The following are the outputs of the captioning taken during an IGF virtual intervention. 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, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.
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>> We all live in a digital world. We all need it to be open and safe. We all want to trust.
>> To be trusted.
>> We all despise control.
>> And desire freedom.
>> We are all united.
>> AVRI DORIA: Okay, hi. Now let me try and share my content again and see if it shows. Almost. And it does, sort of. There's this line at the top I don't know what to do about. I'm afraid if I push anything, it will make it worse. Does anybody know in Polish which button I push to make it go away?
>> GLENN McKNIGHT: That's a risk.
>> AVRI DORIA: Thank you. Great! Okay, so, there we are. And I guess it's time to start. I'm Avri Doria. I'm coordinating this meeting, moderating this meeting and such. So, why don't we get right to it? Okay, now I should be able to move to the next slide. Okay.
So, our agenda is this welcome, this intro, and I was going to give Sandra a chance to say a few words as the Chair, and then we've got the go around the table with the participants with the slides you all sent, which I'm very grateful for. I'm going to ask people to show their slide, and then, perhaps if in their two to three‑minute talk they can say something about how it was during the year of the pandemic. Oh, yeah, I can take off the mask when I'm doing this. How it was to do their year or year and a half of school during the pandemic, then a recap of the year's activities, what was done, what wasn't done, plans for next year, start talking about it. And then we have scheduled some concluding remarks by Wolfgang on Dynamic Coalitions in schools and Internet Governance in general.
During the plans for next year is when I have the slot in for Farzaneh, who's been hired as the consultant to talk about the project. Okay.
So, moving on. I have the slides in the order in which they were received, so you'll see your slide, at which point, the floor is yours. So, Glenn, you were the first to send, or maybe it was Alfredo. No, this one was Glenn's. So, you were the first to send, so there you are.
>> GLENN McKNIGHT: Great. Good day, everybody. I'm here representing the North American School of Internet Governance. In terms of timelines, we're relatively new group, starting in our first session we did was in March 2018. We are going to cycle back to San Juan again next spring, but that's not going to happen because of the COVID situation. But San Juan was a very successful event. Many of you that are here attended it, either as Fellows or were there as speakers.
We followed that up with a pre‑ICANN event in November 2019. My mistake. The 2021 was originally scheduled for Washington in '20, but that got canceled. We did our virtual event. It was two half‑day events this year, in just the last month, November 2021. And we haven't set a date for 2022 for our virtual meeting.
So, our credo, and again, this has been formed as a triad. Eduardo Diaz is the Chair, and we rotate it, depending on which country it's in. It's Alfredo, Eduardo and myself are the three organizers, and we have a bunch of volunteers that are involved. But I'll read it quickly. NASIG is an in‑depth capacity‑building event that focuses on teaching the development and application of the shared principles, norms, rules, policies, decision‑making procedures, and organizations that shape the evolution and use of the internet with a focus on North American issues, rather than generic. So, NASIG seeks to empower the next generation of Internet leaders. So, that's our spiel. That's our Facebook link. And our recordings and testimonials are available. So, that's NASIG in a nutshell. Thank you.
>> AVRI DORIA: Thank you. Next. Is it you again, or is Alfredo taking this one?
>> ALFREDO CALDERON: No, this time it will be me. This is Alfredo, for the record. I'm the Co‑Founder with Glenn of the Virtual School on Internet Governance. And I want to mention that our mission is basically to keep our school as a virtual school, and we are trying to create and promote a comprehensive free online capacity‑building program on Internet Governance for anybody.
So, we started last September in 2020. We started planning this in March of 2020. And once the lockdown came in place, we thought that there needed to be something that could be available online without any kind of barriers in terms of content, in terms of connectivity and access to the resources. So, this project is going to keep online, and it's going to serve sort of a multilingual online learning platform, and that is because of this year, in September 2021, we started a Spanish version of the course.
Now, I want to mention that the Spanish version is sort of linked to the Spanish‑speaking community, so it's basically Latin America, some islands in the Caribbean, and people from Spain that might be interested in learning more about the basics of Internet Governance.
So, we don't charge for our course. It's completely free. It's based on the pillars of the IG. And it's basically an 11‑module course, and it's self‑paced, and we offer a Certificate of Completion for those that complete some requirements that we have. So, Glenn, as I mentioned, and I are the founders. We have some sponsors, and that's why we keep it free. And there you can see there's the link to our website. We have a website. We have a Facebook page and we have a Twitter account, and you can follow all the live sessions we have, because in our model, we have live sessions, weekly speakers from all over the world that are experts in some of the areas we discuss. So, you can look at the past recordings in our YouTube channel, which is also Virtual School on Internet Governance. That's all from me.
>> AVRI DORIA: Thank you. The African School. Do we have someone here from that? No? I guess since I teach there, I can cover it, if we don't have anyone else. So, it's a cool sponsored by APC, the African Union and Research ICT Africa. For the last two years, because of the pandemic, it was done virtually. Last year, the virtual school was actually an alumni session where, instead of having new Fellows, it was basically a collection of Fellows that had done the live school, the onsite school, residential, in the past.
The goal is to develop a pipeline of leading Africans from diverse sectors, backgrounds, and ages with the skills to participate in local and international Internet Governance structures and shape the future of the Internet landscape for Africa's development.
Nine editions, with the first school held in 2013. I've been lucky to be at most of them. And the last two held virtually. I guess I already said that.
Over the years, the school has brought together policymakers, government officials, researchers, regulators, engineers, system administrators, journalists, entrepreneurs, and gender equality and Human Rights defenders. The impact has been increased national, subregional and global participation in ICT and internet‑related policy developments, policy debates, policies and interventions, including schools of Internet Governance.
The alumnuses have emerged as experts ‑‑ let me get rid of my picture in the corner ‑‑ as experts in the sector, influencers, and often come back to the school as part of the faculty. So, that's that one. And I beat the clock. I have set a clock now on the three minutes.
Next one is Ghana. Do we have a representative of the Ghana School to speak to it?
>> RAYMOND MAMATTAH: Good afternoon from Ghana. I'm with the Ghana School on Internet Governance. My colleague is also in the call and will be helping answer questions. So, the Ghana School on Internet Governance is comprised of the E‑Governance and Internet Governance Foundation for Africa, known as EGIGFA. We started in 2020, when we had our first Fellowship. Our main aim is to empower our Fellows with requisite knowledge to become Internet Governance change agents and leaders both globally and locally.
Some of our unique selling points or what makes us quite unique among the Schools on Internet Governance are that, one, we do a six‑weeks online learning, which is a prerequisite for the Fellows. They have to pass through this before they will be allowed to join the face‑to‑face session. And during this six‑weeks course, they take a series of online courses on Internet Governance to broaden their scope.
And we also give our Ghana SIG domain email to our Fellows, so all our Fellows can use the Ghana SIG email to do whatever they want to do for life. So, our Fellowship is, one, application, which is go through the selection, and the online training, before we do the face‑to‑face session. For our participants, some get (inaudible) Like this I can submit to two. We have three of Ghana SIG Fellows. The upcoming ICANN. Three of SIG Fellows have been selected for that and we have two of the Ghana SIG Fellows who have been selected for that. So, we have done quite well in the courses. Thank you.
>> AVRI DORIA: Thank you. And the next. South School.
>> OLGA CAVALLI: Thank you, Avri. And welcome, those of you with us and online. Not many people in the room. So, this is a brief overview of the South School on Internet Governance. We started in 2009. So, this year we had our 13th edition. 11 editions were face‑to‑face, and two of the last editions were virtual, and we are trying, we hope, to come back to the face‑to‑face, at least in a hybrid format next year.
So, the school is based on nobody ‑‑ there is no payment for the Fellows. And if, based on our budget, we pay hotel, meals, and accommodation and the training course for as many Fellows as possible. And we have been evolving from 27 Fellows in the first year in 2009 up to 300 in the last face‑to‑face meeting in Mexico in 2019.
And with the virtual editions, we tried to use kind of a different environment. We hired a special TV studio. You can see it there, some pictures. And we mixed images from the Zoom meeting with experts, with some high‑definition cameras in the room. So, what we wanted was kind of a different environment for a virtual meeting to make it a little bit more interesting.
This year, we added a new feature. We have eight weeks free training, free self‑assistive asynchronous training courses because this was requested by Fellows before. So, we prepared special videos, special podcasts, and special training and reading material for the Fellows. This year we had 620 Fellows, but we had 3,500 applications. We have a different host every year. This year it was the Ministry of ICTs of Colombia. Each year, we have more than 100 experts, and this year we had almost 40 different sessions.
And a new feature is that we have an application that the Fellows can have and they can follow all the events from any device. So, they can watch the videos there, they can participate there. They have a messaging system for the Fellows, and they can interact with the experts. Of course, as all the activities that we do since day zero are in English and Spanish available. And when we organize it two times it was also translated into Portuguese.
The five days of training are synchronous, so we have the tool sessions. The synchronous training is six weeks and then the training of five days synchronous. So, looking at my notes.
We have a YouTube channel. All the sessions in Spanish and English are published there. You can find all of the content there. At the beginning, it is by day, but then our team splits it into different sections and presentations. And also, we published a book as the tenth anniversary of the school. It's kind of a big book. It's in Spanish, English, and Portuguese, and it has a forward by various experts from Americas and some in Europe.
Can we go to the next one? Thank you, Avri. We started with the Argentina School of Internet Governance in 2017. The South School of Internet Governance is focused mainly in Latin America, but now with the virtual event, we have Fellows from all over the world. Mainly, they are Latinos, Latin Americanos, but we have people from Europe, North America, Africa, Asia. So, that's an interesting feature, because we had remote participation before, but now with virtual activities, people are more engaged in different events.
Here you can see, somehow, the arrangement of the studio and the book. And as I said, we have a YouTube channel. All of the materials of the Argentina School of Internet Governance and South School of Internet Governance are published on the YouTube channel in both languages. And what we did with the Argentina School in the last two years has also been virtual with the same virtual experience that we use for the Regional School. But with the Argentina one, we, apart from the general program, we went into deep content about some provinces. We picked one province from the far north, one from the far south, one from the far west, and one for the center of Argentina. This is kind of a large country, so they are totally different, in different provinces. So, we did this special edition that was very, very successful. So, I think I covered all of the points that I wanted to share with you. And thank you very much.
>> AVRI DORIA: Thank you. And now let me go to the next one. It's funny, I don't remember which order they're in, so it's a surprise to me each time. This is the Russian Summer School on Internet Governance.
>> ILONA STADNIK: Okay. Thank you. Hello, everyone. I was hoping to be together with Avri in Katowice, but okay, we can still see and hear each other.
Okay, I will be talking about the Russian Summer School on Internet Governance. We are quite young. We were established in 2020, exactly in the middle of the pandemic. So, all of our activities were online completely from the start, and it intimately affects how we decided to build upon the curriculum and the activities.
On the slide you see, I guess the main outcomes. So, the school is relatively small if compared to the South School that Olga has presented just now, but it's really a good example of the involvement into the Internet Governance topic in Russia.
So, for the past year, for 2020, we have more than 100 applications. And finally, we have 38 graduates. For this year, we have a lesser figure, it's 34, but still, the quality is very high and good.
Let me just say a few words about the educational process. So, we decided that our school would be more of academic style, but again, we invite a lot of speakers from the industry, from the community. On the right you can see the organizations from where we have speakers. But the main case here is that we make this summer school in Russian language. That is really important. So, we are trying to locate the IG topic, the Internet Governance topic for the Russian users, for the Russian youth, for the Russian young professionals and educators, too.
So, what is the average portrait of the school participants? So, mainly they are students or graduates, but we also have lecturers and young professionals. And the background expertise of them is very broad. It's international relations, it's politics, it's law, human rights, media and communications, and of course, we have the tech representatives from telecommunications, from programming, from broader ICTs and so forth. And the age differs from 18 to 35 years, so it's a pretty young school, I must confess.
And the main feature is that we partner with the St. Petersburg State University in order to provide with the official Certificate of Completion of the course. So, this is really important for students, because they can also take these credits, these educational credits, and bring them to their universities to be included into their diploma. That is also a very good thing.
Finally, the last words, probably. For the next year, we will also plan the online edition. And since our geography of the school participants is located in Russia, and this region, mainly, this is a good opportunity because the territories are big, and it is quite challenging to bring everybody on the venue. So, online format proves to be the most effective one. Thanks.
>> AVRI DORIA: Thank you. And the next is Nigeria. Do we have someone from the Nigerian School here? Nope. Okay. Well, everybody can look at the slide. Since I don't teach there, I won't read it. And I'll move on. Asia‑Pacific.
>> SATISH BABU: Hi. Thanks, Avri. And this is Satish from the APSIG. We were founded in 2015 as a second‑tier SIG targeted at organizers of national SIGs and IGFs. We've been having annual editions since 2016. All of the face‑to‑face editions have been in Bangkok, but this week we are having our face‑to‑face edition at Colombo, Sri Lanka. 2020 was virtual, but 2021 is in Colombo. We changed from an NGO setup to a community‑driven model from 2019. Now we have an elected Executive Committee which took charge in July 2019. We are a not‑for‑profit. Apologies for the typo there. This time, for instance, we are actually paying for about 25 international Fellows and 15 Sri Lankan Fellows. So, the idea is that we move from country to country providing local capacity‑building with the local Fellows. But we also have international Fellows, so it's a combination of international and local. And we provide travel, plus accommodation, and we don't charge a fee.
So, we are trying out this model from this year onwards, post‑COVID. We are hoping that we will have more ‑‑ at present, there is some interest from other countries on this model. We've been invited for the next year, also. So, we are hoping that this will catch on. Thank you very much, and back to you, Avri.
>> AVRI DORIA: Thank you. And the next is India School.
>> SATISH BABU: I don't see them here, so I will speak on this as well. India School was founded in 2016. We just had our sixth edition held in Hyderabad. Sorry, it's a virtual edition hosted by the Chennai chapter. The first edition was post the meeting in Hyderabad. We had invited at that point, most of the speakers were from ICANN circles, and we did have a fairly significant launch, because all our speakers are global experts.
It was a joined initiative of two ISOC Chapters in 2016, but today it has got all the six ISOC Chapters behind it, which is a unique model. So, we have continued the leadership and continuity of the team that is organizing and also the content. And we have a regional‑national model of international Fellows and local Fellows, and we also go from city to city, and it's a not‑for‑profit model supported by the .in registry, ISOC, ICANN, APNIC and other industries. Back to you. Thank you.
>> AVRI DORIA: Thank you. Next is ‑‑
>> LIANNA GALSTYAN: That's Armenia School. Hello, everyone. The Armenia School of Internet Governance was started, was founded and started its school in 2017. And the first edition was ‑‑ first two editions, actually, being for the students only, particularly, but covering different professions. So, the first one was a five full‑day course. You can see this on the slide. We had 30 participants.
When we went experimenting with the first edition, we found that it was too hard for students for five full days to understand the whole knowledge of IG world. That was quite a challenge. And the next year, we went to the five‑month extension of once-a-week format, but that was also not very good because we decided only to have on Saturdays, and most participants did not come after two months of attendance.
Then we changed the format, shortening the program for three full days, and we opened the participation to all stakeholders, not only to students. We had 18 participants in that year. And last year, during the pandemic, that was in September, we thought that we can organize a hybrid meeting. That was our first experience, in fact. It was quite a challenge, but we opened the application, as the previous year, to everyone, and I was amazed to receive very many applications from teachers, actually. All the teachers of schools since they have been involved with the educational and online platforms, they wanted to learn more about the IG world. So, most of the participants were teachers. And they mentioned that this was really a good opportunity for them because they could not come to the Capital city to attend, otherwise, this hybrid format, the online format. So, that one was four full days. And eventually, we had 40 participants. The participants were more than that, but we gave certificates to those who passed all the credentials, all the tests, et cetera, that we prepared for them.
And you might know that in 2020, we had a war, and the situation was pretty bad in Armenia. And when the forum was ended, we found that the misinformation and disinformation in the country and the knowledge of journalists would be of high demand for them to know how to protect, how to go and flow the information, et cetera. So, this year, actually, we organized a special edition, the fifth one, specifically for journalists, and we managed to do that outside of the city, and that was face‑to‑face meeting. It was very interesting. The interaction was very high level and a deep discussion, specifically on the topics of information, trust, et cetera.
So, we received the feedback from them, and it was really very good. We might continue organizing some courses during the year, maybe some of them with specific targets. So, I think the feedback was good in this sense, so maybe we will continue this practice.
And the organizers of these over the years have been Internet Society Armenia Chapter and the Registry, which I think are very interesting to have this feedback, the support of the Registry. Thank you very much.
>> AVRI DORIA: Thank you. Yeah. By the way, I have a little alarm that goes off after the three minutes, and it'd be really nice if people paid attention to it.
Pakistan School on Internet Governance. Is there someone here from there that wants to talk to it? If not, we can look at the slide for a short bit. First one was 2015, so it's been going for a while. Each year it's held in a different city. 300‑plus students graduated so far. And the 2022 class will be held in Gilgit. I'm sure I pronounced it wrong. But 5,000 feet above sea level. That sounds cool. Next.
Okay, European Summer School. Now, Sandra, I have an apology to give you. I said I was going to give you a few minutes at the beginning as the Chair of this to say something, and then I buzzed right by it. So, if you do want to include that in your time, please feel free.
>> SANDRA HOFERICHTER: No, Avri, I think it is more important to give the floor to the various schools that are here online.
I would like to introduce shortly the European Summer School on Internet Governance, which I think is the last in the list of the schools today, if I'm not mistaken ‑‑
>> AVRI DORIA: Yes, it is.
>> SANDRA HOFERICHTER: Because we submitted our slide as the last one, which makes a little bit of sense, in a way, because we've been the first one to be established. So, that's why we are the last today. And I think it should be mentioned here again that it's great to see that so many schools across the globe are following a concept that was invented by Wolfgang Kleinwachter and first established in 2006. Not because I have a relationship with him, as he is my father‑in‑law, but I think this should be mentioned that one person in this respect really changed the world in the way that so many organizations, countries, individuals are following this same concept, which became so successful, meanwhile. And I'm very glad that he is with us today and he will speak later on about his vision, how to develop this concept of schools.
But now let me just briefly refer to our school, which is the European one, and the name is a little bit misleading, because actually, we consider our self as a global school, because we do invite Fellows from across the globe. And you see that from our statistical breakdown here and the Fellows by geographical region, you see, of course, there is a majority from Europe, but there is equally ‑‑ there are equal participants from across the world. And this makes us, basically, very lucky and happy, because only if you have the entire world sitting in the room, you will really get to the core of the pressing issues and how they relate to the challenges in each region of the world.
So far, we had Fellows from 97 countries and 363 Fellows, which might not sound very huge, but this is part of our concept, that we give a focus on the networking opportunity. And networking is better done if the group is not too huge, so we stick to a group size of maximum 30 people. During the pandemic, we had to size down our group size a little bit, and we found that was even a better move, and we will possibly stick to that concept.
Now, speaking on the pandemic, I personally felt very, very lucky that we, besides the pandemic, we were able to host our school as a face‑to‑face meeting also during the last two challenging years. I appreciate colleagues that moved to hybrid and to online versions a lot. I could not and would not do it because our concept is really built on the face‑to‑face interaction and the networking, and we would not try to move in the virtual world with our school because, as I said, there are colleagues who can do this much better than we can, so we will stick to our core skills and facilitate the debate in this old monastery here, and you can see I have taken seat on the terrace already. Those that have been there might remember the terrace that is populated by our Fellows until late at night.
Regarding the Dynamic Coalition, let me just thank Avri here, because she is the one driving this forward since, I think now three years since it was founded in Geneva? I think it was 2017. Since that time, you are holding us together. Avri, I think that's something that needs to be applauded. You're doing it very well, and I think it's the only platform that all these schools basically come together. And in this respect, I think ‑‑
>> AVRI DORIA: Thanks.
>> SANDRA HOFERICHTER: ‑‑ it's also great movement that we will now have support from the IGF Secretariat. And I heard Farzaneh is here, who will be coordinating with us. And I think that's on your agenda next, Avri. So, I give it back to you.
>> AVRI DORIA: Thanks. It's not quite on the agenda next, but it is coming up. And I've got to say, the only reason I do it is because you're there as the Chair and you keep motivating me. And as long as you keep motivating me to do it, I keep doing it! But thank you.
Okay, I wanted to ‑‑ one of the things that I didn't put in the agenda, but we normally do, is just sort of ask if anybody is starting a new school or a new program and wanted to say something about it. But very briefly. And I have two hands. So, first, Alexander. And then I don't have your name, but you're next. So, please
>> ALEXANDER: Okay, I will try to be brief. Alexander, Free Moscow University. We try to teach things which are not popular and not available in educational institutions in Russian Federation. And actually, you've seen representatives of Russia from Parliament here, they are not (?) with our processes. So, during academic year 2020‑2021, we had run twice a course of introductions to the Internet Governance. Broad Internet Governance in general, or narrow one with distribution resources. And it appears that it's really difficult to explain to Russian students in Russian language how bottom‑up processes works, how broad discussion is available.
Around 80 students signed up for our courses, and we tried also to bring practical issues. Our alumni participated successfully in ICANN Next‑Gen. Our students submitted a lot of proposals and also our students prepared a workshop for recent Internet Governance forum, but it was not accepted, so it's a lot of work to do with us. Mostly, we tried to speak ‑‑ our course is run in Russian language. We try to invite active participants of Internet Governance community, IETF, ICANN. Not a lot of people speak Russian, but we also tried to invite them. And as additional information, I would like to send (?) because we can give recordings of meetings with prominent English‑speaking participants, are able to give link to that materials.
As we are not exact School of Internet Governance, I hope we can start few days formal school soon. And really appreciate any recommendations from you, any partnerships, any possibilities. Thank you very much.
>> AVRI DORIA: Thank you. And next, and please introduce yourself.
>> Okay. Thank you so much. Hi, everyone. My name is Abdil (?). I am the coordinator of the School of Internet Governance in Chad. So, I am here with my colleague, Mustafa. He is a Co‑convener also of this school. Last year we organized our first edition of the School of Internet Governance in Chad. It was very successful, because we had 50 people was trained and we mobilized also three speakers coming from outside. We have (?) from France, we have (?) from Tunisia, and we have Ester Mura, the President of ISO for Cameroon. And we have some intervention line also, from ICANN, we have (?). We work in partnership. It's convened by House of Africa, that I am the President. But also, we have a partnership with the National ICT. So, the organizer, they pay everything. So, we build the program, and we prepare also for this speaker who comes outside. So, it was the first time that Civil Society partnership with the government and sustainable project.
But this year we need to organize. For the first time, it was 14 and 15 December. It was at hotels of President. It was our first edition. This year we prepared our second edition, but it is really hard also because we have challenge in some lack of funding also, because we have only one source of funding with the government, and the team. And as you know, the government side, they change all the teams. They changed the Director General, and also the technical. So, we need to start again. We have the agreement for four years. So, that's one of the challenges. And most of the people ask us, why not do the second edition? So, I'm coming here just to have a partnership with some colleagues here who have funding or how they can support us with the program also, because our school, we have all of the information in our Facebook pages and our website is the foundation. It was face‑to‑face and accessible in French and Arabic also.
I can give you ‑‑
>> AVRI DORIA: Thank you.
>> My colleague, Mustafa. For the information, he was the first Fellow in our school, and now we coordinate with him. So, this is good, good idea to do it. So, Mustafa, if you have something.
>> AVRI DORIA: For now, that was the thing, basically have a very full agenda, but just wanted to give all new schools a chance to say something. Sorry. Yeah. Another new school?
>> Yes. Thank you very much. My name is Michel, coming from Cameroon. This year we organized the first Governance School of Central Africa in Cameroon. That take place on 18 to 29 with the support of ISOC. And during this School of Governance, we have about 16 students online. And IGF Cameroon was the support and the association. We think we are going to continue next year, and at that time, we will save some later to tell you what we wanted to do. Thank you very much for this opportunity.
>> AVRI DORIA: Okay. Thank you. And yeah, there has been a request. I see you're not ‑‑ maybe you're on ‑‑ no, you're probably not online. On the Chad School, there was a request if there was a website, and if you can send it to our list or put it on the chat, if you login to the chat. But, please. Okay, any other schools? Oh, another two schools! Okay. Quickly, please. First there had only been two. Now there's four. Please, go ahead. Huh? Okay.
>> Good day, everyone. My name is Sarah Kubabelli. I just joined the session of the school in the Ivory Coast. This is the coordinator. And we are planning on having our first event at the end of the month. We are currently discussing with the Ivorian Government to make sure we have everything in place to have that host as soon as possible.
>> AVRI DORIA: Thank you. And there was another hand. Yes?
>> Thank you, Madam Chair. Thanks, everyone. I would like to share the information about the Somali School of Internet Governance. It's been established last year, same like Chad and Cameroon. And it has a functional website and everything. But what we are facing now for challenges are they're not getting more richer in the Secretariat of the IGF, because the IGF is ‑‑ the school comes after Youth IGF, then they have got to put their information into the Secretariat. But in that information, you see that many African countries, around 24, they are not even aware of IGF is and what is going on. So, in that particular information, how we can redo them, because next year, IGF is going to be in Africa. Coming to Africa, but half of the African countries, they do not have established the IGF. So, we need for those who has the power or the efforts to bring that African, which we are very behind in terms of the internet and accessibility, to bring them on these platforms. That is what I am wanted to add.
>> AVRI DORIA: Thank you. Yeah, one of the things I recommend to all of you is that you join the Dynamic Coalition and start participating in this, because that's where you'll find contacts and support and people with, you know, materials and whatever.
In terms of the Secretariat doing more to reach out to African School, the Dynamic Coalition, obviously, does not speak for the Secretariat and can't, you know. But certainly, if there's anything the Dynamic Coalition can do, let the list know, and there might be somebody on that list that can actually do. You wanted to say something quickly about the new South African school?
>> The South African School of the IG, the organizers are not here. They are in the Dynamic Coalition, but they are not here. It took place in October. It included a Hackathon, and it was a bit of a mix of an IG school and an IT school, but it was a really, you know, good start. It was organized by Zadna, the ccTLD in South Africa. Avri, can I make another comment?
>> AVRI DORIA: Sure, go ahead.
>> I think what we're seeing emerge with the Schools of IG is that they are exploding. They are everywhere. And I think that's really, really good. I think most of the schools, the new schools, are targeting younger people, students, or young professionals. I think there's a gap, and I think it's a really serious gap, and it's a gap that we try and fill in the African School, which Avri talked about earlier, and that is to get people in government that are middle, maybe senior management. Same thing in private sector and in the tech community. Because I think they are also in need of having a deeper understanding of Internet Governance and how to be effective and influential in Internet Governance. And I think this is more a combination of sort of leadership development, as well as IG capacity development.
And we try and do that, and I find it actually very frustrating, because everyone thinks, oh, AFRISIG is about youth. Actually, it's not. We have young people, but they are there because they're emerging leaders. And I'm just wondering if other people feel that there's this gap as well and if this is, perhaps, something that we can have like a subgroup that could work on that. But I think it's a very important gap. And I think that the training that's provided by ICANN, sometimes by Internet Society, it's too narrow. It's not ‑‑ it's too institution and context‑specific. I think we need something that's a little bit more comprehensive.
>> AVRI DORIA: Thank you. And in fact, perhaps we can look at that when we get to plans, and we can certainly talk about it on the Dynamic Coalition list. And yeah, we can have as many little subgroups working on stuff as people want to be on little subgroups working on stuff. Okay. Yes, please? Yet another school?
>> Yes, yes.
>> AVRI DORIA: Wow!
>> (Non‑English language)
>> AVRI DORIA: Thank you. Apologize that ‑‑ most of you probably understood.
>> Yes.
>> AVRI DORIA: I actually understand a little. We don't have translation here. For anybody with less French than me, apologies.
>> He came from (?) and he says first time in IGF and he has a project to start in Internet Governance in Youth IGF also. So, he needs our technical support, financial support to start. Thank you.
>> AVRI DORIA: So, join the Dynamic Coalition, and it's an email list, but there will be people there that speak French, and you know, and such, so we can get communications going. So, you know, welcome, and please go.
Okay. Now, I'm actually running late because I hadn't participated quite so many new schools, but it's kind of exciting anyhow. So, I think I'll probably go a little quickly over this year in terms of the recap of the year's activities.
There were things that at last year's meeting we planned to do. We planned to do a lot more work on two of our documents, especially the Operational Guide, which is a document that's been started. It's part of what several of you have been talking about, of how do we start, what do we do, you know, how do you organize this thing? And we basically have a toolkit document that sort of talks about the subject matter material. And Glenn and Alfredo started an operational guide that sort of gets into a lot of the details, but that's a document that, what I call a very rich outline. There's a lot of discussion, but it's still small, so it needs people to fill it in.
It had been our plan to work on that this year, but it's not something that people stepped up. One of the things about a bottom‑up effort ‑‑ the Dynamic Coalition is a bottom‑up effort ‑‑ if you all were members of the Dynamic Coalition don't contribute the text, text doesn't get written, for the most part. Farzaneh will probably tell us about that. But, so, those are two things that remain on our list to do.
We have two documents. They need more help. They need more contribution. They're already pretty good. They're living documents, so each year, hopefully, they'll get better.
Then, though, Glenn ‑‑ and I'm going to ask him to talk about it a little ‑‑ picked up, basically decided on his own, and that's another good thing about a bottom‑up group, somebody decides on their own to do something cool, they can do it. And, basically, he got a lot of support. He basically did a lot of interviews with people from the schools. I've listened to all these interviews. They're very good in terms of people discussing their mission, their hopes, or whatever.
And Glenn, I wanted to give you a little bit of time to talk about the project. It is on the website. But Glenn, please.
>> GLENN McKNIGHT: Sure. Hi, everybody. As Avri said, it was something that I suggested, but not only I suggested, I went ahead and organized the calls. Now, if you look at the ‑‑ and I've put it into the chat, the link for you to look at ‑‑ there's 14 videos in total. The Armenia School will be doing, we just have not gotten together to set up the suitable time. So, they average, roughly, anywhere from roughly 20 minutes to an hour in length. And the original intention of the videos was to ask people, how did your school adjust due to COVID‑19 in the last couple years? What did you do? How did you adapt? And what's your plans for '22? So, that was the fundamental focus. And people stayed to the script pretty good.
And you know, there isn't one school that's the same as the next. Some schools have certain challenges in certain areas, and I'm not going to say what they are. But generally speaking, this is a hard‑working, dedicated group of volunteers that have stepped up and are doing a great job in what they're doing and making a huge impact.
And what's interesting is how some schools have a really, quite a detailed process of selecting fellows and assigning homework and assignments and whatnot. So, it's quite impressive. As I said, the main focus of this was to look at how they, in ONE, adapted to the situation. And I think they all did very, very well. In the case of the North American School, we just decided to put everything on hold in 2020, so it didn't happen, but you know, we're back into the action plan again.
So, again, I need to just shout out, due to time, thank you all for dedicating your time, and I have one more interview to do. And thanks again. That's it.
>> AVRI DORIA: Thank you. I had put a moderated discussion of that, of the issues. But I'm wondering, how many people have listened and watched these interviews, have found them, have seen them? People on the list, perhaps, want to ‑‑ I mean, on the ‑‑ if anybody wants to say anything about them, we can take a few minutes before moving on, from people who have listened to them, if there's any of you. As I said, I've listened to them all up till now and I found them quite rich. I don't see a lot of people raising their hands on having listened to them or having wanted to talk to them, so we can move on at the moment. Yes, Olga.
>> GLENN McKNIGHT: Olga.
>> OLGA CAVALLI: I saw the video. I just don't want to take a lot of time. For us, it was challenging in deciding what to do with the pandemic, and we decided to go to a different environment for visual. We wanted something different. And it was extremely challenging, especially the first year, which was the first time that we did it. So, I was interested in seeing how others have become this inconvenienced. We learned for the second year how to organize time, so it went much better. It went very well in the first year, but this year it was better. But videos are very good, and thank you very much, Glenn, for taking the time and doing that.
>> AVRI DORIA: Thanks. Yes, another comment, please.
>> Yes, thank you so much for the floor. So, I watched the interview. So, it was wonderful because it will help as a new school that wants to start in the challenge. So, this kind of thing we need in the school because we need to have the shift, we need to have documentation. So, thank you so much.
>> AVRI DORIA: Thank you. Yeah, thank you, Glenn. It was a really good initiative, and I'm hoping that more schools as they come on do them, and I'm really hoping people go and listen to them. Anybody else have something they wanted to say on the videos? It's a rich resource, and with the documents we're collecting and some of the stuff we'll talk about next.
Another part of our resources that, hopefully, grows each year is a resource that's maintained by Rainer, and that's our website. I don't know if you know of it. And Rainer, I don't know if you want to say a few words about the website and kind of what your ambitions are for it going forward, but the floor is yours, if you want it
>> RAINER RODEWALD: Thanks for giving me the floor. (Audio fading in and out) for the school on the chat, so if there are new issues emerging, they should just fill in this form and then they are officially a member of DC. And certainly, they will receive all information that are available, and they also can be part of the Wiki and get some information on its school on the Wiki. And if you are interested, you are also welcome to contribute there, as Glenn, for example, has done, with a lot of information that may be also relevant for other schools. So, I only can invite you if you have any ideas, if you have any things you think should be done with the website, with the web space. I'm happy to learn about it, and if possible at all, I will try to facilitate. Thank you.
>> AVRI DORIA: Thank you. Yes, the Wiki is really quite a good potential resource. And as Glenn, who is probably one of our most active participants in the DC, has populated it with all kinds of information. But there is room for each and every one of the schools that wants to put information about its school, information about its courses, pictures, whatever it is you have that speaks about your school, there's an opportunity there for people to do that. So, I really recommend that people take a look at it, and you know, and add your information.
The DC, it's dynamism. People have asked, well, what's so dynamic about a Dynamic Coalition? Its dynamism is what you all contribute, the source of information. So, this year, Glenn was probably our greatest source of dynamism. But others have contributed over the years. Others contributed this year, contributing to the Wiki, to the documents, to whatever is what keeps us a Dynamic Coalition. We're obviously a coalition, many schools, many countries, many people.
So, let me move on. I see no hands or people wanting to say more on that, and I want to make sure we don't miss some of the things on the agenda. And we've got some time left. And that's the plans for next year. So, the first thing that I have on that is the collaborative project with the IGF Secretariat. And Sandra talked a little bit about it. We've had a couple conversations in some of our meetings.
For anybody that's new, we try to have a meeting. Sometimes we do it every month when we're very busy, when we've got a lot that we're doing, like one of the things we do is we go through all the edits to our documents. When there's no edits to the documents, then maybe we meet every two or three months. It really is a variable. But anyhow, there's a collaborative project with the IGF Secretariat, Farzaneh joined our call, joined our meeting, rather. I'm used to doing this as a call. Joined our meeting. And I'd like to give her the floor.
>> FARZANEH BADIEI: Hi. Thank you, Avri. Hi, everybody. Good to see you here. And I'm back at the Secretariat after a decade! So, I'm very excited about this project and I wanted to tell you a little bit about the strategy that I'm developing. Of course, this is going to be a collaborative strategy with you and others. So, what the Secretariat wants to do from the deliverables, it's an Internet Governance, like global syllabus that can be adjustable to different local conditions and capacity, but also like with a focus on how you can operationalize the IGF, like having the Internet Governance school. Avri, do I have three minutes, too, or can I be given, like, more? Okay.
>> AVRI DORIA: You've got more than three minutes.
>> FARZANEH BADIEI: Okay, thank you. So, basically, what I am supposed to do here is to work with the DC on Internet Governance schools and like the members, as well as with the broader community to design a global Internet Governance syllabus. And for that, I'm still, like, consulting and I'm going to reach out to you as well to understand which networks we can also like reach out to, to use their insights about designing the Internet Governance syllabus, and like a global syllabus that can also be adapted to the local needs and also like other thematic needs.
So, here I have been using ‑‑ I'm looking at the DC toolkit, which is a very, very interesting, and also, like, it has a lot of information on it. I am going to design that in a way that, like design each document I'm going to produce in a way that it gets insight from this toolkit, but also reach out to, like, various educational programs that are already out there and around the world, and not necessarily only in North America or developed countries, so I'm going to reach out to academic networks, such as, like, you know, there is this Giganet, which also there are professors at schools that teach Internet Governance to get insight from there.
So, one of the things that I think that we need to think about and decide is who is this document that we are going to provide for, and who is this syllabus for? And I was thinking that maybe teachers and professors and stakeholder groups around the world that they want to, like, know about Internet Governance or they want to teach it at their school, it can be a study aid. It can be, of course, communities that want to convene a School of Internet Governance. And then also communities that want to train workforce initiative and strengthen thematic, regional and local Internet Governance Forum initiatives. I know it's a bit ambitious. We are going to work on limiting it, and this is all with consultation with the IGF Secretariat.
And then, one part that is very important, and I'm going to be done after this. So, also, like, perhaps create structures to crowdsource issues, specific educational materials and have, like a core program, core global Internet Governance syllabus, but also have all these, like, other issues that might be more thematic. And we also want to implement some kind of like monitoring process to see if this syllabus is actually being used by schools and our audience, how it's being used, so we can survey the new established schools about how you use school (?) and also will it help like non‑IG schools in training their staff or planning IG events, even. And also working on the Dynamic Coalition members and also inviting them to join the schools that are not already members, and I'm working on that. I have done a little bit of work on who is not a member by the school and other, like ‑‑ I'm also, like, kind of looking at the broader landscape of Internet Governance education. Thank you.
>> AVRI DORIA: Thank you. And I'd like to open discussion. But what I'd really like to do is, I've got about a little over ten minutes before I want to leave time at the end for Wolfgang to talk. So, we've got about 10‑15 minutes where I basically want to open up the discussion to any of these topics. And any of these topics that we don't talk about enough today, we could talk about it at our next meeting in a month or two, whenever it gets scheduled for, because we go on all the time, so it's not like we do it today and then we wait another year. So, I want to open the floor to any of the stuff you see in this agenda here.
I've already talked about the toolkit and Operations Guide. Not much to say about it, unless you're going to write in it. So, but it's there. It needs work. Yes, I've got Olga and I've got Ilona. Go ahead.
>> OLGA CAVALLI: Two questions. The meetings that you mentioned that you have every two‑three months or sometimes, are they open? We can participate?
>> AVRI DORIA: Everything's open to everybody.
>> OLGA CAVALLI: But you invite by the email list?
>> AVRI DORIA: Yes.
>> OLGA CAVALLI: I may have missed. Okay. So, I will pay more attention.
>> AVRI DORIA: Yeah, everything is on the email list.
>> OLGA CAVALLI: Okay.
>> AVRI DORIA: When I get it together, all things being equal, assuming I continue doing this.
>> OLGA CAVALLI: Okay, thank you.
>> AVRI DORIA: I'll send out a notice, you know, two‑three weeks in advance. And then as the meeting comes up, I try to send out reminders. I've tried to do an exercise of trying to schedule these in friendly times, given that it's a global thing, but I'm not sure how successful I've been. But, and we can talk ‑‑
>> OLGA CAVALLI: I wanted to join in one of them, and I ‑‑
>> AVRI DORIA: Yeah, I think you're on the list now. I think we went through "Is your email on the list or not?" question at one point, but I think that got resolved.
>> OLGA CAVALLI: Thank you. And another question for Farzaneh. How do you plan to work with us? How can we help you in doing your job? Do you have any ideas to share with us?
>> FARZANEH BADIEI: Yes. So, I'm going to reach out to you. I'm going to talk to the Secretariat as well next week. I was just taken on like last week.
>> OLGA CAVALLI: I know.
>> FARZANEH BADIEI: So, I'm going to talk to the Secretariat next week, and then I'm going to reach out to each of you, each, like, members of the Dynamic Coalition, but other schools as well, and I'm going to provide you with kind of like a strategy document that will lay out what I'm going to be doing, and then you can, like, comment on that. And in that document, I will ask for information I need. I have been looking at your websites and social media, and they're very helpful, but I will get back to you with, like, specific questions and information. Thank you.
>> AVRI DORIA: Farzaneh, are you subscribed to the DC list?
>> FARZANEH BADIEI: Yes.
>> AVRI DORIA: Good. Good. And people can reach out to you if they have something they're just dying to contribute?
>> FARZANEH BADIEI: Oh, if they're dying to contribute, of course. Yeah, I am going to put my email in the chat.
>> AVRI DORIA: Okay, fantastic. Thank you. Okay. So, at the moment on the list, I've got Ilona, Amrita. So, Ilona.
>> ILONA STADNIK: I wanted to raise the point I have already raised during the meetings, and this is actually on the agenda about the linkage between the Fellows from the schools and the probably faculty of the schools.
So, as we see the number of schools is growing, and we have more than a dozen already, but we're really lacking the networking between our alumnis about Fellows, and I think this is a good start for them, because one of the major aims of schools is just to get people prepared to participate in Internet Governance processes, events. And if we can join them together on the school level, it would be a good start for them.
So, it's an open question. It's really hard to propose anything just right now, but probably some kind of repository of contacts would be a good starting point.
>> AVRI DORIA: Okay, thanks. Now, Rainer did not mention them, but we do, indeed, have provision on the website for fellows and faculty to contribute their information. So, that already exists, though I don't think it has been used much. I think, Ilona, you've mentioned this a couple times, and I'd almost encourage you to follow Glenn's example and, you know, certainly, I'll give a hand where you ask for one, if you decide to take on this challenge, since it really does appear like a challenge you're interested in, and Rainer will also, you know, be willing to help with whatever's needed in terms of the website.
Now, in terms of what kind of tools, what kind of mechanisms, those are things that, you know, if you can get a couple people to get in touch that are willing to work with you on, you know, it is perhaps a challenge that you want to take on. Again, I emphasize that the bottom‑up nature of the Dynamic Coalition, that anybody's free to put out a good idea, and anybody is free to jump on that good idea and help work on it, but don't necessarily expect that I will get to working on it, but I'm always willing to help a little. So, hopefully, that makes sense to you.
>> ILONA STADNIK: Yes, that makes sense.
>> AVRI DORIA: Okay, thanks. I'm sorry, you know. Have a good idea? I'll ask you to work on it. Anriette, you were next.
>> ANRIETTE: Thanks. I wanted to respond to Ilona. That's actually something we do quite successfully in AFRISIG. We started in 2013, and from the beginning, we have an alumni mailing list. So, automatically, every year, the class is added to that mailing list.
We have reunions at events in Africa. People get together and take pictures, and people get jobs, they get research money through that alumni mailing list.
Since 2016, the Fellows have started using WhatsApp. So, now every year since 2016, there's a WhatsApp group. And in fact, for me, that's been a challenge, because there's so much active networking between the Fellows from one year on the WhatsApp group that it's kind of hard to get them to use email for the comprehensive list.
And then, just the other thing I wanted to say, Farzaneh is something we use very effective in AFRISIG is evaluation and monitoring. We do every year quite an in‑depth evaluation, and we take this very seriously. And then we also do every few years tracer studies, where we do longitudinal evaluations of what the impact of the school has been.
And then, just my final comment. I think it's great that you are doing this project, but I also want to ‑‑ you know, I've been doing the curriculum for AFRISIG since the beginning, and every year it is different because there are new things. We have a Freed Trade Agreement in Africa being discussed at the moment, so this year we had a strong focus on trade. We didn't have that last year. And I just think that when you develop this, just make sure that you keep that openness.
You know, Internet Governance is not static, and I think our Internet Governance capacity development does have to reflect that. So, just create a curriculum that people can use wholesale I think is not enough. And I know you will do it really well. I'm so glad it's you.
>> AVRI DORIA: And in fact, that's been the idea behind the toolkit. While we decided that we couldn't do a curriculum, so we wrote about the general subjects and issues.
>> Thank you so much for giving me the floor. So, thank you to Farzaneh. It seems we have now a focal point between us, and it is a good point.
So, the big challenge also, how to map the School of Internet Governance. So, I think it will be a big challenge, as we see in this year also, the schools are not clear or mailing list of DC, so I think it would be good also to contact the Secretariat to see if there is some school who managed by the NRI, some schools who are independent, some schools who are government, some summer school, so it will be a big challenge.
And also, we have a toolkit. A toolkit, we can do like a video and can put it in ICANN courses. Also it will be good, because some people, reading the document is so difficult for them, as we did for toolkit of NRIs. So, if there is some video, so it will be very easy for the people.
And, also, for the sustainable funding, because it is the challenge key for us because of some developing country, money is a big issue. If we plan everything, for our second edition, we have our program where we have everything, but the challenge in money is a big challenge also. So, how we can plan together as we did in IGFSA, like analyze how we can do the same in the scope of Internet Governance. So, I need to stop there. Thanks so much.
>> AVRI DORIA: Thank you! Lots of great ideas. And I say the same thing that I say to everybody with a great idea is, look forward to you and others working on it, you know, because that ‑‑ I keep repeating myself, but it really is the only way we move forward. In years where nobody contributed, nothing happened, you know. In years where people contribute, it's rich. So, really. Please.
>> Good morning. Good afternoon, colleagues. My good name is Kefander from Africa. I think I've been very privileged, and that's why I sit here today, having gone through a School of Internet Governance. So, I would speak, first of all, as a Fellow of a School of Internet Governance in terms of the capacity development that I got through the school. And then secondly, some of the issues highlighted on the board there.
For me, I think I will speak to localization of the Schools of Internet Governance. We've seen it at a global level and how it's working very well, also looking at, you know, the Summer School and all of that. At the regional level, speaking from Africa, we have the AFRISIG. Anriette has spoken about that. It started in 2013, yes, 2013. And we've also seen a lot of NRIs taking this down at the national level.
But at the national level, if we are to look at it holistically from a national level, I think it's also very elite, because the people who are able to access Schools of Internet Governance is very elite. You either are connected in one way or the other, and therefore, we don't quite get a lot of national representation, especially people who we consider to have been left behind. So, I think we probably need to also cascade it down beyond the national level to sort of micro level, either at local level or community level, because this will also give context to the school. In one village, it is very different from another village, for example. And I think this will also be very, very helpful in terms of bringing Schools of Internet Governance down at the local level. Now that we are talking about Last Mile, now that we are also talking about, you know, reaching to the unconnected.
And the second thing that ties to that, you know, is digital literacy. We see a lot of engagement around Schools of Internet Governance, and it can be quite packed. For those who are not digitally literate, I think there is also a disconnect. And for me, looking at, you know, sustainability of engaging the Fellows in terms of also contributing at local level, because beyond just, you know, the Fellows connecting amongst each other, there needs to be a lot more of innovation on how the fellows can also contribute, either through curriculum development or in a way that we can localize also the content.
One of the challenges is localization of the content and curriculum that we see. So, I think that will also play a very big role.
Lastly is the involvement of parliamentarians around the Schools of Internet Governance. We haven't seen quite a lot of participation from the parliamentarians and the legislatures, also in terms of building their capacity to engage in matters of Internet Governance. And we see this a lot on ICT committees for various parliamentarians, where they're unable to even articulate some of this issue. And some of those who are conversant with ICT, because members of Parliament are not necessarily people with background from ICT. Even going to the committee and lobbying their colleagues on what to say before they are able to contribute to some of, you know, the bills that come to the floor. Thank you so much.
>> AVRI DORIA: Thank you. I have two speakers. I have one, the Remote Hub Dhaka Bangladesh and then one in the room, and then I want to go to move to Wolfgang. As I say, all of these discussions can be continued. So, remote hub, please.
>> Good evening. Am I audible?
>> AVRI DORIA: Yes. Hello. Hello, hub.
>> Hello. Good evening from the Remote Hub Dhaka Bangladesh. So, I have some comments regarding the Internet School Forum. So, the student at this moment, they are not spending much time to study. So, we have patience with them, so we need to erase some psychological motivation for our young learners. How we can do that?
Another one. The remote level, you know, there are not as much developed as today's, you know, the developed parts of the country. So, how we can actually relate the young learners and connect them, the knowledge‑level update to the remote area?
And my last question is how we can include the academic linkage among the Fellows and faculty members? Thank you.
>> AVRI DORIA: Okay, thank you. And those are actually good long‑term discussions, the whole how it sort of melts into the localization, the local, the young, the motivations. So, I think these are really good topics for us to take up and go further over the course of next year and see where we can get to on them. Please.
>> Thank you. My name is Nema. I'm a member of Parliament in Tanzania. And what I wanted to say is that I think the missing link in most of these discussions is that you find that Civil Society is present, youth are present, and other different kinds of groups, but then we leave aside Parliamentarians, while at the end of the day, we are at the center of all of these development agendas when it comes to Internet Governance, et cetera. So, I just wanted to get an understanding, when we're talking about School of Internet Governance Fellows, how then can we also accommodate Parliamentarians to be part of the Fellows? Because one of the biggest challenges that I see is our capacity to fully understand the dynamics of Internet Governance, such that we're then able to adequately advise and inform policy and put to task our respective governments? Thank you.
>> AVRI DORIA: Thank you. I think it's a tough problem. And I think it's another one that's good for us to put on our agenda for the year and sort of talk about it, you know, get Parliamentarians to go to school, get schools to go to parliamentarians. There's a real difficulty, though. I sort of find me presuming to go talk to a parliamentarian and teach them? Well, not unless they ask for it. But they're not going to ask for it unless I presume. So, it's a really good topic, because there really is a deadly embrace.
>> (Off microphone)
>> AVRI DORIA: I know, but they came, but it wasn't me going to find parliamentarians to teach. But it's a good point. I'm going to stop this great discussion now. I need to move to Wolfgang. Join our calls! Let's continue the discussions on the list and joining calls, but I really did ask Wolfgang to speak and I expect he prepared. And if there's any time left after he's finished, I'll come back to discussion. But if there's not, the list, the calls, please. Wolfgang!
>> WOLFGANG KLEINWACHTER: Thank you, Avri. Thank you very much. I'm really fascinated, you know, how this idea which came out of the early days of the Information Society was 15 years ago has evolved over the 15 years, and we have now this wonderful network of national and regional and global Schools of Internet Governance.
On Monday, in the Day 0 event, I met again virtually Francois from Singapore, because he, like Avri, was a member of the Wiki and was with the President of the International Information Society and I was with the International Association for media and communication research NGOs and UNESCO. And we organized a meeting, like the Day 0 meeting on the eve of the World Congress of the ICE, in a small village where we said, what can we do now with this agenda as academic persons?
So, two ideas came out. One was the Giganet and the other one was the concept of the summer school. And the concept of a summer school was driven by two basic ideas. One basic idea was that Internet Governance is a multidisciplinary phenomenon. And normally, universities and academic institutions are organized around disciplines. You can study law, business, infomatics, political science. But Internet Governance goes across a lot of disciplines. And so far, we had to invent something new and an interdisciplinary course.
And the second thing was, it's not enough to have academic teachers. So, it's learning in a multi‑stakeholder environment. You have to understand your role of technical people who manage this. You have to see the business perspectives, you have to see what are the users' perspectives, and you have to understand the role of government. So, these two basic ideas, the multidisciplinary and the multi‑stakeholder approach, where the starting point for the pilot project, which we did 15 years ago, and I'm very happy to see that, you know, more or less now more than 20 schools have taken this concept and have further developed.
So, I remember in 2008, '09, '10, we discussed, why not take a global academy? But then we rejected this idea and established the Dynamic Coalition. And I think this was a very wise decision, because this Dynamic Coalition gives you a lot of flexibility, because you have different local needs and you have different experience of different models, you know, how to design a special school in your country, in your region.
So, the beauty of the whole process now, which has started 15 years ago, is also the pluralism, the diversity and the different models that have emerged. So, I think this is very good because we can learn from different models and can be inspired.
And I'm in particular thankful for Avri, which has collected all of the experience and channeled this now via her leadership as Chair of the Dynamic Coalition. I'm also thankful to Rainer, because he is the good ghost behind the managing of this network. And I'm also, in particular, thankful to all the sponsors for the various schools, because this is really a community effort. So, we have not a state budget or other big budgets. Each school has to find its own way. And without engagement of many units from the Technical Community, from the private sector and other organizations, in particular, the various constituencies, ISOC and in particular ICANN. I think this is extremely helpful.
So, I'm looking forward. I would see three issues which could be further discussed. I think it's very good that Farzaneh is now on board and will help streamline work plan for the years ahead of us. This is also a conclusion from the debates we had now in the IGF, is that I see a low level of understanding of many new stakeholders on the differences between public policy issues and the technical issues. So, I think to understand that this is a layered system, that the governance of the internet on the technical layer has to be different from the governance model on the public policy layer. I think this is an important thing that has to be delivered also by our schools. And as somebody has said, you know, this is a moving target, to substance and curriculum of the summer schools has to evolve according to the special needs. And 2022 is different from 2012 or even earlier.
What I would also see is an opportunity to establish something like a SIG library. So, we have now seen a lot of documents which came out, you know, the great video series published by Glenn McKnight. But this is still unorganized, I think to have something like a SIG library, where we have online materials, in printed form, or can be downloaded as PDFs or videos. I think this would be a very good step forward.
And then, the third and final point is, we have to look at, you know, what is going on in the more broader environment. What I see now as a new beginning is the decision by the General Assembly of the United Nations for the establishment of an open‑ended Working Group for cybersecurity where capacity‑building is a high priority. So, they have a five‑year plan now for capacity‑building in cybersecurity. And certainly, we can make a contribution to this.
And this is also then related to how we focus our activities, so in two directions, whether we develop curriculum for special issues, like cybersecurity, digital economy, human rights, or what else, and then how we have to right target the Fellows. So, the capacity‑building processes are merely for diplomats. But what the lady from Tanzania said, we could also develop a special course for parliamentarians. Because they are the lawmakers, and they have to understand what's going on, then, to make the right laws. So that means there are two lanes for further development for specific causes on specific issues which are pressing now and on the global agenda, also powers the Global Digital Compact, which is proposed by the UN Secretary‑General, and then special targets, diplomats, structures, parliamentarians, and also young people.
You know, our model, learning in a multi‑stakeholder environment, so we want to have a right mix so that people can learn from each other. This is good. But on the other hand, if you want to go to a high level, you need specialized courses, and probably this is the next step in a process, you know, which, hopefully, will bring us forward to the 2030 when we have the final day for the Sustainable Development Goals, because capacity‑building, learning, education is one of the key aspects of the SDGs.
And I was just saying thank you very much and I hope we can find good successes in the future. Thank you.
>> AVRI DORIA: Thank you so much, Wolfgang. Thank you so much, everybody that came to this. I look at what's ahead. If we have the people that want to talk and work on it, we're in a great position to have a very busy and dynamic year of this coalition. So, thank you all, and we've already overrun our time. So, thank you.
(Session concluded at 1525 CET)