[WSIS CS-Plenary] WSISblogs.org: an idea worth developing?

[Andy Carvin]

Last night on a whim, I went online and bought the domain names 
wsisblogs.org and wsisblogs.com.

As you all know, we’re less than a year away from WSIS 2005. During the 
the first summit in Geneva, there was a small contingent of bloggers in 
Geneva, including myself and the amazing folks at DailySummit.net.

Undoubtedly there will be many more at the next summit, including 
delegates, professional journalists, civic journalists and others. And 
let's not forget the prepcoms and thematic meetings. Should we expect 
much of media presence at all of these events, particularly when the 
major policy decisions will take place? Precedence suggests otherwise. 
At the last prepcom meeting in Tunisia last June, I was one of a handful 
of bloggers present, all of whom -- as far as I know -- represented 
civil society; there was practically no mainstream media present, nor 
any noticeable media coverage after the fact.

Just 10 days ago, Rebecca MacKinnon lamented in her blog on the lack of 
mainstream media coverage regarding Internet governance, which was 
discussed at a recent ICANN meeting in Capetown. The event was covered 
by numerous bloggers, she noted, “But no meaningful mainstream media 
coverage so far. Maybe it’s not as easy to understand or as exciting as 
the FCC, but isn’t it just as important (if not more so) for our global 
communication future?”

So all of this got me wondering about WSIS, the upcoming prepcoms and 
other WSIS thematic meetings, and the dearth of quality media coverage. 
 From my perspective, it’s incumbent upon civil society – including 
civic bloggers – to embrace a bigger leadership role in publicizing the 
policy outcomes that are currently at stake, and mobilize the online 
public to take interest in the issue.

With all of this swirling through my head last night, I purchased the 
domain names WSISblogs.org and WSISblogs.com. I haven’t thought through 
what should be done with it, but I can envision something like Dave 
Winer’s ConventionBloggers.com, which aggregated all the bloggers 
covering the Democratic and Republican National Conventions here in the 
US this past summer. In other words, a site where you could find all the 
latest posts from all the bloggers participating and/or observing the 
WSIS process. The site could be organized by major policy outcomes and 
related WSIS topics, so users could explore the latest blogs on Internet 
governance, the digital divide, protest activities, human rights issues, 
etc, as they occur. It would also be great to allow bloggers to add 
their RSS feeds to the site, since it’s not always possible to get an 
authoritative list of who’ll be blogging prior to WSIS-related events.

Even if we do nothing, chances are there will be bloggers galore at 
WSIS: dozens of bloggers, blogging on a variety of issues, in a variety 
of styles and languages, giving the public unfettered, unfiltered access 
to the WSIS process. Imagine if we could organize them all in one place.

Anyway, it’s just an idea. Would love to hear what others think. -andy

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Andy Carvin
Program Director
EDC Center for Media & Community
acarvin @ edc . org
http://www.digitaldivide.net
Blog: http://www.andycarvin.com
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