[Chapter-delegates] Information from the IGF

[Bill Graham]

Dear all,

I have some new information for you related to the IGF’s scheduled meetings in May.

On 10-11 May there will be a planning meeting open to all stakeholders, held in Geneva.  Registration will soon be available on the IGF web site.  The purpose is to advance the planning for the Vilnius meeting as much as possible.  Remote participation will be available as usual.

On 12 May there will be a closed Multi-stakeholder Advisory Group (MAG) meeting to bring together MAG members’ proposals as regards the group’s own functioning and selection process should the IGF mandate be extended.

This will be an important discussion for ISOC.  The MAG at present is made up of representatives of a wide range of stakeholder groups.  Civil society, business, governments and intergovernmental organizations are named formally in the WSIS Declaration, but there has been an unofficial recognition that it’s helpful to have “the Internet technical community” involved in the MAG as well.  The UN has been open to including representatives from ISOC, ICANN, the RIRs, and others involved in the operation of the Internet, but there is no guarantee that this will continue in future.  During the MAG discussion, I intend to argue strongly that the Internet governance discussions need to be informed by sound technical expertise, so it is important to find a mechanism to ensure the I* community is included in the MAG in future.  Although people able to provide that expertise are involved in all of the other stakeholder groups, it seems very important to me that any new selection mechanism be designed to ensure adequate involvement by this community.

As usual the dates of all IGF-related meetings are listed in the calendar section of the IGF web site at: http://www.intgovforum.org/cms/2010-calendar

The Secretariat has also included the dates of regional and national IGF meetings in the calendar and has given the section on regional and national IGF initiatives more prominence. Please let the Secretariat know if there are other meetings or if you have links to other Web sites:        http://www.intgovforum.org/cms/regional-and-national-igfs

Also, a form is now available for uploading workshop proposals.  Workshop organizers who have registered on the IGF Web site previously can log in with their user name and password.  Should past organizers have forgotten their log-in details they can ask for assistance at igf at unog.ch.  New users are asked to register by sending an email to igf at unog.ch.

Last but not least, you may also be interested in the following updates on the IGF web site:

-- A statement by Under-Secretary-General Sha on matters related to the continuation of the Forum: http://www.intgovforum.org/cms/2010/Briefing.for.MS.on.the.question.of.the.IGF_FINAL.pdf

-- The Sharm El Sheikh attendance statistics: http://www.intgovforum.org/cms/component/content/article/87-programme/484-igf-sharm-el-sheikh-attendance-statistics.

Bill