[WSIS CS-Plenary] Opening ceremony speaker

[Dr. Francis MUGUET]

Dear Michael and everybody 
> I wonder if any of those proposing to have Stallman as the Opening
> Ceremony Speaker have ever seen him speak.  
> 
Richard addressed the general assembly during the Intersession, in
July in Paris.
see http://www.wsis-pct.org/pct-talk-en-16jul03.html for the text

The text is very good and the tone was passionate and convincing.
It had a very strong impact on the audience. 
May be it was "unusually " good... I personally liked very much the end:
  
" Free software is necessary for sustainable development. If everyone in
your country uses a program that's secret and controlled by a single
company, that's not development, that's electronic colonization."

As far "high profile" is concerned,(Re another post)  a person from the
delegation from Georgia told me, later on at PrepCom3, that in the whole
assembly, the only one whose name would not fall into the dustbins  of
history would probably be his name, and not the names of ambassadors,
ministers, former ministers and so on that were present. 
This remark being done, we must stressed again, that Richard seems a
good choice not because he is a celebrity but because he participated
to the WSIS process and has a strong message to deliver. 

As far as impact is concerned, Many people in the delegations of
emergent countries are.ITC persons that are in fact, making the ITC
policy of their own country. They are quite sensitive to strong ITC
related messages and are bored by general and vague declarations. 
The impact is real and the influence not negligible. 
  
Richard  just broke his arm and will not be able to come next week
in Geneva, and probably not in December unless there is a chance
he may address the general assembly either as an opening ceremony
speaker or as a general debate speaker. 

Unlike those criticizing the "technologist" or the "unusual", 
we are not going to have any negative comments against Traore, I
personally  never heard her before at PrepComs 
We trust the judgment of the HR caucus concerning the former Minister of
Culture from Mali. She is expected to be an excellent speaker
( in French, which is good for linguistic diversity, and from Africa
which is good for regional balance ).   

Possibly the bottom line is that some people do not wish that a white
male from the US may represent the Civil Society
( I won't argue on this, there are pros and cons )  but his message 
( I hope ) is agreed upon by everybody. .   
We are not dogmatic, if Richard nomination as an opening ceremony
speaker is generating  such surprisingly negative comments then,
for the sake of unity, we propose that it might
be better if the Civil Society would choose yet another opening ceremony
speaker. 
 
Concerning this choice,  personally, I am urging the Civil Society 
           to come out of the "Matrix", 
Do we need to abide by the rules of the Media society, 
the " advertising " society  ? 
Do we need some external celebrity that never participated
to Prepcoms, ( there was a thread about this before ) ?
Do we need to have a parachuted celebrity that we are
not sure she/he will deliver the message ( at least most of it ) as
compiled by the C&T drafting group. ?
If this CS finally comes up with such kind of choice, we need to be sure
that she/he will do so. It seems this was assured to be this way with
the Nobel Prize winner from Iran
 ( who seemed to be a good choice  
   because of an exceptional political context ) 

Another solution, possibly the simplest is to choose an opening
ceremony speaker among the women that, at one occasion or another,
( Assembly or Press Conferences ) already represented the
CS with great success, namely 
( in alphabetical order,  forgive me, if I forgot some names )  
  Beatriz, Meryem, Sally, Susanna

Best regards

Francis






-- 

------------------------------------------------------ 
Francis F. MUGUET Ph.D 
muguet at mdpi.org   muguet at ensta.fr  

MDPI Foundation   http://www.mdpi.net 

World Summit On the Information Society (WSIS)
Civil Society Working Groups 
Scientific Information :  http://www.wsis-si.org  chair 
Patents & Copyrights   :  http://www.wsis-pct.org co-chair
------------------------------------------------------