AW: [WSIS CS-Plenary] Re: Requests/demands for CS participation in Tunis phase

Thu Mar 11 00:20:15 GMT 2004

Amali,

Thanks for your message.  There have been so many messages on our various lists, that it is difficult for one to keep up with them all.  I would be delighted to participate in any effort to enhance the use of information and communication tools to support the efforts to organize the distributed collaborative work of the WSIS civil society.  I have been working on such an effort since September last year.  As I have mentioned before, for the past ten years, we have been studying the socio-technical infrastructure that supports geographically distributed collaboration, particularly between developed and developing countries.  For the past six years, we have taught a global graduate seminar entitled Globalization and the Information Society: Information, Communication and Development between three universities in the US and three in South Africa.  We use advanced web conferencing tools to hold weekly synchronous seminars.  In these seminars, we have plenary sessions for all of my students -- using live voice, video, PowerPoint slides, websites and other digital media (all over IP, with a 28.8 modem connection).  We use the same tools to have break-out sessions each week with of our virtual teams, comprised of students from all six universities.  In addition, we have had students and presenters participating in the seminar from as diverse locations as the ECA in Ethiopia, to other locations in Africa, Europe, Canada, and the Caribbean.

What I have proposed would build on the lessons learned over the last six years of conducting this seminar, as well as lessons that we have learned from working with distributed groups of scientists collaborating across organizations, and countries.  The approach that we have recommended would build on the technologies and organizational structures that we have already built up, but would go further, by allowing us to hold real-time distributed meetings, seminars on key themes, breakout rooms (which could be by language, region, theme, or other designation), panel presentations, issue debates, strategy and training, sessions, administrative business meetings, as well as decision-making and voting tools.

We are still interested in working with colleagues in the WSIS civil society to make this possible.  We have become convinced that these tools and approaches to our distributed collaboration would have an important impact on our work.  The primary limitation in the current tools that we have, is that the webconferencing package is limited to Windows machines (or Mac machines running OSX).  However, we have another tool that is slightly less easy to use, but does accommodate Wintel/Mac/and Linux machines, with much of the same functionality, and will be continuing to test this new tool.

Thus, I propose that those that we organize a small meeting in the next few days for those that are interested in having a discussion about the possibilities of using these tools.  I promise you that we will be able to get most people up and running in about fifteen minutes.  I look forward to working with those that are interested in planning these initiatives.  If we can organize this first meeting in the next few days, that would give us time for more detailed planning before the UNICTTF Global Forum in a few weeks.

n
Cheers,
Derrick

Derrick L. Cogburn, Ph.D. 
Assistant Professor of Information 
and African Studies 
The University of Michigan
Website: http://www.si.umich.edu/~dcogburn 
Blog:  <http://cogburn.blogspot.com/> http://cogburn.blogspot.com/

-----Original Message-----
From: plenary-admin at wsis-cs.org [mailto:plenary-admin at wsis-cs.org] On Behalf Of Amali De Silva
Sent: Wednesday, March 10, 2004 6:18 PM
To: plenary at wsis-cs.org
Subject: Re: AW: [WSIS CS-Plenary] Re: Requests/demands for CS participation in Tunis phase

Robert 

Could you please in the name of our common world good:

1. Connect with Andy and Derrick

2. Choose a "system" that requires the user to have the least amount of technologically sophisticated paraphenalia at hand

3. Pick two dates and times for a virtual realtime meeting - so that both halves of the world can make a connection sometime

4. Enable an archiving system so that those who miss it can access the archives

5. Advertise / Advise plenary of the meeting times with good advance notice ( say 4 days )

and moderate it !!! ????

I would be pleased to develop an agenda for this process.

Amali De Silva - Mitchell 

Andy Carvin <ACarvin at edc.org> wrote:

In Geneva last December, we hosted an event for our Digital Divide Network 
and had it streamed live over the Internet, courtesy of the Digital 
Workforce Education Society:

http://www.digibridge.org/id9.html

The stream allowed users anywhere in the world to log into the site, 
listen to the audio of the meeting, ask questions via chat and voice, see 
still photos of the event taken every 10 seconds, and access a whiteboard 
space. The technology worked pretty well, though it was inaccessible to 
people using Macs (which would have included myself if I hadn't gone to 
WSIS to host the event). There's also the issue of accessibility to people 
with disabilities, but the folks at ncam.org are developing tools to offer 
closed captioning of streaming video, for example.

thanks,
ac

-------------------------------------------------
Andy Carvin
Program Director
EDC Center for Media & Community
acarvin @ edc . org
http://www.digitaldividenetwork.org
-------------------------------------------------

Amali De Silva 
Sent by: plenary-admin at wsis-cs.org
03/10/04 12:41 PM
Please respond to plenary

To: plenary at wsis-cs.org
cc: 
Subject: Re: AW: [WSIS CS-Plenary] Re: Requests/demands for 
CS participation in Tunis phase

I support your inclusive ( input from all on the list via virtual 
mechanisms ) approach Robert. I understand Derrick ( fyi ) was also trying 
out a "system". Your suggestion however, may be accessible by all ? 

Amali De Silva - Mitchell 
President Vancouver Community Network, Canada

Robert Guerra wrote:
Wolfgang:

why just physical meetings? shouldn't we try to use ICT4s to help reduce 
distances and costs for us all to meet, discuss and try to move forward?

a couple of comments:

(1) IAMCR meeting:

Instead of the IAMCR meeting, i'd suggest having the WSIS session at
OURMedia IV, which is being held just before IAMCR.

Details:

Puerto Alegre, Brazil July 22-25

(2) Ways of participating virtually should be on the agenda as well. Not 
only for the meeting you mention, but days in between.

Thus, i'd suggest having an virtual "informal" meeting before the march 
UN ICT Task force meeting in New York. Planning ahead, and devising an 
agenda and our own "road map" of activities would - be a positive thing.

possible dates: March 19,20,21, 22 or 23
where: online - i can setup a IRC channel and a Java based applet so 
that one can enter the virtual room with just a browser.

i'd suggest 1 or 2, 2-3 hr sessions where we'd conduct a virtual 
plenary.

comments?

Robert

--On Wednesday, March 10, 2004 12:07 PM +0100 wolfgang at imv.au.dk wrote:

> dear list,
>
> to bring more balance into meeting places I would like to propose to
> use two forthcoming ICANN meetings in developing countries (July in
> Kuala Lumpur/Malaysia) and December in Cape Town/South Africa) for
> special WSIS coordination meetings and /or regional meetings. A third
> relevant world conference is organized by the "Internaitonal
> Association for Media and Communication Research" (IAMCR) in July in
> Porto Allegre/Brazil. The IAMCR will have a number of smaller
> workshops and a "big plenary", probably with high officials from the
> UN and from UNESCO, on itd agenda . Also here, additional reigonal
> meetings (in the local language) could be organized to promote more
> civil society interaction between North and South.
>
> best
>
> wolfgang
>
> -- Original Nachricht--
> Von: Sasha Costanza-Chock 
> An: Nnenna ,plenary at wsis-cs.org
> Senden: 09.03.2004
> Betreff: [WSIS CS-Plenary] Re: Requests/demands for CS participation
> in Tunis phase
>
> Hi nnenna, thanks for your message. I hope you don't mind that I CC
> this to the Plenary.
>
> I hope you could see from what I wrote that I am not proposing
> confrontation for confrontation's sake, and that I also believe
> holding the summit in Tunis is better for Tunisians and for African
> civil society in general than holding it again in Geneva, NY, or
> another place in the 'North.'
>
> At the same time, I am also sure that we do not want a repeat of what
> happened in Geneva, where in political terms civil society was
> unorganized, took very few strong positions, failed almost completely
> to engage social moveme nts of the base, missed many opportunities to
> advance discourse, critique, alternative solutions. We were organized
> enough to produce a wonderful consensus document, but not enough to
> make demands for basic necessities (for example, a dedicated physical
> space to meet and take decisions) or to make strong symbolic presence
> felt within the space.
>
> The reality is that the summit _does_ need the participation of CS: it
> needs us for purposes of legitimacy. They are desperate to find an
> alternative to the 'global governance' model that sees every meeting
> of high level government officials behind high fences, with thousands
> of riot police gassing and beating tens or hundreds of thousands of
> citizens in the streets below, opposing the current version of
> globalization and proposing alternatives.
>
> They hope that by including 'civil society' they can avoid this
> situati on and make decisions seem legitimate.
>
> This means they must open the door, at least a crack, to our
> participation.
>
> It then becomes our task, not to be joyful for a seat in the peanut
> gallery, but to make our participation meaningful: to insist. To make
> demands. To take stands where we need to.
>
> I only mean to say that I hope we will be organized enough during this
> next phase to avoid bestowing the cover of legitimacy, unless we
> receive more concessions than a fistful of 'overpasses' so we can
> take turns sitting in the back row and listening to the powerful make
> empty promises.
>
> Sasha
>
>
> Nnenna wrote:
>
>> Hi Sasha
>>
>> Thanks for your thoughtful message. The Tunisian system is
>> different.
>
>> It is different from the US, China, Nigeria or anynother country. I
>> do
>
>> not judge systems the way some people did recently. I would rather
>> speak with those on the ground.
>>
>> I did speak with Tunisian CS members. I can agree that that there is
>> a
>
>> possiblity that all of them are pro-regime. You understand?
>>
>> Then I went to see ex-colleagues at the African Development Bank.
>> They
>
>> are people with diplomatic status. They are not afraid of the
>> regime. They are still new to the system and they can still see the
>> difference. I was there the whole of Thursday. I spoke with them at
>> length.
>>
>> And my personal perspective is that what needs to be changed is the
>> system. But you don't change systems overnight. You lay the
>> foundation
>
>> for it.
>>
>> That is why I belive tha the WSIS in Tunis should be a good
>> oppurtunity
>
>> to help lay foundations for a better freer Tunisia. Support and
>> reeducation is needed, not noisemakling and boycotting.
>>
>> On a final note, the ITU SG made it clear that the WSIS was a
>> gorvenment
>
>> stuff. CS is only "invited"! We can only contribute. This is a
> good
>> chance for the CS to make good use of the oppurtunity.
>>
>> Yes, I believe we should draft a position paper, enjoining the
>> Tunisian
>
>> government to enable a freer environment : political, social and
> economic.
>>
>> That, I agree.
>>
>> Very best
>>
>> Nnenna
>>
>>
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Amali De Silva-Mitchell MSc.
Tel: 1-604-736-9012 & Email: amalidesilva at yahoo.com

>W§j¼¦j)bž b²Óåzv«Ë "±Ë(®m¶Ÿÿ 

Amali De Silva-Mitchell MSc.

Tel: 1-604-736-9012 & Email: amalidesilva at yahoo.com

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