[WSIS CS-Plenary] IGF workshops ***important***

[Adam Peake]

The MAG will start trying to evaluate and select workshops.

If you are involved in organizing a workshop please look at 
<http://www.intgovforum.org/workshops_08/wrkshplist.php> and make 
sure information is up to date, and that any merging you have offered 
is reflected, etc. If you find problems, please contact the 
secretariat immediately, cc me if you wish.

Not much time, do it now please.

Please let me know about any offers you have made about merging, of 
request for more information about how to merge that aren't reflected.

The secretariat has suggested some general criteria to be used by MAG 
members when considering workshops, these are:

* relevance to the agenda of the meeting;

* diversity of views and perspectives;

* multi-stakeholder approach;

* geographical diversity;

* involvement of developing countries;

* relevance with regard to the cross cutting priorities of 
development and capacity building.

And whether the organizing group held workshops in the past and 
completed a report will also be a consideration (or it should be.)

Requests to merge have not been very successful, so if we are to 
reduce the number of workshops, as seemed to be the general sense of 
contributions made after both Athens and Rio then the MAG's going to 
have to start saying no.  And that's not an easy process easy.

The schedule has slots for just over 40 workshops and there are 85 on 
the website at the moment.  Initially 101 workshop proposals were 
received, so can see merging hasn't been very successful.

Thanks,

Adam