The following are the outputs of the captioning taken during an IGF 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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>> Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and those of you in the village paying attention to this launch event. We appreciate your company. On behalf of the technical Community Commission for multistakeholderism, we are glad to have your attention for this briefing today.
My name is Jordan Carter. My role is to be a very light touch moderator of this session. All of the interesting things said on this stage will be from others.
Nick and Jen will give a presentation on the Coalition, what it is, why it exists, what it's for, what it's working on. And then there will be a bit of a time for Q&A from them. And then the last part of the session, we'll just mix and mingle, have a chat and so on. So that's going to be the substance of it. And when you two want me to swap slides, just say so.
Our two panelists, Jennifer Chung is from the .aShea organisation, a PAC organisation that operates the.Asia.
Nick Wenban Smith is from Nominet, both part of the Secretariat of the TCCM. And later on we'll have a contribution from another colleague who is in the process of joining to explain why they thought about joining the Coalition.
So without any further ado, I am handing to Nick for the first slide. Thank you, Nick.
>> NICK WENBAN SMITH: Thanks, Jordan. Welcome, everybody. It's great to see people here. Thanks for giving us an opportunity to talk you through a little bit about this technical community Coalition for multistakeholderism.
So there are a group of us loosely affiliated through the technical community. We see each other at ICANN meetings. We see each other at regional meetings. We see each other at IGF meetings. And we largely have a common agenda. Dare I say, we are all good friends. But when it came to the WSIS+20, which has been in anticipation now for well, at least since WSIS+10, but more urgently in the last couple of years. I felt a core group of us felt that there was a lack of urgency and coordination around the technical communities' input into this multistakeholder issue. And each of us individually tend to be national or regionally based. And but we were all, frankly, in the global context, quite small operators. So it's a very big topic area for us each individually to deal with, but collective, we could divide up the work, put our thinking resources together, create common resources where it's helpful for input to consultations or discussions with our respective governmental colleagues, and to build credibility to have a consistent drum beat.
So we realized, obviously, that 2025 was the WSIS+20. We didn't know much about it. But we knew inevitably, as the months go on, that it's coming closer and closer.
The GDC, if I am honest, came on as a bit of a surprise. But we had to deal with that and we had to respond to the challenges of the GDC throughout 2024, and I think if I am honest, we treated it as a bit of an hors d'oeuvre, a bit of a warm up for WSIS+20 next year. So we could see these key years coming.
I think when it came to the WSIS+10, there wasn't too much controversy that the mandate was going to be extended. It was much less clear to us what the future lay post the 20 year review. There was a degree of one of my favourite multistakeholder words is "unclarity." There was a degree of unclarity, and we felt we needed to mobilise the technical community to engage and try to positively influence things. We tried to provide everybody in the technical community with the same kinds of information. As I think we've heard many times this week, with the processes, with the New York running of the Tech Envoy of the GDC has not been super easy. The deadlines have changed. The websites are out of date. There's no clear opportunity for multistakeholder engagement. We needed to force our way to the table. And I think if I'm not going to be pointing fingers at people, I think we felt there was lack of leadership in other parts of the technical community. We wanted to be on the front and positively engage. Hence, to set up a small group of us initially, and then build up and try to get a bit of a momentum to help people. So here we have formed the coalition, and by the way, I think it is so I am a lawyer by background, so I am very keen on the right pronoun. And we are a technical community collision. We don't profess to be the whole technical community. That would be a distinct overrue. It's a technical community coalition group.
And I have put down on this last bullet point on the slide, but I think the technical community needed to acknowledge although we are huge advocates, as the name says, the technical community for multistakeholderism, we have to acknowledge that the experiment has not been 100% successful, if you look at achievement towards the SDGs. Yes, of course, there have been massive strides in technology in the last 20 years, massive strides in connectivity, a degree of equalization. But in the same way you have to acknowledge there's been a degree of polarization as economies have become a bit more digitized.
So I think we wanted to basically be up front about that because I think our responses are positive, but we needed to acknowledge some of the shortcomings during the process over the past few years. Because I don't think although we are advocates of multistakeholderism that it can't be done better.
Thanks, Nick. I think he gave us a good background of how TCCM came to be. We are a coalition, not the coalition. And really, global operators from all over the world welcomes this initiative that we started. What you see right now on the screen is an abbreviation, really, of the key points of the Statement of Purpose that you can actually read a little further on if you go on our website. Tccm.global.
Really, the key three things that we want to bring the message quite clearly, both to the technical community itself and also the other stakeholders of the Internet Governance Forum and also the Internet Governance community at large as well, is that there seems to be a roadway in the same direction. There is alignment that we want to keep defending and having this multistakeholder approach evolve. And we want to strengthened as well.
We also want the technical community to be on equal terms and equal footing when we are talking about discussing all of the Internet Governance issues, the digital process issues that we've been discussing through this past year, through the GDC process, and looking forward to doing that in the coming year when we are looking into the WSIS+20 review. So on equal terms.
We are at the heart of it, we are operators that manage critical Internet resources. This is actually just a very small slice of what maybe a layperson might understand to be technical community. But this is also very important. We are the ones who keep the Internet running. I like to say when we do our good work, you shouldn't actually notice it. You only notice it if we don't do our work, when you cannot connect. You will be like, okay, what's going on?
So with a growing number of members, we want to keep the Internet open, free, global, secure, resilient, interoperable. That's the word I really, really like very much. I will add the word "robust" because I think Jordan really likes that word as well. And I agree. And available to all. And I think we also looked at it, in terms of this year and previously we did see a blog come out from ICANN ARIN, and I think it was APNIC as well, calling attention to the global stakeholder groups, the community, the IG community, that community is really important. We are the ones who keep the Internet on. And I will stop again. When we do our work, you shouldn't notice. It should be seamless. It's when you don't have the connection when you realize, oh, there's this group of operators and all these people that control and manage the critical resources of the Internet. They are the ones who really keep things going. Everything else is there's the ability to talk about it because we keep these things going.
>> Yeah, thank you. What started out as a small, informal group this slide is out of date already because there are more members who have joined the coalition or are in process of joining. You can see 28 members, which was accurate at the beginning of the week when we did the slide. It's now out of date already. But you can see there's a mixture of registries, and that's country code registries, but also gTLD registries. There's a mixture of regional organisations, and there's also a mixture of registrars, so there's a whole sector, broad sectoral approach, different industries, some nonprofit, some for profit, some dealing directly with consumers, some dealing more on a regional basis. Completely different cluster of technical operators. But all providers, fundamentally, of the technical layer upon which everything else that is being discussed this week whether it's AI or information or platforms or education or impacts on the environment none of this stuff really works without a stable underpinning technical layer, which is really what we are here to advocate for.
>> Jen: Currently we have mailing lists, we have not only TCCM members who have signed on to our statement of purpose I talked about a little earlier, but it's really for information exchange. It is for opportunities to input previously, this year into the GDDC, and look forward to all the consultations that will feed into the WSIS+20 review. We also have chat groups that are on different chat platforms to be able to quite quickly and informally notify these members of what is going on. Some of us are here on the ground in Riyadh, others are joining remotely online, looking at the happenings of IGF. It's a good way, a good, informal way, to keep our members actually informed with what's going on.
There is a greater group of technical community who actually are considering joining and have said to us this is actually great information I am bringing from the Coalition that I will bring back to my own organisation, my leadership, to see if we can, you know, take this further or if there are actually positions that TCCM puts out on the website or actually developed through the mailing lists and with members as well, that they might be able to adopt and take on some of the key points.
I think a lot of it is the messaging that would come from different parts of the technical community. And if we have all of these voices coming from different parts of the technical community that do say fundamentally the same things, that perhaps the global community will take note and understand, okay, well, there is many different voices talking about this, and it's from technical community, and this is really what they care about.
I think looking forward into 2025 as well, TCCM is looking to leverage our membership and leverage the wider community who are interested in TCCM work to help us draft positions, especially going into WSIS+20 review and also on topics that are near and dear to the community's heart.
>> MODERATOR: Just to add one thing with the moderator's prerogative. This is not an association. This is not trying to create a big, heavy structure that tries to speak on behalf of its members. It's meant to be a rallying point, an exchange of views, a way to learn from each other, perhaps shape each other's views through that learning, and to test where consensus exists and where it doesn't in this slice of the technical community. So it's a very op tum process. If statement is developed, you choose whether to sign on. The Coalition doesn't speak for all of its members. It's designed to be as easy, simple, and low key to be as possible. Not to create any complicated terrors about being signed up to someone else's agenda. Which I know is a real challenge in parts of the Internet technical community, where people are very clear about their mandate; where membership communities are often very suspicious of outside organisations. So that's something we've really kept in mind about how the Coalition works.
As my interruption, we need to pick up the pace a little bit, lovely speakers.
>> Thanks, Jordan. To be honest, most time is spent on statement of purpose. Once statement of purpose is signed up to, people have access to everything. We don't craft statements which need to be agreed. We craft statements which people sign up to if they want to, but they don't have to.
Just a quick recap of our activities in 2024. 2024 is gone in the blink of an eye, it seems.
From the discussion in March at ICANN Puerto Rico, the meeting Secretariat developed its ways of working. The email list and WhatsApp groups and other ways to share information, whether it's a consultation date changing or some new input requiring some thought or just general chat or exchanges of useful blogs and information, that's all been under the Statement of Purpose. There are now six or seven of us on the core Secretariat, and Jen mentioned it earlier, but we have the TCCM Global website, thanks to my friends at CIRA who help us, and there's a lot of information there to research and to publicize our work more broadly.
>> Jen: I listened to our lovely moderator and will try to be quick. This is to show that TCCM has been involved quite deeply from Day 1 with the global digital process. We did spoken statements, we did written inputs as well. Mentioned earlier our Statement of Purpose, which we publicized on our website in June. On September, we had a submission to the CWG Internet on the developmental aspects to strengthen the Internet. And I think there was finally, when the GDC was adopted in October, that's two months ago, we had a statement regarding what we thought about the entire process.
November, right before the ICANN meeting in Istanbul, we had a full Day 0 meeting, which actually, first part was strategizing how the Secretariat wants to organize the work, so it makes it easier and lightweight for members to be able to input and sign on to statements, as what Jordan has mentioned. And that actually will inform the next slide, which is the high level plans for 2025.
>> Thank you. The high level plan for 2025 is basically to champion the WSIS+20 review. We anticipate it will be essentially a rewrite of the GDC processes. So we've already had a bit of practice on it. That's really clearly the key area of focus, although some of this is in anticipation of and what happens after the WSIS+20 review?
>> Jen: On the screen, you see the results of our Day 0 activities with the members. We did a series of roundtables. We had really good interaction and input with current TCCM members about how we can look into some input and written input, either goals we want to reach for the WSIS+20 review, you can see that on the screen, to secure, of course, the multistakeholder process. And to ensure the implementation of GDC doesn't cut across the WSIS+20 review process as well. And certain goals also for the technical community would be to, you know, ensure that the WSIS Action Lines, really the ones that concentrate more on the technical aspects of the Internet, are preserved in a way that benefits the current operations of the Internet as well as the multistakeholder model as well.
And then the fifth one is, of course, always a controversial one about enhanced cooperation. How we can look at it in the GDC text and how we can look at it going into the WSIS+20 process.
>> Jordan: So what tangible processes have we got to these multilateral processes? If there's one call to action that I want to get across today, it's that there is no good waiting until the co facilitators are appointed in the and the zero draft in circulation. Any hope of getting across our agenda and advocate is now, maybe before now. The train is leaving the station. If we leave it too long, we'll miss it, and we will just be spectators in this process, not contributors.
And if you can look here, there is a degree of certainty for things which are in the relatively new future and a degree of uncertainty as you go further into the future. It will become a clearer, I guess, waterfall the closer you get to approximate. We know, for example, the ITU consultation on Action Lines, that's due for review by the 31st of January. There are other forums and consultations which you can see here on the thing, this is through the first quarter of 2025. I think these are absolutely key positioning points, and it's what we are thinking of in terms of our thought evolution about how to put forward our advocacy in a way that does not look self interested, which way is a positive agenda, recognising the shortfalls, and essentially leaning in and giving a commitment to the future on behalf of the technical community towards a safe and secure underlying technical layer of the Internet.
>> Jen: And this is the second half of the year pretty much, and I think we should definitely cross the opportunities Nick mentioned really early on in the year where we are able to have some effect to the process. Especially when we know that I think they are hoping to have the co facilitators appointed before May 2025. We don't know for sure right now if that's going to be possible. But certainly, a lot of the work needs to be done closer to the beginning of the year in 2025 than the later ones. You already see there that the middle of the year is jam packed with many events that many of you will be at. Perhaps not everyone will be at them as well, but by that time, it might be a little bit closer to a place where maybe we can't really pull the train back from the station if the train is going somewhere that we are not quite sure.
So I'll hand this back to our moderator to open up for, I think, our Q&A.
>> MODERATOR: Just before we do a Q&A, to give you another couple of minutes, up on the stage are part of the Secretariat. But there are some people who have been looking at joining. I am going to invite someone from NIC.b r, Brazilian CCT, about why it is you are considering joining. You can use the lectern or grab my mic.
>> Thank you very much. Thank you, Jordan, thank you, Jennifer, thank you, Nick. Hello all. NIC.br is considering joining the technical community Coalition for multistakeholderism because of the great importance and momentum of the Internet Governance machine related issues that we see, not only from the standpoint of a political perspective in which CGI.br already deals with most of the issues, but also for the outcomes of those decisions and discussions which have may have great impact for the technical community, which, at times, is not hasn't been as united in one single coalition as we have seen this one or in any other place. So discussions should happen somewhere, and everyone looking at each other saying when will it happen, where will it happen, and TCCM became the place to discuss that for the purposes that we have all seen, as you mentioned, the timelines and the deadlines are happening. The discussions are happening elsewhere. So why elsewhere and not here when it also concerns the operations that we have, the services and the initiatives that we undertake as well? So that's one of the reasons why we are considering that. Thank you again for the invitations. Congratulations for the talk.
And I just would like also to say that it's important to say that TCCM is open also for those who are looking for are still not sure if they are joining or not. So you have many initiatives, many approaches. To other members of the community, I am here speaking on my own behalf, as we have been approached by TCCM members to put more people, more institutions, actually, on the group. And this has been a great difference we see from other initiatives, in which at times they stay so closed, and TCCM is approaching so many people, as you saw, 28 and counting members. Hopefully we'll be joining you soon. Thank you very much.
>> MODERATOR: Great. Thanks. That's just a bit of flavor of someone who is considering.
We have 10 or 15 minutes for any questions that anyone has. I see a couple of hands up. Charles in the front row is our microphone oh. We have a microphone runner. So I'll do three. I'll do you, then Lito, and then you.
>> Okay. I will be quick. I am from the Internet Society. First of all, congratulations. You are doing a great collaboration in the community.
Among your objectives, you are mentioning that you discussed some potential improvements to the IGF. Could you share a little bit more about what the group has discussed? Like how are you seeing the equitable?
>> Jordan: I will save you on that one. We know we need an agenda to improve the IGF. I almost side ITF, I would have been crucified. So I said IGF. That's going to be one of the pieces of work the members do together at the start of next year to define an agenda. I imagine it will be things about more sustainable resourcing, about improved participation. But we haven't had that dialogue yet. So at the moment, it's just a headline. There's no secret plan as yet. And it will be worked out between and among the members in the first quarter of next year.
>> MODERATOR: Lito at the back. Yeah.
>> Thank you. I also think it's a great initiative. And I would like to ask what are the requisites to for an organisation in the technical community to join? I mean, do we need just one contact name? What is the level of granularity? I mean, it can be an association of ccTLDs be part? But also a ccTLD individually, like for ISPs or IX? So what is the scope of the membership that you are expecting? Thank you.
>> Jordan: Thanks for the question. We've had this issue discussed a number of times. We have a degree of informality in the sense there is not a legal constitution or a legal body that we have set up. It is an informal coalition, and it's designed to be inclusive and diverse and very participatory. And as we discussed, sort of opt in. But we do require you to be essentially a technical operator. But all of the examples that you gave seem to be exactly what we are looking for in terms of technical operators. You could see the types of members that we have so far. So it's those folks who provide the technical layer operation as their primary focus. And we are looking for organisations rather than interested individuals, but particularly if you are part of that group of technical operators, you are extremely welcome. The only hard requirement is that we ask you to sign up to the Statement of Purpose, which I think is not a difficult ask. Because it's essentially if you are a supporter of the multistakeholder model of Internet Governance, this should be, like, motherhood and apple pie. It should be resonate very strongly. If you have any questions about it, you should obviously ask. But really, we ask for you to sign up. We have if you provide a name, then we will put them on the WhatsApp group as part of the group, then they'll receive Coalition information, updates, announcements. And we will have Coalition meetings, but they are voluntary. Obviously, our membership is very geographically diverse, so we don't expect people to turn up. It's supposed to be an opt in resource model so that people can find out for themselves more quickly than they could do individually. I think we all appreciate the big task which is ahead, and it's easy to do that together as a group of like minded people with sharing information rather than each having to go away and do it all for ourselves. So it's supposed to be a common resource, really, for the technical community. So you would be extremely welcome on that basis.
>> MODERATOR: And just one more thing. There's no limit, like one contact per organisation. So some have one, some have do, some have three. People sign up. So it's designed to be flexible.
Thanks, Lito.
Can we pass the microphone to this gentleman at the back, then I'll come to Sandra at the front.
>> Hello. Thank you for your presentation. I am from Malaysia. I am with decentralized physical infrastructure network company.
I am just curious from a web tree point of perspective, as we are one, what are the what is the stance and position of TCCM on dealing with web tree point of view? And have there been any efforts to bridge the gap between Web 2.0 and Web 3.0 from the technical community? What I have seen from Web 3.0, they have their own conferences, structures, ecosystem. It works independently from Web 2.0 to a large extent. Are there about efforts to bridge this fragmentation from your side? What is the strategy to move forward if you would like to share? Yeah, thank you.
>> MODERATOR: Thanks for your question. I think Jen has a brief response to your question.
>> Jen: Brief response. I think the Internet Governance community itself is already welcoming Web 3.0 discussions. I know there's not that many topics you see right now. Perhaps if you were in Kyoto last year, there could have been some topics on that. But as a whole, TCCM is pretty brand new. As you can see, we just formed this year. Because it was formed in response to this kind of inflection point of Internet Governance, looking at the WSIS+20 review coming up in 2025. So it was really a very quick, lightweight, informal group in response to something.
Now, your question about looking into how to bring Web 2.0, 2.3 together, I think that could be topics that if the TCCM membership would like to explore more, I wouldn't close the door on that at all. I think it's really important to get all different parts of technical communities, with a plural, at the end together. Because I think, like I said earlier, we are all rowing in the same direction. We want to support the multistakeholder model because that allows us a seat at the table. Without that, we won't be even at the table.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you. And the interaction between those two environments is something that is capturing attention in the ICANN and traditional community as well because none of us wants to see confusion between these two at the user level. So it's an important issue to follow on. Thank you.
Sandra at the front.
>> Sandra: Thank you very much. Sandra from the European IGF, EuroDIG.
I pretty much welcome this initiative, and I can fully understand that there was a desire to as a technical community to stand together, in particular when there was at least the risk that the technical community is not recognised in these processes as a separate stakeholder group. So fully understand it.
But I would like to ask is there a risk that we are now separating or fragmenting multistakeholder foras? Speaking for national or for regional IGF, I must say the participation of the technical community in our forums is not huge. And way fear a little bit that now that you are forming your own group, this might even throw away more of the participation on the and I am not only speaking about EuroDIG, but also about the national and the global IGF which is sometimes seen critical by the technical community. So I can hear that because topics are not relevant enough and so on and so forth. So is there a risk of what are you doing against that this will happen in terms that the technical community is not fading away from the IGF and IGF led initiatives that are existing already? Thank you.
>> Jordan: Thanks, Sandra, for the question. And I guess I can appreciate the concern. I think my answer is completely the opposite, which is this should lead to a more integrated approach from the technical community. Firstly as regards the WSIS review, because we should try to have a more consistent message amongst the technical community, which would be more credible and should help to actually reinforce the IGF outcomes in terms of the WSIS review. And I think, if you look at the three of us on the stage, we are all very integrated with our own national and regional IGFs. I don't think any of us have got any plans to discontinue that. If anything, it should make it stronger and more integrated and more credible. This is a mobilizing point, not a fragmentation point.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you. And just one other point to follow up the earlier question from Lito about what categories of membership. We've also got a Supporters category. So if you think you might want to be a member but you are not sure, what that does is lets you join the email list, see some of the discussions, join some of the meetings. So that's another option that's available. If that is something you want to do, come and talk to one of us afterwards.
You still need to be a technically operator, though.
>> (Off microphone).
>> MODERATOR: I'll need to follow that up. I read it very quickly on my WhatsApp group.
One more question in the front, or maybe it's a comment.
>> Hello. Yes. Just a brief comment regarding the point by Sandra is that at times, some members or some interested parties are already left out of the discussions. They just can't follow because they are small, and they don't have the resources to follow up many other discussions. So many discussions which are taking place. So this is one of the advantages of having a TCCM, which becomes one of the focal points for discussion with common peers.
So I would say that this would be a win for those smaller organisations which are not able to reach out to their governments with so many useful resources shared already by many members of the community. So I see that more as a reinforcement of existing structures rather than a separation, so to say, of them. So just a brief comment. Thank you.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you, Everton. And yes?
>> Ian Brown. I am an independent consultant. Jumping up to a much higher level, because this is IGF, after all. From one of your earlier slides, you said the technical community, as you defined it, should participate in Internet Governance. I forget the precise three Ds, but debate, discourse, and decision making, I think it said, on an equal basis with governments. And I wonder what governments think of that. I wonder where your legitimacy comes from compared to democratic governments or authoritarian governments.
>> MODERATOR: I think that probably depends on the forum. So in a forum like the IGF, in a forum like the IGF as an example, we are all here on an equal footing.
If we were talking about an aspect of regulatory policy that needed to be implemented through law, I don't think any of us would claim that we think we are on an equal footing with States. Or if there was the negotiation of an international treaty, we are not decision makers in a decision like that. So it's more saying that as it's the general formulation of the technical community saying in the forums that are either broadly dialogue based or the ones where we do the work that we do, through ICANN, for example, stakeholders have their roles and responsibilities. But there are a lot of forums and processes where people genuinely are on an equal footing, which is distincty from lots of other distinctive from lots of other governance processes where that just isn't the case.
This is a UN meeting where everyone is here on an equal footing for the discussion. So that is absolutely integral to the DNA of the Internet Governance Forum.
>> Jordan: Yeah, you need to go back to the original Tunis because it talks about the groups in accordance with their respective roles and responsibilities. I think all of us believe that better policy making, decision making, and discussion happens through a degree of transparency and openness and accessibility to participate in the discussions. At the end of the day, I don't expect governments, necessarily, to do what I tell them to do. In fact, I'd be horrified if they did. But I feel that an open line of communication, so that at least, especially in areas of technical policy, where they are going to intervene, regulate, or legislate, they are doing it essentially with their eyes open as to the perspectives of everybody else before they break something more important.
>> MODERATOR: Yes, there is another question here.
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: I am sorry. My background is maybe more political. Two questions, but very briefly. One is how would you resolve conflict of opinions within yourself? Now, you presume that you are a community, but you know, traditionally, what I understand is that in the technical community, often conflicts are resolved based on technical, measurement, so one that is superior wins. Given the nature of the technical community, it's more or less concerned with political stuff. So how are you planning to resolve such conflicts? That's one.
And the other one is so how are you planning to influence policymakers? So are you going to just talk? So what, let's say, measures, policy measures, are you planning or are you considering to wield?
>> MODERATOR: Who wants to take that? Jen?
>> Jen: I'll start. It's really good questions.
I think well, I think we mentioned that we had a full day of meetings, especially just actually last month, on how we wanted to take this coalition forward. It's a coalition, not the coalition, of course. We wanted it to be the most lightweight, opt in model that would be able to get the best information for input, opportunities for input for different members. So I think we haven't got to the stage where there is a difference of opinion, then simply the member doesn't have to opt in to any kind of statement. It is an opt in method in that aspect.
If you are talking about creating some kind of conflict resolution mechanism, I think we are going to make the mechanism of the Coalition a little more complicated, a little more clunky. I think it is important for you to bring this up. We haven't gotten to the level where, you know it's more reaction when this coalition was formed. In the future, if the TCCM members think that there are certain things that we need to look into that members would like to work on, both topically and subject wise, and we feel that collectively that there is a need to create such kind of mechanisms, that may help or hinder, I think that's a point where we might be able to consider looking into that.
>> Jordan: And I was going to say to date, we haven't really had any conflicts. That's because we don't require people to sign up. And in fact, if there was a TCCM statement which a member liked some of it and not all of it, we would, like an open source, free resource take the bits you like, change it, and use that. That's completely fine. We provide these resources as a help and assistance, not to create conflict. And if there are bits of it you are less happy with or you don't think that's within your remit or role because of the technical operation that you form or whatever reason in terms of your domestic or regional area, completely fine. That is absolutely fine. And we encourage you to cannibalize the good bits and discard the bits that you don't like. It was supposed to be helpful rather than constraining or creating points of tension within the community.
>> MODERATOR: There's one more aspect that it's worth pointing out. Because there is the orienting and political statement of purpose at the start. That does mean that people come in with some alignment before they are part of the community, which helps mitigate people being completely at odds with each other. It isn't like a situation where you are managing a resource and you have to include all voices and people might have radical conflicts of direction. So that helps as well.
I also have to correct something I said earlier about the Supporters category. It isn't only open to technical infrastructure operators. There are some dear friends who are sort of associated with in parts of the technical community that don't operate infrastructure that are also supporters. I am not going to single anyone out. But I just needed to correct my mistake from earlier.
>> Jen: Not forgetting your second question, because you had a second question.
>> MODERATOR: The policymakers, yes.
>> Jen: One really good thing is all four of the founding members are TCCLDs. To many different degrees that they do have a lot of interaction with their national governments, so that is already a starting point.
Of course, the group now consists of not just the ccTLDs. There's also the oop generics, which .Asia is one of the generics. And it encourages you to talk to like minded governments and your national governments that you are already tied to. But not only that. We are looking into coordinating, cooperating with other stakeholder loose informal organisations too.
So there is a lot of collaboration going on. Of course, we know certain views are expounded more in certain quarters when you are able to get the ear of your national governments. But I think right now the TCCM is quite well positioned to be able to expand and amplify that voice.
>> MODERATOR: Thanks, Jen. And there was one comment I am just going to offer from the Chat because here in the room, we find it a little bit difficult to see the Chat, I think I am right in saying. But there was a comment from Mark Nottingham, I think on your point about democratic legitimacy. He said the technical community doesn't have democratic legitimacy and doesn't pretend to. It has output legitimacy through making the Internet work. So that's another perspective to add.
Look, I think we've achieved the purpose of today in one sense, which was to introduce the Coalition to you. Hopefully for some of the audience it was a new thing to find out and learn a bit about. Thank you very much for the questions and discussion that have come.
>> (Off microphone).
>> MODERATOR: I have been asking that, and there aren't at the moment. It was just that comment that I've just read out. So yes, thank you for asking that question before I enter wrap up mode. If you do want to find out any more information about the work, the coalition has done the Statement of Purpose and so on, you can find that on the website at tccm.global, and we will organize to put a copy of this slide pack on the website as well. So if you want to get some of that information, whether it's the dates or what we see ourselves as doing, you are welcome to do that.
And some of the members of the audience are members of the Coalition. If you are a member of the Coalition and you are comfortable to, just want to wave your hand in the air or stand up or something, so you might want to talk to those people or to those of us on the front if you want to find out more.
But for now, it's pretty much time for us to evacuate the stage, so on behalf of Nick, Jen, myself, the TCCM team, thank you for your attention, and I hope you have a lovely remaining one day and two hours of IGF 2024 here in Riyadh. Thank you very much.
(Applause)