The following are the outputs of the real-time captioning taken during the Eleventh Annual Meeting of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) in Jalisco, Mexico, from 5 to 9 December 2016. 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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>> SANDRA HOFERICHTER: Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to this workshop. My name is Sandra Hoferichter. I'm the coordinator of the School on Internet Governance which was the first School on Internet Governance in Europe and with this session we would like to invite the recent schools on Internet Governance which are up in the world now and try to find if we can try a multi‑global approach in terms of collaborating and coordinating schools, but first I would like to ask Wolfgang Kleinwachter the Chair of the European Internet Governance School which was the inventor of the global concept schools and Internet Governance to give a short introduction because we want to use the time for discussion. And afterward I would like to rely on my guide Jorg Schweiger, DENIC was the first and only sponsor who explored the potential of this concept and made it possible that we could start in 2007 with the European Summer School on Internet Governance, but first I would like to invite Wolfgang Kleinwachter to say a few words.
>> WOLFGANG KLEINWACHTER: When we have the first session on Internet Governance in New York, the position of the working group was exceptional. It was 20 governmental representatives and 20 non‑governmental representatives. Among the non‑Government, Avri was a member, there are a number of academics and during the first meeting governmental representatives approached us and said where can I study Internet Governance and it was difficult to answer the question. Internet Governance is a little bit more. You can study law but it's not enough. It's a little bit political economy, it's informatics, social science, political science, cultural dimensions. So it's a multidisciplinary phenomenon, but universities are organized around disciplines and faculties so it was a big challenge so we could not answer the question where to study Internet Governance.
So finally the academics came together and said we can do and one of the conclusions said and Jorg Schweiger will talk about that later, is we have to create a multi‑disciplinary course that includes different disciplines so we can accommodate these needs. And the outcome was two years later the launch of the concept of the Summer School on Internet Governance. The pilot workshop took place in Germany and I started to organise this, so applaud DENIC the German registry and thanks to them we are where we are now because DENIC discovered at an early stage that it makes sense to be innovative in the field of education and to have new forms of knowledge and with this I hand over to Jorg Schweiger. Thank you.
>> JORG SCHWEIGER: I'm the CEO of DENIC managing the Top Level Domain with Germany with more than 60 million domain names, currently one of the top three registries worldwide, and thanks Wolfgang for the opportunity to speak and I will try to give a double header in a sense that one, I would try to explain why DENIC has been a sponsor for the School of Internet Governance ever since, and secondly, he asked me to provide you a little bit more with the history and what the further development of the School on Internet Governance could be.
So where did we start? Well, actually, one conclusion from the Internet Governance discussions at the U.N. were somewhat on Information Society business between 2003 and 2005 has been that more knowledge about management of critical infrastructure is needed. All stakeholders involved in Internet Governance must have a better understanding on how the Internet works, and this statement does surely address a lot of incumbent players at the Internet Ecosystem, and it truly motivated DENIC to contribute. And why did it?
Well, as a private company but being rooted in a research and academic community, it was a given to promote capacity building programs even far beyond our own needs as a technical service provider. So we recognized the need to reach out beyond our technical community to train stakeholders from Governments, from Civil Society and the growing user community to enhance their understanding on how the Internet works, how the Internet's basic infrastructure like domain names, IP addresses, protocols are being managed and being governed.
So what members of the global academic community who participated in the U.N. working group on Internet Governance approached DENIC in 2006 with a request to sponsor a workshop investigating opportunities for broader engagement of the academic community and the process of enhanced Internet Governance cooperation as by the way envisages by the Tunis Agenda we welcomed this initiative.
So in effect, in June 2007, a workshop in Germany took place which was organized by two global international networks, the International Communication Association and the International Association for Media and Communication Research. And this workshop that had been sponsored by DENIC and UNESCO concluded with quite interesting recommendations, I think, one being to form GIGANET now known and most recognized Global Internet Governance Academic Research Network that actually just yesterday had their eleventh symposium in Guadalajara.
And secondly, the launch of a massive program for teaching Internet Governance on a multidisciplinary basis, and that for sure being the founding idea of schools on Internet Governance SIGs as I will refer to them earlier. So stemming from those recommendations, teaching Internet Governance was piloted in Germany in 2007 by a master program at the European Summer School on Internet Governance, which is now known as Euro S SIG. And this program has become a success store story and DENIC is proud that we supported the initiative right from the start and in various ways.
So the program and the concept of schools on Internet Governance soon became the source of inspiration for similar activities around the globe, like the south School on Internet Governance in Latin America. We had in 2009 the first Arab School on Internet Governance. Now, we see regional SIG's take place in Africa and Asia‑Pacific, and since a couple of years even national SIGs emerges in Brazil onwards, India and the U.S. And there are more, even more initiatives like very recently in Georgia and Pakistan. There are regional, national and international governance Government activity other gTLD registries, registrars, ISPs and various members of the community including ICANN, ISOC have followed the example and they are supporting the concept of Internet Governance schools.
So that was history. In July this year EuroSSIG celebrated its tenth anniversary honored by Steve Crocker, Chairman of the ICANN board. We see hundreds of young people got their extensive knowledge about Internet Governance via various SIGs, and we see fellows in many international Internet Governance committees from the IGF MAG to the ICANN board, so fellows who started or at least enriched their career paths at MSSIG or any other school on SIG.
I'm giving too much credit to Olga here. So all of this being very encouraging to move forward and how do we want to move forward? Well, I think by preparing this workshop for the IGF, we discussed an idea to build a global platform where the various schools of Internet Governance can exchange they're experience, pool their resources and contribute to even more knowledge building at the international governance ecosystem among all involved and affected stakeholders.
And so this DENIC supports an idea that came up to form a new IGF Dynamic Coalition on schools on Internet Governance. As this peers for me at least, and to Wolfgang, I think, to be the next logical step on the road forward into uncharted territories of a borderless Internet. Thank you.
>> SANDRA HOFERICHTER: Thank you Wolfgang and Jorg Schweiger for this overview. We have quite a lot of regional organizers in the room, and I would like to invite you now to share your regional experience because we have now heard about European one and the global sort of approach, but what are the regional specifics when it comes to especially your school? What is the difference maybe to the European young, what do we have to take into account when we think about further collaboration? And I would like to invite first Olga Cavalli she established a School on Internet Governance two years after the European one was formed in 2009 and since ever she is organising one school a year and Olga, and I ask everyone to be very brief, five minutes maximum just to give a short introduction to your school so we have a lot of time for discussion.
>> OLGA CAVALLI: Thank you for organising this session and inviting me. We started as you mentioned the south School of Internet Governance after a kind invitation from Wolfgang to the first school and we had that conversation there that we could do something in Latin America. What we realized in Latin America is that the participation of our region in this global meetings was much less than other regions, even less than Africa. So we thought that we needed a program that could be more outreach oriented, more welcoming people that were not included in this global dialogue, and encourage them in participating in ICANN, IGF, and regional and global events. So we have organized the school starting in Buenos Aires, it was easy to organize it in our hometown, and it has been growing in the number of participants.
Then in 2010 in Sao Paulo, 2010 in Mexico City, 2012 Bogota, we started with remote participation, so it's open to everyone. And since day zero, we have simultaneous translation in Spanish and English all of the time. Since 2012 we have remote participation with video streaming and two audio channels or three. Depending on where it's organized it may be including English, Spanish and Portuguese. Then '13 Panama, 2014 for the first time in Caribbean in Trinidad and Tobago. 2015 in Costa Rica and this year our host was the Organization of American States in Washington, D.C., where we were honored by, with the presence of Vint Cerf as our keynote speaker and we have a nice picture in our booth and in our brochures.
We have some rules from day zero, full gender balance among fellows, as much as geographic diversity as possible. No limits in age. We grant fellowship to all of the selected candidates. If they come from abroad, we can provide also the hotel and meals and if they are from there only the training and the meals. So we try to be as multi‑stakeholder as possible, and there is a big list of countries. I won't go through that. We have trained more than 1500 fellows so far, and the next school will be organized jointly with Rio De Janeiro on 3‑7 April. The call is open now. So if you have more ‑‑ if you want more information visit our booth in the booth area. Apply for a fellowship. We have no limitations of country. They can come from other regions. Those interested in Latin America we don't provide air ticket but we provide the rest of what you need for the school. So that was my contribution. Thank you very much.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you very much, Olga. You mentioned you have 1500 participants over the last eight years, right? Just to give you an overview at the summer school in Europe, we had 300 over the years. So this is quite a different type of concept having ‑‑ what is the number of participants per school?
>> OLGA CAVALLI: In Washington it was 180. The idea is outreach. It's not so much high academic content, but it's understanding the value of being included in the global and regional multistakeholder, and by the way, we will organize the first Argentinian school with the ISOC Argentinian next year in the first quarter of 2017. Thank you.
>> MODERATOR: You mentioned a good point. You said your school is oriented about outreach being involved and we had discussions at ICANN meetings and beforehand where we realized in preparation of this workshop that there is no one size fits all. Still, if you call us SIG we should follow some kind of same basic guidelines. The next school which emerged was before the IGF in 2009 in Sharm El‑Sheikh. The Arab people took the opportunity to organize a school. From this point of view it was not a regular school, but now they are back to more regular approach, and I'm looking for Baher. He is here. Baher, could you give us a short overview of what is happening in your region since the first approach in 2009?
>> BAHER ESMAT: So in 2009 the IGF took place in Sharm El‑Sheikh and before that the Egyptian Government, the local host of the IGF meeting back then led the initiative of organising a regional, Arab regional School on Internet Governance. ICANN was one of the partners that worked back then with the Egyptian Government together with other stakeholders including from technical communities, ISO chapters and so forth. The idea was the same.
There was, you know, a need for more education in this area and since the IGF itself was taking place in the region, the thought was to try to do something in preparation to at least, you know, try to raise awareness before the meeting. What happened afterward was that this sort of addition of the Arab Internet Governance School did not continue for different reasons, and three years after that, ICANN was working on developing regional strategy for the Middle East region which includes Arab countries, includes non‑Arab countries like Turkey, Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan. And one of the recommendations that came in the strategy back then was to, for ICANN to contribute to the capacity building part of Internet Governance and to follow the same concept of summer schools that had been taking place.
So we started with the Middle East School on Internet Governance in 2013. I guess that was ‑‑ or maybe '14. We have had three additions the first time. The first was in Kuwait. The second was in Tunis and the third one last summer was in Beirut, Lebanon. Very quickly, just a few highlights how this works, we have a program committee from community members that work on developing the program, like six, seven people based on their experience, background, et cetera. They kind of identify the topics to be included in the program and they also seek feedback from the rest of the community through mailing lists and other means. And once the program is more or less identified, we begin to sort of liaise or communicate with key experts in the fields to try to invite them as faculty members.
So that's one aspect regarding the program. So it's kind of a multi‑stakeholder approach. The second thing is ICANN is so far taking lead in organising those schools in the Middle East, however, we work very closely with the Internet Society and with RIPE NCC in the Middle East who have been supporting and contributing to this program over the past three years.
The third thing is the outcomes or what we have seen so far coming out of this program, one, we have been seeing more people coming to ICANN through the fellowship and the NextGen program from those schools. So those schools, you know, they work as platforms for producing more people coming to ICANN. And out of this pool of fellows and NextGen we have started to see fewer of them working in different ICANN constituencies and working groups and that's a good thing.
The other good outcome is recently we have been receiving requests from different groups interested in establishing national schools as well. And one has emerged so far in Pakistan and they had through the academic community and technical community with help with ICANN and ISOC as well, and just recently I think last week or the week before, they had the second edition of their local School on Internet Governance. So these are more or less the key highlights from the Middle East school. Thank you.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you, Baher. I take note that it needed technical community involvement to set up the schools in your region because otherwise probably there would have been some challenges around, and I think we can be very thankful to the technical community, ICANN in particular because they are supporting somehow all of the schools on Internet Governance so far. And I think it's a great effort that you are pushing forward in this region and make it part of a strategy actually. So here we actually see another way of doing such a sort of school which we should take into account when forming collaboration platform.
And also one comment regarding the fellows, I would say it works vice versa, those who participated in the ICANN or ISOC fellowship program, they are sometimes also coming to any of the schools afterward. So I think this is a good exchange, and we have seen, I mean, if you count down from the participant that's went through the EuroSSIG, we could at least name 50 or 70 people who are involved or engaged in ICANN or IGF or have a leading position in Governments or so on. The next I would like to invite is Anriette Esterhuysen. I have seen her in the room. She is there. Okay. Anriette was the one who was behind setting up the School on Internet Governance in Africa which was also inspiring in the way you worked interactively with people. I think it was at your school when for the first time we introduced a multi‑stakeholder role play which was then further developed by Avri Doria. Please tell us, tell us about the specifics in your region.
>> ANRIETTE ESTERHUYSEN: The African School is partnership with API and the Net Part Agency which is intergovernmental agency of the African Union. APC does most of the implementation, but it's been useful for us to have the partnership. We started in 2013 and we decided to have a competitive process. There is a tendency in particularly within the ITU framework of capacity building where people send officials. They don't necessarily want to learn and there is not, you know, the opportunity is there, but it's not necessarily reaching the people that are very interested.
And we were shocked by the demand. The first year we had more than 300 applicants and 2013 we had more than 800 applicants, so that's a real challenge. We see it as a leadership academy as well. We bring together people from Civil Society to quite senior leadership level Government and regulatory agency personnel, and that is also quite mixed.
We also quite consciously try both capacity of faculty not just of participants. So we have core faculty, international and African that we invite back every year or we try to and we have what we refer to as resource people who are often then presented on one topic, but they will be faculty, later on hopefully. We have alumnae in the room, actually. I'm happy to have them. We have alumnae lists and alumnae WhatsApp groups. We feel Internet Governance capacity building is done by institutions who actually teach people about their own institutions.
We want critical thinking about ICANN about the international intergovernmental system, about national processes. So that's very much a part of it. Innovation is a practicum which Avri leads for us which has worked well with participants negotiating an outcome document. We have got a new innovation which is to introduce gender in Internet Governance, which is done in different ways through recruitment and have a gender, an interest group that participates in the school.
I think placing fellows at the IGF Secretariat is something we have done on occasion, and I think for the Dynamic Coalition that would be something to look at. How can we actually through the schools identify people that could be placed at Internet Governance policy institutions? I think ‑‑ the challenge ‑‑ another positive thing is national spinoffs and we have people who organized a Kenyan school quite recently. So the challenges have been cost. Africa is a huge continent.
We just the travel is huge. Languages is a challenge. Thus far we have only been presenting in English and English is a requirement. It's a very intimate school, very interactive, so using simultaneous translation could change the nature of it. We really should be having at least one school in Arabic, one in French and one in English a year.
And we are starting an evaluation at the moment, we want to do a trace study or use a tracer study methodology. We will be tracking publications and participation in events of alumnae. And going back to 2013. We evaluate every year, we have a formal evaluation of the school, and that has helped us adapt and improve the curriculum every year because the evaluation results are quite detailed and very useful.
Maybe Avri ‑‑ actually is Amy here as well? So Avri if there is time, I would like to hear her perspective.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you very much Anriette. You mentioned two things I would highlight, the number of applicants you received, that's truly a challenge to go through all of the applications and it shows that there are still not enough opportunities to teach Internet Governance, and also to evaluation, I think this is something Dynamic Coalition could truly take up in terms of develop to move forward. I think this could be a valuable contribution, and also because you mentioned, I would like to ask please one of, all of you who participated in any of the schools, please raise your hand that we have an idea how many alumnae we have in the room? That's quite a number. Wonderful. So we are almost around the globe. The last region I would invite which came up recently with a School on Internet Governance is Asia‑Pacific, and I have here Jungbae, I hope I say the name right. There is a hope to teach 10,000 fellows a year so we are interested in hearing your perspective. I had the chance to participate in the Indian schooling on Internet Governance.
>> JUNGBAE AN: Hello, my name is Jungbae, serving as APC Secretariat. I produce on the APC initiatives. As far as we found there are nations learning now and we expect five to ten more to get started in 2017. They are also in U.S., Georgia and Kenya. So these are the current development of six on the globe. In terms of the nature of Asia‑Pacific region, the mission is to provide Internet Governance courses to large populations.
In APC we focus on the best course for Internet Governance experts and readers. There are estimated around several hundred, we guess. Basically the organizer of the national and regional IGFs and SIGs so they can serve around 10,000 Internet Governance practitioners in the region through their own courses. As well as holding AP SIGs we also focus on open course work development especially creating videos starting with posting APC lecture videos and we also collaborate with other SIGs in IGF sharing information such as faculty, cross materials and others.
For AP SIG, we have seven tracks with 24 classes now and the problem is now on the development, and we gained eight regular classes in 2016 and we will provide around 10 regular classes in 2017 so we can cover all of the core classes. Also we are developing the group discussion, the hot topic sessions with case studies for encouraging more active participation.
We had the first AP SIG just last September in Bangkok with 39 participants from 21 countries and we supported India SIG and Pakistan SIG as well as encouraged participation of Central Asia which is kind of the bare place now. Especially we are sporting the Afghanistan participants SIG and Pakistan SIG and they will develop their own national SIG maybe in the next year.
And we are planning to have a little bit expanded version of the school in the next year with one day of the collaboration meeting among the SIG organizers. There are fundamental issues for us also, the first one is how can we update the class materials every four or five years, because Internet Governance area we need to update materials. That's a crucial point and the second one is how can we accommodate several Internet Governance leaders as we can only accommodate 30 to 40 participants in APC because we are focusing on active participation. We are trying to cooperate request national SIGs and related programs as much as possible, as well as studying online participation for the next year.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you very much. I would like to highlight one point you said which is very important one, you say to update material every five years. I think we might have to update the material more than every five years just looking at the IANA transition for instance which was a big issue over the last two years. But this brings me to an important point where I also see good ground for collaboration for Dynamic Coalition if we, for instance, have a pool where we can offer approved, for instance, ICANN approved material where ICANN could upload the preparations which can be hope by any SIG by any presenter available in the region.
I think this would be a good point where we could really collaborate with all of the Internet institutions around the world and which makes the work easier because as you said you are planning to teach 10,000 over the next years. And, yes, you have the biggest region in the world, Asia‑Pacific. And then you have the issue with the IDNs which has to be taken into account. Can I just finish that round and then we ‑‑ on the Asia‑Pacific.
>> PAUL WILSON: My name is Paul Wilson. I'm Chair of the Asia‑Pacific regional IGF group which is our regional IGF meeting. I wanted to mention that that meeting has also had a training component since the beginning so we have had a regular component of SIG type material through that vehicle, but we are actually moving now to a model that I wanted to mention here because it may be of interest and that's based on the idea that an IGF meeting is a School of Internet Governance. We can't come here and separate the learners from the teachers, and in fact there is no teacher here who is not already learning.
There is a huge source, pool of source material of educational materials, information that is but to date and regularly coming into this process, and so in the establishment of the program for becoming APrIGF we will be including in our call for workshops also the ability for people to propose tutorial sessions so in fact any group who wishes to offer a tutorial session that is really a component of a School of Internet Governance if you like will be free to do that.
And that material will come in through the same competitive model that the program that is used to source the program that the APrIGF itself. And I think, I mean, it's an experimental process at this stage, but I think it would be nice to see a clear link between the schools of Internet Governance and the Internet Governance Forums that I think one of the key purposes of these, of the school event must be to increase the participation in IGFs and in terms of resource availability it's nice to have ambitions but the resources that are duplicated in bringing fellows into these events can actually be saved by taking a more inclusive and I would say more organic approach. I wanted to add that from our region.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you, Paul. You mentioned a good thing, this brings us actually to the point that we might introduce a level system in the future because visiting an IGF is definitely capacity building in itself. You learn and you get material in all of this, but on the other hand, we should be clear if we talk about school and Internet Governance it follows a certain type of academic curriculum where one module builds upon the other and this was the original idea of schools on Internet Governance as you really have sort of educational knowledge transfer, but I agree, and I think this is the practice in many regions of the world already that IGFs and schools should have a very, very close connection to each other.
We have now been in all regions of the world and you might recognize that we are missing North America. Usually North America is always on the top of everything. This time it's not. The question is why. I can even say in the summer school in the European summer school in Internet Governance the least participation, the least participants come from North America. And although there have been a school in the Anna Beck.
>> (Speaking off microphone). Nicole is not here but he is very active and is planning something.
>> MODERATOR: We should note that there is in this region no ongoing effort while all of the other regions of the world manage to set up their initiative.
>> AUDIENCE: I think that's a reflection of the fact that there is a lot of graduate school opportunities to learn more about Internet Governance in the U.S. I'm not saying that graduate level capacity building is the only channel, but I think what we find and why in Africa the command is so huge (Anriette Esterhuysen) is we are filling the demand from people in practice in policy and in the sector as well as though of young students, academics who want to learn more about it, and because there is no university level. There is no international studies program anywhere on the continent that actually focuses on Internet Governance whereas in the U.S. there is quite a lot.
>> MODERATOR: Olga, you have raised your hand.
>> OLGA CAVALLI: We had this question of organising the school in Washington or not because we were focused in Latin America, but the Organization of American States were so kind as to be our host and they said that they represent the whole America. So it was a good idea we had many students from Canada and United States in that, in this year's school that had 180 students. I just wanted to comment on that.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you, Olga. It was mentioned that some schools need to serve very specific needs, and that also the need is there to establish national schools on Internet Governance. And as one of the representatives of the national school which serves very specific needs, I would invite Hartmut Glaser who is involved in this organisation and schools on Internet Governance as well as faculty member from the very first beginning and Hartmut Glaser you set up a school in Brazil in your country which has a very specific focus. Please tell us about this one.
>> HARTMUT GLASER: The Brazilian Internet steering committee took care of our domain names. We start with the multi‑stakeholder model in '95 before ICANN start it was the idea of the multi‑stakeholder model. So Wolfgang invited me to go to the SIG school in Germany, number three, and I am participating for the last seven, eight years, but then decided to start together in Latin America, Olga and myself, 2010 Sao Paulo and then we decided to go for a more Brazilian accent in the school. And we stepped out for some years in 2014, '15, '16, we decided to have really hands‑on school, 10, 12 hours a day during a full week, 50 hours working with 30 to 40 students selected from a number of 150 candidates, and this year, this year 2016 we discovered a new need.
You know that 2014 we have the NETmundial Conference in Brazil and our presidency approved the Marco Seville Bill of Rights for the Brazilian Internet users and we discovered that our judge, or court, our Supreme Court don't understand what is the Internet. So we decided to go in a new branch, a new activity. We have the normal school with 40 students, and this year for the first time we have two distinct schools only for two days, only 20 hours, but only for lawyers, prosecutors and members of the different courts.
And the last one was exactly some weeks ago in Rio De Janeiro, we put it together with some good friends there, and now we are receiving invitation from different courts in the country because we have a lot, if you will follow the history in Brazil, WhatsApp was stopped some years ago, You Tube was stopped. We have some misdecisions by our court and we discover that outreach is important, but education is more important.
And we decided to maintain focus on quality and not on quantity. So we released the numbers to 20, 25, 30, and we are working in this accent full week school every year and two or three more smaller schools only for selected judges invited, normally invited, prosecutors and high level court members in our country. The reaction is very positive. The invitations are very high, and we are developing really hands‑on lectures, classes. That is the model Wolfgang developed in Germany. I am happy in and we are following this way. I know outreach is person. So we maintain in our country it's Brazilian school for Brazilians we select 150‑200 candidates, 20, 25, 30 some receive a full sponsorship, some pay. I see that some of our fellow students are present. So my understanding is that we are doing a good job and we will use this for the future. Thank you.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you very much, Hartmut Glaser. I would like to sum up the first round where we heard from the coordinators of the summer schools that we actually could identify a couple of points for collaboration in terms of managing applications, doing evaluations, updating and providing materials, but taking all into consideration that we have specific needs and different stakeholder group to reach out.
If we are talking School on Internet Governance, we need, of course, sort of teachers. We call them faculty. And I would like to invite three of our faculty members which have been participating in various summer schools, the first one would be Avri Doria. You are the one who participated in most of the global schools ever, and you have been fortunately at the European one every year so far. I would like to hear from your perspective on what do you think how we should move forward in developing the concept of SIGs in terms of providing curriculum and providing and organising the knowledge transfer
>> AVRI DORIA: Thank you. I have been lucky enough to be involved in the schools from the beginning, for a while I had a perfect record at all of the different schools and then I lost it, and that's good. But first of all, I wanted to say one thing in going along with what Paul said before is for me, all of the years at the schools have been as much learning experience as teaching experiences because what happens especially in the schools that are bringing in fellows that already have experiences in one area or another, they always know more than I do in their areas.
And they may not be generalists. So for all of us it is a learning and so that's one thing we have to keep open. That's the notion that there isn't a big division between faculty and fellows, that, and in fact, I tend to call them the fellows as opposed to the students because we are all students there.
So that is an important element that I don't think we can lose. I think there is, it is important to have the core subjects because most people come to these, both faculty and fellows with only partial knowledge, a partial perspective on the field we have got. And being at the school allows for people to fill out their perspective, and I think that's an important element that needs to be kept.
I think, I mean, I was part of developing the whole idea of a practicum in multi‑stakeholder decision making with the African school and it's evolved over the years, but it's become something that basically let's a lot of people who have never participated in a multi‑stakeholder decision making process to actually do, and designing these things has become more and more complicated.
It was at first just sort of ad hoc. Now, it's sort of spend a half year defining it, having subject matter experts, having sometimes even stage presentations so that various people take on roles, really you have a three‑part process you are trying to do in a week. You have got getting people to accept their roles and take it seriously, discussing the subject and coming to consensus, and you have to make that in a scene that works over a week.
I like the construction that I have seen in most of them where a good part of the time is core subjects and a good part of the time is a combination of local and the topic of the year subjects. Though the topic of the year subjects is often one we have used for the practicum because it's a significance everybody is making globally so how can we make the decision ourselves. That's been a very big way of when a subject is still a little too raw for teaching, but it's not necessarily too raw to take on as an exercise.
So I think that that is an important element. That probably is as much time as you wanted me to take but those are sort of the elements. I think there is a lot of good solid elements and those are elements that we need to keep and we need to focus a little bit more on a few of them. I think the core, perhaps, can be strengthened in terms of its subject areas. And make sure that we have covered all of the different flavors of this enterprise.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you very much Avri and thank you in particular for developing this multi‑stakeholder Practicum which indeed offers fellows not only knowledge transfer but their ability and how to participate in a multi‑stakeholder model. Many of them go to IGF's later on and see how it works in real life and they actually have the chance with this multi‑stakeholder practicum to do an exercise beforehand and I think that's an important point that we do not only deliver the core of Internet Governance but also deliver some skills how to participate meaningfully in multi‑stakeholder environments f yes, please.
>> AVRI DORIA: One thing I forgot to add. With the Practicum we don't succeed. Some of them we manage to reach consensus and on some we fail miserably, and in both of those we have had a very good reliable actual experience in terms of doing it. So I don't want people to think that because you do a Practicum you have to succeed at it. You just have to learn at it.
>> MODERATOR: I think failure is success in itself.
We have Bill Drake on the line. He is also one of the old hand faculty members and I hope the technical allow that he will be able to speak to us as one of the academic faculty. Could you please give him the floor?
>> WILLIAM DRAKE: Hello, everybody. This is my first time missing an IGF so it feels very interesting to be remote participating. I am an old hand. I have done, I think I counted, I was trying to look before we started, 15 of these between MISON the south school and one time in Africa, and I agree with Avri, it's a collective learning experience for everybody and it's been really great seeing how the faculty have come together and the participants as well, the fellows have often sprinkled out throughout the ecosystem and been with us for years to follow. So that's great.
I think this is a good idea that you are floating Sandra about having a Dynamic Coalition to take this evolution to the next step. I remember conversations a decade ago when we were talking about whether it was possible to set up some kind of international federation of these things and we realized how bureaucratic and complicated that would be, but I think a more decentralized kind of approach that you are suggesting here sharing best practices and involving common understandings of certain issues is something that is doable and would be a good contribution.
I wasn't sure what to say about this from a faculty standpoint except I guess I will make three points real quickly about sort of challenges, I think, that we face. One is I'm cognizant of this particularly because yesterday I finished the 14th meeting of my global Internet Governance course at the University of Zurich, and when I compare my experience at the university with my experience in these settings, I have to say that? General I think it's proven a lot harder to do sort of conceptual and analytical discussions than it has more empirical and descriptive discussions.
We tend to think in a lot of these courses to sort of cling closely towards what's going on in particular institutions and how certain things work rather than concentrating on the broader sort of analytical things that inform the understanding of Internet Governance generally, and, of course, concepts banter in this context, how you describe and define terms, concepts, trajectories, et cetera, shapes, agenda setting, negotiations, the search for solutions so it really, this is very possible and ideas intensive field because things have been sort of created by us through the process of engagement.
And I feel like in a way, I wish there was more time to be able to evolve the kind of conceptual kinds of issues that one can take more time with in a university setting, but that's just a constraint that we face. A second one, I think, this is related. I think we tend to concentrate a lot on the institutions associated with the management, collective management of the infrastructure, the Istar institutions and so on. And I think my sense has been that overall we have been less systematic at looking at the institutional arrangements that pertain to the use of the Internet for information communication commerce whether it's rules on information content and flows of information to issues of information security, international trade, eCommerce, intellectual property, privacy protection. I don't feel like we, at least this is my sense that we don't do this as systematically as we do ICANN, RIRs, et cetera.
And we all start out by citing the WG Internet Governance broad definition of Internet Governance, and we say by the broad definition matters but a lot of concentration tends to go narrower and I think that's an issue to figure out how to get the balance right. And the last point when is also a question of balance the challenge is always to try to find the sweet spot between all of the backgrounds and orientations and interests of the diverse fellows coming in because what might be of particular interest to somebody who is like in a Ph.D. program could be very different from what's of interest to somebody that's going to go to work in one of the technical administrative bodies in business or Government, et cetera.
And I'm not sure if we always get that exactly right, maybe more could be done with breakout sessions that are more customized to particular sets of interest, so on. But in any event, so there are challenges, I think, to continue to evolve this going forward, and improve it each time. But I think that we have built something really wonderful over the past decade together, and through in a classic Internet way, through a very decentralized kind of model of cooperation and information sharing. So I'm very positive about what's been done and I hope that this Dynamic Coalition idea goes forward. So I will stop there. Thanks.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you so much, Bill, for taking your time, I know in Europe it's quite late, but I'm happy that the quality and thanks to the host extraordinary that we can allow him to speak to that audience. With Bill we had intensive discussion about how to set a curriculum. Do we put ICANN first? Do we do IGF first? Are we talking about the microcosm or the macro come because we always experience that we overwhelm the fellows with so much knowledge in one week that they leave the School on Internet Governance and say, oh, my God, now I know what I don't know.
We are always, and he puts a lot of thoughts into this, and we will continue to work on this and I think that it will be a great contribution to an overall deinstitutionalization. Now, for the last fellowship, I'm sorry, faculty speaker I would like to invite a very special faculty member because he was, he managed not only once to make fellows cry during his session. Because he can, he has the ability to get very emotional presentation and it was not, I can truly tell you it wasn't only one fellows were there with tears in their eyes to Bertrand de la Chapelle please tell us about your perspective and how you could manage to make them cry.
>> BERTRAND DE LA CHAPELLE: Thanks for the mention, I'm Bertrand de la Chapelle. It's actually a unique experience in terms of the interaction with people because it's a people topic. This is something that touches upon the lives of people, and I think that's probably the reason why it resonates. As a faculty member I participated in every single European society and one in Latin America. Unfortunately not enough around the world.
But for me, it's an opportunity every year to step back basically and look at the evolution and how things are evolving in good ways and bad ways and I must say that in the course of those ten years, eleven now, things have gone very much on the positive side, but also very much on the negative side in terms of the tensions and the emergence of those things. So it's a great moment for me every year to just step back and try to reflect on what is exactly the substance of the feeling that we have when we engage in this environment.
The second thing is I think the role playing and the thing that the Practicum has introduced is amazing because it forces people to step in somebody else's shoes. So it encourages people to say, okay, I'm Civil Society, what if I were a Government, how would I look at those topics from the other side. And it's an exercise we never do, and it's one of the strongest ways to get out of the silos and to basically understand that there is not a bad guy or bad woman on the other side. It's basically that they have their own tasks to fulfill and sometimes it's difficult.
The third thing is I was very interested in listening to the presentations on how it has emerged in the regional things that this is a perfect example of the self‑replicating system. It's like the IGFs. People have not dictated from the top the creation of regional and national IGFs. The regional and national summer schools have come just from the example of something that seems to be useful and is replicating. And this is one of the solutions, only one of the solutions to the scaling of the problem because there is an additional challenge to scaling up. It's not only the regional coverage. It's the sheer size of the number of people that have to be reached. And so I empathize with the problems that Asia‑Pacific may have in terms of the number of people that have to be educated, trained or sensitized.
I think one of the benefits of this Dynamic Coalition will be to study a little bit further how video sessions and material, online courses could be developed so that there is a capacity to scale up. And the next thing quickly is the articulation with the IGFs.
I was just sharing with Peter van Ross the fact that I have always been surprised that will is no formal sort of one‑on‑one sessions at the IGF on a specific number of issues. If people want to be brought up to speed at the very beginning of an IGF on something that they want to follow afterward, it would eliminate a lot of the work that is done at the beginning of some of the workshop sessions because you have to explain what the problem is. If there were sessions, training beforehand that would be great.
And the final element I couldn't emphasize and support more what Hartmut said regarding the judiciary, it is an important topic to bring the judiciary and the people involved around the judiciary, the lawyers and the prosecutors, so on, into those discussions because they are wanting this, but at the same time, they are very sensitive on how the way, I'm sorry, on how you present this. It's not training. It's not education.
It's exchange of experience because there are independent actors and they have their own responsibilities, and one of the big challenges that they have and that needs to be overcome is that by definition, they are forced to implement the law as is. And the law as is in many cases is the problem.
So understanding how to prepare for the implementation and the enforcement of laws on a cross‑border tool on a cross‑border network when you are in the position of being the judiciary of one particular country is a very big challenge, and I think this is the example whereas Avri said, it's as much an exchange of experience as a pure training. There is an element of training, but I'm glad to hear that there is appetite for this. And I think it's a huge effort. It may be a separate track as Hartmut said, but I think it's an important element to explore.
>> AUDIENCE: Only to mention, Sandra, one key point will be consumer protection. It's a new area that we discovered in Brazil. We have a Secretariat for consumer protection under the Ministry of Justice, and they asked us to help them how they need to go in details with the law (Hartmut Glaser) so we are working with a new accent, with a new style of school, consumer protection in Brazil using the Internet, rights for the users.
>> MODERATOR: Very good point as well from Hartmut and Bertrand de la Chapelle that one of the concepts is that we have the information from the first, from those who are working in the registry who are working on an issue so they can deliver the knowledge they have and the knowledge the fellows gain from the firsthand. And this is a perfect handover to our last segment of the session where we want to actually ask the people who pay for the summer school who are sponsoring the summer school which without them it wouldn't be possible and the technical community and the Governments, those who get the people out of these schools, what I actually expect from those schools and what are the needs of those people.
And from the business sector, I know we have many people in the room who are supporting the summer schools financially, but I would like to invite Andres in the room and also Gonzolo, Christoph, Christoph Steck. Are you for Christoph? Wonderful. I would invite both of you to let us know probably not why you are supporting it, we just take it for granted you are supporting it, but what do you want to have out of this course? What skill set do you need in the business sector? What do people need to know when they have gone through such a school? Gonzalo maybe you are the first.
>> AUDIENCE: For us it's really important to have the sense that there are very different approaches by the different stakeholders. So that by participating in the summer schools, we tend to provide them the different views and for the students, for their need to understand how the different approaches are and how we look at things differently. So that's basically a more relevant objective when we are participating in these events. And also for us, it's also very positive because we get a very fresh approach with their opinions because basically most of them are newcomers and having this different approach, different opinion from them it's important for us, and that's where we also would ask all of the business community and all of the rest of the stakeholders to engage in the summer schools and to be more active and to help these newcomers into the Internet Governance world to start to understand and to have a better knowledge.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you very much, Gonzolo. Andrew, would you like to conclude. Just as you know, Andrew decided to take the support for the day last year sponsoring three of the fellows from the south school and the European school to participate in the IGF which would otherwise be very challenging for them, and this is actually a real good example of capacity building. So they went through such a school and have then the opportunity to participate in the global IGF which I think is a unique opportunity. So thank you.
>> Thank you. So to answer the question, what are we, what would we look to expect for students to emerge from the schools, I think it's a baseline knowledge that gives them ability to contribute in a meaningful way to the various Internet institutions globally, and so that means that certainly after graduation they can come to the IGF and make meaningful contributions, participate in panels that they can go ICANN and join Working Groups and help shape the outcome to that policy development. I think if this is multistakeholder system is going to work, we have to all of us continue to strive for greater diversification of viewpoints in every aspect of the ecosystem. I think a significant draw back that we face is that there is too much concentration from certain sectors or particular parts of the world, and so we want to make sure that there is always that new flow of information of people bringing new ideas, new perspectives, coming in from all parts of the world with all language experiences, and so I think what the schools can do is make sure that we have, that those folks have the ability to step in and start adding to our work.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you very much, Andrew, and we talked about it yesterday already that one service a Dynamic Coalition could also deliver or one service for the fellows is actually that they could publish their CVs once they have participated in such a school so that Governments and the business sector, technical community have an opportunity to directly look up people who participated in such a school and have a certain knowledge already gained so that they can join a company or so ever, so sort of a little database for fellows.
One fern in the groom is Keith Drazek. He is here with multiple hats. First of all, we would like to know from Keith what the technical community is actually seeking for out of these schools, but on the other hand, you are also among the faculty members for the European summer school and I think for others too as well as a sponsor so you are the person with the most hats in this room.
>> KEITH DRAZEK: Thank you very much, Sandra, my name is Keith Drazek. I work for Verisign Registry Operator for dot com and dot net. So thank you. It's been a multiyear privilege to be a part of the EuroSSIG, the SSIG and also in supporting the regional and national IGFs and I think it's important to consider them together in response to the question of what are we looking for or what are our interests in supporting the summer schools and regional and national IGFs and the global IGF. And it is ultimately a support for the multi‑stakeholder model and to insure that as Andrew said, I think to insure that people, newcomers into this space have, you know, a baseline and the ability to contribute and to learn and to not feel lost as they sort of venture into this fora.
I think it's also a support for relationship building and networking. I think the summer schools to me have been a remarkable opportunity personally, speaking personally, but also what I have seen among the participants, both faculty and fellows is a remarkable opportunity to engage together to get to know one another better and ultimately what we are doing here is all about relationships. In the multistakeholder sort of arena. So I think what we and what Verisign have seen over the recent years in ten years of Wolfgang and Sandra's work now going on eleven, and the extensive work that Olga has put in and others in the national and regional IGFs but especially the summer schools have really made a big difference in terms of contributors to our community.
I focus mostly at ICANN that's my day job primarily is focusing on ICANN but it's not lost on me or my company that that's just one component of a much broader ecosystem, and it's all very much interrelated. So thank you very much for the opportunity.
>> MODERATOR: And thank you, Keith, for the ongoing support on all of the three levels. And now last in the row of speakers I would like to invite Thomas. You should know best what Governments do need.
>> THOMAS SCHNEIDER: Olga asks really. Thank you for that. Well, thank you, and hello. First of all, I would like to congratulate Wolfgang and Sandra as this is the only SIG that I know and I have had the pleasure to participate after ten years to be able to participate because of date reasons this year in MSSIG for the amazing spirit that they create among people from all over the world. And with regard to what Governments need, I think it's, this is probably less an exercise for us Governments directly, but rather, first of all, a capacity building exercise to get new generation of experts from all stakeholders into the discussion.
And that has been remarkable how intense and how much fun this learning exercise was, and the positive side effect is that there are a number of faculty members from other stakeholders, business, academia, Civil Society, that actually learn along with the fellows through participation and input from Governments how Governments actually work.
So this is a very welcome unintended side effect. Experience has proven that this has not been equally sustainable with all of these people, but at least some of them are actually also benefiting themselves from this. So it's basically a capacity building exercise from my point of view for everybody. Thank you.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you, Thomas, I know Governments for them it's sometimes difficult in this multistakeholder model to be really understood in the right way. So we have ten minutes left, and unfortunately we have not enough time to have an open discussion about how to move forward but I think we have gained a lot of input for how to move forward and I would say my conclusion would be that there is no doubt we should form a dynamic coalition, we will move forward, make the official application process through the IGF and we will keep in touch. Actually all of those people and their representatives or the stakeholder groups that are represented should be part of such a Dynamic Coalition so that we can actually work on a work plan. We will follow up by email and then have the next meeting maybe the official start of the coalition during the next IGF wherever that might be. But for the last ten minutes, I would like to invite some of the fellows to share their experiences from the schools they have participated. And I would like to start with Renata, you participated in the south school, right and I would kindly ask you because I don't know you all, just raise your hand when you are a fellow and I will use the last ten minutes and please be brief so that many of you have the chance to speak.
>> RENATA RIBEIRO: Hi, Renata, just a quick input. I was a fellow first at the Brazilian School of Internet Governance in 2014 south School of Internet Governance in 2015 and recent Internet School of Internet Governance. I am grateful for the opportunities I have had. It is really about taking policy making to the next level, being able to engage in ICANN and other venues such as the IGF.
I would also like to thank this effort in creating the Dynamic Coalition. Fellows have started independently a mobile messaging group to try and keep up with each other's development and exchange information, but this is all very decentralized. So alumnae don't really have currently a network that they can engage in, so it would be an interesting opportunity to see the Dynamic Coalition effects on the long term, see if we can get the groups of alumnae to collaborate and build together projects.
So I received some inputs from alumnae on mobile, on the many different mobile messaging groups and Skype groups also welcoming this effort. So I'm relaying them here to all of you. Thank you.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you, Renata. Next, Rachel.
>> RACHEL POLLACK: Hi, I'm Rachel Pollack. I participated in the summer school in MSSIG in 2014, and I would like to echo just a huge thanks to Wolfgang and Sandra, the faculty, Avri, Bertrand and also to Andrew I was lucky enough to participate with a fellowship from Amazon last year in the IGF. And it's really the summer school in MISON was such a transformative experience for me because it gave me a solid foundation in the issues, but also meeting the people directly involved in Internet Governance and so when I did attend an IGF and then EuroDIG and ICANN to recognize familiar faces and I felt that I could find my place and I went lost. So thank you for that.
I would also like to echo what Renata said about tapping into the alumnae network because as has been mentioned so many of us have continued in Internet Governance in various venues and organisations, and so I know some universities have very active alumnae associations. Sometimes they just want money but also organising events, and so I don't know if an association, something that formal would be required but at least to create a network for people to stay in touch and to contribute, and that might help with some of the challenges about scaling up and introducing new topics. Thank you.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you Rachel. I'm sorry, I don't know your name, but the gentleman.
>> AUDIENCE: My name is Emanuel Vitos, I'm from Togo. I was a fellow of the AfrSIG, the African SIG this year. It was a very good opportunity for me especially coming from a country where all of those Internet Governance issues are new issues and even the Government and a lot of people don't really know about it. It was a very good opportunity having all of those tools, going back home and bringing the input and the National Initiatives. So I'm very grateful for this opportunity and I hope that other people from other countries will have the opportunity to focus on Internet Governance issues he is special lip in the Global South and Africa. Thank you.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you very much. Any other ones? Please.
>> AUDIENCE: Hello, everyone, I'm Claudio from state university in Brazil and former fellow of south School of Internet Governance. I would like to add a word or two about building on what Keith said about engagement, not only in the sense that people coming out of the SIGs engage in the phenomenon itself in the institutions of Internet Governance, but also engage with each other and with their own communities.
For example, from my fellows from 2014 and 15 in Costa Rica, the fellows who happen to also have teaching positions in their home universities, we communicate frequently and we exchange time slots in our classes back in our home universities in undergraduate courses and in postgraduate courses. This is a very simple interaction, but it's absolutely transforming in terms of teaching which is what we are discussing here. We have inputs during our regular courses from people with another view that might otherwise not reach our students because of that very physical connection that was triggered in that moment.
So I think this is a very interesting point to highlight from my experience.
>> MODERATOR: Very good point. Thank you very much. Do we have ‑‑ Sophia.
>> SOPHIA MORALES: Sophia Morales, I'm from Mexico, but I live in Singapore teaching governance and new media international University of Singapore. For me it was, well, I did the summer school in 2014. For me it has been exactly the same. It's an amazing opportunity, the opportunity to really experience the governance process. It was the first time that we did the role play. We were in the IANA transition period, and the exercise was just amazing.
I think that is important what we are talking about here. The network is important, I think that we need to continue, well, we have been ‑‑ this is what for me was so important to attend the tenth anniversary of the school because the value for me was not only all of the things that I learned, but as well the connections that I made.
And as well to be more familiar with the environment. Thank you so much for the opportunity.
>> MODERATOR: And I have ‑‑ I would say last, I would close the cue then, I'm sorry, I don't know your name either.
>> AUDIENCE: Thank you very much, my name is Elisabeth Kosaga, coming from electronic. I was honored to attend the African School on Internet Governance this year in October and I'm very lucky to have been made ‑‑ we learned quite a lot. They introduced an aspect of gender within Internet Governance at the school and then we went back to Uganda, we have tried to replicate the AfrSSIG classes in Uganda and we have had monumental impact as far as young girls and young women embrace the Internet.
Because originally girls and women are very scared of the Internet because of all of the bullying. And we had a couple of discussions on Internet shutdowns. In Uganda we had an election in February and we had the Internet shut down and, again, in March. So much as it was a real aspect, the practicum introduced us to multi‑stakeholderism where instead of just looking at the shutdown as the user, you also need to look at it from the aspect of the national security, what is the Government thinking. So the practicum really allowed us to explore the multi‑stakeholderism approach. Thank you.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you so much, and I think the very fact that the fellows are still here, I think that's the best revenue we can get as an organiser, coordinator of these schools and we are happy that you stayed involved over the years, and with this we are close to the end of the workshop, I would like to move forward.
>> AUDIENCE; Soon I will be the grandparents because we have too many new mothers and fathers which is very good, looking backwards what I started and said, okay, if an idea is born, you never know whether it will succeed or not. So this is like Bill Clinton has described Internet Governance as stumbling forward, so from year to year you try to learn and you try to improve, and as I said in the beginning and I think consensus here in the room, time is right to make the step forward in this still unknown territory. So our idea what Sandra has outlined is really to create a very decentralized mechanism. I think Bill mentioned that we discussed years ago to have like a global school. This makes no sense.
The situation in different countries in different regions is different, but we share some values and we should also agree on a certain quality standard as a minimum standard for the schools. So it means school is an ambitious name and so that means we have to deliver quality. Some people mention that over the quality is sometimes even more important than quantity, and I think in the concept of the summer school, we are really teaching the Internet Governance leaders of tomorrow. So that means we have to deliver high quality in content and also in methodology what we offer.
And I think the Dynamic Coalition on schools of Internet Governance could be a tool which helps us to meet the standard or to develop a number of criteria where we can also encourage more schools on the national level to contribute to this knowledge building. So we have, you know, there is no plan to build new bureaucracy or have a structure. So we, even we are very careful when we propose a certain committee or group though we did not call this group a coordination group because there is nothing to coordinate.
We didn't call it a steering committee. There is nothing to steer. We just call it the collaboration group. So this is a group that we can collaborate on an equal level. We have asked Avri to be the focal point because Avri was in all of this summer schools and she can a little bit help to enhance this collaboration or this communication among this, and then let's wait and see what we can do until the next IGF in 2017. And in the meantime, we hope we can develop some communication tools.
There were some good proposals, you know, and it extended certain groups. It's a process as Bertrand has said and that means I invite all activists in this new network to come with their own ideas and then to structure the ideas and to contribute to this so that we can in ten years from now not only celebrate the 20th anniversary, but we have a much bigger community than we have today. Thank you very much. And enjoy the rest of the IGF.
(Applause).
(Concluded at 1:32).