The following are the outputs of the real-time captioning taken during the Thirteenth Annual Meeting of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) in Paris, France, from 12 to 14 November 2018. 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: Hello, everyone. If I may ask you to come closer so we will have more informal meeting. Thank you.
Excuse me, everyone, can you please move in the middle of the room. Thank you.
Wow! I can do this. I have my mobile mic! Hello, everyone. This is more for online people. I think I know most of you here. We are trying transform this very formal meeting to a more informal meeting and that's why we rearranged things bit. It will work better. I would have felt very awkward being up there and probably my colleagues as well.
We have a meeting about SEEDIG. We will tell you a bit about what we have been doing, what we are planning to do and then most of the session should be a discussion about how we can improve SEEDIG and expand our community, our network of partners and everything around.
But before we go the session. Can we go around quick introduction? Andrea, how long can you stay? Two minutes. Then let's have Andrea start. You can take one of the roving mics.
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: So good afternoon, I'm sorry. It feels like one of those politicians. I come, say two things and then adjust. I'm not a politician.
But I will try to ‑‑ I will try to come back before the session ends, and with presence. And with full presence.
I just wanted to say a few words and ‑‑ and then hopefully hear more from this discussion. As you know, I think all of you know I work for ICANN. And we as ICANN have been supporting SEEDIG from the very beginning and we have been supporting this community and we are committed to continue the support. We are glad and amazed on how this community was able to not only grow he but structure themselves in a way that it's quite rare across the national, regional initiatives, and quite frankly, you don't have many other fields where you can look at and you see a community so homogeneous, being able to come together and set a governance model which is a gold standard model for governance and commit to that and grow.
So this is fantastic, and continuing on this line.
At the same time, the times are change, I think the time of the day, for this WSIS ‑‑ was the Macron speech. No matter what you think about the message that he gave, I think he's clear that the house has been shaken and things have to change and that one line is either you do something on governing the Internet or we do it. I think that's how I take it from Macron's speech. And as a matter of fact, yesterday there was news that the French government signed an agreement with Facebook to co‑regulate and co‑moderate the content and Facebook. So they are quite consequential on that.
When I listened to that, while I was feeling pain for IGF and sometimes some masochistic pain. I deserve of that, because IGF has been going around for years. I was happy for SEEDIG, because they took this step. You already tried to bring the multi‑stakeholder model beyond organizing one single event into some concrete, outcome‑oriented activities that are not just, you know, lip service to those multi‑stakeholder, beautiful vocabulary, but I just ‑‑ very factual. And so the ‑‑ the reports and the activities around the region and now the ambassador program and the youth Cal.
I can tell you, that you are being watched. You are being watched and appreciated by other national organizations, and hopefully, you are making more, and more intent within your region, which I think is more the next challenge.
(off microphone comment).
Perfect! The SEEDIG magic. Things happen in there.
>> Everywhere!
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: So now is the time. There is a global call. We are not any longer the few crazy people discussing Internet governance. At the ahead of the state level, it was unthinkable, only when SEEDIG was unthinkable.
Probably in your region, you are not yet at that level and you are even more at the forefront, which is always a problem. Probably so far that nobody is looking at you. And so maybe you have to slow down and see how you can get into the fabric.
On that, I'm sorry, I'm helpless and I wish I knew more and I will do all of my best but really, it's you and it's you coming from the region, seeing how you can make more and more participation meaningful and this is something that is not only supportive from some obscure, international organization, but reality, it's focused on what you can do to address these issues luckily.
Luckily, getting a global solution into the governance is always more challenging and locally, but acting locally is the way to go. If it's good or not, if it's effective, we will fragment the Internet, and we will find out.
As the now, the Internet is already fragmented and we see that and now we have heads of state certifying that it's fragmented.
So good luck with the work ahead and keep up the good spirit. Don't take nothing for granted. What you have done so far has been great but it won't give you more miles and this is still something that you own and it grows as much as you put effort in that.
So the governance model is very strong, but the governance model doesn't assure that the work is done by itself. And this is ‑‑ this is a tricky part of every organization that, you know, is not funded by selling, you know, books or trainings online. That's enough for profits. So you have to find a way where the burden is shared among everybody.
And the way to do that probably is to focus more on our own concrete activities and know that you already have been discussing that. So keep going on this line and look forward to see you in Romania and hopefully soon, when I'm back from this other meeting.
Thank you. Congratulations again and good work.
(Applause).
>> MODERATOR: Thank you, Andrea, so we will go back to the round of introductions. Harry, still with you.
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: So I'm Harris. My ‑‑ my first experience within the Internet Governance as was about one and a half year ago, at youth dig 2007. So I discovered how much I liked all of this field and then I participated to some events like IGF 2017 and also seminar of Council of Europe. And I randomly saw the chance to participate as a SEEDIG intern.
So took the chance and they gave me a chance to be an intern. So I'm a small part of this nice community and do some work and know some chances for other people, like they offer me.
And, yeah, I'm like this ‑‑ I like the youth. I like the youth participation.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you, Harris. Let's go with real, real short introductions in your name and where you are. So we'll go back to the discussion.
Thank you.
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: I'm from Greece.
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: I'm Avi. I'm from Athens, Greece and I became a civic editor for about two months.
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: Hi, everyone, this is the second year that I'm part of the IGF forum and I participated also in SEEDIG this year, and that's all.
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: Hello. I'm Marco from Macedonia. I'm part also of the SEEDIG summary details team. And I also participate in this year's SEEDIG youth school and conference.
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: Hi, Dayla, coordinator of the Albania and youth IGF and part of the editorial team of SEEDIG summary.
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: Yes, Gaylord from better Len, Germany, coordinator of the youth IGF in Germany. This year it's not happening, but the last years. Yeah.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you. Ana.
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: Okay, I'm from Croatia. I'm a member of the Croatia IGF committee. Thanks.
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: Hi, everyone, Nadlda, also Croatia and MAG member.
>> MODERATOR: And we also have Moldova somewhere there.
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: Yes, my name is Ana, I'm from Moldova. And I got involved with ‑‑ a little bit with SEEDIG at the ICANN meeting three weeks ago.
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: Hi, I'm Veronica from Romania. I have never been to a SEEDIG so far. So since Romania is hosting the next one. I coordinate digital Citizens.
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: I'm, Gergana, originally I'm from Bulgaria. I don't represent the country because for many, many years I live in the Netherlands. I work in the external relations office, and I have tended, I think two SEEDIGs so far and two EuroDIGs and this is my second IGF. I really love the SEEDIG community. So thank you.
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: Valentina, I'm a permanent resident in go Bosnia Herzegovina.
>> This is my first IGF and we are keeping.
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: Hello, I'm from Moscow, from Russia. I'm here from last May when I was at my first SEEDIG. And here I present URL and of course SEEDIG. This morning, we had with Olga our workshop. I'm happy, and I think we can lead together strongly and create our SEEDIG the best.
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: Hello, I'm from Georgia IGF.
>> MODERATOR: We have also our colleagues from the Arab IGF.
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: Good morning. It's afternoon. I'm the chair of the Arab AMAG, the Arab MAG, I mean, and covering for my colleagues who couldn't come, who were supposed to be here from the Secretariat and the organization committee arranging responsible for the Arab IGF.
And sorry, I'm a little bit away, because I'm following the power. So ‑‑
>> MODERATOR: Thank you. And my colleagues from the core team. We start with Sonia.
>> Hi, I'm Sonia, I was introduced to the SEEDIG in the 2016 meeting and later I was part of the fellowship and now I'm a part of the core team. And it's lovely. I love it.
>> Hi, everyone, I'm will he Ana Galstyan from Armenia, coordinator of the Armenian IGF and also a MAG member and I'm a part of SEEDIG since its beginning that was started in 2015 and the first meeting was in Bulgaria and that's lovely. I love this community.
Thank you for being here. And it's lovely to see our editors be here and doing a great job. Thanks.
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: Hello being I'm also a member of the executive committee, and coordinator of the Slovenian IGF. I joined the community in 2016 in Belgrade and then started working heavily on this topics and both in Slovenia and within the region and I was also a host of the ‑‑ of SEEDIG 2018. And I'm glad that we have here people that we invited. The students and also the fellows that joined us in Lobiana in May.
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: My name is Sasha, a member of the executive committee.
>> MODERATOR: Okay. Thanks everyone, for being here. It's always these kind of meetings that give us strength to go ahead with what we are doing and we'll start with that.
Can you move a couple of slides. I tell you where to stop. Go. Still go. That's. So as Lanark started, it started in 2016. It was at an ICANN meeting, actually in Londonian and Phi of us just met in up with of the hallways there and talking about the community and whether we can do something to create these kind of things bringing people together in the countries and that's how the idea SEEDIG came up.
It was supposed to be in Bulgaria and we had the first meeting together with them and so it was a pre‑event to EuroDIG then and from there, we had our own separate meetings, around the region.
I will tell you later about the regions. We have evolved a bit. And this is an ongoing process and we have to be aware of that all the time.
I will give quickly through that slide, our vision and mission. We believe that digital technologies have a role to play in the development of our region. And in line with that belief, our vision is that of a healthy, sustainable and digital advancement of the region and to try to help achieve that vision, our nation is to facilitate dialogue and cooperation from among all stakeholders when it comes to addressing. We called them digital policy issues and by that we mean everything related to the use, the evolution and the governance of the Internet and digital technologies.
So that's the very broad picture of where we are, what we want to do.
And we can move one more slide until you try to fix it. I think it looks okay, right? You can see it.
So I say Eastern Europe and the neighboring area. When we started SEEDIG, we made a decision then, not to try to define, it to say these are the countries that should belong to SEEDIG. So it's an open concept, which means everyone who considers himself or herself part of the region is welcome to join.
That map is not showing SEEDIG, but countries that usually participate in our activities. So it's a very wide concept. We welcome people from all over the Europe, all over the world, Eastern Europe and the neighboring area again.
You can go ahead.
Our practices, we are trying to do more than just an annual meeting. We are trying to strengthen the local communities to promote dialogue and cooperation across the region but also at national level. To do the capacity development, and I will go quickly through some of those main activities one by one. Thank you.
This is just a very quick infographic of things we are doing over the four years of existence of SEEDIG. Participants in our annual meetings and a number of fellows and youth students, and we will tell you more about those later.
Countries represented in our activities, partners, surveys, summaries we have been publishing and the fun number of cups of coffee the community has been having over the past four years.
We can go ahead. Who is doing this? To you are years of SEEDIG means something is happening behind the community to keep us alive. We have the community, and that's you all here and many other people who contribute to our processes. The community is open ended. We have a mailing list as one of the main communications tool. If you are not there yet, please make sure you subscribe.
Go back still. And then we have the SEEDIG executive committee. You have not only us. We are all here. The executive committee starting last year, it's an elected body. We have elections. And that's probably one other thing that only SEEDIG as a regional or national IGF is doing. It was a community process also to come up with election process. That was part of the ‑‑ what part of the group? You were part of the elections.
We had a team that drafted the elections for the whole executive committee and then a smaller team to run the elections. So it was all done by the community, through the community.
In a sort of an attempt to give us more legitimacy, I would say. And so we'll see how that goes with the next elections but the terms of reference is available on our website and it should be an evolving document. So if at the point we feel something has to be changed, we can change it. Now we will go ahead.
Let's go quickly through our activities. At the core of our work is the annual meeting, or at least has been so for the first three or four years. And that's what this IGF is doing as well.
The only difference is that we are focused on our region, on southeastern Europe and the neighboring area, again trying to promote dialogue among stakeholders from around their own issues that really of relevance for our region. So digital divide which is a concern in our region, maybe not so much in the rest of Europe. I mention IDNs as a complete example that's very specific to our region, for those would don't know, it's the international domain names, the ones with specific characters.
And other issues which we might share in the region, but might not be so relevant for the rest of Europe or the rest of the world and these are our annual meetings. Then those of you who were there, you no he at the end of each session, we have messages in which we try to summarize the main action points, the recommendations, suggestions, coming out from discussions. And we call them SEEDIG meetings, whatever, the year when we had the meeting and those are one of the ‑‑ I would say outcomes of our discussions. The why San Diego to use them to promote this dialogue and these discussions. And hopefully they will influence the decision making processes whether it's within public organization or something that a company would like to do to, I don't know, help bridge the digital divide. And then we also used them to promote the EuroDIG or the global IGF or? Spaces we are traveling around the world.
That was to keep us alive.
Thank you. We can go ahead.
These are the four annual meetings. Then we went to Belgrade and then Macedonia, and regulatory agency there and then this year we have more.
We can go ahead. Thank you. So that's the annual meeting. Very chose connected to the annual meeting and our capacity development programs and the tool will launch are the youth school and we have some of our youth school here and the fellowship program and we have some of our fellows here.
We can go to the next slide. These are numbers and quotes about which ‑‑ what each of these programs are doing and I will pass the floor to Sonia for a quick overview of the youth school.
>> SONIA: So in 2019, it will be the third edition of the youth school. And as you saw from the overview, every year, not just the youth school, but all activities and intersessional activities of SEEDIG keeps on expanding and increasing and we are planning the same for the youth school this year with more ‑‑ with multiple online sessions prior to the annual face‑to‑face meeting in collaboration with our supporting organizations and giving more time and space for the participants to meet each other and get acclimatized and learn about the Internet governance system and they will be better prepared when the date of the meeting happens.
This year we will have a pre‑event day for the capacity building programs, both for the youth school and the fellowship. But this time, we are going to reach ‑‑ we hope to reach more people, because the online component will be open to ‑‑ it will be ‑‑ there will be less limit, because we are not restrained by budgeting. So the online component will be open to more university and master's students based in the Region and later on, based on their participation, they will choose ‑‑ based on their participation and our budget, we will choose who we can fund to attend SEEDIG. And after that, EuroDIG has kindly agreed to fund three participants to attend EuroDIG and youth dig. So it will be a three‑tiered program this year and we hope it leads to more sustained participation by youth and I think it will because it's like Serena said, some of our youth school alumni is already here. One of them has started their own youth IGF. And others are doing great work on the global level and we are very proud of them.
And our SEESummary, they have been going on since 2016. We are also proud of how it is the only publication that focuses solely on the region. That brings like you can have different websites and resources that talk about a few countries in the region or the globe, but we are the only thing that bring them together. So they carry it one step forward with not just updates and events but on thematic, brief, analysis. Related to our specific region or at times on a specific country from our region.
As you can see, we have 13 editors from nine countries and 40 plus digital policy issues covered. So if you have seen the DiploFoundation's booth, that's would we collaborate with and we use their Internet governance taxon my, it's not just people copying and pasting things using Google Search. Our editors have put time and effort into this and we hope this will be a valuable resource to look back at the developments and the advancement of digital policy issues in the region.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you, Sonia. So the digital capacity development programs ‑‑ you can go back. Back, back. One more. The other one.
Okay. The other capacity development program is the fellowship one and Natalia was mentioning that she was one of the fellows earlier this year. This is more dedicated to professionals, people that are working in areas which are related to digital policy and Internet Governance. We want to pick their brains and make sure they become part of the community and contribute to our work. So that's one of the purposes of the program.
And this year, we are launching a new program. The call for applications went out on Monday. It's not necessarily capacity development. It's more related to promoting SEEDIG and making sure we have more activities at the regional and the national level. We can tell you what we want to do with the program.
>> Well, as you can see, we are doing experiments. We are launching new programs and new initiatives because we want to first build the partnerships, bring in new partners and then also we are trying to expand our outreach and make some impacts in the region. And we are doing this through various programs and intersessional activities. This is why SEEDIG is so special.
And this year, we launched the ambassadors program, where we want to attract students and also other professionals to promote SEEDIG through our materials and also to write about SEEDIG in their countries at events that they will attend.
We are going to select participants in a competitive setting, and then later on, we may offer the ones that would be more active, most active, also payment to attend the SEEDIG in Bucharest.
So we think this is one of the ‑‑ of our best programs. That's why we launch this this year.
Yeah, okay. All of are the best but this is probably it. Yes. It was developed, you know, through our ‑‑ I think throughout the whole year. We are ‑‑ we were thinking about it and then we launch it this Monday and I invite you all, who are willing to participate to join the program.
>> MODERATOR: And the applications is open for four weeks, if I'm not wrong. So pretty please take a look at what we are explaining there, what we would like you to help us do across the region and do apply.
It's important for SEEDIG to have more presence in the region. We need ‑‑ we have regional initiative, right? So we need to be active across the region, not only have the annual meeting an bringing fellow students there, we need to do more and for that, we rely on the local community. Would you please take a look and spread the word, if you are ‑‑ if you know active community members who are very well anchored in the local communities, spread the word to them as well and going back to Sonia's youth school, also the core for applications there. Well, Sonia has presented youth school. Sorry, Sonia.
That's open for five weeks.
So our dear students, please spread the word in your universities and colleagues and peers. Please tell them about this program. So as Sonia mentions it's a more comprehensive one. We hope it will help more capacity development and it will come at our annual meeting which is not about lectures but about them discussing and debating around issues. We hope that will be attractive. Everything is explained on the website. So spread the word as far and wide as you can. Pretty please? Thank you in advance for that.
And we also have an internship program. This is both capacity development but also a way to support the core team do the work. We have Harris here who is our intern and then we have Jana who is online taking notes for this meeting. Thank you for doing that. We launch a call for applications and inviting people to volunteer basically for working with us and they do this throughout the year. They have been very, very helpful. And that's why we will be continuing with the program. And the most important part, I would say is that after each of these programs, we see more people still ‑‑ we see that they stay parts of the community and you saw them here in the room. Harris, for example, he's ending his internship, but he will stay around and help. And Jana is helping with research‑related events. That's how we grow our program, to give us more active members.
We can go ahead. Sonia talked about the SEESummary. That's one of the activities that we are doing. I invite you to have a look at our website, at SEEDIG.net/summary and feel free to use that whenever you need it. And let us know about things happening in your countries because we have coordinated but maybe we don't always find things that are relevant. If there's a law on digital policies just send us a link and one will look into that and write something. But that should be a community activity. So please try to contribute to it as well. We can go ahead and publish this.
And the regional surveys. Basically before each annual meeting, we think of a topic that may be discussed at the meeting its. S and try to see what is the feeling, the perception of the local community around that topic. And then we present the results at the January meeting and they fit into the discussions. This will happen again next year and we will have to identify a topic and we invite you all to participate in this survey. We can go ahead.
Another intersessional activity, but it's part of our community strengthening processes is trying to stay connected with national IG initiative items.
>> Thank you. So Serena mentioned, we want to have this established, this network actually within the national IGFs to strengthen the cooperation with the countries in the region.
We should say that not all the countries in the region have the national IGFs but we know some people are trying to bring to the discussion those people who have been attending the SEEDIG meeting or personal contacts and try to help them build the discussion towards the national IGF.
And we have been successful for the Macedonian IGF that happened. Actually the national IGF wonders with the discussion, we forward it to them annual meetings, which is a good example of growing this network.
And we also plan that we did last year and it's a planning thing and have the online meetings with the national IGFs.
We launched it and we discussed what topics are of interest in the countries and what we can be help with. We also have a separate cause with every country and we try to see the challenges, what they have and what they face but what also can be developed, and enhanced for our support.
So this is basically what we are doing and we invite you to join those groups if you are not the part of the national IGFs, attending these calls or to subscribe and send us a link, the message, so we will include you on the list and you will be a part of those meetings that we hold regularly. Thank you.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you, Liliana. Go ahead. IGFs are trying to work with. I will not go through them. You know which are the countries in southeastern Europe and the neighboring area. So we can go ahead.
These are the activities that we have been doing, whether for four years or less, these are things that are ongoing and happening as we speak.
But we are also thinking and exploring new activities we could be launching and for this, we will also be consulting you on a regular basis and this meeting is an opportunity for that. We have a new activity coming up. I will tell you more about it after we go to the January meeting and then see how you feel about it and go ahead with that. We can move.
So SEEDIG's fifth annual meeting. Go. It's going to be in Bucharest, next year, early May. The dates are going to be six for the capacity development programs and seven and eight for our main meeting. So keep those in your calendars. We will announce them soon as well on the website.
But those are the dates as of now and confirmed. We have some support at the local level. We started with the governmental levels and the parliament on board with the dedicated commission on the information technology and communications and the ministry of communication and Information Society, the national authority for management and regulation and communications, and then we also have the academia on board with the national University of political sciences and public administration and they will actually be hosting our capacity development programs on day zero and the association for technology and the Internet.
And this is only the current list of partners and supporting organizations at the local level, as I'm speaking, we are actually reaching out to other entities in row mania, trying to involve them into the overall SEEDIG process and the meetings next year. On the 26th of November, we will have an outreach meeting in Bucharest, addressed to the private sector.
For example we have gotten confirmation from the national association of ISPs in Romania who also support the meeting. We just didn't have enough time to update the slides.
And we see with the civil society, and the private sector in the country as well to bring them on board.
We can go ahead.
So what's happening at the January meeting? I already said it's two days of discussions on issues related to digital policy in the region. What we would like to do next year is have more focus and more relevance and that's a message we had at the ICANN meeting two weeks ago.
Sometimes it happens that we pick a topic and then we sit in and discuss general discussion. So we are doing our best to plan a little built better and make sure that those discussions at SEEDIG have a regional focus and we discuss the issues from a regional perspective, how we can take advantage of opportunities and address the challenges but really us on the region. Nothing that happens at a global level or all over the world.
And for this, we also rely on you, and the first opportunity for you to contribute is the call for issues. It's open until the end of this month. All you have to do is go online and tell us, what are the topics you would like to discuss at SEEDIG. It's not a call for workshop proposals. You can write in two sentences, what is your topic and what is the relevance of that topic for southeastern Europe. And then when the call for issues ends, we put everything together. We have online meetings where we invite you all as well and we discuss the proposals and build a draft program.
And then the next opportunity for you to contribute is to join an organizing team. For each session, we will have an open‑ended organizing team, composed of members of the community and the individuals who have submitted proposals and everything that's entered, trying to make sure that the session is meaningful, that people are there to talk about the issues that the decision will be addressing and basically, they can take care of all the planning.
Of course we are there to support the process as the executive committee will provide guidance. We can suggest topics or people to come and be speakers, but it should be a bottom up in the community‑driven process. And, again, we kind of invite you to be part of those activities which are related to the January meeting.
And then at the annual meeting, of course, we will have the messages which we will also work on, on transforming into something more concrete and more meaningfully and for ‑‑ more meaningful, and for that we will have a team of rapporteurs.
If you would like to volunteer.
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: No, no, if you want to finish. It was a comment on documentation. We have a lot of documentation. So if it's useful for how to prepare to do the documentation that then it's easier to surface, what are the messages. I will be happy to help. And work together with the people that are chosen. So that also they feel they get a methodology for something new for them. And it's easier.
>> MODERATOR: That sounds good and we will take you up on the offer.
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: I want to mention about involvement and the creation of the agenda. And it's very simple, I know. The question is related ‑‑ are going to have, like, programming committee and organize them separately with each other.
>> MODERATOR: We don't use the notions of coordinating committees. There are five or seven people who build the whole program. We don't do that. We have separate organizing teams for each session. At the end of the day, it's us as an executive committee keeping an eye on everything, and there's compliance on the gender balance and these kind of things but we don't have a core program committee. And so it's again a committee‑driven process or it should be a community‑driven process.
I'm not sure I was left. Our annual meeting, the regional community, private sector, the governors and regulatory authorities, and the technical community and civil society from across the region. Our students and youth from across the region and the regional and international partners and supporting organizations. It should be a good opportunity for networking, outreaching and IGF, and working on projects, and that's basically why we have the annual meeting. It's not only about discussing topics and giving people an opportunity to connect with each other and get to know each other and use this as a way to promote more cooperation across stakeholder groups, across countries and within the region.
I can go ahead. How I have just explained. You can go ahead with that also.
This is ‑‑ this is visualization of the planning process I just mentioned, it's the call for issues and then the draft program and the organizing teams and then everything ends, of course with the annual meeting and just once again, please make sure you do submit your topics by the end of this month. We can go.
I have already mentioned many, many ways in which you can join our community and our works. So I skip this up with. We can go ahead.
And, yeah. I invite for everyone to keep supporting SEEDIG and also to help us reach out to other stakeholders from within and also beyond the region.
And on this note, I would like to briefly present a new program. We are sort of planning now or developing now. We call it at least for now the SEEDIG road show. And it should be a series of activities we do at a national level in cooperation with local community, whether that's national IGF or a governmental entity or regulatory authority, or anything else that can support us locally. It's important to go in countries around the region and have small events, we call them with several components.
Of course the first one is about doing more outreach for SEEDIG, telling people about our work and trying to convince them that they should contribute and why they should contribute. So that's the outreach part of the event.
But then there is also a capacity development and cooperation promotion, component, where we would like to pick your brains, as local communities so you can tell us what are the topics which are mostly relevant for you, at the national level and then we can come together with our supporting organizations and have training if the topic is very specific. Like we can do something on IPv6, or discussions which is broader. We did something about with the Albanian go of the. If you can make it happen that countries around the region, which are very good in terms of access to Internet to come and share with us the best practices, that would be very useful for us. And then we can also invite our local stakeholders to have a discussion around that. So that's just one example of something that we would like to do at the national level. It's part of the capacity development and strengthening at the national level.
And then their component. That came up in a discussion with the Bosnian IGF, and how did we call it? IGF school on the road? Something like that.
So we can also do more focused capacity of develop for young students and tell them about the Internet Governance. So we don't always ask them to come to our annual meetings but we also go there and talk to them in the countries, in the universities. So we hope that it will help us with the capacity development aspects.
Once again, this is a work in progress, an activity that we are still thinking about it. We have had a couple of calls with national IGFs. We hope we can go on road show and test it firstly and see how the first meeting goes and then what we can improve and what we should be changing. And for that, again, we would rely on you. So far we had the calls with the Albanian IGF and the Georgian IGF, this stays here. But we will see beyond that also with communities that don't necessarily have national Internet Governance Forum.
And on this, we also welcome feedback from you and I'm stopping here.
(Applause).
>> Sorry for the monopoly. It's about the capacity. I think that ‑‑ because this is a lot of invisible work that has been done since the beginning by different society, digital right activities and all the work of the SEEDIG. And I think that when we talk about capacity, and we remind ourselves that it's a multi‑stakeholder, there's an, shoe that we agree or gently disagree from the different groups. So I would like that the capacity, when we talk, is really embedded in those different perspectives and I'm talking as women's right, sexual rights, activists and feminist.
I saw last IGF in Slovenia how much desire and need we need to explore and talk about gender‑based violence and other issues.
So I think that if we really want, this is a community‑owned initiative, we need to make sure that all the women that somehow provide and overview or insight that we also make sure that the dissenting voices and the different perspective and priorities sometimes contextually are also there. Because otherwise, we have an impaired situation when that provide the resource in terms of funds to find the space. And the organization that are nice big, civil society because it's clearly a different kind of power do the invisible work but the way in which issues are framed do not receive the same equal relevance as a starting point.
So I think that being a multistakeholder dialogue and I think the dialogue is what is missing most in our region. You can talk clearly for Bosnia Herzegovina. I think now that we are five years old, I think that we are able to acknowledge and to manage our own discrepancy and differences, so that really, when we call, we do not call only one kind of groups one kind coming with us, and comes from governments, civil society, academia, but really, really we go to the people in Internet governance and because Internet Governance is a matter of people, whatever they are.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you, and yes, we have paid attention to making sure that's been not necessarily the capacity relevant programs but everything we are doing, we do give the multi‑stakeholder approach. We can't have a debate. And just a quick example from the youth school this year, we had the debate on international models and we asked them to put themselves in the shoes of the private sector. They are nodding.
We will pay close attention to that and if at any point, you say, guys you are going nuts. Please stop doing that. Please do so.
You want to say something?
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: I know it's not cheap, and can we take a little bit more points, you know, we are doing sessions but can we take another different rooms for some additional issues or additional points to take all of this? Yes.
>> MODERATOR: Okay. So now we are talking about the program of the annual meeting. So far in our four annuals meetings we have found programs and we don't have parallel stations and that was a decision of the community or at least that part of the community that was involved in the planning process. Because they felt it was important for those who are actually at the meetings to be part of all of these discussions and have exchanges around the same topics. Now we have had a point in. Community where, guys, let's move into having conversations as well, we can do that also.
Another thing we are looking into is bringing stakeholders that might have been less represented at our annual meeting into the process and for that we might need to offer separate spaces but I wouldn't call that parallels but pre‑events or side events or other things that they can use as a way to talk about their work maybe or have discussions with stakeholders but not part of the main problem.
Again, I feel like the community would like the linear approach. It should be changing it ‑‑
You were not hearing that part? Introduce yourself briefly.
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: At least the light works. I'm do coming from Serbia. I used to manage CO Serbian registry up to a year and a half ago and in that capacity, I help organizing the SEEDIG meeting in Belgrade. So the registry was like a cohosting faction and me as the executive was involved in the organizational parts not so much in the program. But I person alley do support the SEEDIG. But now, I have been seated as the ICANN board member quite recently and here I can speak mostly in my ‑‑ how say it? Personal capacity. But I want to stress out that there has in the been an ICANN board member from Eastern Europe for quite a long time. One of the main roles of a board member is to be in contact with the global community but more with the local community because it's well, only logical.
So I'm taking this task very seriously and I'm committed to be in contact with the community and to support the local initiatives and SEEDIG in that sense is, of course, very important.
So I cannot speak very concretely and not give any ‑‑ well, answers about problems that ‑‑ and challenges and tasks that you outlined, but I will try to be more ‑‑ more active and more receptive and not because ‑‑ because early I was like more in a role of execution, the agreed upon processes and I tried to be more active and really communicate with everyone.
And please do not hesitate to contact me, anyone from the region, in case there is some issues that I can help at least give you a view of how it's viewed on the other side and we can work for that without ‑‑ within the SEEDIG environment. Thank you, everyone. Sorry that I was late. I was in a session about there is new initiative for the Dynamic Coalition on the DNS issues. This is about universal acceptance and I feel that universal acceptance is important for the regional and I will try to be more active as a MAG member in that sense but also this is something that will be more and more important for the ICANN. So thank you.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you for the support and hosting you're meeting two years ago.
We have the Russian IGF here as well and he's focused on his phone. He's probably not even hearing me. Mikhail?
(off microphone comment).
>> MODERATOR: I noticed that. If you could introduce yourself.
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: Hello everyone, my name is Mikhail and I'm one of the teams responsible for the Russian IGF. We are planning to participate in SEEDIG this year. We are still thinking about the formats and how can they contribute.
But during the previous meetings we have already discussed that we have some topics pretty interesting that is very of great interest in Russia still and we just want to have your inputs about whether it's also interesting for you and to have any solution that's going to be coming for all of us.
So that is pretty much it about our participation in the next SEEDIG. We definitely will be here.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you and I lose the opportunity to encourage other national IGFs to submit topics. The Russian IGF is the only one to submit one so far.
All right.
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: Talking about topics a little bit. I said I come from Romania. My interest is getting this addition, but here I also have the hat of the Council of Europe and I know that the youth school ‑‑ apparently it's quite a focus and since I have not been involved in other SEEDIG, could we also ‑‑ I mean we can of course propose it but have a focus on youth participation in IGF generally as' topic and main stream it as well because in the Council of Europe, there's a growing interest of that. And the point is to have it as a topping and the young people in the room. It can be a great added value.
>> MODERATOR: Yes and I think Sonia can say more on that.
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: Yeah, actually in last year's program, in the preparation part, that is a big part because when talking to young people especially not readily involved in any type of IGF, the first thing we talk about is what is Internet Governance and what satellite ecosystem and who are the actors and many opportunities provided by different actors and I think that's a good gateway to start things.
And like I said, this year we will have more space and time to go into more detail and I have spoke during the youth coalition on Internet governance session two days ago, the Council of Europe was also there, and the youth participation of the hand book is coming out and there's a great focus on it. And we would love more engagement and input and whatever the Council of Europe can provide.
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: I want it thank everyone for the very important information I learned today of how we did it in Europe. In the Arab IGF, we had four annual meetings from 2012 to 2015 and then we stop for two years because we face some problems and we had to make some studies and so we are planning next year to come back again, of course.
With the annual meeting, I will make sure that I share this booklet and what I heard today with my colleagues and what important you think about the youth. We only had one meeting as of now at MAG. That was three months ago. We have another one in December. And we agreed from the first day, we will need more youth as MAG members for our region. So maybe we are ‑‑ I'm old as you can see, a little bit. So I think we need more and I even told them, I hope that ‑‑ I chaired this MAG. I told them, this will be my last year for sure and we should hopefully not only a younger MAG members, hopefully the chair should ab younger too. I wanted to share this with you.
Thank you.
>> MODERATOR: That sounds very nice. And good luck with that. We have been doing that with IGFs in our region but happy to do so with IGFs beyond our region as well.
We still have time for open discussions. We have, I think 15 more minutes of this session. So open issues things you feel SEEDIG could still be doing.
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: Just a very quick, can we tell the dates, like, 7th and 8th of May?
>> MODERATOR: 6 is for the capacity development and 7 and 8.
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: Can we talk about externally or ‑‑
>> MODERATOR: Do you see a conflict?
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: Can announce it, like, publicly.
>> MODERATOR: Yes, yes. We just ‑‑
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: I don't want to out it before we are ready.
>> MODERATOR: That's okay. Public information. This is a public space. Thank you.
Okay. So back to the open debate, the things that SEEDIG can do better at a regional level, at the national level, where we have been wrong, how we can enhance our work, and how we can get more stakeholders on board, how we can get more funds. Ideas? Questions, suggestions? Complaints?
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: As everyone thinks what to ‑‑ like, what we can do better, I'm also ‑‑ I mean, Serena already said it. I want to say it again, that I think we all need to communicate better on the mailing about what everyone is doing individually or as a group or in their own capacity, in their own country and in their own work environment, because I mean, you are SEEDIG and a lot of times we find out much later that something very valuable ‑‑ an initiative or a project is going on. So it can be on the level of directly collaborating with each other or with SEEDIG but even if it's just announcing, it's like we would Lobiana of to amplify the voice of any type of project related to SEEDIG's work that you are doing or that you are involved in.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you, Sonia. Come on. This must be something there. Something else there. Okay. Then going back to any colleagues have we missed something? Is there something else we still need to talk about?
(Off microphone comment).
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: Just to say a couple of words about our social media, that we are using. Many of you have noticed it, that we have a Facebook account and also the Twitter. So please follow us, all the notices that we have, all the announcements we are spreading for that and you also can share it.
So in your relative ‑‑ in your communities.
This is the time of the social media era. The official communication channel is still our mailing list. People do not like to write, actually, but this is just a way of thinking in the region, so we cannot do anything in this, but with them, social media, probably that would help.
So be active there as well and make sure not only share our prospect, but we will be happy to share the things that you are doing, the programs, whatever happening in your countries and communities, we will be happy to promote that as well so that everyone will see what's happening there.
Thanks.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you. Still no hand. Thank you.
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: Thanks. Maybe just to congratulate you as the executive committee for your efforts, and I think this idea with the road show is a very good one. So we have to think of the topics and how to implement it. I think it's a promising idea.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you. We look forward to having that. Any other hand in the room? You know, I can also ask questions to specific people. We have a fifth anniversary meeting and we want to do something special around that, whether that's a social event or a special session or something. Suggestions from you are welcome. I already heard one. Social event.
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: Yes, it should be something different than the social events we might have had before, just to mark our fifth anniversary so any suggestions from you on that note, are welcome as well.
And any outreach?
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: Why don't we do a collective timeline where we put all the people that were helping and doing things. So but really a collective time line. I think it's important to acknowledge and any initiative you have, maybe two people but behind these two people, there are hundreds and they are usually never named. I'm saying just because I saw so many fathers of the Internet, they continue to reproduce themselves without any help.
So maybe this can be done also in an informal way. We can nominate and name people that were there and we think that were important and relevant. So that we do a chain of recognition one to each other, because this is something that is not. People don't name. Everyone started alone and it's just a fight to see who was there first.
And so maybe this is a way to consolidate and we can say that we can nominate people from other stakeholder groups so civil society, nominating someone from some other group. And in this way, acknowledging and recognizing and they can be people from institution, organization, or just individuals, you know, but maybe this can be a chain of care because listening to ‑‑ well, to the old Europe think about Europe, I feel really vomiting.
>> MODERATOR: I like that. And Jana is taking notes. I will be sure to take notes on that. Any other suggestions? Any other comments? Questions? Seriously?
We have nine more minutes.
Okay. I have been pushing it a lot. If there's nothing else to discuss, then we just encourage you again to go online and submit a topic that's most urgent thing, I would say that are still two weeks left. We don't have March this now and also spread the word within your communities and countries and then help us shape the program.
Let's see what we can do with the road show. Happy to further talk with our local people in the countries around the region and keep staying engaged with our work. We are always happy to discuss ideas for new activities, new projects. Not necessarily to be launched by us but to help you run them. Anything we can do, let us know and let's discuss and let's make sure that SEEDIG does something that's of value to the community.
So we strongly rely on you for that, on making this a really, really meaningful process throughout the year and see you in Bucharest next year.