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.
***
>> ANYA: Hi, everyone. This is my last kind request. For those of you who will attend the Newcomers Track, please take your positions at the table. Yes, please, also you. If you could join us and take one of the chairs? So as you know -- please, go ahead.
(Pause.)
>> ANYA: Hi, everyone. Let's officially start. I know it's the last day. Many of the participants already left the venue. But I would like to thank you for staying until the very end with us.
This session is probably more important to us than to all of you because it is a feedback session. We wanted to hear from you what do you think about the Newcomers Track and should we continue with this practice for the next year? And if so, what should be improved.
So if you don't mind, I am going to suggest to start immediately with you giving us feedback. So please, tell us your name at the beginning, your affiliation and then some concrete proposals and feedback on how we should improve this and should we in any case continue this? Maybe from Sebastian. He's with us from the very beginning.
>> SEBASTIAN: All right. Good afternoon. My name is Sebastian Pensus. I'm here with Euro Dot, the EU domain registry. I would like to thank Anya and Bianca for the tireless work they've done. Coming to my first IGF was a little bit nerve-wracking. Wondered how I would navigate such a large event. The cafes allowed me to meet with people from civil society, private sector and doing so in a smaller setting allowed for interesting discussions to go on alert when I ran into them either in other sessions or just walking down the hall.
The world of Internet Governance is really large and complex, and having this Newcomers Track for me at least has been a very valuable tool towards helping me find my footing and gain confidence in order to interact in the larger sessions during the week.
I would love to see this continue at the future IGFs. As an idea for last year I would like to propose a Newcomer Cafe where the Newcomers talk to each other. Giving them the opportunity to ask or answer questions and to begin their IGF participation by getting into the flow of things and knowing their peers would give them some confidence to step up to the mic a little bit later.
I heard a lot of discussion during this IGF about how we can get the youth encouraged and involved in the participation of sessions, and I think that the first step to do is to give them a forum where they can find that first footing and the courage to get the first intervention at the microphone out there. Thank you.
>> ANYA: Will thank you so much, Sebastian. I will have a couple of questions, but later after this round.
>> BIANCA CHRISTINE HO: He also made his first invention, a first intervention at a main session, just now.
>> ANYA: Okay! Can we move now to ...
>> AUDIENCE: Hello, everyone. My name is Sabrina Anhaga. I come from France and represent IGF in France.
I participated in the organisation of the youth IGF forum in France with my colleague, Ted here, who will present after. It is my first IGF. So I had a lot of expectations and now I am also come here to deliver the youth message from France. Thank you.
>> My name is Ted and I'm not going to repeat what Sabrina just said. I could say exactly the same thing. I totally agree with the idea of Sebastian. I think because me and Sabrina are new in the Internet Governance systems it is difficult to step up and having more confidence with something like that would be a great thing, I think.
Thank you.
>> AUDIENCE: Hi. My name is Raquel Marcos and representing the Global Foundation with my colleague Victoria. We unfortunately couldn't make it before. We just arrived yesterday. I can't give you much feedback about the Newcomers Track. This is our first time at IGF. Yes.
>> ANYA: You with respect not part of the Newcomers Track but this is your first IGF. What is the most challenging thing for you about participating at the IGF?
>> AUDIENCE: Well, we don't come from the Internet community. So we are just here to learn really. So everything is a challenge.
As someone was saying in the main session, reshaping Internet Governance, all the acronyms are quite challenging.
(Laughter.)
>> ANYA: All right, thank you. Carlos?
>> CARLOS GUERRERO: Hello, everyone. My name is Carlos. I'm Mexican, come from here as well.
I think this is very important, the Internet Governance. I'm a creator of Homochi that hooks the mind to the cloud computing, cloud services. I'm here to see how is the Internet going to be like all of those topics about fragmentation and privatization of the Internet, how there is going to be security of the information. I think those are very important topics. Thanks.
>> ANYA: Thank you, Carlos. I will wait for the colleagues to take their position. We'll move to the other side of the table and come back to you.
I don't know the name, but I can say ... no, the colleague at the beginning of the table.
>> I'm Anna Companik from the Internet Private Enterprise in Washington, D.C.
>> I am Jan Rydzak from the University of Arizona.
>> ANYA: What do you think about the Newcomers Track. Do you think it's needed at the IGF? For the first time coming participants?
>> JAN RYDZAK: Is that a question for me? Oh, for both of us? Well, I guess do you want to start? Yeah.
>> It is actually my first Newcomers session, but I am particularly interested as a Newcomer. The conference was obviously interesting and rich. I'm interested in what are the ways of staying connected in topics we are interested in between events. That's the main reason I'm here.
>> JAN RYDZAK: I guess I have a similar line of argument. This is the first time at IGF and also my first day at IGF and also my last. One of the things I'm interested in since I represent academia and civil society to an extent, I would be most interested in how to engage with other environments outside of academia. Because I'm used to an extremely academic approach to conferences and I think the greatest value in IGF is really the combination of different stakeholders and so just kind of reaching across the borders is what I'm interested in.
>> AUDIENCE: Hello? Is that working? Yeah. My name is Sophie Tomlinson and work for the International Chamber of Commerce which is a world business association with members in over 130 countries. It is cross-sectoral, all different sizes of business. When we participate at the IGF, we are working through an initiative called business action to support the Information Society, which is the initiative of ICC.
And Bianca and Anya invited me to participate in the private sector Newcomers Track, I think it was on Tuesday. And I am just here to give some general feedback on that. It is my third IGF. I am not a Newcomer but I still feel relatively new. There are so many people who have done IGF from the start. I thought that session was great to have that kind of knowledge cafes. At ICC we are always trying to bring different business partners together at IGF. It was interesting for us to see who from business was participating, who is not one of our members and see how we could collaborate.
Going to the point that you said about, you know, when you are not from the Internet Governance or technology sector, across all different stakeholder groups, it's key at IGF that we try to get people like you here. When we are, when there are panelists on main sessions and things like that, keeping in mind that there are people in the room who aren't in the kind of close knit Internet Governance circles. When they give their remarks, putting things in context and in the big picture outside of the IGF why these things matter.
I'm wondering as a general question, have you got any Newcomers about the remote participants? That's also we are probably seeing a lot of participation.
>> BIANCA CHRISTINE HO: We open for remote every day. Not many people join. But one thing we have used to communicate is the mailing list. Other than this forum where we can share our thoughts, we will send a survey a little later for the remote Newcomers. That's also an area that we want to address in the future.
>> ANNA: Thank you. Sophie, can we move on now?
>> AUDIENCE: Hi, everyone. I am Gassia, coming from the Republic of Congo. This one is my first global IGF, but it is not my first IGF because we had an African one and I was a Fellow for the African school of the IGF. That means that I was already familiar to some terms related to the IGF.
But what I'm going to talk about is maybe the fact that I am coming from a French, Francophonal country. It is not easy for us when we are coming here to, even in the African IGF it's the same thing. You have translator maybe just in the main room. And in the other rooms you don't have it.
I have a background helping me to understand things according toe freedom of expression, according to human rights. So when it is coming to technical discussions or meeting, I am kind of being lost. Even if you are explaining something because, for example, here we are all going to speak in English. The panelists they are going to speak in English. The time I'm going to understand what they are saying because it is not in my background, it is not easy at all when you are a Newcomer.
And it is also the same thing, for example now I am going to say I'm the only one Congolese here. When you talk about remote participation, trying to talk to your friends in the Congo saying I'm in Mexico, you can follow us on the net. And they are just saying yes, you're right, even now you can even see it.
I'm speaking, it is in English and even on the Internet, it is just in English. So it is not easy even for people in our countries to follow us. So that is what I can say for the moment.
>> AUDIENCE: Good afternoon. I'm Maria Madura. I'm from the University of Guadalajara, and I'm Mexican. This is my first IGF. It has been a great experience from the Day Zero I have been here.
And I have to admit, I had no clue what is this going to be about. So I was just like open to all experiences and it has been really interesting. It changed totally my perception of the Internet and of some organisations from around the globe. So I can say that I am very grateful for this opportunity. I thank you because you make us feel like we are part of the group, part of something, inside of this big event.
So my recommendation for next year would be to give more diffusion or more publicity to these kind of events. Many people from many different sectors would be interested incoming to these meetings. You can learn a lot. You can meet a lot of people and you can get in touch with important organisations around the world that may enrich each other. Thank you very much.
>> AUDIENCE: Hello. I'm Victoria. As Raquel said we work together at the global challenges foundation. We focus more on global catastrophic risks such as climate change, but we are here to learn from the innovative Internet community on how to approach the problem of forming a multi-stakeholder framework. And global governance in general and how you tackle this.
>> AUDIENCE: Hello, all. My name is Maria. I'm from France. I work at Orange, the Orange Company, the teleco. It is my first IGF, of course. My believe is that this proposal to be continue is a very good idea. It is a very good idea to meet new people and to try to create this feeling of -- of what?
(Laughter.)
>> AUDIENCE: -- of being together and understanding how it works. And then I think really it is a very good idea.
I have seen that you have put a direct link to the Newcomers on the Web site. This is a way to let people be aware of that, on the fact that it is interesting. And it means also there is a means to communicate on it. I rather feel it is, concerning the issues that are dealt with here in terms of public policy because it is my job. Then that's okay for concerning this point.
But what I'm trying to do is to understand IGF, how it works, because my objective is to contribute as much as I can in the future. Thank you very much.
>> ANYA: Michael is not a newcomer, probably a well-known name. He is helpful to the IGF and involved in our process. I invited Michael basically as our guest here to share his experience because he used to be a Newcomer. How did you engage with Inter-Sessional work of the IGF?
>> MICHAEL: Thank you very much, Anya. I'm an ISOC returning Ambassador. So this is my second IGF and it is kind of funny because I am highly involved now in the Internet Governance ecosystem but I didn't even know what Internet Governance was until last August, let's say. I always joke with, now, for instance, this is the second year I have been involved with an initiative, the best practices forum on IXPs, which is Internet exchange points, sorry for the acronym. I also didn't know what an IXP was at the beginning of last September. So one thing that I found when I first started getting involved was that the community was largely very welcoming. They were quite happy to see new blood, new energy coming into the IGF. It wasn't just me. It was many others.
With that said, I remember quite well how, because other people were looking out for me and trying to get me involved, I felt much more encouraged to do so as well. So something take Anya wanted me to talk about was the Inter-Sessional work. What we have to understand is that the IGF, at least the global IGF, actually regional and national initiatives as well. It's not just one meeting where people come and we discuss things and go home. The fact is, first of all, everybody has a different perspective to bring to this. The Internet is not just the technical functions. It is not just how it affects something like net neutrality. It affects everything. I was happy to hear that you all work, Raquel and Victoria, you work on global issues. I have been going off lately, but talking a lot lately about climate change and how the Internet and energy are relevant to the climate change discourse, something that we don't talk about here, but we can.
The point is everybody has a unique perspective to bring to the table, whether it's a youth perspective, whether it's relevant to user location, that you're from Congo, and I don't know anything about Congo, so it's good that you are here and you have a lot to contribute. You probably have a lot more to contribute than you realise.
On that note, let me talk about the Inter-Sessional work. Like I said, the IGF is not one meeting. It's a process. Think of the IGF as being the culminating experience, in the sense that we neat once a year. We actually are meeting in many ways to talk about some of the developments from the past year, but also in many ways to have that physical meeting to discuss the work that we have been doing.
What I mean by that, I'm sure by now you are familiar with the best practice forums and familiar with the dynamic coalition proposals. I don't know want to talk down to anybody. That's what I mean.
So this work that is done, it's meant to be building on addressing problems that are relevant to the community and finding multi-stakeholder solutions that then can address these problems. For instance, I'm involved in two of the best practice forums.
By the way, please understand about my background, like I said, I didn't know Internet Governance. I have a bachelors and masters in sociology. There is a piece that somebody had written a long time ago, they said the advantages of being useless. Basically, I was never really anything, but because of that I was able to find my place in this community. For instance, I am not technical in nature, but yet I do a lot of the proof reading because I used to work as an editor. I do a lot of the proof reading on the best practice forum documents.
What else do I do? I do a lot of consulting, but the point is that I found a way to contribute. Then by doing so, I actually end up learning. So it kind of builds on itself.
I wrote about this recently. I wrote an article and published it in Diplo Foundation called "I am not a technical person, but I don't need to be."
When I worked with the best practice forums, I kept getting such good feedback from others -- by the way if I talk too fast, let me know. I get excited.
So the people that were technical in nature, I kept getting feedback from them saying we really appreciate that somebody that isn't familiar with the acronyms, somebody that is not familiar with border gateway protocol and IPv6 can read the document and understand what they are talking about because the fact is it is our job, it is part of our job to make these issues ones that are digestible for the general public. That is not done through jargon and technical speak and whatnot. It is language and engagement and interaction. If there is a topic that interests you, get involved. That is the best advice that I can give you. I will do my absolute best to make sure that you feel welcome and feel included. If there is ever -- I'm sure that so many others in this community will do the same. I hope that my experience can reflect yours, because the best -- we get so excited when somebody that we don't know starts getting involved. They are like: Yeah, what can I do? Not everybody here is a youth, but especially youth, I always try to tell people: How can those of us who have a lot of time to use on meaningful things help those without that time.
I don't have a family. I don't have a lot of commitment. Most of my commitments of Internet Governance, meaning I have that flexibility. Many of you do as well. That means we can really have something to offer those people that have families, that have a lot of commitments already. In turn they can offer us mentorship which is so important. Not just knowing a face at the next meeting but knowing that you are committed to these processes, knowing that you are going to learn and knowing that we are all investing in the same process.
We are here to make the Internet a better place, something better for humanity. So that takes work, but it takes a lot of -- it does take time. But I mean, I can't believe that I know as much as I do now about Internet Governance and it has just been a year and a half. Like I said this is my, my last Internet Governance Forum was last November.
I do encourage you to get involved and stay involved. The Inter-Sessional work is open to everyone. That is the Dynamic Coalitions, the Internet practice forums the policy groups for connecting the next billions. We need your voices. I am telling you we need your help. We can't do it ourselves. Many of us are spread thin with our personal and professional commitments.
With that I'll give it back to the chair. Sorry if I talked too much but I care about this space and home you care about it as well if you don't already.
Thank you.
>> BIANCA CHRISTINE HO: I think the beautiful thing, you might be a Newcomer now, but next year you're not. You can totally do the same thing that others have been reaching out to you. That's something that you can carry on. I wanted to make that quick point.
>> AUDIENCE: Thank you.
>> ANYA: Thank you for your feedback. Me and Bianca were taking a lot of notes.
Let me talk about what Michael said, the IGF Inter-Sessional work. What is the process for engaging with the Inter-Sessional work for next year's IGF. After that I will come up with one complete proposal that last night came to my mind. Michael mentioned the best practice forums. Day Zero we explained the logistics, Dynamic Coalitions, the NRIs, connecting and enabling the next billion project. Let me not go through the logistics of those Inter-Sessional activities but concretely say how you can engage. The Dynamic Coalitions are fixed. They don't depend on the MAG, which means that the MAG doesn't decide, they are not part of the Inter-Sessional programmes as such.
There are 16 Dynamic Coalitions on many different subjects. If any of you are interested in discussing and engaging on experts on child online safety, libraries, gender, block chain technologies, human rights, different kinds of human rights perspectives that are represented, under 16, the Dynamic Coalitions, everything you have to do is contact the IGF Secretariat and we will put you in touch with the leader of those groups. They are expert groups, expert teams gathering different organisations, different stakeholders and working on kind of reviewing what is happening on certain topics and presenting it here at the IGF. The DCs had yesterday in the main session. I don't know whether you attended but in any case they were presenting their work.
If you are interested to be engaged with any of the national or regional or youth IGFs that exist in your countries, there are 79 of them now. They are all listed on the Web site. Everything that you need to do is contact the IGF Secretariat again and they will put you in touch with the organisers of the NRIs. They are a wonderful world in Internet Governance that exists in different countries, regions. And they are doing what we are doing here, just on a national, regional level and they have their own Inter-Sessional activities. To me, I have been working very closely for almost the last two years with the rights, what you don't see at the global IGF, you see a tangible output and the change because it is on a lower level, more specific.
The best practice forums depend on the MAG. The MAG every year, when it is organised they decide on whether they will go with the best practices and if so, with what kind of topics. This year we had the continuation over the last year's best practice forums. We had four best practice forums that I mentioned on Day Zero, but there is a variety. There is some of them are more kind of oriented on the technical side. Some of them are oriented on the on the grounds side. If you are interested in gender and abuse of women online there is a best practice forum on it that is gathering a lot of contributions and drafting the recommendations and the output documents. All documents are available on the IGF Web site.
To any of the best practice forums please contact the IGF Secretariat. We will put you in contact with the Coordinators for the best practice forums. They are all being led by the IGF Secretariat's consultants mostly which are the experts on certain topics.
There is one very interesting project I think which is, I think they had yesterday or today, the session. Connecting and enabling the next billion. Last year we started this project to deal with access and connectivity from the perspective of the global IGF. We were reaching out to different stakeholder groups in different countries and regions to see what are the problems with connectivity and with access. Then we were gathering the contributions, putting it in one document and presenting it last year in Brazil.
It was so welcomed by the community, the work has been continued this year, but it was somehow continued through the NRIs, which we all liked because we were consulting certain countries, certain regions to see what are the issues with the under connected, with the non-connected and you can see it in the outcome document. The colleagues working on pulling everything together in one document had a lot of challenges. The issues are so different.
How you can engage the CNB has its own work teams as the best practices. You can contact the Secretariat and we can put you in contact with the organisers.
For the next year, we still don't know who the composition of the MAG. As soon as the MAG is established they will have their first meeting and they will decide on the annual programme it self. That is your first step, just to kind of keep yourself informed, following the IGF Web site, see when the mag is forward and see what the outcomes of the first MAG meeting and contact the Secretariat.
Just send an email and we will put you in contact with the organizing team. For the DCs you can do it right now. They are continuous. They work throughout the year and they will just welcome new colleagues and new participants.
This is something that I wanted to say. Do you have anything to say?
I know we are running a bit out of time. I don't want to leave the Newcomers Track without us having something concrete. We received a lot of feedback. There is an agreement within the group that this should be continued. But obviously we need to improve it a bit. I think what you now told us, it is so valuable and easily, we can easily apply it in any case.
I'm thinking now if you are interested to stay in touch with us through the Newcomers mailing list, maybe even to start a Working Group or something like that to put our inputs and to try to improve this for the next year. So this is kind of my proposal that comes and I would really like to hear your feedback on this whether you would be interested.
I think it will be so valuable to us because you now have the experience with the Newcomers Track. You see what has worked well, what didn't work well, how we should improve. You have the advantage compared to the colleagues that didn't attend the Newcomers Track from the very beginning. Can I briefly hear your feedback on this so I can bring inputs to my team? Sebastian?
>> SEBASTIAN: Yes, I'm really on board with that idea. I'm happy to helping to develop the Newcomers Track. I think it's an initiative that is important to all of us here. It would be cool to see it grow.
>> AUDIENCE: Good evening. I will try to speak some English and Spanish because I am agree with she from the Congo that it is very difficult to, who don't manage the English and we have every good exposure to someone like Michael but he's so fast.
We are patient.
I'm from Argentina ...
(Continues in Spanish.)
ICANN is multi-stakeholder only but ICANN only knows about names and numbers. This is my first time here in the IGF ...
(Continuing in Spanish.)
We don't meet yet with the Internet. Ten years ago we have questions.
(Spanish.)
We still have these questions. But now more people have these questions because ten years ago when the conference, they weren't so many government involved, many corporations involved and in this kind of meeting ...
(Continuing in Spanish.)
We can be in the same workshop with the President of ICANN. I know him because of your name, but not face-to-face. (Continuing in Spanish.)
We think that today more people is taking the same, asking that we have lonely, if we have the same questions, we can build the solutions. We are, with the proposals, with the goal of the new connections from 1.5 billion, but we think that first every human must have water, must have work. We must join that goal. Everyone connected. With that, they are no more hungry. There is no confrontation between us (continuing in Spanish.)
Because of that, we are here.
I'm grateful to meet you face-to-face. Anya, I see you in the webinar. I know some people of the IGF. Sarah from Fiji was working with us from the ICANN (continuing in Spanish.)
Our experience with the gap between families, not only the digital gap, the family gap. Some child in the school have your net book. Some programmes. (Continuing in Spanish.)
We need to work on this gap. My country is so huge, like Mexico. And we have several districts and we have any of us were working, networking. And in each place we try to make something. (Continuing in Spanish.)
For little that there is, talking in the school, talking with the family, like say Michael, this is our engagement with the IGF. We will continue working. We know how to work into the Working Groups. It is similar like ICANN, but here we are agreed that here we can work with another things more than names and numbers. (Continuing in Spanish.)
Thank you.
>> BIANCA CHRISTINE HO: Thank you so much for your comments. One thing, I think it was not well advertised. There are these badges with -- slightly different than yours. It has a native language. So some of them -- these are the mentor badges. Maybe next year we make it a different color. I say I speak Chinese, because I do. Others speak Spanish or Swahili or other languages. Like that. I understand like for people who don't speak English as their first language this would become difficult. I think it's good for you to rely on mentors like this. Next year we we'll do a better job of promoting. Thank you again for your comment.
>> AUDIENCE: (Speaker away from microphone.)
But I'm really glad that we have here Raquel and others. I will play a video and you speak at the same time and explain to us what it is about.
Can I start now?
(Music playing.)
>> NARRATOR: The shape of a system will always determine the outcomes it achieves. The shape of our global governance system was decided after the second world war when the world was very different.
Is it the right shape to tackle climate change? And extreme poverty? And global conflict?
These challenges are global, not national. The way the world works together will dictate. It is time to explore new operations to future-proof our world, new lines, new voices, new ways, a new shape. Take part in the new shape prize.
>> AUDIENCE: Hi, again. Thank you so much, Anya and sorry Bianca, yes, for allowing us to introduce the global foundation new shape prize. I'll be super short. So first I will speak a bit about the global challenges foundation. The global challenges foundation new shape prize is aimed at spiking fresh ideas on how to better handle global challenges such as the ones we mentioned before: Climate change, conflict, extreme poverty. I will try to speak more slowly.
And the prize will award $5 million to ideas that remodel global governance for the 21st century. The foundation aims, or we aim to deepen understanding of global catastrophic risks that are threatening humanity. And we believe that fresh thinking is needed to be able to address the scale and gravity of these risks. Which have out stretched the international system's ability to deal with them. The prize will have an impact by stimulating a global debate about how the world manages the global risks that threaten humanity. By producing ideas for more effective global governance that could be taken forward.
Internet Governance is an inspiring example of innovation and global governance and we encourage you and people in your networks to take part in the prize competition.
We are here as we would love to hear your insights on these issues. If you want more information, you can visit our Web site: Globalchallenges.org. We also brought some brochures that you are free to take. If you have any questions about it, just let us know.
>> ANYA: I will wrap up here. I want to thank you so much. I finally enjoyed this because I was so busy these last days, working with the private sector, but I want to thank you all.
Carl is here. I want to thank him for supporting us and Sophie, and thank you also, and thank you also to our key speakers. The biggest thanks goes to all of you. Michael, thank you for sharing our experience.
>> MICHAEL: I wanted to encourage you, I don't know if you're familiar with the Internet Society, ISOC Ambassador programme. If you really enjoyed your time here and want to contribute more, I highly recommend you apply next year. The applications open, I think in July. They are announced, the Ambassador are announced in August. It is a great way to be able to have sponsorship to come back to the IGF to participate and get to know the ecosystem better as well.
I encourage you to apply.
>> Hello. My name is (gives name) Net Citizens of Venezuela. Actually a LAC member. This is a community in Latin America and the Caribbean Islands within ICANN. I would like to invite all of us to work together, to try to take this opportunity that inside ICANN with improving our efforts for 2017 IGF. That's all. Thank you.
>> BIANCA CHRISTINE HO: Thank you, everyone. Again we will send out a survey to collect more information. We really appreciate that you are here today. And for those who haven't had lunch, go ahead. The lunchroom is closing soon. Thank you again for coming.
(Applause.)
(The conference concluded at 1426 CST.)
(CART provider signing off.)