary support.

First of all, just to remind everyone that although free food was introduced for some of the IGFs, it has not been at all of the IGFs. One thing to think about might be not having free food but having a number of concession stands where people could bring food in and sell it, and I think most of us would respect that and be happy to pay for a sandwich or water, et cetera, and that might move the issue of free food aside.

A second thing I'll just remind everyone of is we were hosted in Europe not that many years ago and the buses were scheduled but not paid for and if you took the bus you bought a ticket. Not a big deal but it meant that that relieved the host country from having to prepay a lot of money to buses.

I will also just say that in another meeting I've gone to from an IGO, there was also an effort to do a special deal with taxis, to have a special fee. You could prepurchase tickets for taxis and pick them up at your hotel when you checked in, so that also reduced some of the costs. The attendees bore the costs but they were also getting a special discount.

Finally, I'll just remind all of us that we did go to an IGF not that many years ago which was funded largely by stakeholder contributions. Some quite significant. They were not in any way viewed as being given special attention, and they were -- they came together to support what the local community could provide and we had a very successful IGF and I know this one will be as well. Thank you.

>>CHENGETAI MASANGO: Yes. I'd just like to underline that the -- free food is not a requirement. Transport -- paid -- I mean, free transportation is not a requirement. It's just that the government should ensure that there is adequate transportation to and from the venue. Because here we are in New York, it's just the same type of rules. We pay for our transportation to come here and back to our hotel. Yes.

>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you. Those are good points.

The next speaker in the queue, with apologies, is number 131, and I can't see a lit mic, so I don't know who that was. Did --

>> (Off microphone.)

>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Marilia?

>>CHENGETAI MASANGO: Marilia. Yes. Your mic is red.

>>MARILIA MACIEL: Thank you, Lynn. Not working? Thank you. So I just would like to say that I do appreciate the attempt to clarify the commercial signs in the venue, but another point that I think is very important is public demonstrations of opinions, and I'm sure that you remember in the last IGF there was a group of civil society activists that conducted a public protest, a peaceful one, and the signs were torn apart and there are report -- concerning reports that they were henceforth monitored or forbidden to access the venue and this is very concerning.

I believe that for next year something that maybe we should look into is to have a clear policy that is made available and clear for IGF participants, and if demonstrations like this happen again -- it sometimes is very hard to control them on the ground -- that U.N. personnel is instructed how to react properly and not in an exaggerated manner to these demonstrations, so we can preserve freedom of opinion and expression of IGF participants. Thank you.

>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Marilia. We have Ginger in the queue?

>> Ginger, can you try and speak now?

>>VIRGINIA PAQUE: Good morning. This is Ginger Paque. I'm a MAG member from civil society. I'm -- can you hear me? I am speaking. Can you -- I'm hoping you can hear me.

>> We can hear you, Ginger.

>>VIRGINIA PAQUE: I do not see the captioning capturing me, so I am not sure.

>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: We can hear you, Ginger.

>>VIRGINIA PAQUE: Okay. I am confirming now that you can hear me. This is Ginger Paque from civil society.

I consider myself as representing the Americas. That includes South America, Central America, and North America, with all of our mixed priorities but really a multiregional effort for inclusion and access.

And with that, I would like to express my appreciation for the efforts being made to include online participation. I know it has not been easy for you this morning, and we -- it is indispensable and we do appreciate it.

I very much appreciate the host country's efforts and the explanations that we've been getting of what's being planned. This is very important as we prepare. And in the spirit of the inclusion and access and in the spirit of what Ritu said earlier this morning, Ritu Sharma, about underserved and underrepresented groups, including newcomers who do not have always the support of established groups or colleagues who have been already in the venue, I really think we need to emphasize a space in -- a large booth in the Village Square for a newcomers and information booth. I'd like to see full discussion on this and I think it's an important point for people who do not have a way to join in, exchange ideas, and get support for being involved and for the voices that are not being heard and don't have support to group together and get organization and groups.

So I would like to ask that we please discuss and firmly commit to a newcomers or information booth and center. This may take care of some of the problems with alternative voices as well.

Thank you very much.

>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Ginger. That's a very important point.

Zeina, you have the floor.

>>ZEINA BOU HARB: Hello. Good morning. This is Zeina Bou Harb from Lebanon. I'm a MAG member. I would like to ask Victor two questions because in the previous meeting we mentioned a mobile app regarding the forum this year and we mentioned the -- we discussed the possibility of launching a social media competition to encourage the youth to get involved with the -- with governance issues. This is one question. I would like to know if you are considering this, as the host country.

And my other suggestion is based on our experience in the Arab IGF, we established booths on the -- in the airport two, three days before the start of the meeting so whenever people from abroad are coming, they can collect their badges at the airport, or even sometimes we send them the eBadge with the QR code, they can print it and bring it along with them. It will facilitate too much from the burden you will face at the registration desk. Thank you.

>>CHENGETAI MASANGO: Yes. Unfortunately, the U.N. registration is tightly controlled by the U.N. security, so, I mean, Victor has his proposal. We have to pass it through the U.N. security. They really like -- before they issue a badge, they really want to check your ID and your particulars. It's just the security protocol that they follow, so it's going to be a bit difficult. We are trying to modernize them but we'll see how it goes. Yeah.

>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you. I had tried -- apparently unsuccessfully -- to close the queue after Zeina some time ago. I have three speakers left. We're sort of significantly behind in the agenda. I will give the floor to the three speakers but really ask you to be fairly succinct in your comments so we can move on to updates on -- from best practice forums and the connecting and enabling the next billion.

So with that, ICANN, Nigel, you have the floor.

>>NIGEL HICKSON: Aha. It's gone red! I'm getting there.

What it is, Madam Chair -- and where I come from, it's green usually that signifies go and red stop, but I know that's rather...

[ Laughter ]

>>NIGEL HICKSON: Not the case everywhere.

So just very briefly -- and thank you for the opportunity and thank you, Victor, for that -- for the outline of what's going to take place in Guadalajara. Certainly I'm very excited to be able to return to Guadalajara again. It's going to be a great opportunity.

On the discussion we just had about events that are sponsored or not -- and I appreciate that this has to be a multistakeholder approach, as you rightly said, and it's only right that people should contribute and I think -- I think Marilyn got it quite right. No one minds paying for dinners and buses and things like that.

The only thing I would say -- and perhaps this has already been clarified -- that in terms of the day zero agenda, I know that you've kindly asked for -- if you like, for ideas and contributions on what might take place on the day zero and for ideas and we'll, as ICANN, certainly be putting in a contribution to hold a discussion on the IANA transition. And I think one would hope that that agenda itself is not linked to the sponsorship.

Obviously, there might well be side events, as has happened at other IGFs, which are sponsored, and of course that's absolutely up to you, but it would be nice to know that the -- that the day zero agenda, as such, is -- can be applied for on the basis of sort of merit and interest, which of course is up to you entirely on what is considered to be meritorious. Thank you very much indeed.

>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Nigel, just a quick clarification. The day zero event will be on -- it is always manage between the host secretariat and the host country. It will be on the basis of merit. And things such as the ICANN workshop or the GigaNet worships, et cetera, will have no relationship, no impact to anything the Mexican hosts might do with respect to any of the other events on day zero. I think I can say that quite unequivocally and Victor is shaking his head.

The last two people in the queue, I'm sorry again, the numbers are number 82 and 129. Both your mics are green. I don't know which one is the next one in order, and I'm afraid that will mess up the system, but since yours just turned red, sir, I guess you were the next one in.

>>MARCEL LEONARDI: Yes. So hi, hello. I'm Marcel from Google and I'd just like to clarify that Google is and has always been a major supporter of the IGF through the financial support that we give to the trust fund, through the robust participation of Googlers themselves in the wide range of panels, and to stipends to civil society across the world, but just to clarify, all of the side events, all the extra stuff that Google does or does not do at the IGFs in general has nothing to do with sponsorship packages or any kind of extra payments to the host country or anywhere else for that matter. It's just something paid by Google itself. I just wanted to clarify that because it's a different way of putting things. I don't want people to think that in the past Google has paid anything extra or different for hosting those extra side events. Thank you.

>>VICTOR LAGUNES: I completely agree with you, and of course hosting the side event has -- you know, Google invested some money into doing so.

What we are attempting to do this time is to collaborate within that format. So these side events will happen. What we're doing is presenting the industry with some options so that these side events can happen in a better way, in a more -- in a more valuable way, if I can say so that way.

There are, for example, many venues, neighboring venues, as I mentioned, that will not be -- any company would not have any access without government support. So we're doing that in a way that we can collaborate with the industry and the industry actually sees that valuable.

We have been in conversations with Google already at the public policy level, so -- at the OECD meeting, and they have expressed their interest into contributing in such a manner.

Just one clarification.

The branding will not be in any way inside the venue. On that, we will continue to keep the spirit into -- that the IGF has had. We have no interest and no -- into tampering with that, but we like to strengthen of course the surrounding area so we can do so that way.

Zeina, very quickly, yes to the mobile app and yes towards engaging more youth through the use of social media for capacity building, so we can talk more about that.

>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you. I've just been given another update on the system here, and in order to help the mics work properly, I need to announce the speaker specifically as is marked on your sign, so, for instance, if ICANN has asked for the floor and I know it's Nigel, I should not identify him as Nigel but as ICANN because that is what's marked as the placard in front of him. So maybe that will help speed some things up. So I now have number 129 in the queue and I know that's Lori but 129, you have the floor.

>>LORI SCHULMAN: Thank you, Madam Chair, members of the MAG. I'm Lori Schulman from the International Trademark Association.

I'm following up with a suggestion on welcoming newcomers and perhaps embracing those who may not be as vocal or as active as perhaps some of us are in other venues, and I would strongly recommend and consider a mentoring program.

I envision this where you could have a sign-up desk with newcomers who come in and say they'd like to be paired with a mentor, at least for the first day, to learn the ropes, and then have people more veteran sign up as volunteer mentors. It could be done smoothly, very easily, and I think it would foster a lot of good conversation.

>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Lori. I would like to thank this opportunity to thank Mexico for everything they're doing. I think it's going to be a really exciting and energetic conference with a lot of energy based on some of the things we're seeing in the proposals and here from the MAG. I think it's an absolutely beautiful place. And Victor and Yolanda have worked very, very hard to meet all of the requirements and, in fact, go beyond in many ways. So I'm very much looking forward to a really successful IGF there. And thank you.

[ Applause ]

The next item are updates from the IGF best practice forums, and then I suppose we go to the IGF policy options for connecting and enabling the next billion. So, I'm not sure who is prepared to speak the updates from the BPFs. Is that the secretariat or is that some of the...

So, Michael Nelson, you have the floor. Izumi.

>>MICHAEL NELSON: Just very briefly, the best practices forum on Internet transparency and the fight against corruption is finally getting going. We had a useful conference call about a week ago. Had a critical mass of about nine people, including a couple of experts from outside of MAG community, outside of the Internet governance community. One of them from Access Now. We've also had someone from OECD quite interested in and are reaching out to Transparency International.

We are on the third draft of our mission statement, and we'll get a new version out probably tonight. And we plan to have an informal luncheon discussion on Thursday to finalize this and to also continue our outreach to the people who are engaged. There's a lot of interest, and I think we have a pretty clear agenda on what we want to do. So I thank everyone for their support.

And anyone who wants to talk, come and find me. We're also setting up a listserv so people can sign up for and be part of the conversation. Thank you.

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

All the best practice forums and DCs, there's information on the Web site for all of these. So people who are interested in following or participating, you can find the necessary information there as well.

Izumi, you have the floor.

>>IZUMI OKUTANI: -- date on the best practices forum for encouraging environment for IPv6 adoption. As I've been updating to the MAG members, the focus this year is on the economic element.

I think we've made quite a good progress so far in fixing the goals and scope of our group as well as having the draft structure of the output document as well as the general time lines.

I'd like to emphasize the importance of outreach for the best practices forum in two perspectives. One is to make sure that we get relevant input from a wide range of stakeholders. And the second is that once the output document is ready, then again we're able to reach out to the target readers of the document.

And I think one of the great things about having the best practices forum in IGF is that you are able to reach out to the people who you don't usually have the reach on a particular issue. So in the context of IPv6, we have good reach to the technical communities. But for this year's focus, we would like to reach out to the people who make business decisions or be able to collect the business cases. For example, from it companies such as Apple, Google, or companies that have deployed IPv6 on access lines. But not from the technical people, the people who make the business decision, what is the economic incentive behind IPv6?

And I would like to ask for support from MAG colleagues on reaching out and helping collect case studies as well as the analysis on how certain economies are more successful in IPv6 adoption than the others. Thank you.

>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Izumi. I think that's a really important point. And I would like to make sure that people did hear that in that particular -- the IPv6 best practice forum, they are really looking as a very significant portion of their next phase to engage with the business community specifically. The technical work is mostly done. They are really can looking for case studies. So I really would encourage MAG members to use your own contacts and see if you can help support that work. Advancing IPv6 will support all of us very well in advancing the Internet.

Next in the queue I have IGFSA, which is Markus Kummer.

Markus, you have the floor.

>>MARKUS KUMMER: Yes, thank you. And building on what you said, I think I would also emphasize the importance of outreach. We had three calls so far, and yesterday a call for contributions was posted on the IGF Web site. The idea so far is that the experts involved agreed this needs to be seen as a multiyear project as the issue is so broad and also that we should not try and reinvent the wheel and duplicate with what is already done in other organizations but focus on the core competency and the core strengths of the IGF; that is, bring people together from different organizations and focus on coordination, cooperation.

And we have a dedicated listserv with close to 80 people on it participating with a good range of experts who are not regularly involved in MAG who conduct open consultations. With this, I also would call on MAG members and other interested people here in the room to subscribe to the list and to engage in the discussions as we go forward.

And, lastly, maybe a horizontal issue, the question whether we should have a synchronized approach as regards to various deadlines or we should let the individual best practice forums go ahead within their own rhythm, we thought we would need at least three to four weeks now for the contributions and have thought of setting a deadline of mid August. But we are obviously open here to listen as how others feel it.

I think most important perhaps is that we all agree then on a final deadline when we all issue our report of final comments going ahead for the Guadalajara meeting. That should be well in advance, at least one month ahead of the annual meeting itself.

Thank you.

>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Markus. I know Jac and Sala have put their hands up to report out on their best practice forums.

Let's start with Sala over here. We need to wait until your mic is lit.

>>SALANIETA TAMANIKAIWAIMARO: Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair. This is Sala for the record. I bring greetings on behalf of the other co-chair, Douglas Onyango, and the BPF to the MAG and also to the broader community.

And one of the things we wanted to do was to go back to -- as a BPF, one of the things we wanted to do see -- was to do was to go back to the original mandate of the BPF in terms of outlining our activities to the mandate.

And noting that the report from ECOSOC working group called for an enhancement, to enhance the impact of the IGF on global Internet governance and policy. Further noting also that the BPF exists to enrich the global policy debate -- or global Internet governance. We took an approach of examining where we've been as a BPF.

And last year -- behind me is Wim, who is our expert consultant who's working closely with the BPF where the BPF took a general approach to producing a document.

But, also, simultaneously one of the things that's been happening globally on 3rd Feb 2015, there was a council working group by the ITU that had consultations on discussing the establishment of IXPs to enhance connectivity, improve quality, and increase stability and resilience.

As a result of that, there were resolutions reached where the -- where they talked about a cross-collaborative -- there's a council working group on international Internet-related public policy issues. For those who are interested, that's pertaining to Resolution 1344 and the consultations were opened from 18 February and it's still running and will be closing at 11 September 2016.

So given that as a BPF, we have the opportunity also to feed into global forums, it might be useful -- I've noticed that there are many members, many organizations from the broader community that have made submissions. It's already up on the Web site. So it would be interesting to see how we could sort of synergize some of the pertinent issues.

And following calls that the BPF already has had, we're moving into defining a specific scoping statement -- a specific scope for this years' output. And we'll be updating the MAG and the community through the mailing list. Thank you, Madam Chair.

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

Jac, you didn't get in the queue electronically, but I would like to pull you in now while we stay with the best practice forums. I'm not sure what your name plate says. CG? CGI.br, please, if you could make that mic...

>>JAC sm KEE: Thanks, Lynn.

So this is Jac reporting on behalf of the best practice forum on gender which I co-coordinate with Renata.

We have had three meetings so far. It's been really good. Lots of engagement. We have had new as well as existing members from the last BP participating.

So one of the first few meetings is really about defining the scope. One of the things that came up was that it felt that it was a really good idea to have a best practice forum on gender as a broad thematic area in which different dimensions then can be focused on in subsequent IGF -- well, in subsequent years to ensure the sustainability and that it goes sort of both broad as well as deep.

For this year, two things were agreed in terms of the scope. One was to ensure that the best practice forum -- last year's best practice forum on countering online abuse and gender-based violence, that we would keep the outcome document as a sort of living document and some conversation about how do we do this to update on new initiatives that has come up as well as to look at opportunities to both -- let me see now -- to look at opportunities to both extend the dissemination and the use of that document. And, secondly, to focus on gender and access as the thematic issue this year as it linked very strongly also to SDGs.

So there are two sort of activities that have been identified. One is a mapping initiative. So we are mapping existing research and initiatives on gender and access. This is both to basically determine whether there are any lessons to be gathered from the existing work as well as to identify gaps in work and research that the BP can work towards.

And, secondly, is to -- the second activity is to have a kind of Webinar as a way to engage greater participation in outreach as well as to also inform people about the work of the BP.

So the first Webinar, in fact, is scheduled for this week and the Webinars are also sort of linked to national and regional IGFs, where possible, where there is discussions around gender and access.

And that's a way to also make sure that there are kind of linkages between all of the different activities. So we really do welcome and encourage participation, especially around the mapping initiatives. It's really very simple. It's an Excel sheet that's up right now.

So if you are aware or would like to make sure that work that's happening at different levels around gender access is included as part of this conversation, we really do encourage it. Thanks.

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

So we've just heard report-outs from some of the coordinators of the five best practice forums we have, which rely very much on work of the community. It's also a critical part of extending the IGF's impact and clearly was part of the recommendations of the CSTD working group on improvements to the IGF, which is looking for more concrete outputs.

So the work is extremely important. It really depends on the community. We appreciate all the support and all the time that's put into it. As I said, all the information on those BPFs is on the IGF Web site, including all the modalities for participation. But I want to thank everyone for all the time and effort they put in. That work has really come a very long way over the last few years, and it really is critically important to the success of the Internet and certainly very helpful to the IGF itself as well.

With that, I would like to move to the next in the queue, which is Constance Bommelaer from ISOC who will be speaking on the major intersessional project we have, Phase II, "Connecting and Enabling the Next Billion." Constance, you have the floor.

>>CONSTANCE BOMMELAER: Thank you, Madam Chair. Can you hear me? Thank you very much.

So, first of all, I would like to start by thanking all the MAG volunteers and colleagues outside of the MAG committee who have stepped up and contributed to developing the framework document that I will be presenting today.

As Lynn mentioned, the best practices but also the policy options for connecting and enabling the next billion have been developed following the CSTD working group on IGF recommendations that were endorsed by ECOSOC, inviting the IGF to contribute to the global Internet governance dialogue by producing more tangible outputs.

The work this year with regards to policy options for connecting the next billion has also been developed bearing in mind the outcome of the 2015 Sustainable Development Summit where we have a very clear goal, 9C, calling for universal and affordable access for all by 2020.

So you will remember that following the last MAG meeting and open consultations, we developed a draft framework document to guide our work going forward. We received many, many contributions, suggestions on how to tailor the exercise this year, many specifically coming from the NRI, the national and regional initiatives.

I would like to thank Marilyn and Anja who have really helped collect and solicit these contributions.

Mainly what came out of the suggestions was a call to take the policy options that we have identified last year -- and I will remind them very quickly: Deploying infrastructure, increasing usability, enabling users, and entering affordability -- one step further and looking at the regional, national level what are the specificities in terms of market structure, level of capacity-building and so on and so forth. That needs to be taken into account as policymakers, the industry, civil society work together towards fine-tuning these policy options.

The second wish that came out of these contributions and suggestions was to try to connect in a more explicit way how ICTs support the different sustainable development goals.

There have been some suggestions to look at the full list, the 17 sustainable development goals. I think with -- this set a special emphasis on how the Internet and ICTs can eliminate poverty, contribute to health and well-being, education, and empowering women are clearly the four sustainable development goals that were suggested the more often.

In terms of next step, now that we have this framework document that has integrated the contributions and suggestions from the community, we will be reiterating what we have done last year calling for open contributions, written contributions. The tentative date is end of July, but the reality is that last year we accepted contributions throughout the year bearing in mind that some national, regional IGFs may take place later in the year.

Through an iterative process, we will develop a first draft and then a second draft that will systematically be open for comments through an online platform where anybody can make some suggestions in an open, transparent, and bottom-up fashion.

What we will also do is invite any MAG colleagues but also beyond the MAG, experts who would like to contribute to the drafting of these policy options for connecting and enabling -- this is a word we have added in comparison to last year -- the next billion. Thank you.

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

Again, that was a very significant piece of work last year and was in direct response to some of the requests from various quarters for improvements to the outputs of the IGF.

Next in the queue is Renata.

>>RENATA AQUINO RIBEIRO: Hi. I just wanted to -- Renata Aquino Ribeiro from Brazil, from the BPF on gender and access with Jac.

I just wanted to add also upcoming is the item about NRIs, that we are having the Webinar today with IGF Brazil, but also we wanted to present the BPF's work, as well, in the main session, and in the main sessions list I did not see the BFP main session listed, so I was wondering what happened with that idea.

This could be also addressed tomorrow during the main session discussion, but I just wanted to bring it since we were talking about the BPFs as well. Thank you.

>>CHENGETAI MASANGO: It was excluded in error and then I did send another one out with it in the PDF.

>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you. The next item is updates from the national and regional IGF initiatives. Again, those initiatives are obviously very central to the advancement of the Internet for the well-being of everyone in the world -- it's not just about the Internet -- and we're very happy that there are 62 such initiatives, at last count, and I think it's also critically important in terms of enabling a lot of activities at the very local level.

So I'm not quite sure how we're prepared to speak about this.

I see a number of people have come in.

Marilyn Cade, you can have the floor, and then I have Patrik, European Commission, and Council of Europe, and the list is growing, so I'll just keep the list going.

Marilyn, you have the floor.

>>MARILYN CADE: Thank you, Madam Chair. Marilyn Cade speaking. Can I just clarify that what I'm doing now is an update on the NRIs or are you looking for comments from the floor about the NRIs?

I'm prepared to do the update, with Anja help, or we can just take open comments if you prefer.

>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: No. I think an update would be very useful. I know a lot of people are very familiar with the NRIs but perhaps not their scope and reach, so I think a brief update at the top of the discussion would be useful.

>>MARILYN CADE: Thank you.

Marilyn Cade speaking.

I'm presenting the summary update on behalf of myself and Anja, and I want -- also want to acknowledge that in the room, we also have Yusif and Sala, who have also volunteered to work with us on enhancing the engagement of the NRIs.

So this is going to be just a very quick overview of the work that has gone on since the IGF in 2015. I am going to then post the document to the MAG list, but Anja and I need to insert a map in it so I need to, first of all, get that map inserted.

So let me, first of all, start out by just giving a few statistics that are important to understand.

NRIs did not exist as a concept directly called for in the Tunis Agenda. There was reference to working at a national and local level, and the NRIs began to grow up after the Internet Governance Forum itself planning began.

In 2011, for instance, we had 12 regional or subregional IGFs, 23 national IGFs, and two youth IGFs.

In 2016, we have 14 identified as regional or subregional IGFs, we have one that has not met for several years, and we will be talking with them to see if they intend to stay active, but we have three new subregionals in formation: Central Asia, Southeast Asia, and North Africa IGF.

That means that -- and I want to congratulate the African region. That means that we now will have subregional IGFs across all of Africa, as well as national IGFs and of course the continent-wide IGF, the African IGF.

We have 40 nationals that are in existence right now and we have two to three new that are in formation.

When I use the term "in formation," that is "in," space, "formation," meaning they are just beginning to plan or have yet to fully put forward their plan for the IGF that they intend to hold.

We have five youth-affiliated IGFs. They're all quite unique. I won't go into a detailed discussion.

During the IGF 2015, at the substantive session, the NRIs themselves made a number of recommendations.

One was to double the number of IGFs by 2017 to add in a dedicated focal point. I'd like to comment and express appreciation to DESA and to the IGF secretariat and to welcome Anja in returning now as the dedicated focal point.

We also agreed to create a self-developed and peer-reviewed toolkit. We agreed to increase the networking horizontally across the NRIs, to host a collaborative booth at the IGF, to propose a main session at the IGF, and to establish a way to increase the way that the national and regional coordinators can find each other when they go to other events.

We will have an NRI informal dialogue tomorrow during the lunch period. The details for that will follow. It is primarily for the NRI coordinators to continue work on the main session and their IGF engagement. It is of course an open meeting and open to observers.

There will be a separate NRI information discussion that I wish to just mention that Yusif, Sala, Anja, and I will be able to organize with any of the new initiatives who are working toward a new event.

Now I'd just like to comment about we have held bimonthly calls and we now hold the same call, topic-wise, in the same week but in two different time zones so that we're not so unfriendly to any part of the world.

Out of that, we have taken a survey of the way that the NRIs would like to conduct the proposed main session. I've posted that main session and I won't go into the details here, but just to note that it is published and we do have the support of the NRI coordinators. We will, of course, be looking for MAG feedback and then we will continue the planning with the NRI coordinators for their main session.

Out of the discussion and the survey, the NRI coordinators have also expressed interest in a separate sort of admin/management-type sharing session that could include the IGF secretariat and the MAG chair and suggest that that perhaps could be held at either -- on either day zero or, if not enough are there, it could even be held over the lunch period. It would be an informal working session on their part.

Finally, work is underway on finalizing the -- we do have a request for a booth. Work is underway on finalizing how it's going to be staffed. It will be shared with the youth IGFs. And while there are some initiatives who will have their own booth, there are a significant number who are interested in a shared booth.

The -- we intend to continue the ongoing bimonthly calls, and we hope to have a -- once the MAG accepts or provides comments on the main session proposal, then we will undertake to finalize the way that that main session will happen.

Thank you, Chair.

>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you. I think that was a very useful report and thank you to everybody who contributed to it as well.

So Patrick, you have the floor.

>>PATRICK HO: Thank you, Madam Chairman. Let me introduce myself. I'm Patrick Ho. I'm a new MAG member. I'm from the China Energy Fund Committee operated out of Hong Kong, China, and I would like to put in a plea for the -- for developing countries and the national and regional forums for the developing countries.

And Madam Chairperson, when member states in the Tunis Agenda requested the United Nations secretary-general to convene the IGF, they also called for efforts to strengthen and enhance the engagement of stakeholders in Internet governance mechanisms, particularly those from developing countries.

They further requested this forum to advise all stakeholders in proposing ways and means to accelerate the availability and affordability of Internet in the developing world.

At the same time, the Tunis Agenda also called on us to contribute to capacity building for Internet governance in developing countries, drawing fully on local resources of knowledge and expertise.

In this spirit, Madam Chairperson, I want to highlight the need for us to do more to strengthen and enhance the engagement of stakeholders in global IGFs convened by the United Nations secretary-general through national and regional IGFs, particularly those from developing countries.

Indeed, this request was reiterated last December by the United Nations General Assembly high-level meeting on WSIS+10 review during which member states recognized that there is a need to promote greater participation and engagement in an Internet governance discussion, including relevant stakeholders from developing countries.

Member states called for strengthened, stable, transparent, and voluntary funding mechanisms to this end. The China Energy Fund Committee is an ECOSOC accredited development think-tank and it is our philosophy to promote sustainable development for all, especially the disadvantaged groups, through sound public policy. We also strongly believe that strengthening national and regional IGFs is a cost-effective way of capacity building, and we pledge to work closely with national and regional IGFs in eastern Asia, southeastern Asia, and the Asia-Pacific area because that's the area where the greatest growth of Internet usage will materialize in the very near future and that's the area where the efforts to achieve the sustainable development goals will be most apparent, especially in attaining sustainment development goal number one, eradicating poverty. And we are ready to work with partners to explore further options and initiatives for supporting national and regional IGFs. Thank you.

>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Patrick. Next in the queue is the European Commission. Cristina.

And while we're getting the mic lit there, I'll just remind everybody that, in fact, we do have French interpretation here as well if people would prefer to speak or listen in French. Thank you.

Cristina, you have the floor.

>>CRISTINA MONTI: Thank you, Chair. Is this working? Yes. Thank you, Chair. And good morning, everyone. My name is Cristina Monti, from the European Commission.

I would like to take this opportunity to briefly report on the recent European dialogue on Internet governance, EuroDIG, which took place in Brussels on the 9th and 10th of June under the theme "Embracing the Digital Revolution."

This was the ninth edition of EuroDIG and it was hosted by EuroDIG -- I'm sorry, by EURid, the .EU registry, in cooperation with the European Commission, and with the involvement of all EuroDIG partners.

Approximately 700 representatives from government, business, technical community, civil society, and academia gathered in Brussels to address Internet governance and policy issues, including Internet privacy, security, and access.

During the event, a number of keynote speeches were given by high-level speakers like the commissioner, the European Commissioner Oettinger, who covered digital single market aspect data flows and data protection.

Also, the Commission Vice President Ansip intervened and he talked about the European Union vision on -- of Internet governance on the basis of a thriving digital economy and the development of the digital single market strategy.

He also addressed current efforts from the European Commission for removing geo blocking.

We also had high-level participation from other partners like the Council of Europe. The Secretary-General Jagland was there and he spoke about protection and promotion of fundamental values and rights in the digital world.

We had the foreign minister of Estonia who spoke about human rights and the rule of law on the Internet and cybersecurity, including the important balance between privacy and security.

This is just to give you a feeling and a sense of the kind of issues that were very topical in this year's EuroDIG meeting.

We also had other high-level participants, including the ICANN CEO, and we were lucky enough that the meeting coincided with the announcement by NTIA that the IANA stewardship transition proposal meets the required criteria, so that was a good coincidence.

And we were also very pleased to see you, the MAG chair, also participating actively in the EuroDIG and the -- and Chengetai from the IGF secretariat.

And in general, there is still a lot of potential that could be used from EuroDIG and create better synergies and linkages with the IGF, so your presence there I think was very useful.

I would also like to mention that this edition introduced a nice innovation, which was the Twitter wall. I know that some MAG members were discussing about the possibility of using this also for IGF.

I think it was really nice and it provided an interactive element which was appreciated by participants.

And so if this is something that the MAG members are considering for the IGF, maybe it would -- it could be useful to also get in touch with the people in EuroDIG who took care of this particular aspect.

Finally, just to mention that this edition was important to raise the level of awareness about Internet governance issues in Brussels in what we call the Brussels bubble, which sometimes is very focused on European Union activities, and so this is something positive.

When -- now, concrete messages are going to be drafted summarizing the discussions that were held in Brussels and these messages will be transmitted to the IGF.

And in terms of next steps, EuroDIG key partners and supporters are reflecting on how to take full advantage of this multistakeholder bottom-up platform at the pan-European level and to further use the full potentiality of this platform.

One particular aspect that I would like to highlight is that EuroDIG could be very useful to also debate emerging issues like Internet of Things, blockchain technologies, challenges of the sharing economy, and I think that this is something that also the IGF could consider, and this in addition and beyond the specific focus on ICT as an enabler for sustainable development goals. In Brussels, the discussion was really a lot about digital economy and the transformation that it is bringing to our societies and our economies. Thank you very much.

>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Cristina. It really was a very good event and the discussions were very high-level and I think in part because there was such a good diversity of participants. Certainly government, civil society, technical. So it really was a very good event.

Next in the queue we have Council of Europe. Lee?

>>LEE HIBBARD: Thank you, Madam Chair. This is just -- thank you, Madam Chair. This is just to echo -- as one of the partners of the EuroDIG since the beginning, this is just to echo what Cristina has said, that it was a very good event, and to say that it also brought together -- I think we -- in Europe, there's over 25 or maybe 28 national and regional initiatives, which is probably the -- more initiatives in one continent than any other continent, and there was a lot of pre-events and side events to mention.

And we had a -- we had a special event which actually Anja and I chaired, moderated, on national and regional initiatives, which was very, very good.

I think it's driven also by partners. I mean, there's a cloud of partners around the EuroDIG as well. This includes the commission, RIPE NCC, Council of Europe, and several others, and it's very important that they support this and to drive it forward. Outreach is also done by them. I think that's a good best practice.

There were 39 events organized over the two days or the two and a half days based upon 132 proposals for different workshops. That's quite a lot. And so that's really the basis on which we started at EuroDIG this year.

Looking forward, EuroDIG will take place in Estonia in 2017 for its 10th anniversary. The date has not been set. And there will be -- just drawing back to now, we have messages from Brussels which will be conveyed to the IGF 2016 which are being prepared at the moment. Thank you, Madam Chair.

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

Next in the queue is Egypt. Christine, you have the floor.

>>CHRISTINE ARIDA: Thank you, Madam Chair. Is it working? Yeah.

Okay. I would like to thank all colleagues that have advanced the intersessional work and acknowledge the big effort that they've been doing, whether the best practice forums or the policy options for connecting and enabling the next billion.

And I think it's -- those are very important efforts that enhance the impact of the IGF, and there was so much effort put into engaging stakeholders in that intersessional work as we moved towards the yearly meeting, especially going organically through maybe national and regional initiatives. But I think what we need also to think about -- and maybe this could be done while we are work intersessionally to design what we are going to do for those initiatives -- is that we also focus on how can we market those outputs when they actually come out of the yearly meeting, because I think this is something that we're missing. Although there's so much effort being done, I believe the impact organically is not as big as it should have been, and for that, I think we should maybe align with national and regional initiatives to go to them with the output, possibly in their -- in their preparatory phase, after the yearly meeting or even in their yearly event that follows the IGF.

But we can maybe also target the diplomatic circles in Geneva and New York. And I think we should go with those outputs to the regional and national events or international events that go across the region like ICANN, ITU events, and so forth. Main (indiscernible) maybe. I think it's very important that we do this step because unless we go through that, the impact will remain restrained within the IGF community. Thank you.

>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Christine. I think those are very good points. I think there's a lot of different requests that come through for what we can do to make the impact much more significant on the grounds. So those are some good comments.

Next in the queue, I have Juuso.

Juuso, you have the floor.

>>JUUSO MOISANDER: Thank you, Madam Chair. Just to add to the previous speakers that as chair of one of the Nordic IGFs, the Finnish Internet Forum, I used the convening power of the EuroDIG to organize a discussion among the Nordic IGF initiatives on improving our coordination and cooperation towards a possible Nordic IGF in the future. Thank you.

>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Juuso. Just been reminded by my Finnish learning colleague here that it's Juuso. The J is silent. So thank you.

I attended that meeting and thought it was very useful.

I have Zeina in the queue and then Jivan. Zeina, you have the floor.

>> ZEINA BOU HARB: Thank you, Madam Chair. I just want to give a brief status of the Arab region IGFS. I just would like to -- actually to announce that the ESCWA and the League of Arab States ordered the proposed new initiative which is the AIGF 2020. And the technical cooperation working group has been established just for the enhancement and improvement of the Arab IGF. Thank you.

>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you. That's very interesting.

Jivan, you have the floor.

>>JIVAN GJORGJINSKI: Just to repeat something that we have been discussing before, and that is that there should be a more coherent effort to connect all of these initiatives in some form. Nothing structured -- nothing too structured but at the same time, just the fact that most of them are going over common issues. And the thing is, perhaps in one region, it's going to be this year but in another region, those kind of issues will come up at another period. So it's a good way to reconsider what has been already considered.

And a good way is perhaps questions and answers. So that perhaps at the end of an IGF, the issues, the questions that pop up should be structured in some way. At least a part of the report. These are the questions that were unresolved, such as the issue that was raised by Izumi earlier about the fact that the business community can contribute a lot to IPv6 discussions.

So those kinds of discussions formulated at the end of IGF to be considered next year by national, regional IGFs and then those -- each of them to contribute to next year's IGF with some thoughts on that and perhaps a formal discussion around them comparing experiences.

So I think that that kind of question-answer cycle can provide some kind of a loose framework to discuss common issues and to put them in a given context and then to provide a way to discuss them across regions. Thanks.

>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you. I think those are some very interesting comments as well.

I have Marilyn in the floor as the last speaker for this particular topic here and then we will move --

>>MARILYN CADE: Thank you, Chair. Marilyn Cade speaking as the substantive coordinator.

I just want to respond to some of the comments that have been made because I think perhaps it would be useful for MAG members who are not themselves directly engaged in the NRIs to have an opportunity to read the reports that we post from all of our calls.

Some of the issues that have been raised are very much on the minds of the NRI coordinators, and they are discussing how to better reflect into the IGF and how to reflect from the IGF into the NRIs.

We chose that term after much debate in multiple substantive meetings of NRIs over several years addressing the fact that there is no hierarchy but there's a very strong interest and a very strong engagement in the -- between the NRIs and the IGF itself.

So I just want to comment that, that work is underway. I flashed past the idea that we are trying to increase the horizontal networking. We called for the creation of observatory where the NRIs could post concepts and calls for action that they themselves have developed, perhaps share their version of best practices about tools and resources. We've also now been -- very thankfully we see that Anja has been appointed, and I just want to point out that the development of the peer-reviewed toolkit will now begin to take place.

So perhaps one of the things that we'll be able to see by the NRIs having their first main session at the IGF is how some of the comments of the MAG members are also being reflected in the work of the NRIs. Thank you, Chair.

>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you. And I think "reflect" is a good word.

I also want to thank, before you move into the DCs, all those that are involved in the national and regional IGF initiatives because it's a tremendous amount of work. They are very important to the work we are all doing here. I also know they are one of the first go-to places when the IGF is actually looking for participation, support, or ideas.

So -- and I think I want to acknowledge all the work that they're doing. Often that's in a volunteer mode. But it is critically important certainly to the richness of the IGF but also to impact at a local level.

With that, we'll move to the agenda item on dynamic coalitions. I assume it's some combination of Markus and Avri that are going to speak.

Avri, you have the floor.

>>AVRI DORIA: Thank you. Avri Doria speaking, a MAG member, assuming I can be heard.

So I actually don't have that much to report. And I don't know how many of the dynamic coalitions we actually have with us that may want to say something about it.

There are 16 of the dynamic coalitions now, most of which have sort of this bottom-up construction that work in their own way.

But the dynamic coalition coordinating group has actually been working. It meets every three to four weeks. The schedule is somewhat ad hoc in terms of finding a good time when everybody around the world can actually meet. And have put together a request for a slot on the main program, which I'm sure we'll be talking about in a different slot; so I'm not going to talk about that.

But one of the things we have seen in the dynamic coalition coordination group is really a coming together, a working together, a finding a way to look for the issues that are common to them all. So that's been very heartening because this is a group that really does work through the full year and is not really timed to the annual meeting but it does target the annual meeting for reports. So I think that that's pretty much what's going on.

One of the things I do want to mention is that there's very strong support there for things like Twitter walls and tweet walls. It's something that they have incorporated in their program and such.

So I don't know -- oh, yes. The other thing I did want to mention is they have decided together that they also want to apply for one of the booth spaces so that all the dynamic coalitions would be able to take turns and such being there and working. So very much trying to now integrate themselves into the program of the meeting.

I don't know if Markus has anything he would like to add.

>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Avri. I think that's really good news on the booth and certainly on the main session as well.

I have number 224 in the queue. Oh, that's Mr. Chip Sharp. Is it not?

>> SHARADA SRINIVASAN: Am I audible? No.

>> Yes.

>> SHARADA SRINIVASAN: Oh, okay. Hello? My name is Sharada. I'm a research fellow at University of Pennsylvania, Center for Technology, Innovation, and Competition. And this is my first time at a MAG consultation process.

I'm here to talk about the dynamic coalition for innovative approaches to connecting the unconnected. We are a very new dynamic coalition. We were convened earlier this year. The coordinators are Christopher Yoo, Michael Kende, Helani Galpaya, and Rajan Mathews.

I just wanted to report out on initial work that we're undertaking and, honestly, make a call out to members of the MAG as well as members of the community that are here so that they can help us or, if they're interested, participate more in the work that they're doing.

We are currently undertaking a literature review to identify potential case studies to try and understand innovative ways of connecting unconnected communities. So this goes beyond just the policy approaches that have been mentioned already. They're looking at on-the-ground solutions that are being implemented. And we are very interested in hearing about case studies both by businesses as well as, like, innovative things such as community networks that are happening around the world.

They're also looking at reviewing submissions that have been at the IGF already and seeing if there are potential case studies that we can document. We hope to have some preliminary case studies that we can present at this year's IGF, but we are looking to get more and more data and analyze it to be able to have more information on these approaches, what works, and what doesn't.

So that's what we're doing. If any of the people here are either working on similar issues or are interested in being part of the dynamic coalition, we do have a listserv that's available on the Internet Governance Forum Web site. Do join us and do have a conversation with me. I'd love to talk to you. Thank you.

>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you.

Next in the queue is 166, which I'm assuming is Chip Sharp. Chip, you have the floor.

>>CHIP SHARP: Thank you. Appreciate it. I just had to wait for my light to turn red.

Just a quick question. Since it related to dynamic coalitions, since it wasn't mentioned -- or maybe I missed it. Just want to check, so there will not be any idea rating sheets or efforts to endorse dynamic coalition output at this upcoming IGF? That was a discussion last year. Since I didn't hear anything about it, I assume that will not be a topic this year. Thank you.

>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, chip, for the question. I will see if Avri or Markus -- Avri would like to respond.

Avri, you have the floor.

>>AVRI DORIA: Thank you. Part of the discussion will happen more when we are talking about the program. We are discussing using a form of the rating sheets, and we do expect there to be some output from the session that we hold.

Haven't gotten to the point of actually talking whether we are looking for a specific endorsement of specific DC's input. That's an ongoing conversation still within the DC coordinating group.

But certainly there is a conversation about how we're going to use the idea rating sheet idea differently this time, use it earlier, use it such. But that conversation is still ongoing. But they are part of the program.

And I guess when we talk about the program, the main session issue, will talk about it more there.

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

Chip, does that answer your quite-specific question? I think Chip is indicating yes for now.

That brings me to the end of the queue, although I'll do one quick double-check to see if there is anybody online.

>>REMOTE INVERVENTION: Yes, if you allow, Thomas Schneider would like to intervene.

>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Yes.

Thomas, you have the floor.

>>REMOTE INVERVENTION: It seems Thomas is not connected to audio. Maybe we can come to this later.

>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Would he like to wait, or is he typing his comment in?

>>REMOTE INVERVENTION: He's not typing anything, but I'm going to ask him maybe to send the comment and then I can read it.

>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Okay.

Somewhat astonishingly, that actually brings us to the end of the mornings' agenda. I say "astonishingly" because we are actually 15 minutes early. Normally we are quite pressed for time on those discussions. So I can certainly give everybody the gift of 15 minutes of time.

But before doing that, I'll just cover quickly the agenda for this afternoon and see if there are any final remarks that anybody would like to make.

So we will reconvene at 3:00. And for an hour and a half or so we have an open discussion on the retreat on advancing the ten-year mandate of the IGF. Wai-Min Kwok from UN DESA is actually going to just say a few words of introduction. And then we are really looking for quite an open, and I'm sure, a fairly robust discussion as well.

After that, we'll move to briefings from other related or relevant initiatives or organizations. As I said, there were five or so that had come in with specific requests to give some brief updates on their activities and specifically where they think there might be some collaboration opportunities with the IGF. And certainly is open for any other updates from the floor in a similar vein as well.

And then that leaves 45 minutes at the end of the day to either continue with a retreat discussion, if that is of most interest, or if there are other topics that individuals would like the opportunity to bring up. Then we will use that slot for that.

At some point during the afternoon, I will try and decide whether there are other topics that people would like to use that slot for or do we continue on with either one of the other two agenda items, either the retreat or briefings from other organizations. But we'll take that call partway through the afternoon.

Just trying to check a note here.

Yes. So, first, I'd like to thank all the U.N. staff for helping us sort out the mic system here. I think it got better after we sort of calmed down. And probably I was actually not using individual's first names but, in fact, the names on your placards. That signals which mic to actually light up. So I want to thank them for all their support and staff there.

Obviously want to support the interpreters and the scribes. We do have scribing. Those transcripts are incredibly useful. I actually rely on them a lot myself. And certainly the secretariat, too, for all of their support and activities here.

And now I'm looking to see if Thomas -- if that has given Thomas time to put his comment in or not.

>>REMOTE INVERVENTION: Yes, if you allow, I will read his comment. Just a second.

Hi, this is Thomas Schneider from Switzerland. I just wanted to inform you about a national IGF that has probably a unique feature. At the Swiss IGF that was held for the second time this year in May, we had a one-day meeting with substantive three plenaries and two workshops.

What is probably unique at the Swiss IGF is the fact that we decided in the multistakeholder steering group that we will not allow panels. We only have two five-minute entry talks and then no panels. We had an audience of around 100 people talking to each other, people from all stakeholder groups including members of parliament.

And it was an amazing experience that everybody loved because there was a completely different dynamic and extremely rich in substance because with this format, many newcomers to the IGF were able to participate and share their expertise.

This is in contrast to many sessions elsewhere where you have the same panelists talking almost all the time. This is an inspiration for how making sessions more -- this will be the end of my comment. Thank you.

>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you. Does sound like a very interesting experience.

I have Liesyl Franz in the queue.

Liesyl, you have the floor.

>>LIESYL FRANZ: Thank you, Chair. And good morning, everybody -- or afternoon, I suppose. And I -- at the risk of taking away two minutes of your 15 minutes to give everything back, I just didn't know if you wanted me to provide just a quick overview of the main session proposals that came in. I noticed it was on the agenda, and maybe I skipped my moment at the time. I don't know if you wanted me to provide that quick read-out.

Okay. Just thank you to everybody who provided proposals for the main sessions. And apologies to Ginger and Jac for not capturing their proposal in the first go-round. Thank you, Chengetai, for resending the proposal compilation.

There were nine main session proposals that came in. I'll read them briefly for the benefit of the transcriptions and open consultation, knowing that we will probably have more of a discussion about them later in the week.

The first is towards an interoperable global Internet network, solving current problems on cyber jurisdiction.

The second is connecting the next billion, phase 2, as we heard from Constance earlier.

The third is sustainable development, Internet and inclusive growth.

Next is trade agreements and the Internet.

Next is the proposal for the dynamic coalitions main session.

Oops. Sorry. There we go.

Then shaping the future of Internet governance, which was proposal -- workshop proposal 179.

Next is assessing the role of Internet governance in the SDGs.

Next is the national and regional IGF initiatives main session.

And then the ninth one, economic, social, and cultural rights, what are the implications for the Internet and sustainable development.

The compilation includes the proposals that people sent in with more information, if that's of -- so be sure to take a look at that. Thank you.

>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Good. Thank you, Liesyl. That was a helpful intervention.

With that, I think we'll call this session closed. We'll look to start promptly at 3:00, if we can, though. We have quite a number of very interesting and somewhat meaty topics, so I thank you all and I will see you back here at 3:00.

[ Lunch break ]

[ Gavel ]

>>CHENGETAI MASANGO: Ladies and gentlemen, we're about to start in one minute. Thank you very much. If we could all take our seats.

>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Well, thank you, everybody, for coming back here. I just want to -- a couple of quick comments on the agenda for this afternoon. We have had two requests for the last slot, which is an open discussion. One of them was specifically a couple of the community members requested time to discuss some of the topics that are on the Day 2 and Day 3 of this meeting. In other words, the MAG meeting itself. And I'm going to -- I think that's only appropriate that if there are topics that are of interest to the community members from the MAG meeting which will kick off tomorrow morning, that we give some floor time to that. So we will try and maintain the overall timing of the schedule here.

And then there was also a request for a very brief presentation on some work Miguel and the working group has been doing on new formats, and I think that it would be helpful in terms of just getting people to think about it a little bit, think about it overnight. We can talk about it a little bit more before we go into the broader workshop discussion tomorrow.

So we have those two items on that final slot.

So with that, I will turn the floor over in just a moment to Wai-Min Kwok from UN DESA. He's going to just introduce the retreat. I think a lot of information has been shared already. He's not intending to do a full or comprehensive presentation but a short retreat [sic], and then we would open it up to comments from the floor.

And in this session, we clearly want to hear from community members. We also obviously need to hear from the MAG members as well.

So it will be a slightly different session than what we might normally do in terms of prioritizing speakers in the open consultation day.

So with that, I'll give the floor to Wai-Min.

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

Let me just start with what Mr. Wu, under secretary general for DESA, mentioned this morning.

This retreat is really part of an ongoing process that really is what you know. IGF has -- there's a past 10 years of IGF history, but looking forward, there's -- this renewal of 10 years is an opportunity for the community as a whole to see how we can advance not just on a more ad hoc or yearly effect but what is the longer-term strategy to guide us through that.

First is that for -- for DESA, I think we are convening this on behalf of the secretary-general. One is that it's actually -- other than the Tunis outcome, it's also related very much to the development agenda of UN DESA itself.

So -- but then again, IGF is a very unique platform. It is unlike other platforms. At the U.N., as you know, we have several platforms. The IGF being that unique, that means we really have to call on the community to give us advice. The retreat is really a brainstorming session for -- we're actually looking at participants with rich experience, with diverse expertise, some of whom have contributed a lot, some of whom have good knowledge.

As you know, Mr. Nitin Desai will be joining us, at least in the beginning of the retreat. We also have -- other than Lynn herself, we have former chair of MAG, including Markus himself, Janis. We are also getting Mr. Peter Major, who is the CSTD chair and who is also the chair of the working group on improvement of IGF. And a lot of you know that the retreat participants in any case, they're all published in the Web site, the IGF Web site. And along with that is also all the documents there.

While there are different -- different consideration constraints being the retreat -- the objective, I'd like to take more of a holistic strategy discussion among individuals who have expertise, but how to actually come up with refreshing idea, and also it's not just one idea, it can be different ideas. It can be polarized ideas, it can be opposing views, but to pull together. That goes to kind of what initially we talk about as outcome but now we actually -- we correct our text, because "outcome" I think it also leads to different interpretations. So at the end of the retreat, there will be a set of ideas, a set of suggestions, probably in one document or a single document. That's actually more -- more of the formatting. But in any case, that will be going back to the community. As we have several discussions with some of you, including with Lynn as the chair, it could be a working document, it could be -- it could serve as an ongoing work in progress to guide the work of different work streams, including whether it's in the MAG or in the IGF secretariat itself or the different initiatives coming from IGF.

One last thing that I want to mention is that the -- there is actually this open process and the inclusive process of IGF is something that we would like to continue to uphold. So as you know, starting from the agenda, the call for participations -- right? -- and also the call for inputs, at this moment we receive a total of 28 inputs. They're all on line. And part of the discussion -- not part, but in the discussion, any documents coming out will also be published on line as soon as they are ready.

We continue -- we have to continue to listen to all the stakeholders, including yourself, the wider community, on how we can actually improve not just the retreats, the modality, but also the entire IGF process itself. So thank you, Madam Chair.

>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Wai-Min.

And there are no other comments from Chengetai?

I don't know that I have anything to add to that specifically, so I think we'll just open the floor for questions, and I want to check and see if we have the online participation sorted out. No?

>> (Off microphone.)

>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: But are they able to hear us or are they just reading from the transcript?

>> (Off microphone.)

>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Okay. I do hope we get that sorted out soon.

So in the queue, I have mic 166. Okay. I'm going to remember you as -- you have the floor, Chip.

>>CHIP SHARP: Thank you very much, and I appreciate the opportunity to comment on the retreat.

I guess a couple of questions I'm not -- still not really clear on in terms of the retreat is, it sounds like there's going to be some output from this retreat. I guess there should be, since there wouldn't be a point of having a retreat if not there's not some output. But the question -- my question is: What -- who is that output going to and what are they going to do with it? I mean, what's going to be made -- what is this going to be made use of? Thank you.

>>WAI-MIN KWOK: What I mentioned just now, the outputs will be a list of ideas and suggestions. And they could be different documents of the five identified sessions following the agenda. And this will be put online for consultation with the different stakeholder groups including the MAG itself. So there is actually no -- first of all, no decisions. And it will not even be mentioned as recommendations. But it's a list of ideas and suggestions to see how we can actually put forward for consideration.

One example is the NRI. How the whole community including the IGF secretariat should do the support to NRI, so there could be a list of ideas. As I mentioned, it's brainstorming. So there could be many ideas. Some of this could be related to find -- some of it will be related to communication outreach. So that can be different work stream including the current initiative by the MAG and also the various NRI focal point. They could actually take that for future action.

>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Wai-Min.

We would actually like to hear from people here in terms of what would work. Obviously there have been smaller discussions and smaller group meetings and people sending in suggestions. One of the suggestions we looked at was to do something similar to the WSIS+10 output paper from last year's IGF, which had a series of guiding questions as input to the discussion. The discussion was held. It was very open, very multistakeholder. We had four microphone queues around the room.

And the paper that was submitted afterwards, which is part of the IGF record, basically, said there was a discussion around topic X, a little bit kind of context or background, and then tried to represent -- and I was the one who wrote the bulk of it, but tried to represent there was significant agreement on X with some dissenting opinions on Y; or Y was proposed but there was no clear consensus and a couple of other alternatives were suggested.

So it was a factual report-out which tried to sort of assess for everybody else in the room what sort of support there was or wasn't for the various points that came up in the meeting.

So one suggestion is we do something like that, probably organized around the five main sessions and then we put the document up for public comment, possibly using the same platform, the same tool that, in fact, was used for the Connecting the Next Billion Phase I pilot, which allows for very interactive editing. In fact, I think that was the same platform that was used for the NETmundial input document or paper.

But, again, we are really looking for the conversation today and the next couple of days to help clarify what may help people know of better practices, better processes, better tools. I think everybody would like to hear them. And then, of course, we would need to get the support of the participants and the retreat on the day as well.

So I throw that out there. We are really looking to hear from -- assuming everybody wants the IGF to be as successful and have as much impact as possible, that this is -- this retreat is the start of a journey which is really looking to start a discussion at quite a high-level brainstorming that we can take out to the community and communities. What would make that most helpful? Assuming, again, we all share the objective of looking to advance the IGF and have as much impact as possible from the work we all do.

So with that, I'll open the queue. If people could really please use their mic. You have your hand up in the back. But if you could use the technology in front of us as well, that would be helpful. Please introduce yourself.

>> RICHARD JORDAN: Thank you. Richard Jordan from the Royal Academy of Science International Trust.

I think one use of any group of ideas should all go to whoever the new Secretary-General will be. I think many of them have stressed the desire to reach out to different audiences, to reach out to youth, to engage business and industry. And I think whoever it is should benefit perhaps from ideas. And that could be one purpose of whatever is produced, whether they're just ideas or later recommendations. Thank you.

>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you.

Michael Nelson, you have the floor.

>>MICHAEL NELSON: Thank you, Chairman. Mike Nelson with CloudFlare, a web security company.

As you work through the issues at the retreat, I hope that a lot of time will be spent on what I consider a pretty serious problem, which is that we are losing some of our stakeholders at the IGF.

When we heard the report first thing this morning about where the proposals came from, I think we heard that only about 10% of the proposals came from the private sector. And if you look at what's been happening over the last five years, we really have seen fewer and fewer people from the private sector who are making some very important decisions about Internet governance. So I think we have to face up to that.

And one way to face up to that is to realize the private sector tends to go to meetings where there's a lot of attention paid to what goes on. To be crass, many companies go where the reporters are and where there are news reports about what's going on.

We have an incredibly rich amount of content coming out of IGF meetings and, yet, the press is not showing up. They're not talking to some of the best people, grappling with the issues that will define what happens to the Internet over the next five years.

It would be a pity if at Guadalajara we didn't have dozens of mainstream media reporters, some with news cameras. We'll have a few bloggers. But if the past is prologue, we're not going to get as much attention as we need.

One thing that we might think about doing -- and this is a result of a conversation I had with Peter Dengate Thrush over lunch -- is we should think about doing some warmup Webinars prior to the main event. Tim O'Reilly does a very successful conference called Strata. It's about big data. And in the six to eight weeks before the conference, he does a weekly Webinar with some of the best panelists talking about the most exciting topics. It's just an hour, hour and a half. And it's a way to build momentum, get people excited about the new topics, and also a way to pull reporters into the discussion.

Some of the reporters won't bother to come to Guadalajara. But at least they'll tune in and they'll tell the world what's going on. And that, I think, will have a very positive feedback and get governments to pay more attention, get private sector to pay more attention, and help us restore the balance between the different stakeholder groups that we want to reach at the IGF.

I just think we need to do more to reach those communities which have not been coming as often as they used to.

So thank you very much. And I look forward to the results of the retreat. It's a great group of people spending two days on a very important mission.

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

Council of Europe, Christina -- oh, Lee.

>>LEE HIBBARD: Thank you, Madam Chair. Lee Hibbard from the Council of Europe. I have been Internet governance coordinator for many years in the IGF, since its inception. And I've been to many MAG meetings, and I have been to pretty much all the IGFs except for Hyderabad.

And the Council of Europe is very supportive, of course, since the outset and has brought expertise into this process and has taken very good, you know, ideas away and then turned them into public policy instruments in the Council of Europe sphere with its 47 member states dealing with the human rights, rule of law, and democracy online. So it's been very useful for us over the years. I think we have to reflect on the different actors and what it means for them.

I think the biggest question and the most important is to say: What does success look like? I'd like to know more from the room and from remote what does it look like. What does it look like for NRIs? What does success look like for them? They're doing the same thing at the national and regional level. Are they successful? Do they see that?

I was very struck by the Undersecretary-General UN DESA this morning who said very eloquently it's a lot about SDG implementation. So I think one has to be -- there's a need to maybe be more narrow rather than too broad sometimes in what the success looks like.

He said very well, I think, the question of: Where are we close? Where can we achieve -- where can we achieve wins? Are we close in terms of positions and linkages and synergies, which he mentioned is very important. Are we linked? Are we in synergy where we can be? You know, the Internet governance strategy of the Council of Europe for the next four years, 2016-2019, has a number of actors in which we will try to link up with others to work out responses to issues like law enforcement issues, jurisdiction issues, et cetera.

Are we writing that down? Are we actually saying we need to -- you know, we need to get X and Y together in the same room and have that conversation?

So the question is: Who are we serving? Where -- what public policy are we referring to? I know I'm being very -- I'm asking too many questions and not giving enough answers. But, I mean, do we -- we need some wins, I think. We need some wins where we have proximity. And a lot has been mentioned time and time again -- I want to reassert that -- the issue of -- I mean, the question of journalists is very important. The question of visibility of course is always very important. But outreach and capacity building, are we doing enough capacity building? Are we creating enough capacity building programs? We talk about young people, but are enough young people coming? What can we do to really maximize global young people coming or talking about Internet governance? And the same thing goes for human rights. There's always a very big push for human rights every year. Are we doing enough on that score? So, I mean, what does success look like? It will look different for different actors, different stakeholders, but there must be something in the middle of all of those which brings us together and where we can have some wins. Thank you.

>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Lee. I mean, I think there were some good questions there, and we've got three more people in the queue, but maybe we could ask people to either -- if a question, which is "what does success look like for you" works for you, it would be helpful if you have some concrete examples of the -- you know, you know, the way you think we can engage the community after the retreat. Another way of saying that is what might some useful outputs look like? What form might they take? Those are things which would really be helpful and certainly good input to the retreat.

You know, a lot of good questions there as well.

Next on the list we have ICANN, which I assume is Nigel. So ICANN is the next in the queue.

>>NIGEL HICKSON: Ah. Yes. Good afternoon. Good afternoon. Thank you, Madam Chair.

And it's a great opportunity to comment on this, to comment on this repeat -- on this retreat.

You asked the question what does success look like, or the question was asked, and I think that's very important, indeed.

I think it's important not so -- not so much on the retreat, although it's clearly important that the retreat is a success, but what I would suggest is critically important is that the retreat contributes to the overall success of the IGF itself, and I -- I think we're at a very important juncture. Clearly this time last year, we were in the runup to the WSIS+10 review and all the importance of that in terms of the future of Internet governance, but the way that the IGF develops and matures over the next 9 to 10 years, I think, is going to be equally important in setting the overall agenda for Internet governance.

And so for the retreat, I would like to draw on just three elements, really, that have been covered in the various submissions that have been made, and it's really good news, as UN DESA noted, that you had 28 contributions for this retreat, and that's clearly significant.

So the first point is the document to be produced, or whatever. And very much in favor. I think it's an excellent initiative to have a living document, to have something that comes out of the retreat that can be presented to the MAG, and just as importantly, can be presented to the IGF in Guadalajara as something that's living. Not a static document that makes five recommendations and that's that, has dates and codes or whatever, but some real ideas behind a living document that people can contribute to and can take it forward.

So I think that's really, really important.

I think the second point is the role and composition of the MAG itself and what the MAG does.

This is a tremendous opportunity. As someone said in the -- in their contributions to the retreat -- and I won't name names because I've forgotten who wrote it, but I -- someone said to the effect that this is a very expensive program committee, the MAG.

This is a tremendous group of talent in this room. And I'm not in the MAG so I can say that freely. And surely the talent and the experience of this group of people could be used not only to shape the program, which it does in such an excellent way in terms of planning on the workshops and the forums and that, but also could look at the whole structure of how the IGF goes forward, as I'm sure it will in the future.

And one of those ideas, and this third point coming out of the retreat was in the submission from the U.K. government, from Mark Carvell on the nature of this idea of policy initiatives.

Now, this isn't new, as such, but I think Mark put it in a very eloquent way in his submission.

In other words, this ability of having some form of discussions at the IGF on certain policy ideas so you don't just discuss the broader issues, but you also discuss a question. A question, if you like, that the international community has.

We often talk about the IGF, and I often talk about the IGF, as being the ideal forum for putting ideas into people's heads that can then go to the policy forums, whether they be OECD or ICANN or some other policy forum, and input into that policy forum in the knowledge and in the experience of what happened at the IGF. But there's also another way round, in that we use the IGF as a test bed, as an arena in which to evaluate some of these policy ideas.

So we come to the IGF and we say, "ICANN is thinking of doing X or Y" or "The ITU is thinking of doing this" or "The OECD is thinking of doing this. What does the IGF think? What does the broader community think?" Because the IGF is such a broader community than we have in some of our own organizations.

So I think that's a really excellent idea and something that could be taken forward.

So I'll finish there. I wish the retreat every success, and I'm sure it will be an excellent occasion for this genesis of a new nine-year strategic think, so to speak. That's dreadful English, I know, but there you are. Thank you.

>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you very much, Nigel.

Next in the queue is Ritu Sharma, and you have the floor.

>>RITU SHARMA: Good afternoon. Thank you again for the opportunity, and I'd like to share some thoughts from my experience of organizing about a hundred conferences in 14 cities in the last four years in four countries.

I think one I would say is potentially looking at feeder events into different regions where your stakeholders are. Speaking and adding to what Mike Nelson said, when I go into Silicon Valley, where I'm based out of, and I speak with my corporate partners and such, very few people know the ITU, the IGF, except for the -- really a handful of policy folks. So potentially hosting some conversations, even if it's an annual simple breakfast forum or something in some of these technology hubs where the technology community is present, where you go where some of the stakeholders are would be a good way to engage with them, also to increase your visibility.

Second thing I'd like to say is really thinking about -- during your retreat about what you can do to be systematically inclusive of younger people and women in a way that's not very cumbersome to engage. An example would be, I congratulate you on all the efforts you've made in the comprehensive application for speaking slots at the IGF where you've given a number of criteria to make sure that it's -- everybody is represented, but it's also quite cumbersome. So thinking about some ways that you can make that process either easier or perhaps having a side track for first-time speakers, younger speakers, women, to potentially give you ideas about if you're interested in speaking but you don't have either the experience or the roster to come up with speakers from five different constituencies, many of us don't have that, so we are really prohibited and discouraged from applying. And I really tried to get help to get a proposal in in the time, but to know a business person, a policy person from different sectors, from different genders, it was very, very difficult for me and I was discouraged.

So I would say not to lower your standards and the work that you've already done in being inclusive, but I think creating a forum, as I said earlier in the morning, but to kind of really build on that during your retreat, to think about what can you do to create a forum for people who are first-timers, who are not connected across domains. Those are your new and fresh voices. What can you do to give them a central place to say, "Hey, anybody who wants to participate but doesn't have the expertise or the know-how to know all these things, you can congregate here and our staff person will help you figure out where we can put you all together or figure some similar mechanism."

And then finally, I think looking at embracing technology a little bit. Given that we are an Internet Governance Forum, we at the social media for nonprofits, our program where we've served over 10,000 people in four countries, we've used Internet platforms, whether it's Periscope, whether it's Twitter, whether it's Facebook Live, you name it, almost every one of them, so I think using a combination of social media a little bit more effectively to engage people who are not here and maintaining that visibility and branding, and potentially having, you know, a live Twitter feed, like -- live feed besides the Webcast feed would help you engage around hashtags and be up and about on technology without being -- without favoring one provider or another would be some simple suggestions for you consider during your retreat. Thank you very much for the opportunity to comment and I hope some of it is helpful.

>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Ritu. Some very helpful comments.

Izumi Okutani, you have the floor.

>>IZUMI OKUTANI: Mike has mentioned about the need for raising profile for the IGF, and I think what is needed is to extract what's relevant per stakeholder group.

So going back to my community, I give update of the IGF and try to raise awareness, but I'm from the technical community so I can share what's relevant for the technical community, but coverage from other stakeholders' perspectives is weak.

For example, I still have challenges in raising awareness and having more contributions from business.

So having support from the -- either the IGF secretariat or having like a common joint effort as the MAG on what's relevant from each stakeholder's perspective for this year's IGF would be really helpful.

And outreaching to the media. Just to give an example that's separate from the IGF, we tried a media outreach event on the IANA stewardship transition and focusing on messaging towards the media, and that really worked for our coverage in the Japanese media. So just to share an example of what kind of work we might be able to consider something like that for the IGF.

I also want to mention that it's not just for the media or the publicity or for stakeholders, but reaching out to the national and regional IGFs are very important, so very glad that this focused agenda on this topic. And I also would like to emphasize that this existing group on the national/regional IGFs are helpful, and in addition to what's already being done, I think again having like highlights of what's, like, important for this year, what are the features for this year, is really helpful.

I happened to be on the MAG until this year so I can do that for AP IGF or the national IGF in Japan, but after this, I would not be able to share this.

So if there is such opportunity that maybe non-MAG members can also participate, but from the national and regional IGF, like a Webinar or something like that, then they can actually go back to their communities and make sure that people are up-to-date, so that they can sync up in their program on what's relevant in terms of themes or like making sure that a workshop is submitted from their respective communities. So those are my suggestions. Thank you.

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

Michael, were you in the queue again?

>>MICHAEL NELSON: Thank you. Yes. Mike Nelson with CloudFlare again.

I just had 40 seconds.

In response to Lee's very good question, which is, what does success look like, I wanted to propose two tweets, since I'm real fond of tweets. Two ways to summarize what I would like to see the IGF really accomplish.

The first tweet is what I would like to see as CloudFlare, which is I would like to see IGF provide the place where the very best people are talking about the most important Internet issues in a way that will inform the debates happening in national governments, in courts, and in board rooms, and then #bestpracticesforum, because I think that's one of the most important ways in which we can have an impact on all those debates.

The second thing I would say as a part-time professor at Georgetown who teaches Internet studies, I would like to see the IGF be the TEDTalks of Internet, so that these incredible sessions we have, which are Webcast and which are available on the Friends of IGF Web site, would be accessed not by a few hundred people or a thousand people, but by literally 50,000 people, because in many cases what happened in Joao Pessoa or will happen in Guadalajara will be some of the best discussions on these topics with many of the right people and we just have to get that -- those resources out to more people.

Thank you very much.

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

We have Hanane Boujemi. You have the floor.

>>HANANE BOUJEMI: Hi. My name is Hanane Boujemi and I'm senior manager with Hivos IG programs.

Regarding Lee's question about what success looked like, I'd just like to share an experience of a program that I'm managing at the moment with Hivos. It's called IG MENA and we're trying to engage civil society actors from the Middle East in the dialogue on Internet governance, and I think from four years working on this program, what I learned is that continuous support to voices who do not have necessarily the space, the means, or the knowledge to be integrated in this field in general, and I think the IGF can probably learn from this experience by trying to work with communities on a continuous basis rather than just organizing Webinars or let's say advocacy meetings around the forum itself.

So I think in my opinion capacity building does not stop at a specific point but it's a continuous work and I suggest that we actually take the support from national and regional IGFs by maybe organizing focus groups of people who are willing to work at the local level and regional level with the wider participants, because the more we have a centralized structure to work with communities or to engage with people, the more challenging it is, so we need to scale the work and, you know, divide it among different, you know, parties or organizations active in this field.

I think it's also important to give the lead to people at the grass-roots level because they are facing different issues that we're maybe not aware of here at this level, and due to several challenges they're not able to make it here to the room.

So I think we probably should think how we can reach out to these communities at their level, at the local level and the regional level, and help transmit their messages to this fora.

Thank you very much.

>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you.

We now have participant number 149. I guess look at your mics and see if your mic turns red. Okay. Great.

>>DEBORAH BROWN: Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Deborah Brown. I'm from APC. Thanks very much for the opportunity to comment here.

I want to go back to the modalities of the retreat itself. It's really great to hear that the outcomes of the retreat will be brought back to the community for input and for comment.

I do have a question, though, on what happens with these outputs next, what are the roles and responsibilities for bringing them forward.

The reason I ask is because it's important that there's accountability, so that whatever this -- whatever outcome this process leads to leads to the strengthening of the IGF and that the broader IGF community has an opportunity to contribute to this.

And I agree with some points that were raised earlier that this can be an evolving process rather than a static one, but there still needs to be clarity on who is carrying the outcomes forward and that they -- otherwise, there's risk that this joint effort won't lead to the common goal of strengthening the IGF.

One suggestion that APC included in our contribution to the IGF retreat inputs was that a smaller advisory group can be established with no more than 12 people that can work with senior secretariat staff, with UN DESA personnel, and can include MAG members, which can be identified through a NomCom process, and that this group can help implement the outcomes of the retreat process.

And just another point on the retreat itself is I just wanted to underscore the importance of these discussions to be open and support some level of remote participation as much as is possible. There's been some suggestions of maybe a one-hour -- one hour a day of remote participation or allowing participants to tweet using Chatham House rules and posting summaries from one day to the next.

I just wanted to highlight those recommendations that APC and others have put forward. Thanks very much.

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

Are there any comments that either Wai-Min or Chengetai would like to make to that? Sorry, I didn't know you were conferring. Pass for now?

>>CHENGETAI MASANGO: Yeah, okay. We can pass for now. It's just the comments that have been made for remote participation that we have.

>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Go ahead.

>>CHENGETAI MASANGO: Just to answer Deborah's question that we have had a lot of discussion about this remote participation within the group of participants as well. And it was felt that -- because we operate on a consensus mode, right? So -- and there was a wide-ranging views on that.

But it was felt that by some participants that remote participation would distract from the purpose of the meeting, and it is a retreat. So if it's a retreat, it should behave like a retreat where people go away in a secluded place and discuss.

We are also going to publish some daily updates on what has been going on in that retreat. And we still have the open question on whether or not the actual participants can tweet. But we are going to finalize that on the first day of the retreat. But we are looking into that, and we take your concerns seriously.

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

Shita, you have the floor.

>>SHITA LAKSMI: Thank you, Madam Chair. Can you hear me? Shita Laksmi from civil society. To share with you that Indonesia is testing the input for the retreat via multistakeholder processes. So we do it via email. We do it discussing directly. And at the end of the day, we do it via Google Docs together.

I was observing how the process would stand. And one highlight was that there's an urgent need to make IGF relevant to the real process on the ground. "What's in it for me" was the main questions that we had.

I agree with the representative from the E.U. Council, perhaps to make the recommendation for the retreat to be more narrow and tangible for community also according to what Izumi has mentioned.

I really hope that the retreat can give recommendations that can help IGF processes contribute to the more relevant issues. Thank you.

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

Marilyn Cade, you have the floor.

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

I'm just going to make two comments, reflecting comments, that have come up in discussions and conference calls with the NRIs and ask that this be taken into account.

There's a section in the questions which refers to the NRIs, but very few of the NRIs themselves have been able to spend time on submitting responses. That may be because Anja and I are keeping them too busy working on their main session.

But I think it's particularly important that any discussions about the NRIs not be taken in realtime, even if there are two or three or four there. This is something they're committed to discussing in their calls and to providing further comments on. And I'd like to be sure that that is respected. While any ideas that are put forward by others about the roles that NRI should play or have further support could be provided would be, I think, also very welcomed by them. That's my main point.

My second point is on the one hand I hear reflection that this is a brainstorming session and everything will come back to the community, and then I hear about ideas that might even go into the project document.

I hope -- I liked the idea that you had mentioned, Chair, of perhaps using something of the format that we used in the WSIS+10 consultation because I think that's a very open, inclusive, and with time limits to speaking. That also means you'll be able to take input from all of the participants on a rotating basis.

Perhaps even if you can't support remote participation, and it's probably too late for you to support the transcript approach, it would be good if you can be as detailed as possible. And I think the suggestion that you made on how the report from the WSIS+10 was done might be a very effective way to provide that documentation. Thank you.

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

Just for the very first point you raise, I don't think there's any intent from anybody that I've spoken to about the retreat about sort of committing or making assumptions on behalf of what is either good for the NRIs, would work for the NRIs, or certainly committing any resources from them. That will obviously be a very robust consultation back with that community. So I just want to make sure that point was clear.

There are quite a few people in the queue. So we'll just keep going through and then maybe see if we can get to a couple of other wrap-up topics towards the end there.

So I have United Kingdom, Mark Carvell.

United Kingdom should have the floor, please. Waiting for the mic to turn. There you go.

>>MARK CARVELL: I'm on. Thank you, Chair. Good afternoon, everyone. A lot of very interesting points and suggestions have been tabled. And United Kingdom government stays supportive of the retreat as an opportunity following the WSIS+10 review to look at the IGF and do some really long-term forward thinking for the next ten years. Obviously things can change during that ten-year period, so shouldn't be too prescriptive.

Our expectation is for the retreat to do some rethink of some key elements of the process that will address some of the deficiencies that have become apparent. And Mike Nelson flagged up a very important trend, if that's the right word, that seems to have developed in recent years of a fall off in private sector involvement in terms of submission of workshop proposals. Perhaps that's reflected in some of the active participation from the private sector.

And there are other problems as well. I mean, I'm from a U.K. government ministry, but I don't see that many government officials actively participating. Not many governments submit workshop proposals. There must be reasons for that, which the retreat can very usefully address in a very timely fashion.

And perhaps one of the conditions that we're currently experiencing is post-WSIS+10 is maybe an element of complacency and we need to be shaken out of that.

So in terms of success and what kind of measures might we look to following the retreat and the process that the retreat might set in an ongoing way, if that is, indeed, the plan. Firstly -- well, hopefully, we will see countries queuing up to host the IGF. We don't really have that assurance at the moment in terms of who's going to host the IGF over the immediate future even, which is quite worrying. So success in terms of countries saying, yes, they want to be part of the IGF action, actually want to host it, and their stakeholder communities all coming to the and that particular country saying, yes, this is the time for us to do that.

Secondly, success in terms of some real understanding of how the intersessional work is developing, how it's evolving, how it's meeting needs and expectations, and measures of how actually the experience of the last two years of intersessional work is showing results. We don't really have that assurance yet, that the best practice fora and the policy options documented, which are incredibly value, we don't have that assurance that they've got high visibility and they are being factored into public and private sector policy-making processes. So success in terms of looking at how to advance the intersessional tangible outcomes.

Thirdly, young people involvement. Yes, this is very important; but there are problems. We would like to see young people involved in as many sessions as possible rather than saying, Here's a dedicated main session for young people. That's not the approach I think which they would like. They want to be involved and participate. But how do you get that level of participation when it means travel over possibly long distances, except for obviously the young people in the country which is hosting the IGF.

So that brings you to the question of getting the level of effective remote participation up to the same standard as physical participation.

Now, fourth measure of success is restoring the diversity of issues and levels of participation. And what I said in my contribution, my written contribution, to the retreat was that maybe a process which complements the bottom-up workshop call for setting the program, a complementary process, will be to solicit proposals for policy questions which ICANN touched upon when they spoke earlier.

This, I think, will provide a channel for engaging with the private sector with governments and with other constituencies with an interest in the Internet, including users, business users, the ordinary citizens, through the soliciting of policy questions to the kinds of entities who have outreach to those communities, be they the national and regional IGFs themselves, be they the intergovernmental organizations which may have business committees and so on. I'm thinking, for example, of the OECD. And ICANN which has Governmental Advisory Committee, a technical committee, a users advisory committee, ALAC. So you've got some important networks that you could use in order to solicit proposals for policy questions and then that will promote awareness of what the IGF could do for those communities and actually attract them into participating actively either physically in person or through remote participation.

So that was one of the objectives that I had in mind for the policy question -- looking at how policy questions can get those communities that are either drifting away or who are not aware of what the IGF has to offer in terms of opportunity and where success can be generated. Thanks.

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

Just one sort of quick comment here. And there's obviously not a lot of interaction back and forth. The retreat is called by DESA. It's a retreat of all the stakeholder communities that are there. And I think all of us here, and everybody here in the community, is really listening to all of these inputs. And we should absorb them all.

I would ask actually if the secretariat could perhaps from the transcript get to a sort of summary of comments as well, that at the end of the day are actually given to all of the retreat participants. And we can post that online as well.

So I just wanted to explain we're all listening very carefully. We're taking notes. I think it would be a good idea to provide a summary of the comments which feed into the retreat participants and posted here so people really recognize that the comments were understood and are being pulled into the retreat as well.

So with that, I have quite a long queue in front of me. Obviously, the shorter the interventions are, the more people we will get to hear from. So if you are in the queue already, if you could make your interventions quite to the point.

Right now, since a few more have come in, the last one I will recognize here at this point in time is Chip Sharp. He's not next. He's at the very end of the queue.

And when we get to that end, if, in fact, there is still time left in this session, we can open it back up. But I don't want to mislead anybody with respect to their time to speak here at this point.

So, Marilia, you have the floor. Could somebody please turn Marilia's mic on.

>>MARILIA MACIEL: Thank you, Lynn. This is Marilia Maciel speaking in my personal capacity.

I actually find the question about the future and what we expect very interesting. But I also think that at this moment, it would be useful to look into the past.

And this is not the first time that we are discussing IGF improvements. We have a recent experience about that, as CSTD creating the working group on IGF improvements. I had an opportunity to be part of it with some of the people that are here in the room, Marilyn, Constance, and others. And it produced a report. I think that this report talks about the same points or almost the same points that we will be discussing in the retreat. And some progress was made there in some of the points such as making the IGF much more output oriented. Good steps were made there.

But I think there are gaps. It seems that we could have advanced more such as, for instance, funding the IGF or have transparency and accountability when it comes to the IGF funding; transparency and accountability in the process of selecting MAG members; more opportunities for including less developed regions.

I do agree with concerns with regards to private sector participation. But I think that the point the report does in terms of including less developed regions of the world is also true today. But looking at the report, I think that it was a very interesting exercise in which we have five members from different stakeholder groups. We had the opportunity to meet six, seven times in Geneva. And it's something very concrete.

And I think that one thing missed from this report, which is implementation afterwards. We have a good document. But we did not have a follow-up to this document. That's why I think there's this uneven level of implementation in the recommendations that were made.

So I do agree with the suggestion made by Deborah. There needs to be a strategy for follow-up. And although it's a very good and interesting idea to have the document posted online for comments and treated as a living document, because we are improving every day, it's also very important to have a stable document that we can implement and establish milestones and to see when they're going to be achieved.

So looking back at the previous experience, it was a rich one but implementation was missing. And I think we should include that.

If I can make just a small contribution in terms of future and where I think IGF could develop towards, I think that in the last years we have seen an inflation of different platforms, commissions, initiatives to discuss Internet governance. I don't think this is necessarily bad. Some of them are taking points of the agenda of the IGF and diving deep in these points. This is something that the IGF -- maybe it's not the best space to do. So I think they are useful. And even if we believe they are not useful, they are there to stay. It's very hard to turn back on that.

So if these platforms are going to increase in number, how the IGF can have an interplay with them? In my view, the IGF could be a platform of platforms, a meeting point in which there's different exercises and commissions. They come together, and they talk to one another. So if there's a point that could be maybe explored in the retreat, I think that this would be a useful one: How the IGF can be a useful space in which these different initiatives, commissions, platforms come together and talk to one another about the development and the progress that they are making. Thank you.

>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Marilia, some very interesting comments.

Next in the queue is Lori Schulman.

>>LORI SCHULMAN: Hello. I support what Marilia said about implementation and outcomes. I think that's critical.

What I would see, what does success look like, I'm new to this process, my organization is new to this process. We do represent the private sector. So I think that's important to know, that there are people coming to the table. Our membership comprises 6700 organizations that are devoted to brand protection. Of these organizations, they include major corporations, small businesses, emerging businesses, nonprofits as well as academics. So we are a microcosm of the community but with a specific interest.

I feel it's important to explain that here today so that you do know there are new interested members from the private sector who are ready to dig in and help with the hard work ahead.

That being said, specifically I think it's important that whatever comes of this retreat, that the participants look to achieving a well-defined communications plan. And I don't necessarily mean for the retreat alone. I would look to how to plan -- create a template for communicating results, whatever the results are, even if they're inconclusive. And that this plan be a format for reporting after the retreat, reporting after each consultation, reporting after each IGF event.

These could include speaking points for observers from each sector because I do support the point that while it might be easy for someone from the technical community to talk about the technical, someone from the private sector to talk about private sector interests, it's not always easy to communicate all of the other interests. And in order to weave them together into one unified message, I think in fact we have to tailor it to the audiences that we want to speak to so they understand what we're relating to.

I can tell you that my personal observation, my first IGF meeting was this time in Brazil and I was -- it was very interesting for me to hear the different discussions and -- but to also really note that the discussions around private sector issues, particularly around brand protection, which is the issue of my association, was missing. And it's important that if there are contributions being made and we're not aware of it, that we communicate it with speaking points.

I would also offer that whatever these speaking points look like, that we use the list of observers that are coming to the MAG to help generate that, to have an ongoing observer list, if not a MAG list.

I know that there are different lists available now, but there might be an opportunity here for like a communications hub, a place where we can go to get very targeted communications information for our sectors and for the community at large, and I would definitely support that the MAG engage associations, particularly like associations like my own that have their own internal communications structures that did help you start generating the grass-roots input that you need. Thank you.

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

And maybe one quick comment as I'm getting some sort of indication that the -- this notion around the private sector somehow losing sort of significant interest is picking up some steam. I don't actually know that to be true and I actually would suspect that there are probably more proposals that came in, but as a percentage maybe there's a difference because they might have been overtaken by the enthusiasm of another stakeholder group, for instance.

So I would just be careful about picking up on a statistic and looking at absolute numbers and percentages. We can certainly look at that later. It's something the secretariat should do, because if we are losing support of any one of the significant stakeholder groups, we should certainly work to understand why and how we get that back up.

So having said that, I will move to the next in the queue, which is Jimena Sierra. You have the floor.

>>JIMENA SIERRA: Thank you. Thank you very much. Is this listening? Okay. Thank you.

Well, this is Jimena Sierra. I'm representing the technical community from the Federal Telecommunications Institute. I just would like to share very quickly the useful output or ideas that I think that can engage the community after and in the retreat.

So the first of these ideas is to encourage the participation of the people with disabilities, and it's important to have the necessary infrastructure and facilities in the location, but also -- at the retreat but also at the forum.

And also I would like to follow the idea of inclusive participation of these new participants and I think that this could be done to encourage training workshops for these new stakeholders so they can join in the discussions that will take place in the forum.

And by the end of these ideas, I would like also to share that it is important that the results of the Internet Governance Forum have greater dissemination, and this will be by promoting the translation of the most relevant documents so the stakeholders can spread the IGF results within their respective organizations and countries. Thank you.

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

>>L.P. GJORGJINSKI: Thank you. The one -- there's several things that I would like to talk about, but I will stick to one, in the name of time, and that is, how to think of -- during this retreat, how to think of bringing stakeholders a bit closer together. Because I think that there is an unnecessary division between stakeholders that is -- that I would see is even solidifying, and that is unfortunate.

So that would be -- that's the issue I want to talk about.

But before that, I just want to echo something that -- well, two things that were mentioned. One is the communicating results, and I'll just say that I think it's important. That needs to be focused on certainly.

And then what Mark and Nigel caught on, and that is the policy initiatives, the policy questions at the IGF as the -- as the forum, perhaps, to discuss these on a grand scale.

Having said that, I think that -- I thought that actually that is what the IGF would have done from the beginning, and perhaps there was a feeling in the beginning that if the IGF went about that process, it could have taken over or stepped into the territory of existing bodies who have done their jobs well.

So I think that now, after 10 years, we've seen that everybody's doing their job, the IGF is not about to do that, so it has a very specific role that it has proven for itself, and it is a good time, perhaps, to get into policy initiatives and into more substantial things.

To get back to the stakeholder issue that I mentioned in the beginning, I think that there is an unfortunate inflation of divisions between the stakeholder groups, and some are better organized, and actually the one group that keeps on being mentioned here that is somehow retreating, I would say, is quite strong in representing its interests, and that is a good thing, because the private sector has -- is where things are happening and it's a good thing if it's active and it's representing its interests. But other stakeholders have not been so effective in forwarding that interest -- those interests.

The good thing is if they can better understand what this is all about and say, "Okay, this is what we're thinking of doing." The bad thing is if new members come in and they see a division and are reminded by certain interests or groups or individuals who make a career out of making divisions.

Now, those divisions are dangerous, and if that is -- if that keeps on going, it could spill over into other policy areas.

So the big games will be resolved in a different way. There's no need to bring them at the IGF and to the MAG. They will not influence -- well, they will influence to some degree, but the IGF will not influence these big games. So it is bad if we keep on negotiate- -- keep on nurturing a feeling that there's some strong division between us. There isn't. Everybody who has intervened here and everybody who keeps on intervening at these meetings has very similar points of view. Loves the Internet, first of all. Loves the free and open Internet, first -- you know, secondly. So it is -- we should stop nurturing that there's strong divisions and this retreat should certainly focus on how to bring the stakeholder groups together. Cheers.

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

Xiaodong, you have the floor.

>>XIAODONG LEE: Thank you, Madam Chair.

I just want to comment on the success of the IGF for the retreat.

It's no doubt IGF has success in the past 10 years, being a dialogue platform, but if IGF be a success in the next 10 years, it's a common challenge for us, it might be better for the retreat to consider and discuss.

I think IGF is a forum which any meeting, we have thousands of participants in each meeting, but why not we try to highlight the most important governance issues this year and try to outlook the future issues in next year.

Maybe have some kind of editing team to make the material we discuss into IGF annual report in a specific year.

But how IGF success looks like, I think there's three important.

First, no past; the second, no future; the third, to build the collaboration.

I think if people want to know what is the most important thing in the governance issue in each year, please come to IGF and see the forum report.

If people want to know what's the most important governance issue to pay attention next year, just come to IGF.

If people want to build a collaboration on Internet governance and to find a way to solve the problem, please come to IGF to find their partners.

The other way we could achieve this, I do believe IGF would be the most important and unique platform for people to attend and follow up.

I think we should learn a lot from other successful fora. For example, the World Economic forum. So the World Economic Forum leads to many issues which need to be discuss and build a council which is very helpful for the forum, and also the documents delivered by the forum is very useful.

But I think in the past 10 years did a lot for IGF, but what's the achievement for the outcome -- I mean, the outcome document? It's not very, I mean, formalized. I think it's -- we have two or three hundred proposals every year, but not categorized a lot. We could find so many topics are discussed for many years and are in the same track, but why not we build a discussion group based on topics and ask MAG members or some expert to chair the specific discussion group and to deliver the report on that topic. I think it's a forum that we can do. So I think it's just a comment, it's just a suggestion for the retreat to discuss. Thank you.

>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Xiaodong. I'm going to read out the list of people in the queue and then close the queue. So it's closed now.

[ Laughter ]

>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: More names keep popping up.

I have Wanawit, then Sumon, Segun, Chip Sharp, participant number 83, ICC/BASIS, Council of Europe, UNESCO, and Bianca Ho. And we'll close the queue after that so that we can move on to the next topic. I would ask -- and an online participant, which we will definitely give support to because if they're still hanging in there after all the difficulties of the day, they actually deserve certainly our attention and probably our applause.

I would ask everybody to keep their interventions quite short, though, so that we can ensure that there's adequate time for the remaining agenda items. Sumon, you have the floor.

Oh, sorry, did -- Wanawit, you have the floor.

>>WANAWIT AHKUPUTRA: Thank you, Madam Chair. My name is Wanawit Ahkuputra, MAG member and currently the vice chair of the GAC in ICANN.

I also would like to echo what Mark Carvell just mentioned, and I'd like to propose the models that I experienced when -- two aspects, one Thailand setting up the national multistakeholder committee shared by the prime minister which took us almost a year, and the lessons learned we have is also I try to compare for the other floor I working in UNECE. UNECE is coming out with recommendations of National Trade Facilitation board just recently which reflect on the WTO. UNECE is coming up with a recommendation that would lead to how every national organize themselves for the future of the trading, and the major challenge we face when we're setting up the committee is what is the function that this national body should do. And without the recommendation, these would be different from one country to another, and I think the model that UNECE have been proposing and currently WTO also put it in the trade facilitation agreements that normally they call (indiscernible) package prove to be quite effective. Every country try to setting up the National Trade Facilitation Board. The function is the same and the contact point is very clear. I think that Internet, we have to think that it's -- it's everywhere and seems to be half of the government is involved with Internet and that create a problem in the government on how we organize ourselves, to whom should participate, where, and then what is the public policy and the international fora or trade negotiation, no matter TPP, RCEPs or whatever. It's always relate to Internet. Maybe one of the biggest chapters is eCommerce. There are a lot of things related to what we talking, and then I do believe that if the retreat was also touching base on how the government organize themselves locally to enter in the Internet in a harmonized way, I think that would be helping every country to really coming up with the right public policy. Thank you.

>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Wanawit. Sumon, you have the floor.

>>SUMON AHMED SABIR: Yeah. Thank you, Madam Chair. I would just like to point out one particular issue. That is, the government engagement in the IGF process. Especially in my region in south Asia, what I can see is that the government doesn't have merely any participation in the IGF process but they're suffering in many different issues like cybersecurity, like (indiscernible). They're trying to make the policy but they're not taking the help of the IGF documents. We have IGF retreat, we'll have IGF retreat, we'll have IGF meeting in Mexico, and we'll prepare our documents, but somehow those are not reaching to the right person of the government. I can see they're trying to handle this process and in many cases they're going in the wrong direction.

So I just want to give a plea that if we can make arrangements so that this document reaches all the governments, to the right people of the governments, so that they can take help of these documents. Otherwise, some positions may really in this present situation where we can see a lot of terrorist activities, they're using the Internet for their communication and sometimes we see the Internet shut down in different countries. So to avoid this, to take the best use of these documents to do the best thing, we can see to a better Internet. So I don't know how, but whether we can take the help of U.N. or somehow we need to reach these governments. Thank you.

>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Sumon. Now we have Segun. Segun, you have the floor.

>>SEGUN OLUGBILE: Thank you, Madam Chair.

You know, I've listened to various discussions on input and I've listened on the need for us to offer awareness and to strengthen the communication strategy of the IGF, but from what I've seen so far, from my own experience and from what I've heard from the community, I want to propose that there's a need to have a fundamental review of IGF as a nonbinding engagement.

What do I mean by that?

You see, we've had occasions where the government side will be saying that after all, IGF is a talk show, it has -- there's no binding outcome, effect, and all that.

So they see IGF more as, you know, engagement of the civil society and probably business sector and all that.

So I think there's a need for the retreat to look at the fundamental structure.

The nonbinding nature of the IGF has to be looked into. That is number one.

Number two, I also would like to propose that if there's any way we can put in place assessments on evaluation of the IGF, it could be on the annual or biannual basis, so that the impact of the output of IGF can be measured. I don't know but I believe that if we have that in place, then we will be able to compare where we are and where we are going.

Then I also would like to talk about the need to have a communications strategy that is more robust. I remember when we discuss in our working group, we talk about the need to have IGF resource center that has to be active and not just being robust, it should be a center for learning, you know, where the youth and the younger ones can go in there and study issues or things that has to do with the IGF policy and all that.

Then we -- I also would like to talk about the need for us to improve the inclusion of the relevant technical community. Like, for example, I'm aware that IEEE, they have over 350 -- about 350,000 members. Then whenever we talk about IoT or smart initiatives and all that, these are the people that are essential to be part of that discussion. So in our own working group, anyway, we are trying to find a way how to ensure that they are included in our outreaches and all that.

So to go back to the first points that I made, we need to review the fundamental nature, the nonbinding nature of the IGF, because not until when we do that, you will discover that the impression that the community has is that IGF is not really a binding engagement.

Like, for example, they will give you the example of ITU, they will give you the example of ICANN. Even at ICANN, you have the government taking -- you know, actively participating in the ICANN process and they come back to the country and implement the outcome. But IGF, it's not so. So not until we look at that fundamental nature of -- I'm talking about the nonbinding nature -- how can we improve from that. Thank you.

>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Segun. I think we all want to find a way to make the IGF as impactful as possible and at the same also just recall that the IGF operates under the Tunis Agenda, which was reaffirmed in the WSIS+10. So there is some guidance there through those documents as well.

Chip, you have the floor. As you had the floor in this session already, can I ask you to keep your comments quite brief. And the same for all the remaining interventions.

Chip, you have the floor.

>>CHIP SHARP: Sorry. I forgot to wait for my red light to come in.

It's still not very clear for what's going to happen with the discussions that are going on at the retreat. So I would just like to ask that in the discussions and whatever comes out of it, that there is some kind of information or guidance given as to what's going to happen with that information in terms of who's going to use it. I heard about the NRIs, but there is all kinds of other things in there. The other one -- so that was one request.

Second one is, I think, in terms of the input in the discussions at the retreat and talking about the outputs, we might be -- think about looking at improving the institutional memory and utilizing the outputs that we already have from previous IGFs in a more efficient manner and making them more available in a better way for people to use, if needed, before we start getting into discussions on recommendations and more negotiated agreements and outcomes because before going down that path, there would need to be an extended discussion on working methods that we would have to have at some point. Thank you.

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

Participant 83.

[ Laughter ]

Introduce yourself.

>>ZAHID JAMIL: Hi, Zahid Jamil from Pakistan private sector. Member of ICC-BASIS.

So I'm one of the persons who are going to be at the retreat. So I'm listening very carefully. And, therefore, this has been very helpful.

And I agree that it's helpful to have the transcript sent out to everybody, so thank you for that.

I have a clarifying question because I just want to make sure that I'm clear on what our scope is at the retreat. I've heard about the non-binding nature and the fundamental shift that needs to be considered at the retreat. And I think the Tunis Agenda comment by the Chair was helpful to try and say, well, there may be a certain picket fence around this.

My question is related to that. What is the scope of the retreat? Do we limit ourselves to the five questions? Or given some of the things that were raised right now in the comments we've heard, do we go beyond those five questions to even discuss things such as matters that have already been settled at the CSTD or elsewhere and put to rest? Or can we reopen and revisit? If we can, I would just like to know.

As an example, we hear the word "output" which has always meant for the last ten years the Chairman's report and summary of the IGF versus an outcome which might be a negotiated outcome. And if we are open to discussing that, I would just like to know whether that's something. Because I didn't read that from the five questions, but it would be good to know what our scope is for the retreat. Thank you.

>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: We'll go through the rest of the questions, and then Wai-Min has a couple of summing-up remarks at the end.

ICC-BASIS, you have the floor. Carolyn is.

>> CAROLYN NGUYEN: Thank you, Madam Chair. My name is Carolyn Nguyen from Microsoft, and we are a member of ICC-BASIS.

I wanted to address a couple of comments that's come up this afternoon. So, firstly, with respect to the division, I'd like to remind all of us of how strongly the multistakeholder collaborated and worked together to ensure a positive WSIS+10 review and outcome. And it would be great if that sense of community and collaboration continue as we discuss the next ten years of the IGF.

With respect to the earlier question about what would be success for the IGF, I think that the WSIS+10 outcome document laid that out pretty clearly. And there are some very measurable goals in there in terms of what needs to be done.

I think the other part is that the document highlighted the socioeconomic importance of the development of the information society and, furthermore, the alignment of the technological development with the SDGs. And those economic factors are something that we should really keep in mind as we think about the impact, Madam Chair, to your word, going forward.

And in that light, one of the things that we would like to bring up as part of the private sector is how to be inclusive of SMEs. There are challenges in terms of bringing in participation of SMEs in particular from developing countries around the world. And they are the key to sustainable national economic development going forward. They are creating the economic opportunities to attain and realize the SDGs as we talk about.

So to the earlier conversation with respect to, I believe, the representative from the U.K. in terms of improving remote participation, we see that as a critical source of discussion to increase the impact of the IGF going forward.

The IGF has always been a recognized forum for relevant, timely discussions amongst stakeholders. And I think that's what it really needs to be going back to the first principles, Madam Chair, as you mentioned from the Tunis Agenda.

I would hope that this would be a major objective that we can take on at the IGF retreat. I believe that the success for the retreat would be open, collaborative discussion as has been put forward in terms of under Chatham House rule, that we can -- really do come back together under the same collaborative spirit that we had in December to work together to strengthen the IGF going forward. Again, back to those first principles from the Tunis Agenda.

With respect to the conversations around outcome, I believe that there are two things that are being conflated. One is a report of the discussion that's happened at the IGF and, secondly, the communication and archiving of those discussions going forward. It's more than a communications strategy. It is also a mapping that's required to make the discussion and the information much easier to find going forward.

Thank you.

>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Carolyn. Next it's Council of Europe. Lee, you had an intervention already on this. So if I could ask you to keep it very short. Thank you.

>>LEE HIBBARD: Thank you, Madam Chair. Very shortly. My point is about roles and responsibilities. We are all here because we have different roles and responsibilities. I come here on behalf of the Council of Europe to find out more about the human rights aspects of Internet governance and to take it back to Strasbourg, which then influences policy perhaps in there.

So I was prompted to intervene because when I looked at the main session proposals, for example, Internet governance in trade and the reference to the WTO, then surely the part of the role of roles and responsibilities coming together here is to collaborate and to try to work out -- or to try to invite those with the responsibilities to take that back to where they are from and deliberate perhaps and discuss upon perhaps policy in their field.

So is it the role of WTO to come here and talk about trade and Internet governance? And then take you back at the invitation of the IGF? My point is if we are going to open, safe, secure, inclusive Internet within our respective roles and responsibilities and if we get our -- if we have clarity on what priorities we are looking at and what communication plans and success therefor, then we can have clear roles and responsibilities in coming and going back.

Can we use the IGF to go and come back and to clarify those roles and responsibilities? Can we use the IGF to task or to invite those to act upon discussion here and then also to report back to show progress? Thank you.

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

UNESCO, you have the floor.

>>UNESCO: Thank you, Lynn. Thank you for giving me the floor. Also would like to thank you for accepting this scope of the retreat.

As you know, we have been supporting IGF since ten years ago. I'm so happy to be here, meeting so many friends. And many of you were there for ten years, like me. So we really have a lot to say. But I know we will discuss more at retreat.

And now I would like to share the experience from UNESCO since we have been discussing why IGF and what's good about it. If we look back to past ten years, UNESCO has been benefiting from IGF so much, at least in the three areas.

First, I mean, on the policy area, I mean, IGF is the forum. It's not a policymaker. But UNESCO is a policy -- we are working with policymakers. We have been -- we have been sensitized by IGF on so many emerging issues. For example, privacy. For example, intermediaries' reliability issues, how they are impacting free expression, human rights, access, and education, et cetera.

This impact is so profound that we not only conduct research, policy recommendations, and even until last year, in December 2015, our general conference has adopt a resolution by all the members that we are working -- we endorsed the new framework on Internet universality principles as organization's guiding principles for Internet-related policy making.

And this contends that we endorse the multistakeholder approach. And we take in the new issues, like privacy, to a new work in the post-2015 strategy.

So you see, as an intergovernmental organization, we are working with policymakers. We are able to channel the new knowledge to our daily work to help governments to make sure in their policy-making process to be more inclusive, to take in the new issues, and to make sure that all the policies regarding Internet will be complying with international standards and considering the international discussions.

Second area I want to mention is partnership. Yes, there are divisions, but I see more coalitions. In past ten years, without IGF building up partnerships, I wouldn't (indiscernible) how UNESCO can work so extensively now with not only other IGOs within U.N. agencies and beyond regional and national. And also we worked so much with the private sector. We worked together with Google, with many Internet companies, also in including those in developing countries to get them on board to discuss a way to conduct a joint initiative.

We worked with technical community. We worked closely with ISOC, with many other technical organizations which we wouldn't have worked without this platform. We really said, okay, we are really working on the same issues.

And then, of course, NGO and civil society, we have been working so much with them. We invite them to UNESCO conference in addition to the IGF at all levels.

Third area I want to mention, even on implementation level, now we have seen that the IGF is creating the best practice platform and also the NRIs. I'm learning today the national and regional IGFs are prospering everywhere. We have been advising our regional and national offices of UNESCO to actively participate in these NRIs.

And nowadays Internet becomes such central issue even as developing countries, that's why our office found it very useful. They actively use our framework to propose the activities with the local stakeholders through the NRIs.

So you see that the global idea will get penetrating to the local level through IGF and also through partnerships, through our own constituencies in a different way. So it's a complicated -- it's a complex procedure and perspective you need to assess the impact of IGF. And that's not straightforward but it takes time. It takes different interactions to get there.

So I'm looking forward to a further discussion with all stakeholders. I think it's already a good start. It's well-done in the past ten years. And for the future, of course, we need more discussion about even technical level, like communication strategy of IGF to deliver the impacts more and better and also to be more inclusive how together.

I'm so satisfied with past ten years. I believe we will do even better in the past -- in the future ten years, particularly in light of achieving the SDGs in 15 years.

>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you. Some very good comments. We are going to go to a remote participant.

>>REMOTE INVERVENTION: I will read the comment from Deirdre Williams. David Souter made an excellent point in his retreat submission. Many people have fears about Internet, but they are not represented in our discussions and its governance. It is important that people who hold different views from those which are prevalent in the IGF today are fully included in its work as it goes forward.

For the IGF to attract attention be newsworthy, we need to include these people whose perspective is different than who may inform things for the current insiders. The IGF community must be inclusive. As we include these next billion, they must also be persuaded that they have a right to voice in how the policy is created and an obligation to use that voice. Thank you.

>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you. And thank you to all the online participants for hanging in there. I know it's been a challenging day technology-wise.

Bianca, you have the floor.

>>BIANCA HO: Thank you, Madam Chair. Bianca Ho, MAG member. I wanted to echo Mark and Jivan's points, the importance of continuing to make it an open and inclusive space, to speak up particularly using retreat as a place to discuss the mechanisms to ensure that, of which I think promoting participation is not only between different stakeholder groups, you know, like government, private sector, civil society, but also within rights. So developing and developed world, gender, youth. So I think that's important to keep in mind. And, also, you know, considering marginal groups including youth members.

Particularly, I do agree that remote participation has to be taken so seriously that even though they don't have the funds or resources to travel to the IGF, they would still get the same experience per se for anyone who's physically there.

And the other point I wanted to make is it's important to -- I think it was mentioned earlier to keep in mind how to make it relevant for different stakeholder groups and, you know, translating the value of IGF. So I think that's also another topic that could be discussed during the retreat. Thank you.

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

I want to thank everybody for participating in this discussion. It obviously doesn't end here. If you have other thoughts, you should feel free to share them. There are many vehicles for doing that.

I want to give the last few words to Wai-Min, and then we'll move to the next agenda item.

Wai-Min, you have the floor.

>>WAI-MIN KWOK: Thank you, Lynn. Thank you for all your comments and very wise advice, indeed. We started off with the question about what is the success of the IGF. I think there were several follow-ups to that and some giving very thoughtful comments, some questions. And all this I think will be very constructive to inform the retreat itself.

Speaking of which, there's actually a list of all these background documents online, which is also not just for the group participants but for everyone to know, including the CSTD working group improvement to IGF, the ongoing work of the MAG -- of the secretariat, and all other relevant documents.

There's also one specific document. If you look on the Web site in the background documents for the retreat, the first document is actually a document put up by the IGF secretariat. And that includes some guiding questions for the retreat itself. But this is not -- this is not a final document. So the retreat discussion, I think there was some questions posed whether you will be restricted to the five areas.

I think it's quite fluid. But we also are mindful that it's just a two-day retreat. Given this constraint, it's not -- I think we're not ambitious not to say the retreat itself is a panacea. It definitely not -- and the (indiscernible) itself is the ongoing process.

It will go back again to the community for consultations.

How it is being done, Lynn has suggested some way following the past efforts. And I think that is one way to consider and how they will be -- again to be further consulted including at the IGF in Guadalajara itself.

My final just input is just to say that it is very much a learning process for all of us. It's a learning process for DESA. And I think -- including myself, of course. And we very much count on your continued advice and support to see how not just for retreat but the ongoing how we can together as a group to further the mandate of IGF.

Thanks.

>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Wai-Min. Appreciate your comments and certainly appreciate all the effort you're putting into this and staying with us as well.

With that, we move to the next agenda item which is briefings from other related or relevant initiatives and organizations. There have been a number of presentations posted online as a part of this agenda. We might as well just work right through them, although I must admit I'm not quite sure how the Stanford University's poll will be presented. Is there somebody here who -- okay.

So let's start with that one. We'd asked everyone to keep their presentations quite short. If the MAG needs more time for discussion going forward, we can look to schedule that in the next couple of days but I want to make sure we can get through what is now, I think, seven initiatives, with Friends of the IGF being added as well.

So could you please introduce yourself as well? Thank you.

>>ALICE SIU: Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, MAG, and everyone here today. We're very excited to have this opportunity to present our ideas and our plans for what we'd like to do at the upcoming IGF.

My name is Alice Siu. I'm here on behalf of Stanford with two research centers, Center for Deliberative Democracy and Center for Democracy, Development, and Rule of Law, and in particular, some of our team members who some of you know couldn't be here. Eileen Donahoe, Max Senges, Larry diamond, and James Fishkin and they send their regards.

So last year, we had our first pilot event at the IGF, and it was a combination of online and face-to-face. Some of you here may have been participants or witnessed the event. It was on the topic of increasing access to the Internet, and it was extremely successful. The final report and all the results have been posted and have been circulated and you're all welcome to review the report.

Some of the findings -- the most interesting, actually -- what we found, was opinion change was actually possible among an expert community like yourselves.

One of the concerns prior to the event was whether deliberation among experts would have any effect because you all talk about this all the time and you're experts in it.

What we found in our results was that experts are actually able to have some opinion change, and significant opinion change, when actually gathered into a room deliberating with people that they don't know very well, and you're happy -- you're welcome to read the extensive report on line.

In this coming year, we'd like to do something similar. We'd like to have an event on day zero where we can gather participants that are already coming to IGF to discuss on an issue of current kind of hot topic, governing digital encryption. And so we're switching the topic because the team felt that it would be interesting to bring this topic to the IGF this year, and like last year, we have an extensive advisory committee producing balanced briefing materials. We'll have pre- and post-surveys. And we hope to do the event on line prior to the IGF to engage remote participants that aren't able to come, and also to have the event face-to-face as well.

And this year, echoing some of the sentiment that I've heard today, we're looking to actively bring members from the global south and folks that may probably -- or may not have been able to go otherwise, and we're trying to do our best to recruit in that way.

And we're really hoping that the results from this coming event and the results from the prior event last year will be able to serve as insights to everyone here, to the IGF community, and to be able to share our experiences with everyone as well. Thank you very much.

>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you. I'd like to just take one quick moment and ask Chengetai to make a logistics announcement in case there are people in and out with respect to the passes. I just want to make sure we don't lose anybody at the end of the day because your passes are just for today.

>>CHENGETAI MASANGO: Okay. We -- people with passes, the stickers, you need new passes for tomorrow since we're meeting in a different room.

You can fetch them today. You just see Eleonora or Adriana at the corner there and they'll give you the new passes.

For those new who are coming tomorrow, there will be a chance to get them the same time and place for today. Or those people who have left today, as well, can come tomorrow morning and get them like we did today.

>>WAI-MIN KWOK: Just an additional announcement to that is that please pick up the passes only for yourself if you are sure you're coming for the next two days, because we do have a limited number of passes, so we would not want to go without a pass for someone who is really coming tomorrow. Thank you.

>>CHENGETAI MASANGO: Yeah.

>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you. Sorry for introducing that but I really didn't want people to leave and not be aware and try to scramble tomorrow morning to find the appropriate pass.

So with that, the next speaker is from the World Economic Forum, Internet for All initiative. I think that's Eric. You have the floor.

Could you light the WEF mic, please? World Economic Forum, WEF.

>>CHENGETAI MASANGO: W-E-F.

>>ERIC WHITE: Oh, I have to push a button?

Ah. I think it was operator error.

Okay. Thank you very much, Madam Chair, for the introduction and the opportunity to address the group today. My name is Eric White. I am the project lead at the World Economic Forum for the Internet for All initiative.

Internet for All is one initiative under the forum's Future of Digital Economy and Society system on which the MAG chair is a steward, I'm happy to say. It uses the forum's platform for multistakeholder collaboration to expand Internet inclusion globally.

Earlier this year, the initiative launched a guiding framework that lays out how we view the issue. It essentially says that in order to achieve Internet for all, multistakeholder collaboration is required both within and across four barriers: Infrastructure, affordability, digital skills and awareness, and local content.

And I should add that we worked with the IGF secretariat as we developed this paper and we drew from the Connecting the Next Billion work. We're very grateful for that support.

So we see IGF as a key partner in this work and a group with which we look forward to continuing to work very closely.

More about the project.

Internet for All has as its principal goal to facilitate the development and acceleration of new, scalable, and replicable business models of public/private collaboration on Internet inclusion.

As a secondary goal, we're enabling a physical and a digital platform to ease this collaboration.

Globally we're guided by a steering committee of 30 organizations. This includes the IGF secretariat, the ITU, ICANN, mobile operators such as Telefonica and VimpelCom, equipment manufacturers such as Cisco, Huawei, Ericsson. I should nod to my colleague at Microsoft sitting to my left also on our steering committee.

It includes development banks, governments, civil society organizations such as the Worldwide Web Foundation and many others.

To launch the global platform, we're having a high-level roundtable on Internet for All in Geneva at the World Economic Forum headquarters in August. The idea is that this group that we convene will continue to meet and continue their coordination at various events throughout the year to come. This is part of the reason that we've submitted a panel proposal for the IGF in Guadalajara, as we see the IGF as a venue where this type of collaboration among the same partners can continue.

Additionally -- additionally to the global platform, we're establishing three country or regional-level platforms. One in east Africa in what we call the northern corridor, so that's Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, and South Sudan; one in Latin America; and one in south Asia. These platforms will have local steering committees that include ministers, private sector, civil society, intergovernmental organizations, and academics, among others.

They will work through working groups constituted by stakeholders and coordinated by a permanent secretariat, and these working groups will set goals and develop activities for implementation.

In east Africa, the government -- the four governments have committed to using this platform to create 25 million additional Internet users in the region by 2019.

Finally, just a quick comment to highlight what I see as the synergies between the forum's Internet for All project and IGF.

So as I mentioned, we've submitted a panel request and we look forward to hopefully participating in December in Guadalajara. We welcome the participation of Chengetai on our Internet for All steering committee and by the MAG chair on our overall system stewardship group.

We see room for participants by these groups in our meetings. We will -- and we actually -- something that I wanted to mention that I just learned about today is I see room for participation of NRIs, and so this is a term new to me because I'm new to the IGF, in our local platforms that we're developing around the world in those regions. So I want to close by stressing that I'm here because we're interested in collaboration, we see IGF as a key partner, and we look forward to continuing to do that. That's it.

>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Alex [sic]. I see a request from 199, participant number 199. We'll take a comment. Does anybody -- has anybody asked for the floor?

Have you asked -- would you like to speak? I can't tell because the mic keeps going red, green. I'm assuming not, then.

With -- so with all of these initiatives, as Alex [sic] said, there's been a pretty close collaboration between the Connecting the Next Billion effort and their Internet for All initiative that has primarily been led through the secretariat and Constance, I think, and I think one of the things that we need to address going forward is how we can appropriately support appropriate activities with other organizations and where some of the leadership for those interfaces should come from.

I think that's a bigger discussion than we have time for now, but perhaps we can put that on some future calls or even at the third MAG meeting later in the year.

In the meantime, the efforts to understand where there are some collaboration opportunities continues.

The next item we have is the Global Internet Policy Observatory. Cristina?

The European Commission's mic, please.

>>CRISTINA MONTI: Thank you very much, and thank you, Chair, for the opportunity to briefly report on progress on the Global Internet Policy Observatory or GIPO. GIPO is an automated tool to collect, process, and analyze information related to Internet governance and policy. It is an initiative that was kick-started by the European Commission to help stakeholders -- in particular, those with limited resources -- to have better access to the many issues and documents related to Internet governance and policy.

The beta version of the tool is available on line since February, and in June a new upgraded and improved version was presented during the European dialogue on Internet governance.

The GIPO tool is what we could call the engine. It automatically scans relevant information from quality sources and it automatically processes and analyzes the information.

Basically by categorizing items in seven different baskets which are infrastructure, economic, security, legal, development, social/cultural, and human rights issues.

And for these, it uses the same taxonomy that was developed by DiploFoundation, who has extensively worked on these issues, and it's also used by the Geneva Internet Watch.

And the tool also assigns automatically tags and metadata to each item. All this work done by the engine, by the GIPO tool, facilitates the search and retrieval of information by users who have different options to navigate through the information and refine their searches also according to specific geographical areas or periods of time.

In particular, the dashboard graphically displays the information to further help the user. This dashboard allows for a histogram panel that shows results of a search item over time, as well as geographical coverage of the topic by showing a map.

To do this, GIPO relies on a mix of open-source tools and is -- it is being gradually developed in an open way by asking feedback and input from interested parties, by connecting to experts in different fields, and by looking to address the needs expressed by potential users.

GIPO is not replacing or duplicating other tools, but rather, it is thought to be complementary to them. And indeed, while developing GIPO, the cooperation with other initiatives in this field has been paramount in making sure GIPO serves other organizations' needs.

For instance, GIPO now provides an open API, an application programming interface, that allows programmers to make apps, Web sites, and widgets that interact with GIPO's content.

Other initiatives can use GIPO to customize and integrate the dashboard in their Web sites, thereby enriching it with additional features.

We have already successfully tested the customization and integration of the dashboard with Axis, which is the largest African civil society organization active in ICT for development.

Axis used the GIPO dashboard and customized it on their Web site to monitor Internet governance and policy in Africa.

This cooperation is very positive and can easily be replicated with other organizations. In this way, the many initiatives active in Internet governance can focus on what they do best, and in particular they can support their specific constituencies and target groups and they don't need to worry too much and invest resources in the technology which is already available and provided by GIPO.

The positive cooperation with other players also spans to other types of activities, like, for instance, the exchange of information on how to address common challenges like multilingualism, data visualization, different legal issues, and even how to understand users' needs and in general what are the factors to be considered when developing these kind of tools and platforms.

In this context, the GIPO advisory group has been of key importance. The group brings together 12 experts in different areas and is providing guidance throughout the development of GIPO. They met recently on the margins of EuroDIG for a special workshop on the contribution of GIPO to multistakeholderism. The discussion was very interesting and stimulating, and the outcomes are currently being summarized in a paper, and the intention is to present this in more detail during the open forum in Mexico.

Finally, a word on the potential use of GIPO by the IGF.

While the commission is financing the development of the tool, it never intended to be the final owner once it becomes fully operational. As a global tool for the multistakeholder community, GIPO will need an appropriate home from which it can be managed in and for the global public interest.

The IGF could potentially be that home. Some initial contacts have been made to this purpose, including at the technical level, to better understand how GIPO could support IGF in fulfilling its mandate. In particular, in the areas of capacity building, in ensuring more informed discussions, and in creating opportunities for cooperation. Thank you.

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

The next item up is the NETmundial Initiative, and Marilia, are you going to speak to that? You have the floor. Marilia, please.

>>MARILIA MACIEL: Thank you, Lynn. This is Marilia Maciel speaking.

I actually wanted to make a comment on the previous agenda item and then I will switch to the NETmundial Initiative, if that is possible.

So my comment is actually on behalf of DiploFoundation. We are very happy to recognize the evolution of the different observatories and platforms and initiatives to map different areas of Internet governance. We believe that this is extremely valuable for many stakeholders, newcomers, to come and try to navigate this very complex and multidisciplinary environment of Internet governance. A wide range of tools are available to all out there. We just heard about the algorithm that run automated feeds coming from GIPO. There is also human-curated resources and analysis that are being produced by the Geneva Internet platform Digital Watch, but moving forward we would like to make a suggestion, which is that maybe a more ambitious and focused approach in the future would be the adoption of a common IG taxonomy that could be used by the different tools and platforms available out there. This could ensure a certain level of consistency between the different approaches and platforms and foster more clarity when we try to analyze Internet governance issues.

So we would like to suggest that the IGF create a working group that would gather the institutions, the individuals that are working with observatories and mapping initiatives, and the role of this working group would be to present and to try to explore the idea presented before about a common taxonomy.

This group should work in close collaboration with the IGF. And maybe in the future, the IGF Web site could serve as a one-stop shop for gathering information coming from all these mapping exercises.

SoI would just like to highlight that DiploFoundation and the Geneva Internet platform would like to assist to implement this idea of creating a working group, if this idea moves forward. So this is my comment on behalf of the DiploFoundation and the previous point.

Now moving on to the NETmundial Initiative, if there are no further comments about the previous point, I would just like to provide you a quick update on the NETmundial Initiative as the former NETmundial Initiative co-chair.

As you know, the NETmundial Initiative was created to provide a platform to catalyze efforts to implement and advance the principles that were collaboratively drafted during the NETmundial meeting in Brazil.

The Coordinating Council has worked together for 18 months, and the mandate has expired now in June. Members of the Coordinating Council have met together at ICANN56 in Helsinki. And they have provided a final statement, making an assessment about the work that has been developed in these 18 months and looking for the future.

So one of the things that we have recognized with great happiness is that in this past two years, NETmundial principles have been adopted by a broad range of organizations such as the BRICs' declaration makes mention to NETmundial principles, the WSIS+10, the G7 declaration, the OECD ministerial declaration, Council of Europe, the European Commission, and so on.

So we are happy to see that. Individually and working together as Coordinating Council, we try to be champions of these principles. And we know that many of you that helped draft them have been champions of these principles as well. And this was a good step moving forward.

The NETmundial Initiative in these months have developed two platforms that we believe are a legacy to the community. One of them is the NETmundial collaboration platform. It's a collaborative space aiming to help to catalyze practical cooperation between stakeholders around Internet governance projects and ideas.

The second one is the NETmundial solutions map that we believe is one of the first crowdsourced Internet governance mapping efforts where anyone can share and access information about Internet governance, connecting issues, actors, responses, resources that are available out there.

So moving forward from now on, we have these products. What we discussed during our meeting in Helsinki is that until December this year, ICANN will be hosting and taking care of the continuation of the NETmundial solutions map with an aim of strengthening and enhancing it, making it more known and available and operational. But with time, we believe that other organizations in the community should share the responsibility to update this map. After all, this is a collaborative effort.

I will pass the microphone to my colleague Flavio Wagner in a moment so he can give updates about what CGI will work on in the future.

But we also discussed that we cannot stop here in terms of assessing the NETmundial principles. It's very important that we develop a NETmundial follow-up track. And this is something that we would like to present to you, especially the members of the MAG. We believe that this follow-up track of NETmundial should be something carried out in collaboration -- in close collaboration with the IGF.

The IGF could be a moment, an opportunity, to periodically assess the progress of the implementation of NETmundial outcome document in view of -- maybe if we assess that it would be a useful thing to do, calling up the organization of NETmundial+5 or +10 in the future so we can together assess the progress that we have achieved from that moment on.

So moving forward, I think that this would be the main tracks in our agenda besides what Flavio will comment in a few moments.

We just would like to thank all of you who have participated in the open consultations for discussing the documents that we have put on the Web site, that have shared your suggestions, and principally to the ones that have helped to move forward with the principles of NETmundial that we believe are principles that we all share and we should strive to see more and more implemented in the future.

Flavio, please.

>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Could you please give the floor to Flavio Wagner, please.

>>FLAVIO WAGNER: Thank you, Madam Chair.

So, thank you, Marilia, for the report on the decisions taken in Helsinki by the NETmundial Coordination Council.

As Marilia said, one of the products of the initiative was the NETmundial collaboration platform. And this shall continue, this effort. And beginning July 2016, so now, CGI.BR, so the Brazilian Internet Steering Committee, will coordinate efforts around the NETmundial collaboration platform, which is, as Marilia said, is a platform for showcasing projects that are relevant for the effective deployment of the governance principles, established in the NETmundial statement and also for the advancement of its roadmap.

So CGI.BR is committed to provide all the administrative and operational structures that are needed for the platform to achieve the goals and vision by the Coordination Council of the NETmundial Initiative.

CGI.BR will not be involved in funding the projects that are showcased through the NETmundial platform but in really taking care of the platform itself. So CGI.BR will very soon provide further details on the proposal of a very lightweight, multistakeholder coordination structure for guiding the development and operation of the platform. And for this, as it has always done, it will work in close partnership with stakeholders from across the world following the collaborative model that guided the NETmundial meeting itself in 2014.

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

I think there's a request from ICANN, Nigel, for the floor on this same subject.

You have the floor, ICANN.

>>NIGEL HICKSON: Thank you, Madam Chairman. Good afternoon. Just to follow up on that very useful comments about the NETmundial Initiative, ICANN is one of the partners. Would certainly like to endorse what Marilia said about the interface with the IGF and the great synergy that was -- that took place in the last couple of ICANN -- in the last couple of IGF meetings.

I think it's worth saying that although the NETmundial Initiative itself might have ended with a council meeting in Helsinki, the principles live on. And the spirit of cooperation and multistakeholder participation lives on.

In the OECD ministerial on the digit economy in Cancun a couple of weeks ago and the ministerial declaration, the value of the principles was highlighted. And I think the suggestions and ideas just put forward by both Marilia and Flavio are very valuable, indeed.

ICANN has, indeed, taken on a commitment to discuss with partners, colleagues, et cetera, in terms of finding a way that the solutions map can be used because it certainly has a degree of utility along with the other initiatives that Marilia spoke about and the European Commission spoke about. And so hopefully the idea of having some sort of working group or something of the MAG on this issue might be very useful. Thank you very much.

>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you. I'd like to just make a comment for the last three or four speakers who have actually made some very interesting and, I think, some very full offers. I think it's something the MAG needs to go away and consider and consider how best to address that. That clearly needs to be done with DESA as there are obviously implications from within the U.N. system. And then, of course, there's the management issue and ongoing support as well.

So I don't want anybody to think that we're just running from one to another. We'll need to find a proper way to actually engage more fully in those discussions.

The next on the list is the ITU update. And I think Preetam is joining us remotely or as an online participant. You have the floor.

>>REMOTE INVERVENTION: Preetam will speak remotely. Please, you have the floor.

>> PREETAM MALOOR: This is Preetam Maloor from the ITU. Thank you, Madam Chair, for the opportunity to update the group on ITU's recent work and let me also thank UN DESA and the IGF secretariat for organizing this meeting.

Following WSIS 2016 Forum, which most of you actively participated in, and its discussion on the next steps for the implementation of SDGs, the ITU Council in June 2016 highlighted and reiterated ITU's commitment to the implementation of the SDGs, particularly in terms of increasing access to ICTs worldwide.

David Nabarro, the Special Advisor to the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development addressed the delegates at our governing body meeting.

So ITU is currently developing a mapping tool intended to essentially serve as a one-stop shop for information on what ITU is doing, not only on SDGs but the foundation of ITU's work on SDGs. And, of course, (audio difficulty).

In terms of updates on WSIS, WSIS Forum 2017 is scheduled to take place from 12 to 16 June, 2017, at the ITU in Geneva. So the co-organizers, ITU, UNESCO, UNCTAD and UNDP, have launched the Open Consultation Process on thematic aspects and innovations for the format of WSIS Forum 2017.

The first physical meeting of the WSIS Open Consultation Process will take place in Geneva and further information on the next phases are published online.

Another interesting open consultation process that's going on is the one connected to the ITU CWG on international Internet-related public policy issues.

And we had consultations on a diverse group of topics, IXPs, accessibility, various topics. The current round of consultation is on "Building and enabling environment for access to the Internet" with questions to Internet connectivity, affordability, quality of access, security, and role of governments in building such an enabling environment.

The online component is open until 11 September. It will be followed by a physical open consultation meeting on 11 October. We look forward to the participation of all of you in these consultations, especially given the IGF's work on the policy options for connecting and enabling the next billions segment.

These consultations are all available online on the ITU Website. We can easily provide the links to all this information to be put up on the IGF Web site.

In closing, I would like to confirm ITU's active participation in this year's IGF in Guadalajara. We have already submitted our session proposals which are co-organized with other U.N. agencies. And we really look forward to the outcome of this meeting.

I look forward to meeting many of you in person at the retreat. I apologize for not being there for the MAG meeting. I will see you in a couple weeks.

>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Preetam, thank you. And thank you because I know it's very late in Geneva as well.

The transmission wasn't all that clear. If by any chance you have your comments written down, if you could actually send them to the secretary, we'll make sure that the transcript reflects them properly.

Maybe the transcript even caught them quite well. I can't see it, but it was a little difficult at times here in the room. Thank you again very much. Appreciate your sticking with all the online difficulties and, again, given the lateness of the hour in Geneva.

The next request was for Friends of the IGF. And I think that's Flavio Wagner who is going to speak to that as well. If you can turn Flavio's mic on.

>>FLAVIO WAGNER: Thank you, Lynn. It's me again now talking about Friends of the IGF. So the project Friends of the IGF is a community-built archive of IGF discussions dating back to the inaugural IGF event in Athens, Greece, in 2006. So the mission of the project is to preserve the record of the IGF by compiling and organizing the various transcripts, videos, agendas, and reports from all IGF sessions into a browsable, searchable Web site database.

Following the IGF 2015 in Joao Pessoa, in Brazil, CGI.BR, the Brazilian Internet Steering Committee, stepped forward to become the new steward of the project and seeks the support of the IGF community in further developing and sustaining the archive Web site.

So CGI.BR already hosts the project Web site, which I strongly invite you to visit at friendsoftheigf.org. And we will give all necessary technical and administrative support to further the development of the project.

So the project was developed through a bottom-up, open, and inclusive community process. Many individuals and organizations led by Susan Chalmers, who is behind me, member of MAG until last year, contributed financially and in-kind to the effort. It will be very important to maintain this practice, to maintain existing relationships and establish nuance with key stakeholders.

A multistakeholder steering committee composed of members of the IGF community will work to guide the development of the Friends of the IGF project and Web site. Among other tasks, this committee will be responsible for planning and fund-raising for the redevelopment of the Web site for the IGF 2017. We should include a search capability, a plan for tagging of content, a plan for interoperation with other relevant online projects, for example, GIPO, the Global Internet Policy Observatory, text on data mining capabilities, options for translation, and reaching out on national and regional initiatives to invite the uploading of content to the database.

It is very important to highlight that the Friends of the IGF Web site complements the official IGF Web site by providing easy access to IGF transcripts and videos. Interoperability between both Web sites will be sought through cooperation with the IGF secretariat as well as with MAG members.

By its very nature, the Friends of the IGF Web site supports the recommendations of the CSTD working group on IGF improvements. And we hope as the IGF community advances in its strategic discussion for the next ten years, that Friends of the IGF will be considered as part of that discussion.

And I would like to give the word to Susan, please.

>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Okay, Susan.

>>SUSAN CHALMERS: Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Flavio.

My name is Susan Chalmers and speaking in my personal capacity. I would like to express appreciation and support for CGI.BR assuming leadership of the Friends of the IGF project.

As the previous lead of the project, I can say that over the past three years it has really been developed in an open and multistakeholder way. And it was beautiful to see different members of the IGF community come together and support building this archive.

I have every confidence that the capable team at CGI will do a great job.

And collaboration is key. So I think that is important that we work together with important initiatives, other initiatives such as GIPO. Together we can all work to preserve our shared history of soon-to-be 11 years of invaluable discussions on Internet governance and policy issues at the IGF. And the working group proposed by Marilia might be a good way to move forward in step with the balance of the community.

So with that, thank you very much.

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

Peter Dengate Thrush asked for the floor as well. Peter.

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Thank you, Chair. Peter Dengate Thrush. First of all, just congratulations to .BR for picking up this project. Thank you very much.

And a question. You've asked for support. What form would you like that support to take? What is it that we can do as a MAG or as a community to help you with this project?

>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: If there's a brief response, we'll have it. Otherwise, I think when we look at the GIPO and the Diplowatch and all of these projects, I think they're all very, very intertwined, not the least of which is what makes more sense for the IGF and the MAG. So I think it really is a very, very big topic and we should determine how we come forward with that.

If there's a quick response, then you should certainly do that, but...

If you'd light Flavio's mic, please.

>>FLAVIO WAGNER: So, Peter, with regard to the Friends of the IGF project in particular, the idea is that we build a very lightweight structure for -- with representatives from different stakeholder communities to guide the project in the future, but of course we would like very much to have liaisons to all the community, to all entities that are willing to support the project, both with ideas, making it easier to retrieve content that are valuable for the Web site, but also helping with funding or at least finding the right funding for extending the resources and the contents in the Web site.

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

Council of Europe has asked for the floor, and with that last -- with that last intervention, we'll close out this agenda item and then move on to the final one.

So Lee, you have the floor.

>>LEE HIBBARD: Thank you, Madam Chair. Now in terms of substance, the Council of Europe does a lot of substantive work for the public policy-making on the Internet and Internet-related issues, and it formalized that support for the IGF last year in a declaration which the 47 member states adopted. So we have a formal, you know, very strong support for IGF going into 2016 and beyond, of course. Also because that declaration supported IGF for the next 10 years.

My job is to see -- to see how IGF wants the Council of Europe to support its work intersessionally and also on-site in the -- in Guadalajara, so I really -- I'm here also to listen to you about where you see -- which expertise you need, you know, which types of support, which types of capacity building, et cetera. When I looked through the workshop proposals, I saw -- I counted approximately 80 workshop proposals out of 260 which relate directly to the work that we do in Strasbourg, work which involves human rights, work which involves rule of law and democracy issues, and that's all wrapped up into Internet governance strategy for 2016-2019 which I would ask you -- invite you to look at. There's plenty of work there.

I would just like to say that we have -- there's a lot of legally binding treaties adopted and developed in Strasbourg, treaties -- you know some of them. The Budapest Convention on Cybercrime has a global location. The Convention 108 on data protection. There are treaties, legally binding standards on medicrime, on trafficking in human beings, on violence against women and domestic violence, bioethics, the protection of children, their sexual exploitation and abuse, and also on terrorism. And many of those legal treaties now are looking at the Internet in their day-to-day work. There are reports out there. There are -- you know, there are member states and other observers that are deliberating on how these treaties interact with the Internet. So I really would like to mention that, that there are mechanisms, legal mechanisms with monitoring attached to them, which looks at the ways to make sure that, you know, issues regarding crime on line can be addressed, both between governments but also with other actors too.

My point is, how do we input that this year and beyond. There are a number of other issues -- other -- other types of expertise that we can bring. We have movements or campaigns on no hate speech on line. We have a Web platform which allows for alerts regarding the safety of journalists and the protection of journalism. We have indicators on Internet freedom which can help to measure how much freedom you have in a country. There's also descriptors for questions of citizenship and digital citizenship. And of course we have the case law of the European Court of Human Rights, which carries on in different fields regarding such things as intermediary liability. We have work on algorithms, on cloud evidence and questions of law enforcement across borders, et cetera.

We -- two areas of work I want to mention in particular this year. One which is the -- we have a comparative study of the laws and practices in the 47 countries on illegal content filtering and blocking and takedown of content. An 800-page document which can be summarized, which can be conveyed to the IGF, for example.

And we also have a new, let's say, forum or platform on human rights and the role of business in respecting and protecting human rights, which has been developed.

So there's far too much work there to try to summarize cleanly and easily to digest. I will send something to the list but I would really support your support in going forward how -- which expertise, which areas of priority do you wish that we contribute to.

Mexico is quite far away from Strasbourg, and experts in Europe, particularly, so how -- we'll have limited resources. How can we best use what we have this year and beyond. Thank you.

>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Lee. And thank you to all the participants for this last session. I mean, I think it's clear that there's a lot of opportunities where we can work more deeply together, and, I mean, I don't know about you but at one level this conversation felt fairly unsatisfying. I'm not sure that's even proper English at this point, but -- because there was so little time to actually engage. And I think one of the things we need to find some time as a MAG to decide is how do we set aside enough time and engage more deeply with a lot of these efforts, and what is the appropriate way to evaluate some of the offers and opportunities that have come forward as well, so that we can move them forward, you know, as appropriate and in a more expeditious manner.

But I want to thank everybody for all the effort, and, again, you know, at a future MAG meeting, I think we should decide what -- what items are appropriate to come in front of the MAG and how we can best do that, so that we actually get some more satisfactory and deeper engagement here.

With that, I'd like to move to the last item, and particularly, we had requests from a couple of community members that wanted some time to visit a couple of the items that were on the next two days' meeting.

Of course those are MAG meetings. It's predominantly, and sometimes only, MAG members that participate and speak in those meetings, so I think it's important that we actually leave some time to bring up -- for them to bring up whatever kind of questions, comments, or suggestions they want to pass on to us for the future.

We had that, and then we had a short presentation from Miguel on some working group efforts with respect to new formats.

If necessary, I suppose we could always bump that latter one to tomorrow, but I also think that would be a good thing for the open community consultation here to see as well.

It is a big piece of trying to further invigorate the IGF.

So with that, I see I have Barbara Wanner in the queue and I'm assuming that's to the first item, which is, again, to be clear there were a couple of comments made that there were some items from the next two days' agenda that some community members wanted time to comment on here today.

So that's what this particular agenda item is at the moment.

So Barbara, you have the floor.

>>BARBARA WANNER: Thank you, Madam Chair. My name is Barbara Wanner. I'm with the U.S. Council for International Business. We are also active participants in ICC/BASIS. Thank you very much for hearing me today, in view of what will be discussed tomorrow.

There are two brief comments I wanted to make, one of them concerning the proposal submission process and also one particular proposal in particular that we submitted.

In terms of process, the U.S. Council for International Business has submitted workshop proposals really since 2013, so this will be the fourth time that we've submitted proposals, and that has been an extraordinary learning process with wonderful respect and admiration for the dedication that MAG members put into reviewing these proposals and also to continuing to consider every year how to improve the workshop proposal process, and I've observed many changes in the proposal process over the years, requirements, priorities, and so forth.

This year in particular, I noticed a number of changes I think aimed at sharpening the proposals that were submitted, creating more accountability in the proposers to make sure that they were doing proper due diligence in terms of following up with speakers that they are proposing for their various panels, and I appreciate all the effort and thought that went into that.

One aspect of that this year did prove to be a bit challenging, and I would just invite the MAG to consider it.

It concerned the speaker confirmation element, and in this part of the process we submitted our workshop proposals and then the IGF secretariat automatically generated an email confirmation to the speakers that we had indicated would be participating in our workshops.

And for some of the speakers, it was confusing what that email meant. That was despite my concerted through emails and telephone calls to clarify that and urge them to respond to that email.

In other instances, I think speakers are just very, very busy, have an inbox that's bulging with emails, and maybe it just got lost in the email.

And then in other cases, I think -- and especially perhaps for some of our government -- potential government speakers -- they just felt uncomfortable offering a commitment this early in the process. So that as I say, I just invite the MAG to consider that that was a challenging element in submitting workshop proposals this year and to consider how you might weight that differently. You know, just because a potential speaker did not respond does not mean they are not interested, in other words.

The second element was a proposal that we submitted, and here I would just like to express my gratitude and appreciation for the MAG support. It goes to an issue that was the subject of a best practice -- some best practice work that Jac talked about earlier today. It is an item, an SDG, that we want to see implemented and a key element of the WSIS outcome document, and that concerns bridging the gender digital gap.

I am delighted that the MAG seemed to appreciate the hard work and thought that went into our proposal and the extraordinary group of women who will be participating in my workshop, and so I just wanted to offer the MAG my heartfelt gratitude for your support for my proposal. Thank you.

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

Some key points, and I think we will be considering the speaker identification process for next year's process.

Next in the queue we have Lori Schulman.

Lori, you have the floor.

>>LORI SCHULMAN: Thank you. I want to echo Barbara's comment about the confirmation, and thank you for recognizing that that was a challenge.

We were a first-time proposer and, yes, a learning curve and we really do appreciate the guidance that was published.

We had offered as an alternative to confirm speakers because we have the challenge again -- we didn't even put names because we didn't want to put any names that we couldn't guarantee a confirmation, so we put speaker profiles, and it's not clear whether or not a profile of the type of speaker we would ask would garner any greater weight than not having anything, and so that's just a comment that I share with the evaluation. I would like that to be considered.

Secondly, I have a question. Keeping within the spirit of inviting diverse speakers, and to the point made by Microsoft earlier about including SMEs and small businesses, I was wondering if there is any funding anticipated, were we to reach out to small and emerging companies to participate, to provide speakers on our panel or if it would be left to the proposer to fund the speakers, which could be challenging if the proposer is a nonprofit or, like ourselves, an association with limited travel resources for volunteers.

>>CHENGETAI MASANGO: As far as funding goes for -- from the IGF secretariat, there's very little funding available there, but, I mean, there might be a little bit but very little.

But there are other organizations like ISOC has got its ambassadors program, et cetera, which do fund other participants to come to the IGF.

I think we're going to try and list some of those on our Web site so that, you know, it's easy access for people to find.

>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Chengetai, and thank you, Lori. Good comments.

We have participant number 126, you have the floor.

Is there somebody wanting to speak?

They can just raise their hand so we can -- so 126, you have the floor.

>>LIYUN HAN: Many thanks to the chair, and I am Liyun Han from the Institute of Internet Governance sponsored by CNNIC. And based on my personal capacity, I would like to share some experience and make our contribution to our IGF.

I would like to make three points of comments.

The first one is the outreach, because I -- we noticed during the next two days there is a working group on the outreach and communication of IGF, and we have a suggestion to promote the outreach of IGF, such as is that possible to enhance the linkage and the cooperation between IGF and local -- national and regional IGFs? Maybe we can boost -- we can set up a session on the national and regional IGFs and appoint some MAG members and cooperate with the local host to promote the IGF and improve the literacy of -- the local literacy of IGF.

Because according to our experience, actually we are paying attention to promote the China -- Chinese community to participate in IGF, but many -- many other communities in China, they don't know IGF. They don't know what is IGF and they don't know that IGF can bring them -- bring benefits to them.

So I think maybe it is a feasible approach.

And it also reminds me about the ICANN's eLearn platform. ICANN has the eLearn platform and -- open to -- open to many communities to launch their training programs on the eLearn platform. Maybe we can set up a similar platform on the IGF Web site to boost more participation in this field.

And the second comment is the -- is the focused topics, because we noticed this year the MAG tags doing a lot of work on the categories and tags of the workshop proposals, but we also noticed that there are so many overlapping tags in the categories such as we can see that the areas of cybersecurity that I think is very similar. And they also have the capacity building and the digital literacy. And another one is the Internet governance ecosystem and Internet governance and Internet ecosystem, but I think the three tags indicated the same topics.

If we can -- if we can reduce the tags amount, we can clearly see how many hot issues that we are talking about.

And it's -- according to the past IGF experience, it's very easy to get lost in the hundreds of workshop -- workshops and the workshops are categorized by the numbering, so if you -- if you propose the workshops in advance so you can categorize at the number one and number two, but I think maybe in the future we can categorize the workshop by the topics and the attendees can choose which workshops they can participate in.

And the third comment is the multistakeholder cooperation. And I think, yes, we also notice that fewer private sectors and technology -- technology communities and academia attendees in the recent years, but maybe one reason is that they don't know IGF can bring -- bring something to them. Perhaps we can make a survey or a questionnaire between the IGF and the two to -- yes, to seek for the interest of the attendees. That's all. Thank you for listening.

>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you. We have two more questions, Peter Micek and then Sharada Srinivasan. And then I would like to ask Miguel to walk through the new formats.

So, Peter, you have the floor.

>> PETER MICEK: Thank you. As you continue your important work over the next couple of days, I just wanted to encourage the MAG to take account of the recent Human Rights Council adoption of the so-called Internet resolution, adopted by consensus, the updated text of this renewed resolution which established in 2012 for the first time that human rights apply online as offline. The new text, I believe, could guide the MAG in shaping the substance of the December IGF. In particular, the resolution promotes taking a human rights-based space approach to expanding access to the Internet. It condemns intentional disruptions of connectivity or access to information including through Internet shut-downs and condemns also attacks against those exercising their human rights online. This year in anniversary of the human rights instruments and of the Human Rights Council, we believe it's appropriate to keep this timely resolution in mind and inform the agenda for this year's meeting.

Second, I just want to present also an event that while not a national or regional initiative is likely of interest to many in the IGF community, which is RightsCon. RightsCon is one of the leading multi-track program conferences on issues at the intersection of the Internet and human rights. In March of this year, we held our fifth RightsCon in San Francisco, convening more than 1100 people from 84 countries with more than 150 different sessions that addressed many of the most timely and pressing Internet policy issues facing users at risk around the world.

We at Access Now are very pleased to announce Rights Now 2017 will be held in Brussels, Belgium from 29 to 31 March. While our call for proposals will be open shortly, we are very interested in helping coordinate a session, workshop, or site event focused on improving the collaborative link between the IGF and RightsCon. Looking at the large amount of IGF proposals related to human rights online, we welcome MAG members or IGF community members to advance what this collaborative link could look like. That's it. Thank you.

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

Sharada, you have the floor.

You are in the room. Okay. There you are.

>>SHARADA SRINIVASAN: Thank you, Madam Chair, for the opportunity. I just wanted to make two points. The first was I wanted to echo what's already been said in relation to speaker confirmations.

As a first-time workshop proposer, I found that part of the process slightly challenging, especially in terms of communicating with speakers and making them understand as to how this process would work, et cetera.

The second thing that I wanted to point out in relation to the process of submissions and something that MAG can consider for future IGFs, especially for first-time proposers and newer entrants of this community, I felt that the participant roster which was provided as a resource person roster for people to access was quite difficult for most people to get -- to wrap their heads around. Simply because while there was able for workshop proposers to pick people from that roster, there was very little information on how we could contact them or talk to them about our project, the workshop, that we are proposing outside of that platform on the Web site itself.

I understand that there might be privacy concerns in relation to putting out this information quite publicly. But I do think that if there is, in fact, to be a process that allows for resource persons to sign up, there also ought to be a process where we can communicate with them outside of just the form interface wherein they are asked, like, confirm their participation in the workshop. There should be a process of deliberation, usually which is, like -- seems standard procedure for creation of a workshop which, like, at this point in time for first-time proposers is not very accessible given the interface.

I also found that some of the email confirmations with the interface was slightly difficult to handle. Sometimes there were double entries, and most times you get two emails from the interface. I'm not entirely sure if these are technical considerations, but they are definitely things that made the process slightly more unwieldy and might be something that we want to consider if you want a simpler and smoother process which is more inclusive of the community.

Thank you.

>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Thank you. Those are very useful comments. I would now like to ask Miguel to walk through -- one of the things the MAG wanted to do based on a lot of comments we heard was find a way to, I guess, energize the MAG session and workshops a little bit more. So the MAG established a working group. Miguel is one of the coordinators of it. And this would play in pretty significantly to our workshop selection discussions over the next couple of days.

Miguel, you have the floor. Thank you to all your group and for all your work as well.

>>MIGUEL IGNACIO ESTRADA: Thank you, Chair. I don't know if you can hear me.

We have just a little work until this meeting because most part of it will be after the meeting because you'll notice later in the presentation most of the workshops we hope we can get them from the proposers that will not be selected in the following days.

Well, the main objectives as you just said are exploring new and preferred formats to share projects and views and ideas; also to create new ways to participate here in the meetings. And the main point, I think, is to attract a broader community, especially youth.

You can go to the next. Okay.

So we have been exploring two kind of sessions. One is the flash meetings. As you may know, there are -- we are thinking about preselecting the speakers. We thought it's a good idea to do them during lunch breaks in order to get more people to attend to those flash sessions.

So it's a good way to have people going around. And if they saw someone speaking, they maybe get interest in what is he saying. Well, actually, the spot we were thinking about would be the place -- the place the host will define for lunch. And the sessions might be from seven, up to ten-minute slots. No more than that.

You can go to the next.

The speakers, there will be up to 24 slots. That's four days, one lunch break per day, and six lots per hour. So we will have 24 speakers or group of speakers. It depends on how they manage to fit into the time slots.

We hope to find those speakers from the non-selected proposers who can adequate to the format for this form of proposal.

Also, in terms of the society chapter, show their interest in curating the proposals. Internet Society ambassadors could be another (indiscernible) and host volunteers.

I know there's a program in Mexico for universities to -- for universities to volunteer to the IGFs. Maybe they can give some presenters to these sessions.

Maybe other programs that might be out there, if they want to reach out to get them into the slots, we can speak about it.

What we need for the flash sessions, it's a little stage. I was thinking about the villa, but maybe it's not the villa because it's not the same place as far as I know from the place where the lunch breaks are going to take place. So I think it's well in the place where the lunch breaks are.

We need plugs, projectors cables, adapters, microphone, sound, and chairs for attendees in order to show the people going around that there will be like a presentation there and they can see it and see the presenters.

You can go to the next.

That was the selected spot, but that slide's wrong. I don't know if the host can clarify where the lunch breaks are going to take place.

The other format we have been working on is an unconference. The unconference has this kind of -- I don't know the word for that. The unconference-s are held by itself for both speakers. We thought about having a board where each speaker can right now -- write down the names and what they are going to speak about during the conference. This board would be during the morning of the selected day, and the unconferences would take place on the afternoon that same day.

We are thinking about five 15-minute slots. I don't know if maybe more can be requested. But I don't have any -- I don't think we're going to need more than that.

Can you go to the next? The speakers, we're thinking go the self-proposed speakers during the morning. The format is that. And we should work on encouraging non-selected workshop proposer and also youth to take parts of this.

What we need -- the next slide, please -- a smaller middle room for half a day, stage, plugs, projectors, cables, adapters, microphone, sound, and a big whiteboard in order to propose.

If you have any other ideas on these sessions, please come to us. We can explore them.

Next please. If you want to volunteer for the working group, there's the address and stuff.

This is the time line. After this meeting, maybe points three and four may be completed. We can start working on four and five, the plan approval.

I will share with the whole list this presentation if you want to check the other points.

Next one, please.

Again, if you want to volunteer, there is the address.

Thank you.

>>CHAIR ST. AMOUR: Miguel, thank you. And thank you to the working group for all the work as well. I think there's some interesting ideas there.

From the relatively little I know about the venue, I think those spaces can be accommodated. Obviously, the MAG still needs to go through its workshop proposal selection. Given these are largely self-proposed, community-member initiated, I think we can assume that some portion of those might go forward. Again, I'm trying not to get ahead of the MAG meeting tomorrow. But I think at some point, if you can meet with Chengetai and Victor and Yolanda and just understand the venue a little bit more and they can understand some of the possible requirements, then that will help to move forward should the MAG decide to support flash sessions.

So we are at time, and the interpreters need to be released.

I have requests for two more speakers, which if I could request the interpreters to stay for five more minutes, we could get those two speakers in. Otherwise, we could probably do without the interpretation as it's been pretty much in English all day in any case.

Let's press forward. Renata was in the queue, but she has disappeared from the queue.

So I guess it's just the United States.

>>SUSAN CHALMERS: Thank you, Chair. So I just wanted to say that in light of Miguel's presentation, it's good because it seems to respond to some of the comments that we've had today from the members on new and innovative session formats. So it's good to hear that.

And, also, just on a general note, I was heartened to hear Chengetai say that this year has been the most successful year in terms of MAG member evaluations. So I wanted to thank you and congratulate the MAG on doing such an excellent job going into tomorrow and really, really digging in and reading all of the evaluations. Thanks so much.

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

German, did you have a short intervention? That will be the last.

>>GERMAN VALDEZ: Thank you, Madam Chair. I want to support Miguel's proposal here. I would like to ask the secretariat and the local host to have serious consideration of this.

I know in Mexico we have strong voices that would arrive at the very last minute, and these sessions are good channels for those voices to have an opportunity to participate. The groups that might otherwise won't be able to have a platform to express their opinions. This could be a good way to have some space for groups that are not familiar with the IGF procedures. And maybe this might bring some stress to the local host to try to accommodate this.

But I think in the -- at the end of the day, we'll save a lot of headaches in terms of having pressure from groups that would like to take the floor as we experienced in Joao Pessoa last year. But I think this could be a good way to give the space and the room that they need. Thank you.

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

We're being told that we need to leave the premises. Let me just do some very, very quick thank yous. Obviously thank you to the interpreters, and thank you for staying a bit later. Thank you to the transcribers. Those records are just extremely helpful to many participants.

Thank you to the online participants. And I'm just so very sorry for all the difficulties we had getting an appropriate online participation. And I will meet with the secretariat and see if there's anything we can do to ensure that's addressed more for tomorrow.

I'd like to thank the U.N. staff here onsite who I think probably disliked having to read out participant number 1, 2, 3 as much as I did because they have been working very diligently in the background to give everybody a name. So I appreciate that. I just wanted to recognize those efforts as well as well as the support of all the AV team here.

With that, I think the only thing to remind everybody is that you must collect your new passes for tomorrow. If you run into somebody who hasn't collected their new pass here at the end of the day, the same arrangements will be available tomorrow morning, 8:30 to 10:00, I guess, outside -- 9:00 to 10:00 tomorrow outside of the front gate. And we are in a different conference room. Conference room 5.

Any final words? Thank you all very, very much. It was a full agenda. And we pushed through it all. So I thank you. Thank you for a great day.

[ Applause ]

IGF 2016 2nd Open Consultations and MAG Meeting July 12 (2024)

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