<div>Hi all,</div>
<div> </div>
<div>I support Jacqueline's proposal for an MMWG contribution. The proposed Agenda for the consultations (see : <a href="http://www.intgovforum.org/agendafeb2006.htm">http://www.intgovforum.org/agendafeb2006.htm</a>) is :
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<div>
<ol>
<li>Adoption of the Agenda
<li>Nature, character and structure of the IGF
<li>Substantive priorities
<li>The first meeting of the IGF
<li>Any other business</li></li></li></li></li></ol></div>
<div>As the Internet Governance Caucus will produce a general statement on the Forum that will directly relate to item 2 (see parallel thread on the governance list) I think we could focus on practical suggestions for the Athens meeting to feed into item 4.
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<div>I believe that if we move as quickly as possible into practical - and hopefully obvious - elements for Athens, it will help establish precedents and move our agenda forward. The general debate (items 2 and 3) will initially go on for a while, say, up to the end of the first day probably without producing a real agreement on formal procedures for the Forum. Therefore, the stage will be set to put forward a few concrete proposals for the Athens meeting. After all, the title of the Consultations is : "Consultations on the convening of the IGF" which could be interpreted as concerning ultimately the Athens meeting.
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<div> </div>
<div>In light of the discussions in Malta, I suggest to build on the following concrete elements :</div>
<div> </div>
<div>
<div>1) let's prove the movement by walking, ie. by organizing the first meeting in <strong>Athens as an open conference</strong>, accessible to all stakeholders with a simple registration process with no prior accreditation (like the former UN ICT TF Open Forum on Internet Governance in New York in March 2004)
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<div> </div>
<div>2) let Athens be a three-day event organized around three components : </div>
<ul>
<li><strong>two plenary meetings</strong> :<strong> </strong>one at the beggining (general debate) and one at the end (wrap-up session), they coould last half a day each, or the first one could be a full day;
<li><strong>a few (5-6 for instance) thematic break-out sessions </strong>around a few themes explicitely mentionned in the Tunis Agenda section devoted to Internet Governance; this would facilitate the structuring of future discussions around "thematic threads"
<li>a special <strong>"poster session"</strong> (half a day for instance or three hours) with precise 3 or 5 minutes slots (ie a total of 30-60 presentations) for participants to indicate among the list of issues mentionned in the Geneva Plan of Action and Tunis Agenda, those they would like to see addressed by the IGF; a sort of "call for posters" would be issued in advance and submissions should indicate the nature of the problem, the rationale for seeing it addressed withn the IGF and the proposed way forward; Nota : the strict 3-5 minutes format was adopted very efficiently in the WSIS' first phase Regional conference in Tokyo in Janary 2003
<span></span> </li></li></li></ul>
<div>3) the Athens Forum should heavily rely upon the <strong>use of information technologies</strong> (online tools, teleconferences, even videoconference if possible) to facilitate participation of actors form all sectors and all regions. In particular, wireless connectivity, webcasting and most importantly real-time captionning are strongly requested.
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<div>4) The forum should <strong>take inspiration from the way the Internet itself works </strong>: allowing heterogeneous governance mechanisms to interface/coordinate, in the same way the Internet allows the interoperability of heterogeneous communications networks. The Forum allow a network of activities undertaken by the various stakeholders, respecting a comon set of "protocols" indicating :
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<div>- how each activity is set up</div>
<div>- how it is conducted</div>
<div>- how it interfaces (input and output) with other activities</div></div>
<div> </div>
<div>5) <strong>Financing</strong> of Forum activities should be scalable, multi-stakeholder, distributed and distinguish different elements :</div>
<ul>
<li>the permanent financing of <strong>a small secretariat</strong> : financial contributions as well as in kind (in particular people on secondment from various entities); the secretariat itself coould be progressively distributed around the world in several locations according to local support (analogy with the multi-located Team of the W3C)
<li>the financing of <strong>each annual meeting</strong> (contributions from a host county, sponsoring and possibly registration fees for participants); the annual meeting (there could be several but this point is open) could either be alwaysint he same place or, preferably in my view, be held in different locations each year (one continent per year in the first five years of the Forum)
<li>the financing of <strong>activities related to each Thematic Thread</strong> : seminars, conferences, working groups, drafting groups if recommendations; particularly interested actors could pool support for issues they are interested in,with clear provisions to handle potential conflicts of interest and strict disclosure and transparency of contributions;
<li>the financing of <strong>a capacity-building and inclusiveness initiative</strong> towards participants from developing countries or needy ones in developed areas; the idea here would be to have three dedicated funds established within each constituency : one among governments, one among private sector and one among civil society (you could even have a fourth to facilitate participationof small international agencies); each fund would be contributed to by the richest actors of each constituency in order to help the participation of their less favorized members (rich companies for small one, rich governments for poor ones, etc...)
</li></li></li></li></ul>
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<div>On the last set of points, interventions in the next two days could focus on the last element (the creation of three funds) if there is agreement among ourselves; the other points would just be addressed lightly or kept for future interventions if there is no consensus.
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<div>This list of elements is very detailed and could be shortened for distribution. But I wanted to present the main ideas I intend to put forward on a personnal basis. I hope this helps the definition of a common statement within this MMWG group. Pick what you want !
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<div>Best</div>
<div> </div>
<div>Bertrand</div>
<div><br>
<div><span class="gmail_quote">On 2/15/06, <b class="gmail_sendername">Jacqueline Morris</b> <<a href="mailto:jam@jacquelinemorris.com">jam@jacquelinemorris.com</a>> wrote:</span>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="PADDING-LEFT: 1ex; MARGIN: 0px 0px 0px 0.8ex; BORDER-LEFT: #ccc 1px solid">Hi<br>Rather than working on a total mechanism and not saying anything in public until we get that sorted, would it be interesting to ppl for us to pull together some BASIC PRINCIPLES as a first step that we can present at the consultation that we think that any mechanism needs to subscribe to? We have articulated some, I believe, and that might be an easy consensus first step.
<br><span class="sg"><br>-- <br>Jacqueline Morris<br><a onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)" href="http://www.carnivalondenet.com/" target="_blank">www.carnivalondenet.com</a><br>T&T Music and videos online
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http://mailman-new.greennet.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/mmwg</a><br><br><br></blockquote></div><br> </div></div>