[Mmwg] putting working groups on the radar

[William Drake]

Hi,

On 6/11/06 10:46 PM, "Jeanette Hofmann" <jeanette at wz-berlin.de> wrote:

> Hi, I guess my position is somewhere between Bill and Avri. If we as CS
> managed to establish an online working group together with some of the G
> 77 countries, I am sure such a working group would have not problem to
> be acknowledged by the IG forum or its advisory group or the SG or whoever.
> jeanette

I agree with this and said so, so I must be between me and Avri too;-)  The
issue is whether they will be enticed to join in the first place if there's no
prospect of a formal linkage/role.  No way to know for sure a priori, so let's
make the case and see how they respond.  It'd be easier if mAG created a
receptive environment, though.

On 11 jun 2006, at 17.15, Adam Peake (ajp at glocom.ac.jp) wrote:

> I think working groups and list discussions will be very hard for
> governments to cope with. Not easy when representing a govt to just
> throw out ideas, explore new positions (positions that might be wrong,
> against existing national policy, etc.) I know ICANN GAC struggles
> with this, and that's a bunch of people who individually are pretty
> comfortable in email etc.

Exactly.  They face different constraints/incentives, etc.

> Obvious to have them, obvious to encourage and support them.
> Workshops should anyway have online working groups (without Athens
> will be no more than a traditional conference.)  But I haven't sent
> the email, bit concerned that someone will use WGs as an excuse for
> fewer workshops ("oh good idea, so we'll have 12 workshops this year,
> and all the rest can work online until Brazil..." kind of thing.) Last
> couple of notes to MAG supporting fewer workshops have come from
> developing country folk.

I would think it could be made clear that a framing this as a zero-sum trade-off
would be a misconstruction.  WGs and workshops ought to be integrally linked,
not alternatives to one another.  At the front end, a workshop topic that gets
blessed will need some core group of people to plan it, which could be the
start-up kernel for a WG.  IF at the Athens meeting or subsequently people
decide that they really weren't able to progress the topic very much in just a
couple of hours of F2F and it would be useful to have some continuing dialogue,
potentially with an eye toward some sort of joint product---study,
recommendations, whatever---that could be presented in Rio, then they could
form a WG, and there would be defined modalities for any that wanted to be
formally linked to the IGF.  If instead there's no demand for continuing
dialogue, then a WG will not be created.  Of course, people could also
propose/form WG on topics not covered by the blessed workshops as well, but it
might be harder for these to get traction, and they certainly wouldn't be an
adequate alternative.

The point in all this is not to create more busy work for already overtaxed
people or dialogue for its own sake (although I have some sympathy for the
latter, since there are often unanticipated or even unidentified positive
externalities).  By themselves, a couple of hours discussion in Athens on a
various topics simply will not significantly advance any of the declared
objectives of the IGF.  Three hours talking about trusted computing or whatever
won't be enough to build capacity, foster much needed inter-species dialogue
and mindshare, identify best practices and options for improvement, etc.  If
one really supports the IGF's mission as specified in the Tunis Agenda then
more than an annual meeting is needed.

On 6/12/06 12:42 AM, "Avri Doria" <avri at acm.org> wrote:

> this is just a quick note becasue i am about to go to a project
> dinner this evening, but do take caution.  i know you are in a bind,
> with the MMWG pushing you (well just Bill) pushing you to speak.

It shouldn't be just me, since the MMWG agreed on this earlier, and the caucus
has said the same in various ways.  Either we mean what we've said or we
shouldn't spend scarce time figuring out how to say it.

> btw, you should also re reminded there are other AGies on the MMWG
> like Shears, Erik, Ken, Qusai and one SCAG Wolfie. and of course
> Chengetai MK's ubiquitous watcher.

It would be good to hear from them.

Best,

Bill