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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>> MODERATOR: We're going to get started. Thanks very much everyone for coming. I know it's the end of the day, and there's a lot of fatigue and jet lag and all the rest of it. It's great to see such a full room. Just a little disclaimer. The description of the workshop in the program and schedule is slightly different over the next hour and a half. It's about approaches to advocacy. There won't be any speakers. We want it to be more interactive, so I hope you're ready to get up and move at some point. So some brief introductions.
Global Partners Digital is an organization based in the U.K. for those who don't know us. We work globally, and we work towards building Internet policies that are more inclusive and transparent and an Internet built on democratic values and human rights principles, and I'm sure we share that with many of you, if not all of you hopefully. What we realized working towards the aims in the last few years in this field ‑‑ sometime power cuts happen but you're still heard. I'll go on.
There are a number of challenges working in the field and some of them are not unique to human rights on challenges. There's never enough money or time or resources or people to do the work that we have to do. Some of those challenges are unique to this field. The shear, legal technical complexity on issues we work on. The technical complexity of the issues as well and the global scope of what we deal with where policy developments in one area have ramifications across the globe.
And the very fact of the fast‑changing nature of the technology we're working on as well in a world becoming increasingly digitized. So lots of challenges, but also opportunities. And that's the premise of the workshop that we proposed here. It's how do we take advantage of those opportunities, considering the resources we have and make the most of what we have to achieve what we want to achieve and over the past few days working in the field we had some insights and developed some tools and we hope to ‑‑ we will share those with you over the course of the next one and a half hours.
We also hope that with the amount of expertise in this room that we can all take away lessons learned as well to inform our own advocacy going forward and that this will be a useful and constructive session for everyone. On that note, I hand over to Charles.
>> MODERATOR: This session is interactive. We have to disobey all safety regulations and move around chairs and tables and I hope no one is injured in the process. Really, this session is going to be about sort of extracting some of the real keep elements of strategy and what we mean by strategy and one set of framework that we built and used with a lot of partners on here.
We're sort of deconstructing and sort of analyzing the eco‑systems to be more effective in the work that we do. And what I'm going to do, first of all, is ask Andrew the executive chair at DGJ to talk about why we need to be effective and why specifically around the human rights implications we need to be effective and efficient in the work that we do. Over to you, Andrew.
>> SPEAKER: Was a major politician, I was also the advocate who secured the human rights act in the U.K. It was the first for 300 years. So I often reflect on what I learned from those two experiences, which spanned about 15 years. I think the first thing I learned is I spent the first ten years of my life trying to be the most radical person in the room. The kind of guy was a right wing sellout. I realized after ten years that I basically lost every fight that I went into.
After ten years I got fed up with losing and I thought ‑‑ I want to win something, and I actually see some real change in my society, and winning something and achieving real change became more important to me than whether I felt good about myself or whether I was the most radical, principled guy in the room. The first question is if you just want to be the most radical and right‑on person in the room, this is not the session for you. If you want to actually win something and achieve something and change something, that's what we're going to try and address in the course of this conversation. And I think the three kind of key things that I learned is first of all to understand the kind of change I wanted to make.
What I find within the Internet policy world is Civil Society groups spend a long time formulating a position and arriving at a rather grand, norm active policy statement, but they spend virtually no time on thinking practically about which elements you want to achieve and who they need to influence and how they want that change to happen. You often find people coming to an international conference with a position where in the conference they drew up their positions three or four months in advance, and it's impossible for government delegations to walk into an internal conference and change their position because there's a brilliantly argued Civil Society position.
We have to talk to the governments five to six months in advance in all the preparatory work leading up to a conference if we want to influence how a particular international session or treaty discussion goes. So figuring out the change you want to make is really important, and if for example we want a free and open Internet with governments and businesses playing no significant role, then good luck with that.
We'll see you in the 22nd century. That's not going to happen in our lifetime. So let's figure out what would be an achievable goal within the Internet policy sphere.
The second part is figuring out who are the people who can make the change we want to happen? I spent two years, two whole years working on one politician in Britain. One politician. Became the development minister and resigned over the Iraq war. She played a particularly symbolic and moral role within the labor party which was an advocacy target and it took two years to persuade to change her hostility from opposing it to supporting it.
That two years of work of one politician did more to shift the balance of power within the British political environment than anything else we did, and she wasn't even a government politician. She was an opposition politician who occupied no formal status. So figuring out who are the people that make change, and they may not often be the most visible and important people. They may be quite low level or quite side people, people you don't recognize in the public domain.
That's very important. The third part I learned here is what is their incentive to change. If you want people in power to change something, to shift their behavior, to owe to what they do, what's the incentive to do that? As a politician if I had met a delegation from Civil Society, which I did all the time, part of my calculation was always, why should I do this? If I do this for them, who else is going to impact on. What's the incentive within my political world to make the change that these guys want me to make? And understanding what the incentive is for a politician to change.
What's the problem ‑‑ you want them to do something, so identify as a problem that they need to fix. Now, if you have a mass movement and you can threaten to deselect them or vote them out, that's a very powerful incentive to do what you want. Most of the Internet policy groups aren't like that. They're relatively small, and they have some moral force but they don't carry electoral weight in society. So figuring out how we present our issues in a way that solves a problem they may not know they had is one of the key things, I think, in making change.
So for me the three key lessons are, figuring out what it is you actually want to achieve, secondly figuring out who needs to influence to make that change and what's the incentive to make that change. And frankly abusing them and that faith and I never found that argument too change that behavior.
In fact, if someone came in to me and said I was crapped, I took the view you're crapped too so why listen and engage with you. We need to modulate the tactics to actually whatever we think of them, you're interesting and decent and you have a problem and we're here to help you fix your problem. I that I found to be the most effective tactic with any politician I ever encountered. Over to you, Charles.
>> SPEAKER: Thank you. Does this work? It's great to see your words captured on the board behind you as well. Fantastic leadership in practice at GDP. So the big question is and coming from you're really thoughtful and insightful comments is what do we mean when we say strategic advocacy? We throw around the word strategy and advocacy as well, but it's super important to think about what we mean by advocacy and how we measure that.
At the GDP we spend a lot of time thinking about that and working with partners to identify key trends and issues when we look at advocacy and understanding how to be more effective and more impactful. A couple of things that we've identified, which I'm going to put up on the screen here, is, you know, what is having a strategy enable us to do? If we could get the slides on the screen, that would be great. So it helps us to maximize our impact.
Impact is some ways is a bittery term. We have to find that as well. It's really important to be sort of identifying where we go and what we want to achieve and be able to increase that with the resources that we have available.
Getting full value from our activities, and the number of times we get into the activity trap. We want to do this, and we have no idea where we're going to go and how that's going to impact us in a sort of long term, and also it makes sure that we're doing the right things in the right way at the right time.
These three points are really important to what we think about strategic work and that we are able to identify the exact activity in the way, the approach, the language talking about at the right times. It's timely and effective.
One of the common pitfalls my team often hear me talking about the fact that a plan is not a strategy, and we often think about a strategy as a sort of set of activities. It's not. Another common pitfall that we have seen is the strategies disconnects from reality. There's a lot of analysis that needs to go into developing a strategy, and it needs to be contextualized and brought to life through the analysis and research.
There's a disconnect between the analysis and the goals and then what do you do to tomorrow? What do you do in two, three, four months' time? Bad strategy doesn't define what you're not going to do. We only have so many resources, and there are only so many hours in the day. This field is complex and it's ‑‑ we suffer from the mag pie effect of shiny new issues popping up everywhere.
We need to focus and think about what we're not going to be doing when we define what we are going to be doing. A bad strategy leaves assumptions left unchecked. You really need to ‑‑ every word you put in you need to understand what that means and you understand what your goal is going to be, and you know, preconceptions that we have need to be questioned as we think about it.
So we've developed a tool called The Canvas that we're looking at right now before we break you up in groups for an example of it. This is The Canvas, and it's apologized for that and the first part of the top is setting the goal and sort of analyzing of the context and the goal then the second part of it and that's in the objective canvas.
For each objective you want to achieve is it provides analysis of the problem, sets your outcomes and does a mapping of the different processes and you're going to engage in and the different actors and then finally showing those activities and mapping out the resources.
We're going through an example very quickly, so the goal part of the canvas is what is the long‑term goal. This is an ambitious statement unrealizable in the short and medium term. An example here is cyber security laws and policies in Kenya are human rights respecting by design, so it gives you that shot of the bigger picture. In the context it's easy to describe the relationship there.
What are the trends and factors behind those? The policy debates driven by increased access to the Internet. And that's why it's important for you to do it, so ensuring that you're able to protect and promote human rights online. By this point you'll complete this and before moving down to setting your first objective. So the first part of the objective setting is analyzing the problem statements and we said here what is really trying to define and what is the problem you're trying to solve.
This should include information about the specific issues, the context or history of that issue, the trends so how is that issue moving in context to other things and also the driving factors behind those trends. I was actually moving those trends and moving that particular issue.
So we've given an example here about the government having a duty to protect and promote human rights both on offline cyber security policies without the full impact on human rights and the policies on transparent and resulting in lack of engagement by the Civil Society. You see what you put into that analysis of the problem statement before sketching out what your first objective would be. And we use the terms smart objectives, which is specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time‑bound and other people use other acronyms for this.
The objective here is something that you could realize within your time frame of your project or the time frame that you set out for this particular advocacy. It's to increase the openness, inclusivity and transparency in these processes by Kenya at a certain date.
Outcomes, what is the specific change you want to see so there could be outcomes related to particular awareness, particular information, and/or the number of groups that increase their capacity to be able to engage in these as well as the process itself being more open and inclusive.
Once the sketch it out and dig down and understand whether your objective is realistic, is achievable by doing this sort of stage that we call mapping the eco‑system, which sets out in four stages. What are the processes to achieve your objective to understand when and where the decision is made is really important to be a strategic advocate.
So, for example, the 2017 cyber security policy has a particular time frame. What are those deadlines? How open are those? What ability do you have to be able to input into those processes? The bit we look to do and who do I need to engage with and on what and whatever relationship do I have with them and what influence in that particular environment, so we might talk about a particular government agency, we might need to find a specific individual within the agency we'll working with.
What relationship do we have with them? Who else has that relationship as well that we might want to lean on? And then also mapping out the sort of partners and contributors, so what else can help us on our way? Who can support the realization of our objectives and outcomes?
Before thinking about other opportunities, what opportunities can help you achieve your objective so in Kenya there's a constitutional commitment to public engagement on new policies and law. That's a really important thing to be mapping out for cyber security policy we would recommend thinking about the sort of working group 1 recommendations and there's a new inclusive cyber policy‑making framework we're working so if you want to increase the openness and inclusivity of that process, what are the existing languages you can use.
After you've done all of this which takes ten minutes or six years, you get down to the advocacy pathway, which is how do I connect all those dots together and set out my activities, when am I going to do them, how much does it cost me to do them by time as well as resources and how do I evaluate that? We need to set that out in three boxes so the activities and outputs are very simple like who you engage, how will you engage with them and when thinking about that time line you mapped in the processes box.
The resources so how much time for the power and the resources into the activities and then two key points, and how and when will you review your path way? And say you're not moving towards your objectives and will you do that on a regular basis or when a significant change happens to the system.
So there's a change in government, and there's a change in a particular actor in the government. Then how will I measure my progress towards my outcomes and my goal? How do I know when I get there how will I be able to find success and what's that like? There's some things that are already something in there, and what you need to do is break out into groups and the first activity is sort of matching the correct answer to the correct box.
By the quick example which are put into envelopes and we're given a big canvas and we break you into groups and complete The Canvas with all the different answers before we sort of come back in a group and share whether we got it right or not.
So if I ‑‑ because we have to ‑‑ we've only got ten groups able. If we can do a group that's here and we can take one of these to one group here. If you can join into one group, and then the next group sort of from here to about you and if you can come in and join that as well, we can do that in the middle here. And then the next one, if you can do this group here to about here. Excellent. Let me take that. Great.
(Small group activity)
>> One group here if possible if you can join around and that would be excellent. That's great. Excellent. If you can do one more in the corner there. Has everyone found a group? You have five minutes. So each slip of paper matches the box. The box is the same size or shape as the paper, so that can get confusing. They're not the same size. They're not the same size or shape. That would be very easy. You have to read the text first.
(Small group activity)
>> MODERATOR: We'll check them in full groups. We have one more minute.
>> MODERATOR: Okay. Staying in your groups, we're going to go around and each group and ask for one answer from each group, and then we ask the other groups whether you agree or disagree with them, and you agree by saying we agree. You disagree by saying nothing. Otherwise it will get a bit loud.
So we're going to start with this group, and I promise you the next activity is even more fun. So if we can move on from this one, you'll literally be blowing your mind what we have been able to do in here. So we start with this group who were first and therefore got it perfectly right. So on the objective what did you have for your objective?
>> The objective is to raise awareness of the impact of user's rights for the cyber security practices and policies to target business leaders by March 2017. The other objective is to develop a better and new business model with an online service provider that respect the user's rights by January 2018.
>> MODERATOR: Perfect. Do we agree? If we agree we say we agree. It's correct. Well‑done. No round of applause? Second group outcomes. Let's ask Kelly, what did you get for your outcomes?
>> Outcomes, increase an understanding on the impact on user rights to freedom of expression and privacy of identified ISP, and telecommunications since you are security practices among target private sector actors.
>> MODERATOR: We agree? We agree. Yes, it's correct. Next group. Did you do one, didn't you? To this group. Problem statement. Just the first few words. What do you have.
>> Issue it's on selling person data which impacted the user's right to freedom of expression and privacy.
>> MODERATOR: Perfect. Do we agree? That was the easy because we set out the questions on it. A round of applause. Now we're onto mapping eco‑systems processes and decision‑making. What did this group get?
>> The freedom of expression and privacy standard for telcos and IPCs and how to implement the standard. Double up on implemented the targeted awareness with the standard with key details with ICC business leaders. Do we agree? You're in that group. Is there anyone that disagrees? You do. What did you have as the process in decision‑making?
>> The use of anonymity tools.
>> MODERATOR: Did anyone disagree with this one? Shout it out. Yes, yeah. It's the U.K. national action plan, so it's first and correct. They're cheating. They are cheating. So it's what's the existing process that you would engage in so the U.K. has a national action plan on human rights? It's a bit technical, so sorry for that example there. We're onto target groups and individuals. What did this group get?
>> Company executives and leadership team with no previous engagement.
>> MODERATOR: Perfect. Do we agree? Well‑done. In that example you see that we sort of start with the company and then move to the particular area and then the individual and think about the relationship that we have the influence we have on the particular objective that we've set.
This group, we're on partners and contributors. What did we get?
>> We have the global network initiative, consumers international for humidity rights and business center for international private enterprise.
>> MODERATOR: Perfect. Do we agree or disagree? For other impunities, what did we have here, Barbara?
>> Other opportunities.
>> MODERATOR: This one here.
>> Other opportunities. Increase the quality and user anonymity tools.
>> MODERATOR: Yeah. The one that starts with increase quality and user. Do we agree? Absolutely. And then back to this one. Advocacy pathway, and we look at activities and outputs.
>> Develop a freedom of expression.
>> We agree. That's what we do and what the output of that would be basket back to Gigi on her phone and resources. What did you get for resources?
>> Human resources, logistics and design.
>> Resources helps with that one. It's about the human resources and the hard costs to implement that and finally we should and do that by deduction what's left and review and evaluation.
>> Complete quarterly reporting most on one, two and three. Excellent. What do we think, do we agree? Excellent. Give yourself a round of applause. Fantastic. So we will have an opportunity for questions and things after the next activity. I'm going to pass over to Sheetal that will explain what we're doing next.
>> MODERATOR: Put a hat on in an imaginary world or maybe not, because what we're going to ask you to do is to now use the canvas to address or to flesh out a strategy to a particular problem or issue. I'm going to read out what that issue is, if we can put it up on the slide that would be good as well.
So the issue is the next IGF will be hosted by the Kingdom of Cyberland in November 2017. Six months before the next IGF, the organizing committee announces that it will be charging participants to attend the meeting. So it could ‑‑ I mean, it could be anything from $500 to $1,000. Either way, this is obviously a huge problem and there's huge uproar amongst the community.
How does one go about it? So to help us, it would be great if you start by using this. If you have pens and pencils, all you need to do is just fill out the boxes that are already here with your plan to address this grave issue that we are facing? Yes, please use the canvas you already have. Help. Any questions? Okay. Well, anyway we'll be coming around, so if you have any questions, please shout.
>> MODERATOR: We have 15 minutes to do this and we'll ask depending on time one or two groups to present back their advocacy canvas thinking about what we mean by strategic advocacy. So all the different principles that Andrew talked about in answering ‑‑ Andrew has already started. Answering all the questions of The Canvas, but thinking about how do we correct that and change the fact that the organizing committee is going to charge for participating in the next meeting. Great. Over to you.
(Small group activity)
>> MODERATOR: So if we could start wrapping up, in 30 seconds we'll start wrapping up, 30 seconds, please.
Okay. Thank you everybody. I understand you probably haven't got to the end of canvas, and you can't take it home and you can complete it at home if you want to. If we could just get a bit of focus as we ask a couple of groups to report back. So I'm going to start with this group. If you could talk us through your solution to the IGF charging for entry to the IGF.
>> I don't think we ‑‑ I'll stand up. I don't think we made it through a solution, but we got some ideas. We all know the problem statement and our objective was to maintain an IGF free of charge, so the outcome is free participation. There's not a distinction there.
We got to the process to talk to the IGF secretariat and taking it top to the top of the U.N. secretary‑general we are flirting with. Then, of course, private donors, but we don't know how to bridge the gap to convince them. We want to get everybody on board and get back to talking about how the multi-stakeholder platform is important, but if we get everybody on board, it would be a private sectors and governments and CSOs who is making it prohibitive. We didn't know where to move on from there.
>> MODERATOR: Excellent. Thank you very much. It's an interesting problem to have. We thought it would be one to bind us together. We come back to this group to present back on the solution.
>> The whole thing?
>> MODERATOR: The whole thing.
>> SPEAKER: Yeah. So clearly the problem/solution is charging for entry into the IGF is problematic. It would no longer be an inclusive space for multi-stakeholders and many people would be left out. The overall goal is that the IGF would be all inclusive and nobody would be charged to attend.
So we came up with one objective, which was to successfully advocate members of the steering committee to overturn the decision by next meeting in three months. Then the outcome, I think, is really what I said was the goal.
So for the process and decision‑making, we said that we would start by determining what the formal decision‑making process is within this steering committee, and yeah, let me see what I wrote here. Yeah. We would want to find out how we can influence the committee through their next meeting, so the target groups would be the members of the steering committee and we would want to figure out who the people were on the steering committee that made the decision in the first place and why that decision was made to figure out what we're up against.
So there are a number of target groups, so the members of the steering committee, we thought the kingdom of the kingdom of cyber land might be someone who has a very fragile ego, you know? The minister of external relations, trade groups, and global commerce would be kind of contributing partners, and also those people who would be marginalized, Civil Society groups who couldn't attend the IGF if this were implemented.
And then other opportunities we thought could be to look at other funders and other opportunities for fund‑raising on a needs base for people that could attend. That's a last resort. We'll be successful for sure in this process. In terms of activities, this is kind of in no specific order and very random. They're tactics really.
We thought we could do an online petition accompanied by a social media campaign with Civil Society groups with a common hashtag. We could do an open letter and encourage the commerce groups who would be impacted by less numbers at the IGF to participate and send their own letters. We would see if we could secure meetings with the steering committee, and we'd want to present a petition to them.
If they closed us out, then we would organize a protest outside of their next meeting. That's what we've got.
>> MODERATOR: That's excellent. Well‑done. Great.
(Applause)
>> MODERATOR: Protests, petitions, playing on the fragile mental state on the king is an effective strategy, absolutely. One more group. We will ask you to present your strategy.
>> So what do I read first? The problem statement. So charging would destroy Civil Society engagement, and that's the very purpose of the IGF, and discriminate against poor, marginalized people and organizations and even governments, you know, smaller governments would certainly not be able to do it.
It would no longer be multi‑stakeholder. Objective is to make it free on a long‑term basis. We did talk about how a short, quick fix for the next IGF wouldn't be our goal. We'd want something more embedded about long‑term accessibility. Outcomes, yeah, we'd just like to have that ‑‑ the outcome be that the core principles would be protected on a long‑term basis, and that diverse participation would be protected. So processes.
Meeting members of the mag and hosting U.N. advocacy. So targeting MAG members and we had interesting conversations about the government and about getting to know the parliamentary assistance, the policy advisers, the people behind the scene. I say that I'm a member of the European parliament, so I know kind of how it works. My staff really is far more powerful than I am, okay?
And also, in the government the different departments that might have an interest in it. So if this was the U.K., it could be the development, it could be deferred but it might be education, skills, equalities, different areas. Then also talking to like‑minded governments so previous IGF host countries, partners would be IGF support association, U.N. as we said hosts the countries and societies and organizations and networks.
Basically we can do it ourselves, yeah. And private entities. Other opportunities. We didn't talk about that much, but I wondered about the world's social forum. I know that there's somebody here suggesting that there might be an IGF social forum, so at one stage we said if they didn't make it free, have an alternative.
Threaten to take it somewhere else in a different way. Activities, training lobbyists, so members of several societies being trained to do the lobbying and supporting each other with a peer network. Sharing your successes, publishing an open letter. Meetings, meetings, meetings building that relationship.
Oh, God. You have to have people in every country doing it, right? A big campaign. Lots of high‑profile press to celebrate success. Time, staff, travel costs. We didn't do the review or evaluation. We just liked doing it. Okay, right.
(Applause)
>> MODERATOR: Thank you very much. It's super interesting to see the different ways in which people have approached the same issue, and sort of this group identifying particular points of the problem statement more than other groups. I think the one thing that we would say is that really the problem on the surface is there's a charge to attending the IGF, but why?
What was the driving factor behind that? What is that decision, and what is that called? So a lot of the problems that you define was around the lack of multi‑stakeholder engagement in the IGF and what that would cause going forward. Having that more detailed and concise analysis of the program gives a different picture of what that objective might look like in the short term and who you might need to engage with, which is excellent.
We've got ten more minutes, and in that I want to just ask sort of reactions and thoughts about the tool or any sort of comments that people had about using it and also if anyone has any sort of words of wisdom before we sort of leave the final session of the day as we walk into the Mexican sunset for human rights strategies and advocacy going forward. Just comments on the tool. How did you find it? We'd love feedback on it, but has this been useful and is this something we should be doing more of? Any sort of key sort of questions or lessons for us.
>> AUDIENCE: Thank you. I'm Mary from Armenia, youth IGF fellow. So it was really useful, but in the beginning, as we were reading different pieces, like in the first exercise, at first we thought that we got everything correct, but then when we started thinking, we got more confused because if you are doing this for the first time, it's really difficult to differentiate between the goal and the objective.
Like the outcomes are fine, but the objective and the goals seem to really be similar, but I think it's a very useful tool. We just need to train more. In terms of practical terms, I think it's useful to do this in every case if you want to develop a strategy, because it's really ‑‑ it really breaks it down into all the important aspects that you need to take into account if you want to have a good strategy. So thank you for it.
>> MODERATOR: Absolutely. There is ‑‑ we didn't provide in and should have in hindsight, with an explanatory guide that gives more detail to each box and certain questions you should ask behind the boxes. We realize unfortunately this session is all in English, and we ‑‑ the next step for us is to think about how to make it much more accessible to others as well. Any other comments?
I'd be interested to see if anyone sort of approached or sort of as they thought about their activities, it changed as you went through the canvas. So when you first thought about the issue, what were you thinking about, and by the time you got to the bottom, did that change? If you want to use that mic there, that would be great.
>> AUDIENCE: I thought it was interesting that we had a devil's advocate who said is it all that bad? Maybe we don't disapprove of that proposal? Maybe accept they charge and instead provide proposals for how to achieve equitable outcomes while maintaining the change in the IGF.
>> MODERATOR: Absolutely.
>> AUDIENCE: That didn't work in the workshop, because we didn't have early agreement on what the actual goal was.
>> MODERATOR: Which is often the case. Absolutely, coming to a common understanding problem statement objective especially when we coordinate across groups and regions is really important and spending that time and investment on that stage of the process is really important. Maybe the IGF secretariat would be much more effective if they had all the money from all the ticket sales, you know? Maybe there is a longer‑term outcome of the IGF if they were to charge. Anything else? Yeah.
>> AUDIENCE: I thought it was a really effective use of the time and actually the first session that I've been dynamically involved in. So I think it's much better learning environment for people to do something like that. I think the way you got everything prepared before was really helpful for us to get through the exercise quite quickly in the time that we have. Thank you.
>> AUDIENCE: I think this type of tool is really helpful for Civil Society groups, because as you mentioned in remarks at the beginning, I think it's common to get caught up in activities and being activity‑driven because we're constantly in a reaction mode. So I think it's really important to people to take the time to step back and know if you build a strategy that you're more likely to be successful and repeating the same tactics over and over again. Thank you.
>> MODERATOR: Fantastic. I'm glad it was helpful. I'm going to pass it to Andrew as well.
>> AUDIENCE: The observation I got is I think the rooms at the IGF really mitigate against genuine interactivity and participation. I found that every IGF I've been to, you have the tables and panels of speakers and the audience. A lot of them are coming to do your e‑mail. If you want to have a conversation, you have to go to the cafe area to interact with people.
I think feeding back to the secretariat when they look at space, that the spaces are flexible and can be used in different ways and not the assumption it's a bunch of experts talking at an audience that listen. There might be the opportunity for much more participation. We came into this room and said, how the hell do we run a session for a large number of people in a room like this, which is not designed to be interactive? That's what we should try to feedback to the secretariat, a different kind of space and opportunity for dialogue.
>> MODERATOR: Absolutely. That was slightly terrifying five minutes before we walked in. Four rows deep, and here we go. Anything else before we wrap up?
>> AUDIENCE: I just applaud the people that stayed to actually do the activity. You notice half the room was like I have to do work? Ran out. So kudos to everyone that stayed and great work doing this. Thanks.
>> MODERATOR: Great. So myself, Sheetal, Andrew, Danny and Lara are here and we're happy to answer questions on it or if you want materials please ask us. We'd love to share more and thank you again so much for your active participation. I've learned a Loy about how to get free tickets to things in this process. Thank you very much indeed. Cheers.
(Session ended at 17:54 CT)