IGF Remote Participation Draft Proposal — Sharm el-Sheikh, 2009

Some of you may remember the draft proposal from last year’s Hyderabad preparations. The results definitely eliminated many of the expectations, but the common concern still exists for the potential of even more complete remote attendance at the Sharm el-Sheikh 2009 Internet Governance Forum. As very little has changed aside from overall scale and the inevitable developments, I could do worse than to quote last year’s working group draft proposal:

“While we have differing but compatible motivations, we are principally concerned that many of those who should have the largest voice in these proceedings are those who do not or cannot attend for a wide variety of reasons.

We would like to address the possibility of remote participation that involves interaction and the possibility of approximating real participation, instead of just reading a summary or watching a Webcast after the fact.

Purpose:

• To offer remote participation options to those unable to attend the IGF in person, in order to increase developing country involvement and input in the IGF process.
• To offer a more flexible approach to full, part-time or topic specific participation and observation to the process.
• To offer remote participation, observation and comments in the IGF process.

Target groups:

• Activists, civil society and parties interested in the IGF process who are unable to attend in person due to financial, time or other constraints.
• Educators, students and researchers who would like to observe or participate in the IGF process who cannot justify incurring the costs involved in physical attendance.
• Government officials who cannot take the time for in-person attendance, or full-time attendance, who would like to observe, attend or participate in the sessions their schedules permit.
• Any other interested parties.

Priorities:

• Maximum flexibility of options.
• Cost-free software and setup.
• Low bandwidth requirements.
• Low learning and adaptation requirements for connection and use of tools.
• Low equipment requirements.
• Attendance possible from Internet cafes.
• Participation and interaction, remote PARTICIPATION, not just remote OBSERVATION.
• Inclusion of remote participation without pre-emption or interruption of on-site proceedings.“