[CS Bureau] Back to work...

[Adam Peake]

Robert,

What and extraordinary message.  We haven't even begun a serious 
discussion about essential Bureau reform and you are asking for money 
for yourself and 20 other people (15 days?  Are you sure...)

The Bureau had an opportunity to meet in Cape Town, that expensive 
and I hope valuable exercise should have been enough.  Efforts the 
Bureau makes in fund raising must be for civil society generally and 
focused on facilitating discussion and contributions to the substance 
of WSIS.  The Bureau must not be self-serving.

The deadline for accreditation is January 6. I'll send a note about 
this to Plenary.



At 4:13 PM -0500 1/3/05, Robert Guerra wrote:
>
>
>* Accommodation - Can we reduce the cost of lodging/accomodation by 
>having those in geneva make a   bulk reservations ?
>
>* Virtual Participation - How can we develop options so that those 
>not physically able to travel to Geneva can participate in a more 
>effective and meaningful way? Can we plan in advance - so that 
>virtual attendees can participate in sessions?
>
>* Schedule / Program - Andy Carvin and others are starting to ask 
>about the meeting schedule/agenda. Is it available anywhere? If not 
>- do we have an idea of what will be discussed @ what week of the 
>meeting?
>
>* Tasks - by when can we develop a concrete list of tasks, when they 
>have to be done by and who will help with them.
>


Agree with the above 4 points.  Could someone in Geneva (local 
probably easier) chase down Mr. Geiger and his staff for any 
information --official or just guidance-- on the schedule of the 
PrepCom.


1./  Look forward to hearing Derreck's comments about online tools. 
Think this is a great idea. As Wolfgang's says, we must practise what 
we preach.

2./  I sent a note in mid-December.  Copied below.  Any comment please?


Thanks,

Adam


>To: bureau at wsis-cs.org
>From: Adam Peake <ajp at glocom.ac.jp>
>Subject: RE: [CS Bureau] TR: CSB Cape town
>Date: Thu, 16 Dec 2004 21:35:08 +0900
>
>Dear Viola, Renata:
>
>Thank you very much for organizing the meeting.  Viola in particular 
>for the preparations: always hard to arrange people's travel, visas, 
>accommodation, etc. And seems an amazing job was done with 
>translation and note taking: could you describe how that worked, is 
>it something we could duplicate during prepcoms and other meetings? 
>(What would it cost :-)
>
>Fully support suggestions to shrink the size of the bureau.  As well 
>as those families that don't respond by December 31st, perhaps some 
>of those that do could be encouraged to think about merging. 
>Building around a core of regional groups might be effective?
>
>I think the original proposal to create a CS bureau suggested 10 families:
>
>1. Academia and education
>2. The science and technology community
>3. The media
>4. The creators and active promoters of culture
>5. Cities and local authorities
>6. Trade Unions
>7. Parliamentarians
>8. NGOs including social groups such as: Youth, Women, Indigenous, 
>Disabled, etc.
>9. Social movements
>10. Multi-stakeholders partnerships
>
>Add regional families (+5)
>From the list cut "Parliamentarians", and make Gender, Youth and 
>People with Disabilities families in their own right (+2).  Do we 
>have enough multi-stakeholders and trade unionists to merit a 
>family? For the rest, they could be rolled up into these, e.g. the 
>family I have been associated with, think-tanks, might become part 
>of the NGO family. Also wonder if there needs to be both NGOs and 
>social movements (NGOs organizations with legal status; social 
>movements, those without.)
>
>14, 15, 16 or 17, still quite large. Then add various liaisons.
>
>Couple of comments on the meeting summary.
>
>The government bureau and WSIS secretariat have spoken highly of the 
>CS bureau, so I think sensible to take these positives and try and 
>build on them.  Try to build on Bureau's successes rather than knock 
>it down.
>
>Pressing tasks:  begin a dialogue with the task force on financing 
>mechanisms to see how civil society can contribute and be better 
>represented there.  I think the Friends of Chair group is also 
>urgent, how can we contribute, CS seems very missing from this. 
>Given Mr. Samassekou's comments about the importance of CS 
>contributions to the Geneva phase documents, we can justifiably a 
>claim that CS will make a significant contribution.
>
>About the WGIG --and I am obviously bias/conflicted on this-- I 
>think we are doing OK and would prefer the Bureau to work through 
>the Caucus. Internet governance is a well established content issue, 
>I am not sure what the Bureau could or should do.  In terms of 
>process --at least process issues in our external relations-- the 
>caucus has been successful so far. For example, I would not like 
>confusion to creep in about who WGIG should contact, etc. When the 
>caucus needs CSB's help we will ask (as we did during the summer...) 
>It is the responsibility of a content group to work via Plenary and 
>content and themes.
>
>Thanks,
>
>Adam
>_______________________________________________
>Bureau mailing list
>Bureau at wsis-cs.org
>http://mailman.greennet.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/bureau