[IGFmaglist] Interview notes from IGF Istanbul Participants

Tue Dec 2 04:54:03 EST 2014

Dear Izumi, Dear MAG members

Thank you for your valuable comments. I agree with them at all.

I would also like to add some comments from my side. Unfortunately I couldn’t attend MAG meetings this time, and the quality of remote participation (as you said: online participation) can never be equal to on-site participation. So I prefer to echo my comments through this email:

>>>> 

As a 2 year old MAG member and a participant of 5 IGFs, a rough feedback I was receiving from the general participants in the former IGFs, was the lack of knowledge about I-Star’s and other communities’ role and their relation to the internet governance among some IGF participants, especially those from developing countries which I was more connected to them. As a person who has been involved in IG activities for several years, I can understand this situation, since I also had the same problem at the beginning of my activities.

Even a worth situation is now happening to the new IGF participants, where the huge amount of data published about Internet governance and the role of players, and the speed of increasing of these data, makes it hard for new-comers to understand the process.

I call this a “Potential Barrier” against the active participation of attendees from the developing countries in the process of policy making for Internet Governance. Despite the effectiveness of the IGF model, I believe that this model is designed to be more familiar for participants from the developed countries, rather than those from the developing countries. It’s because that the “Multi-stakeholder participation model in decision making” does not necessarily match with the culture of decision making in traditional communities, causing confusions for participants and make it more complicated for them to understand the model. So I believe that IGF should encourage the participating community to be more flexible in knowledge sharing regarding the philosophy of the Multi-stakeholder model itself, in parallel and in addition to the discussions based on this model which is now a norm in IGF meetings.

In addition to the above, one of the other factors which I found it can harm a global participation in IGF’s Multi-stakeholder model, is the lack of clarification of “stakeholders”. In most of the developing communities (and even in developed ones), there is not yet a clear understanding of Internet Stakeholders who can participate in decision makings related to IG. For example, I remember a discussion in one of the communities I was communicating with, in which even an ICT expert did not yet believe in the role of non-IT-related civil society organization in the Internet Governance discussions, and was thinking that IG is only related to different types of ICT activists (including technical persons and ICT related NGOs, but not ordinary internet users. It again shows that IGF has not been successful in expressing its model as good as needed.

Generally, I can summarize my comments in the followings:

1.     IGF needs to pay a special attention to the methods of encouraging interested participants to try to spread the philosophy of Multi-Stakeholder model by looking at the model through the window on traditional communities, making it possible for those communities to accept the model as a logical model, and not just as a forced western-type model.
This can happen through sub-themes in the next IGF, So I recommend to distinguish a specific sub-theme in the next IGFs, making it possible to propose workshops related to philosophy of Multi-Stakeholder model by looking at the model through the window of traditional communities.

2.     IGF has to encourage communities in discussing about better clarification of stakeholders. This can be done through awareness programs, as well as specific sessions and workshops in the next IGFs. Maybe a mechanism of higher grading these type of workshop proposals in the evaluation period is useful.

Best Regards,

Shahram Soboutipour | IT Business Advisor | cell: +98 913 141 6626 | fax: +98 21 8978 7875 |  <mailto:shahram at soboutipour.com> shahram at soboutipour.com

From: Igfmaglist [mailto:igfmaglist-bounces at intgovforum.org] On Behalf Of Angelic
Sent: Monday, December 1, 2014 1:46 PM
To: Izumi AIZU
Cc: Igfmaglist at intgovforum.org
Subject: Re: [IGFmaglist] Interview notes from IGF Istanbul Participants

Thank you Izumi.

I can understand these comments well.

Angelic Alihusain-del Castilho

Sent from my iPad

On Dec 1, 2014, at 11:09 AM, Izumi AIZU <iza at anr.org> wrote:

Dear all, this is summary of what I just said at Open Consultation meeting.

I also attach the result of my interview.

I am the retired MAG member after three years ended at IGF Istanbul this year.

Still, I like to share my notes of Interviews we did on ad hoc basis at IGF Istanbul. There were only 9 interviews, but there are some good elements for us to consider.

I would like to summarize into two main points.

1) More Participatory style

Most, if not all, mentioned that IGF meetings are not easy to participate.

There was a clear line between organizer, speakers and just audience for most of sessions and workshops. Many felt isolated or not well addressed.

There are many ways to make meetings much more participatory.

I would not go into details here, but some methods like:

"Unconference, "BoF" or "Open Space" is one way.

2) MAG to listen to participants

By conducting this ad hoc interview, I felt it very valuable. I like to encourage the MAG members to try to do it again at the next IGF. 

3) Propose to change “Remote Participation” to “Online Participation”

Onsite and Online – to give more equal-footing status

Difficult to stay and listen, but much more difficult to make meaningful intervention.

With NETmundial, videos were shown – from India or Indonesia – gave somewhat more intimate feel – and coherent but not sufficient

more later,

izumi

-- 

                     >> Izumi Aizu <<
Institute for InfoSocionomics, Tama University, Tokyo
Institute for HyperNetwork Society, Oita,          
Japan
www.anr.org

<IGF Interview Sep2014 Aizu.pdf>

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