[WSIS CS-Plenary] Upcoming Prepcom

[Robert Guerra]

At 9:34 PM -0500 1/17/05, Taran Rampersad wrote:
>
>I'd like to see some more weblogs on these things. They allow for
>transparency. This is the World Summit on *Information Society*, last
>time I checked, and honestly it does seem as though things have become
>more bogged down in the last WSIS - I followed through the Daily Summit
>(a weblog; http://www.dailysummit.net/ ) as best I could. I would think
>that Caucuses and Plenaries discussing technology would use the
>technologies available. It's pretty hard to make excuses for that.

surprisingly people in the past haven't really blogged.  Well, that's 
with the exception of the youth caucus that has always been much 
better at not only communicating, but also providing details of 
activities.


>(Yes, Robert, I do read your weblog. It lacks an RSS feed, perhaps that
>could be fixed? If you need help, let me know)

hmm. It does have a RSS feed, and should be auto-discoverable.
(has the RSS feed icon turned on in firefox..)

if it doesn't work, just add "rss.xml" to any my main WSIS blog address...

http://www.privaterra.org/activities/wsis/blog/

Resulting in :

http://www.privaterra.org/activities/wsis/blog/rss.xml
Which should work. let me know if it doesn't...



>Funding is not an issue for weblogs. Neither are Wikis. Perhaps it's
>time for people discussing technology to use it at the same level or
>better than the private sector. I've been rather perturbed by the fact
>that the average person doesn't know what is going on in WSIS.

a couple of comments...

1.. if we identify, as we have now that better communication is 
needed and that blogs and wikis can help then we need to have a group 
of people who are available and dedicated to use them, who in turn 
have the resources where to post them, and know that people will read 
it.

The closest thing to a blog is this site - 
http://www.worldsummit2003.org/ . It's where I turn to for news, 
analysis and commentary on what's going on. It's not live, but good 
nonetheless.

WSIS has been a goldmine for academics - they are researching it, and 
it's starting to generate a considerable about of documents and 
research. Are the resulting documents being shared so that we can all 
find out ...well, not in all cases. At times documents are shared, 
other times articles are published in subscription only journals (ie. 
http://tinyurl.com/59zvq)  and out of reach to the general public

For example, it would be nice if the SUMMER 2004 edition of  the 
journal for Information Technologies and International Development 
(http://tinyurl.com/4gjd5 ) which was specifically dedicated to WSIS 
could be made available under a creative commons license of some sort.

2. if we want the "average public" to know about WSIS, then we need 
people who can translate the WSIS geeky terms like WGIG, WEOG, GRULAG 
and other terms into something that is more understandable.

we  need more journalists not only participating, but also reporting 
and informing the public.  allafrica.com did cover PrepCom 3 and the 
summit well, probably far better than any of the north american press 
that , to be honest, really ignored the summit.

In summary we need to have an effective press strategy and way to 
effectively engage the press. Who will do that? Having identified the 
need, we then have to find out who could do the task. Believe it or 
not this - WAS - done at prepcom 1 (first phase), but never since. 
Perhaps with the time we have now to prepare we can ....

>The Civil Society Plenary, especially, should be doing this sort of thing.

who, how, in what language ? let's make sure its not only in English, 
but also in other languages.

It takes people who have the time, the resources and access to the 
technical tools to make it happen.


>In all, I think that there would be a lot of interest demonstrated on
the internet.

agree.


>My main weblog is at http://www.knowprose.com - I'm not a direct
>participant, but as things unfold in the world I have a tendency to
>write about them. Prepcom will be one of them, of course.

make sure to feed it to a aggregation site like technocrati - 
http://www.technorati.com/ that way, your wsis related articles can 
be found be others (and be available as a feed as well).

Subscribe to one of the feeds i've setup below and you'll get a daily 
dosis of WSIS related blogs in Spanish, French and English...

1. "sociedad de información" (Spanish - Information Society)
  RSS: http://www.technorati.com/watchlists/rss.html?wid=25668

2. smsi (WSIS in french)
RSS: http://www.technorati.com/watchlists/rss.html?wid=25662

3. wsis (english)
RSS: http://www.technorati.com/watchlists/rss.html?wid=25655


Getting back to preparations ....

one of the items that I raised was how to more effectively use  ICT 
tools for CS. what do people think? how do we deal with offers people 
have come forward with - and run with them.

how about the logistical issues and briefings...what to people have to say?


regards

Robert



-- 
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Robert Guerra <rguerra at privaterra.org>
Privaterra - <http://www.privaterra.org>