IGF Workshop
 Monday 11 February 2008
 Icann Meeting
 New Dehli, India
 
 
 >>PAUL TWOMEY:   Good afternoon.
 We will now start our workshop on Internet Governance Forum.  And let me just do a little bit of introductions.
 The members of the panel this morning, the moderator is the esteemed Nitin Desai, who has been playing sort of the key leadership role within the Internet Governance Forum, Markus Kummer, who many of us now know, a friend of ICANN's, as the executive director, David Appasamy, who is the chief communications officer of Sify and also the vice chair of the International Chamber of Commerce's Internet and Telecoms Infrastructure Task Force.
 Gaurab Raj Upadhaya, Internet economics analyst and staff engineer with Packet Clearing House, who are also good friends of ICANN.
 And a virtual unknown, named Vanda Scartezini, who, in terms of Internet Governance Forum, is her own multistakeholder organization, having been both on the board of ICANN, a member of the GAC, and now a member of ICANN's ALAC.
 And vice chair of the ALAC.
 Perhaps I might just make one- or two- or three-word comments, and then put the -- pass on to Nitin.
 ICANN considers -- has considered and continues to consider that the Internet Governance Forum is an incredibly important initiative of the Secretary-General.  ICANN considers that -- was part of the consensus coming out of the World Summit on the Information Society in Tunis, that consensus that such an organization, such a forum, was important.  We think the multistakeholder approach that has been followed in the forum has been an excellent one.  We want to congratulate Markus and particularly Nitin in the leadership they have shown in building the space for a multistakeholder organization in a U.N. system which, by its nature, must be governmentally focused because of its member states.
 But I think Nitin, in particular, has shown his long experience in the U.N. system in actually helping create that space, and we appreciate that, Nitin, personally on your behalf.  And it's great -- a great joy for me, really, that we're able to hold this session in your hometown.
 The -- we think the exercise in Rio was a reasonably, you know, positive one.  We're happy to have participated in that process.
 We are certainly very keen to be participating in both Delhi and in Cairo, and we think a lot of the emphasis for the meeting in Delhi around the sort of things that Secretary Singh mentioned this morning about access and participation for getting the next one billion people on the Internet, we think they really are the key objectives, and we're happy to participate in that.
 So with that sort of opening statement, I'd hand now to you, Nitin.
 >>NITIN DESAI:   Thank you very much, Paul.
 May I first welcome you all to my hometown, and I live here, which, of course, is a bit of a problem for me, because there are many other demands on my time.  So, unfortunately, I can't spend as much time here as I could if the meeting were not to be held in my hometown.  But, nevertheless, welcome to my hometown.  We have very good weather for you, and it will remain that way.  So enjoy that, but don't enjoy that too much, come here and listen to the meeting, and those of you from outside.
 I am not going to say anything now, I will leave my remarks for the end.
 The procedure I will follow is to turn to the panelists first, ask them to speak, since we have roughly, well, about 50 minutes, ask them to speak about five minutes each.  After that, I'm going to request Mr. Gadelha, from Brazil, just to give us his sense, as a person deeply involved in the organization of the Rio IGF, his sense of that conference.  We'll open the floor for discussions, and towards the end, I will request India as the host for the meeting to be held in December to respond to whatever questions, queries may be raised, and I'll try and wind up.
 That's the drill that I hope to follow.
 Let me first turn to Markus Kummer, the executive coordinator of the Internet Governance Forum, and ask him to give his assessment.
 >>MARKUS KUMMER:   Automatic.  Thank you, Nitin, and good afternoon.  It's a pleasure for me to be here.
 Throughout the existence of the IGF, we always had a session on the IGF, and the ICANN community right from the beginning has shown a great interest.  And many of you who attend ICANN meetings were also at the meeting in Rio and contributed to the success of the Rio meeting.
 I think it was generally felt that we had moved on a step further after the first meeting in Athens, which was also, by many, seen as an unexpected success.  The Rio meeting had, I think, in general terms, exceeded expectations even more.  And at least all I heard was that people were generally very satisfied.  And I think the participants made the success of the meeting.  They did not just come as active consumers, but many of you actually organized their own meeting within the meeting, their own workshop or other event.
 Right now, we are in the process of taking stock of the Rio meeting, of looking at what worked and what did not work, or what did not work so well.  And we look forward to the meeting in India later this year.
 The discussions focus on process, on format, as well as on substance.  
 In terms of process, the Advisory Group -- that was the body that prepared the meeting in terms of substance -- has also been given the mandate to make proposes regarding its own renewal.  And these discussions are taking place now.
 We will have a meeting in two weeks' time in Geneva, open consultations, where all interested stakeholders are invited to take part.  And we will discuss this there.
 There is a general feeling also that the Advisory Group has done a good job.  Obviously, if the meeting was good, so the preparatory process must also have been fairly adequate.
 But there is also a general feeling that the Advisory Group needs to be renewed, it should not be a permanent kind of body, but it should bring in new, fresh blood.  And the difficulty is now how to find a process that is sufficiently transparent and that is also accepted by stakeholders where stakeholders feel represented by the Advisory Group.
 But the members of the Advisory Group, they have not been -- they have been appointed in their personal quality.  They don't actually represent different institutions or bodies, but they are expected to connect with these people to a wider community.
 In terms of format, again, on the whole, it was felt that it was an excellent meeting.  However, there are some who say there were too many meetings within the meeting.  I think we had -- apart from the main sessions in the main plenary hall, we had a total of over 80 different events.  And there are those who say that's just too much, too much for -- you cannot digest that many meetings; you cannot go in all of them.  Whereas, others were quite pleased with that.  I heard positive comments on the structure of the program, that it was well-defined, it allowed people with one particular interest to follow their particular interest.  For instance, we had a strong interest on the protection of children, child pornography, these issues.  And there were several workshops, best-practice forums, on these issues.  But we made sure that they did not clash with each other so that people who are interested in these issues could have a fairly interesting and rich menu.  In many ways, it reminds me of the buffet we have outside.  Nobody is expected to eat all the dishes our generous host presents.  We make a choice.  And in that sense, the program in Rio was a very rich program.  Nobody was expected to go to all the meetings, but participants had to make a choice.
 But as I said, we have to discuss this, whether to go ahead again with a very rich program that satisfies also the interest expressed by different stakeholders who want to present their own event, or whether we should have a more thinned-out program or streamlined program.  These are essentially the main options.
 And also, we will have to discuss whether the new types of meeting we introduced in Rio, such as the open forums, where different organizations could present themselves -- ICANN made use of one of these slots -- or the best-practice forums, where we looked at good practices both in terms of issues and in terms of national policies, whether they made sense and whether they should be repeated.
 In terms of substance, I think there's a general feeling that the four themes we started in Athens -- namely, access, security, openness, and diversity -- were broad enough themes to satisfy all different interest groups.  And in Rio, we added critical Internet resources.  And what I've seen and read and heard so far is, there seems to be a general -- generally positive feeling to keep these themes.  However, maybe with a different focus, maybe that some of them should be a little bit more put on the back burner.  Also a proposal was to have the main sessions more as reporting-in sessions from the workshops and other events.
 Also, the question has repeatedly been discussed whether the overall priority themes -- development and capacity-building -- should not be a little bit more in the focus.
 One of the problems when you have cross-cutting themes is that you tend to forget how to address these questions.
 Definitely a emerging new issue is the linkage with sustainable development, and the environment in general.  It was brought up in the Rio meeting right at the opening session by the CEO of Fujitsu, who made comments on the impact of ICT in general and the Internet in particular on the environment, and at the closing session, a panelist -- a session on emerging issues, a panelist turned it the other way around and referred to the positive contribution the Internet could make to solve environmental problems.
 And one of the substantive contributions we received is from the highly reputed Canadian Institute for Sustainable Development, who is interested in the interlinkage between sustainable development and Internet governance.  And in the times where global warming is more and more an overarching priority of governments, I think this is a very interesting avenue that deserves exploring.
 But as I said, we are right now in a very preliminary phase in determining the shape of the meeting in India later this year.  And I would, of course, also be interested in hearing your comments and input.
 Thank you for your attention.
 >>NITIN DESAI:   Thank you.
 Thank you, MARKUS.
 May I now turn to David Appasamy, who is the chief communications officer of Sify Limited, and he's also the vice chair of the Internet and telecoms infrastructure task force.
 >>DAVID APPASAMY:   I speak on behalf of BASIS, which is the ICC initiative.  BASIS stands for Business Action in Support of the Information Society.  And we have actually put down our thoughts and reflections from a BASIS point of view, which I will use as the basis for my feedback.
 ICC/BASIS members believe that the second IGF successfully built on the IGF in Athens in 2006 and provided an open and informative forum for discussion on Internet governance issues among all stakeholders.
 I must also add at this time that we must congratulate the IGF secretariat and the host country for the tremendous arrangements that they had made in Rio, which were very, very conducive to how the meetings went.
 As regards the main sessions, we support the conclusion of the main sessions but encourage an evolved format that will make these discussions more meaningful.
 The main sessions appeared to attract less attendance than at the IGF in Athens, primarily because of the general nature of the discussions and the number of events that were running in parallel.  Markus just mentioned that there were something like 80 workshops.
 And the sheer number of events that were going on resulted in people having to decide where they wanted to be, and the main sessions had considerably less attendance.  And this is something that could be addressed as we go into New Delhi.
 I think we should also stay cognizant of the cross-cutting theme of capacity-building, so that in all the main sessions, discussions should emphasize the development agenda issues and human and institutional capacity-building measures that are necessary to strengthen involvement of all stakeholders in Internet governance issues and institutions.  Sometimes when you're looking at the larger picture, we tend to drop some of these very, very important issues.
 The emerging issues session in Rio was a good model and should be used again in New Delhi.  It was very interactive and a valuable opportunity to raise issues that were not discussed during the other main sessions.
 With regard to access, the discussions on access issues can add real value for participants.  
 For example, in Rio, we lost the opportunity to really discuss the last-mile kind of issues, you know, which many developing countries were looking for in terms of how do we connect more and more people to the Internet.  And this, again, is something we should keep consciously cognizant of as we go towards New Delhi.  
 With regard to diversity, we believe the discussions in New Delhi should focus on the ability of the Internet and ICTs to enhance diversity with limitless capacity to transmit content.  The role that user-generated content plays in advancing cultural diversity and the promotion of cultural diversity through intellectual property protection and standards that facilitate the creation of new software applications and tools, such as translation technologies, et cetera.  This, again, is, you know -- you remember what Mr. Singh had to say this morning, Secretary Singh, in terms of languages and the relevance of languages in a very diverse country like India.  This is, again, something we could focus on with greater clarity going forward.
 I did speak about the languages and how important they are at the diversity session in Rio.  And we had speakers from Africa who talked about how important it was.  And I think if the next one billion people are going to come from the developing world, this becomes a priority.
 With regard to the session on openness, the openness session, we believe, should be managed in the balanced eight way that allows all stakeholders to share their experiences.  Emphasis should be placed on the role that the Internet and ICTs play in promoting access to information and how governments, business, civil society, and other organizations can work together to maximize openness, interoperability, and the free flow of information on the Internet.
 With regard to security, we think the relationship between security and openness should be part of both sessions, to demonstrate the tradeoffs and challenges in ensuring both simultaneously.
 The discussion should raise awareness about the work which is going on in private and public-sector bodies and forums, with substantial expertise in network security to prove practices in the area of security and with a special focus on work that is relevant to small and medium-sized enterprises and emerging economies.
 With regard to critical Internet resources, we believe this underpins all of the discussions in the main sessions and would be best discussed as an -- and incorporated as part of those sessions.  So whether we're talking about access, openness, diversity, or security, critical Internet resources should be an underpinning that kind of holds it all together.
 With regard to the IGF in India, there is something that we believe should be included, and that is a session on innovation.  We believe that innovation and how to promote it should be a new cross-cutting topic addressed in New Delhi in all the main sessions.  Discussion about new developments, applications, and services that affect Internet governance issues and that might provide solutions and improvements in each theme area would add an important dimension to the discussions and what participants learn from the IGF events in New Delhi.
 Innovation, after all, is what drives the Internet, and this is something we need to take cognizance of and have as a cross-cutting theme.  
 This about sums up most of what we were talking about in this document.  There is far greater detail with regard to workshops and so on and so forth.  This document is available on our Web site, which is www.iccwbo.org.
 And I would encourage you to go and have a look at it to see all that we had to submit.
 In concluding, I'd like to say that we should be careful, again, about perhaps the number of workshops, because they also had the effect of preventing people from networking opportunities.  Everybody was busy in Rio running from one session to another or choosing between one session and another, and very little networking actually happened.  And there's a lot of value in that as well.
 With these words, I conclude.  Thank you very much.
 >>NITIN DESAI:   Thank you, David.
 May I now turn to -- may I in fact also take this opportunity of thanking ICC and all of its members in BASIS for the consistent and strong support they have provided the IGF process.
 I now turn to Gaurab Raj Upadhaya, who is an Internet economics analyst and a staff engineer at the Packet Clearing House.
 >>GAURAB RAJ UPADHAYA:   Thank you, Mr. Desai and other folks or the panel.
 Probably of the five people up here, I was the only one who was, unfortunately, not there in Rio, although I quite keenly followed the proceedings there and was to be on a panel, but, unfortunately, I was up in the mountains in Nepal during that time.
 Coming back to point, I'm mostly going to talk about my own personal experiences of running networks and helping out ISPs and working with R&E networks in the south Asian as well as the overall Asian region, including the Pacific Islands as well as the Middle East lately.  Most of my work relates to routing, DNS, most of the nuts and bolts of the underlying Internet stuff.
 So looking from that perspective and especially from the region, I have a few points that I jotted down that could be on the agenda of the next IGF meeting as well as, you know, other discussions going forward.
 First and foremost, the first point that I would like to point out, and probably going to be a theme of discussion at the next IGF, is access and infrastructure in the last mile.  David just brought it up.  But as this year is pretty interesting, because exactly almost after a year of the big Taiwan earthquake and a big fiber cut, which affected most of Southeast Asia and north Asia, we had almost similar cut in the Middle East region, which kind of took out almost the entire Middle East for almost 48 hours or more.
 And that is a problem, from our perspective, because there's so much traffic going on on the pipes, trying to read out this traffic very fast and quickly across the ocean is not easy anymore.  That's a big problem.  So that could be something to talk about.  And, you know, how do you build more?  I mean, Middle East and Asia-Pacific or north Asia and south Asia are lucky in terms of they have diversified fiber access.  But thinking about something like Mauritius or South Africa, if one of those cables going down there gets cut off, then they're literally cut off the Internet for an extended period of time.  So that's a big concern on a big scale.
 Coming to the regional perspective, it's kind of a pity that, looking at it, Bhutan and Bangladesh just got connected to the international fiberoptic network, and Nepal is still not connected.  And within the region, traffic from India to Bangladesh goes through Paris.  That tells a lot about what's happening in the region.  So probably something needs to be done about liberalizing the buildup of infrastructure within the region, rather than being dependent upon out-of-region infrastructure for access between these countries.  That could be something that could happen on the sidelines of the SAARC framework or something that could be discussed at IGF, because this is mostly something that we think is kind of government controlled, as it goes up at the policy level.
 Other stuff there, there's also regional cooperation, and talks about how do you share knowledge across the region.
 I've been involved with the south Asian for six, five years now, since the very beginning.  I believe it's been a very good forum to extend knowledge and tips and talk to each other across the region, which builds up a big group of people who know what's happening in the region.  And something like that is -- needs to be supported further.  And I'm pretty happy that there's a new initiative in the Middle East as well as there are initiatives in the Pacific Islands with PACNOG and MENOG that are trying to fulfill those roles.
 So alongside the infrastructure that kind of ties up with the policy, there needs to be a lot of effort or push on trying to get people to talk to each other.  I mean, there's the IGF, there's the IETF, there's a lot of these meetings.  But, you know, trying to find engineering people talking to each other like they do in the U.S., with NANOG and other meetings, or in Europe, is not yet happening in this part of the world, which is a big problem, because when there are problems, we don't really know whom to go and talk to at the other side.  And I don't know how many of you get to that, like you call up your ISP and get put on hold and have to go through, like, press 9 for this and press 8 for that, and when the Internet core routers are, you know, melting down, I don't think that's the way to actually solve a problem.
 And that needs to be emphasized as well.
 Now, I'm going to go into something a bit broader on the technology side of things from the IGF -- I mean for the next IGF meeting, something that could be discussed and something that's being discussed quite extensively here at the ICANN meeting are actually implications of new standards coming out that we take it are trying to implement things like DNSsec, maybe the governments or participating people at IGF need to be looking at that.  Because I see a big disconnect in people coming to the IGF meeting versus people that come to even ICANN or go to IETFs or other meetings.  So maybe a bit of focus there on trying to get those people who are primarily coming to the IGF meeting, mainly the government people, a bit more, you know, clued in into things like DNSsec, maybe IDNs and, of course, IPv6 and things like that could be a bit more useful.  Maybe -- I mean, I'm just looking at 80 parallel forums.  Maybe there could be some kind of basic teaching stuff going on for policymakers about, okay, this is how it actually works, and this is the bits and pieces that policymakers do need to understand if they are going to make policies about this particular -- these particular technologies.
 Those were some of the things I was -- I want to talk about.
 Now, coming to the solution part of things.  I probably talked about problems more.
 Some of the things that we have been trying to do are things that could be talked about in the solution space.
 Am I speaking too fast?
 >>NITIN DESAI:   Yes, but you need to finish.
 >>GAURAB RAJ UPADHAYA:   Okay, I will try to slow down and try to summarize things.  Is a lot of our effort, and (inaudible) point and I was talking about the (inaudible) point at the ccTLD tech stuff this morning, is a lot more traffic is getting localized.  Unfortunately, it is probably not the case in South Asia.  And maybe there are some things people need to look at.  I have friends from Sweden here and I work almost globally, and a huge amount of European traffic is local now.  And the same thing happens in Japan and Korea.  But, unfortunately, for some reason, we are still not seeing a huge amount of local traffic or localized stuff in the region.
 And maybe that points back to things David was mentioning earlier, are diversity, local language computing, resources available in the local languages, and regional infrastructure connectivity.
 It all comes back to the same thing.
 Those are the talking points I want to raise about.  And then you can always ask me questions about things.
 Thank you.
 >>NITIN DESAI:   Thank you.  Our last panelist is Vanda Scartezini, the vice chair of the At-Large Advisory Committee.
 >>VANDA SCARTEZINI:   Thank you, Mr. Desai.
 It's a pleasure to be once again in this wonderful country.
 As a member of at large of ICANN community, we are trying to translate the interests of users of the Internet, so let me raise the main points that are the focus of Internet users' concerns.
 When we think about IGF, I would put.
 Let me use the Chairman's words from the Rio IGF meeting in November.  IGF is not only a space for dialogue, but also a median to encourage fundamental change at the local level to empower communities.
 And we believe in that.
 Under this approach, the most important issues for the users are access and content, and both are critical resources from users' view.  Build up local infrastructure, not only for offer physical access to telecommunication facilities to all, but also guarantee that this access will reach the people under affordable price.  As deploying ISPs, Internet exchange points, routing sites, or even find new alternatives for public/private partnership in order to allow more fast deployment of IPv6, for instance.
 But physical access itself is not enough to provide users inclusion in the Information Society.
 Capacity building is another critical resource that users have in mind as critical one, and as a priority for that.
 Capacity building is as wide as it gets.  Content in local language and local script is fundamental for wider inclusion, as well as empowering small business.
 Under these issues lies the importance of IDN.  We are talking this today, this morning.
 I said the Indian secretary this morning, why should India, for instance, have its own country name in just one script?  For most of its population, the script is associated with their culture and their identity is another one.
 The identify yourself with your own culture and own script plays a key role to accelerate digital inclusion in many communities, especially in Asia region.
 Being in India, it is very easy to remember another important issue under capacity building is developing software solutions to address problems, including to reduce the cost of access to those populations.
 And here comes the importance of a regional approach, which in my personal opinion needs to be reinforced by IGF.
 Regional organizations is the best way to help to reach IGF meeting goals, and afterwards, to help implement those outputs from the IGF.
 Regionally, consensus and deployment of the change is not only more affordable, but also brings more efficacy to the whole system.
 Inside of ICANN, the at-large organization is reaching more productive outputs after the regional at-large organization starts to function.
 So I would like to encourage you to participate and contribute with the next step with IGF here in India to ensure that Delhi IGF will bring a step forward in our way to build a more fair and more balanced economic and social development for all users around the world.
 Thank you.
 >>NITIN DESAI:   Thank you, Vanda.
 So you heard from the panel.  And before I just open the floor, can I request Brazil's representative, Mr. Gadelha, the sense of how the host saw the Rio meeting and the lessons learned.
 >>AUGUSTO GADELHA:  Thank you, Mr. Desai.  Good afternoon to all.
 Well, we are very proud and glad that we had hosted the IGF meeting in Rio, and we are also glad that, at the end, all the assessments that we had from people were very positive ones, as we heard here.
 Certainly we have to remind that the IGF is a multistakeholder meeting, which brings together people from society, from the users in general, from governments, from industry.  And so it is a big forum which we believe, with time, will get better and better, and maybe will be the seed of a permanent forum where people that use the Internet, in general, people in the whole world will have the opportunity to discuss what Internet means for their nations, for their cultures, and for their lives in general.
 So we were very glad that all these aspects have been taken and discussed in Rio.  And as for the many discussions and many sessions that we had, this is a demand which we feel is still contained.
 There are a lot of issues that people want to discuss, and so the organization of the next IGF in India will have the same problem:  How to contain all these sessions.  How to make people understand that not everything can be discussed at the same time.
 But anyway, in Rio, we were glad that some issues that had been, in a sense, not discussed in Greece were brought together, or brought in front -- to the front of the discussion, as was, for example, the critical resources in Internet.
 And our evaluation of the Rio meeting was very positive for Brazil, not only because we had this response, which people really gave a lot of praise to the organization, to what happened there, but also because in the process of organizing the meeting, we had the society in Brazil very much involved in discussing many issues of the Internet in Brazil.
 So we saw many organizations, social institutions and governmental departments getting together, discussing questions that were going to be discussed in the IGF.
 And so we saw that there was a very big impact on Brazil itself.  And for that, we are very glad that we have hosted the IGF in Brazil.
 Actually, we believe, as we did in Rio, that Rio should be the "Athens-plus."  We believe here in New Delhi you will be Rio-plus-plus.  IGF will get better and better, as I said.  And for that I would say that the work of Mr. Nitin Desai together and Markus Kummer in organizing the topics, in organizing the whole meeting, together with the (inaudible) is certainly to be praised, to be part of our thinking in the evaluation of the success in Rio.
 So thank you very much, and that's what we would like to express in this meeting.
 Thank you.
 >>NITIN DESAI:   And I'm sure I speak for everybody who was there to thank you once again, Mr. Gadelha, to you and all the people in Brazil who worked so hard to make that meeting so effective, so successful.
 We have floor is open.  We have about 15 minutes to take comments from the floor before we wind up.
 Who wants to come up and speak?
 Yes.
 >> Pablo Hinojosa:  Hello?
 >>NITIN DESAI:   Why don't you come up.  Can somebody have a look at the mike and see why it's not working?
 >>PABLO HINOJOSA:  It's a question from remote participant Wolfgang Kleinwächter.  He says, what I observed in Rio was that the vague concept of enhanced cooperation is evolving bottom in an informal way without bit noise among interested parties like ICANN, ISOC, IETF, UNESCO, ITU, and others.
 IGF is primarily a place for enhanced communication.  I would like to hear some comments how the panelists see the IGF a possible space provider also for enhanced cooperation.
 This is from Wolfgang Kleinwächter.
 >>NITIN DESAI:   Whether the IGF can be the place where, if you like, coalitions of the willing to take on specific actions could emerge, and not just as a space for dialogue and communication.  That I understand is the question.
 Maybe we will collect one or two more and then I will turn to the panel to comment on this.
 Yes.  I think the mike is working now.
 >>SEBASTIEN BACHOLLET:   As far as the question asked by Mr. Wolfgang, there was a part about the communication of international organizations, and I wanted to know whether -- rather than the future of these international organizations, if you could explain whether we could have new members, whether they could explain what they have done during the previous year, what are their objectives for the next year.  And it will be very interesting for those who cannot be present at all the meetings, at all the workshops, and at all the international organizations.  It will allow them to know at the end of this meeting what is really happening as far as Internet governance is concerned in all international organizations.  They will have the big picture of what is going on.
 >>NITIN DESAI:   Anybody else?  No?  We will turn to the panelists.  I have two -- essentially the questions are linked in some ways, but the first question was whether the IGF can progress to becoming a space where -- which engenders concrete cooperation between entities, and not just as a space for dialogue.
 Second, linked to this whole idea, we talked of dynamic coalitions and so on earlier, I understood the second question to be really focused on, in some ways, taking stock of what was stated then in terms of what would be done, what has been done, what are the pluses, the minuses, how has the system evolved over the year.
 That's my understanding of the second question.
 Any further questions before I turn to the panel?  No?
 Who is going to lead off on this?  Markus.
 >>MARKUS KUMMER:   Thank you.  Yes.  It's nice to know that Wolfgang is following as he cannot be with us this week in India.
 I hear it's the first ICANN meeting he is missing since ICANN started its activities, which is quite remarkable.  His questions refer to the term enhanced cooperation as defined in the Tunis Agenda.
 The question is that many different people understand this concept differently, and so it's in a way very difficult to answer.
 I understand what he is getting at.
 I think what happened, de facto, is in the various IGF meetings, indeed, because the IGF offers a neutral platform for dialogue, it actually fostered a positive dialogue among the various intergovernmental and other organizations participating.  And in that sense, I think the IGF is contributing to enhanced cooperation in a very narrow sense between existing institutions.
 The other question was very specific, and I definitely would agree with Sebastien that the open forums that were intended to be there where organizations could explain what they were doing.  They were not intended to provide a platform for a beauty contest.
 However, it is very difficult to tell an intergovernmental organization what they should do when they are given a space.  And we can only hope that, over time, they will interpret this platform, if we continue with the same format, that it is actually better if it leads to an informed dialogue on their past activities rather than to present a glossy picture of their activities.
 But as I said, nobody -- I was not able to participate in any of these open forums, so I don't know whether he refers to all of these sessions or just one or two in particular.  And this is one of the elements we have to take into account when assessing the usefulness of this type of event.
 >>NITIN DESAI:   Thank you.
 David.
 >>DAVID APPASAMY:   Thank you, Mr. Desai.
 I cannot think of a better platform than the IGF to foster cooperation.  As Markus said, it's a neutral platform and it's a very rich platform where people exposed to a high level of multistakeholder cooperation and understanding.
 So it can foster cooperation better than anyplace else.  It's also highly experiential.  The people there are more open, I believe, than they would be back in their offices.
 But the key here is they should be given the space in terms of time to be able to talk to each other and to cooperate.
 The experience in Rio, as I said earlier, was it was so rushed that most of us just went from meeting to meeting and were struggling to keep pace.
 We need to be able to have open times when people can cooperate, people can network, people can spend time understanding each other's objectives and so on.  And I believe that would be very valuable.
 In terms of the workshops and what Markus had outlined, what we have, at ICC BASIS, suggested is that, A), those who would like to do workshops submit their requests well in advance with a clear-cut topic and objective.  What do they hope to achieve, so that it doesn't become a showcasing of any one or the other organization.
 If this is done well enough in advance and if the program is frozen well enough in advance, instead of taking additional workshops till the very last minute so that the program doesn't even have on it what exactly is being discussed, I think we will avoid a lot of these problems.
 Thank you.
 >>NITIN DESAI:   Thank you.  Vanda?
 >>VANDA SCARTEZINI:   Regarding the other participation, this, for us, I believe, as well any other institutions, this is a process we are learning a lot how to behave.
 So it's expecting that we improve from Rio till now and find out another kind of facility to allow more space for interconnection among people.
 And what I believe is that once we have this kind of step forward in each IGF, we are using the innovation in this process.
 So I believe that putting this innovation issue in this IGF in India will be really an alternative to provide more input from the society, because it's an open space to allow people and allow the communities to bring, more openly, their opinions in each of the issues we are talking about in the Internet.
 Thank you.
 >>GAURAB RAJ UPADHAYA:   I was not at the IGF, so I will probably present my comments after the IGF in India.  
 Thanks.
 >>NITIN DESAI:   Before we wind up, may I just ask whether Ravi Shanker from India would have a word or two to say?  Since you are the host of the next IGF.  Before I just conclude.
 >>N. RAVI SHANKER:   Thank you, Mr. Desai.  ICANN in February 2008 and IGF in December 2008.  I think we have a calendar of the Internet for India.
 The fourfold approach of diversity, access, security and openness, with the Rio factor of critical Internet resources can only build on, as the delegate from Brazil mentioned, that New Delhi will hopefully be a Rio-plus-plus.
 Inclusive development is what we would look forward to.  And as the Secretary of the Department of Information Technology highlighted in his opening remarks today, multilingualism will be the cornerstone of our inclusive development.  And I think these facets, delegates who arrived in New Delhi, would be able to understand during the course of the next few days, as they begin to explore the multi-faceted cultural and linguistic flavor of India.
 I'm sure that with the support of all, we will be able to make IGF 2008 a Rio-plus-plus.  I appreciate the Brazilian counterpart for having wonderful work at Rio, and we will definitely build upon it.
 Thank you.
 >>NITIN DESAI:   Thank you.
 We are out of time, so I will just quickly try and say a few words rising from what the last people have said as well as the comments that I have heard.
 First in terms of the organization.  If I get the message right, we will have to look at the number of meetings, because several people have expressed this concern, that the sheer number of meetings is a problem because, -- but as Markus did explain, you don't have to attend all the meetings.  It's exactly like you don't have to eat all the food that is laid out there.  But nevertheless, we will have a look at it, I'm sure, when we examine the organization of the IGF.
 I would like to stress here that the IGF is an open access forum.  It's like a town hall meeting, and the one most important thing in the town hall meeting is nobody must go away from that meeting thinking they could not say what they wanted to say.
 This is very, very important.
 The whole logic, the whole political logic of the IGF is that it's a space -- the one space which is available to you if everything else is still shut to you.
 Because it's not a membership-based organization.  It's an open access forum.  It's a town hall meeting.
 So I think we have to be very careful not to create rigidity of structure which generates a sense of oh, I wanted to do this and I was not allowed to do it.  We should try to avoid that and keep the regulation to the minimum required for logistical purposes.  So I will keep that in mind.
 But nevertheless, the message is well taken.
 I thought the question about open forums was also a valid one, and Markus did respond to it saying that we certainly didn't intend these to be beauty shows, which was raised, and we could certainly examine how to give them a certain edge, a certain bite, and we will look at that.
 Everybody was very much in favor of the -- and stressed the importance of the emerging issues theme.
 In terms of what we need to discuss in the sessions, by and large, nobody has questioned the fivefold structure which was used in Rio.
 One question which was raised and which resonated very strongly, certainly in this is country, is that of innovation, and how does Internet governance impinge on the possibilities of innovation.  I believe this is a very interesting idea.  We have to do it from the perspective of Internet governance, not in some overall, generalized perspective but certainly posing a question like this:  How does the structure and management of the Internet impinge on the possibilities of innovation and rapid development, is something that we could do.
 I heard a lot of questions about access, last mile, and one theme that -- in a way, one needs an identity for every IGF.  Where one possibility for the India IGF is to ask the question:  What are the implications of the universalization of the Internet for the themes that we have?  What if the Internet is used not by a billion people by but 6 billion people?  What if everybody, every person in India had an Internet address?  Or had an e-mail address?
 How does it impinge on openness?  On security?  On issues of access?  On diversity?  Or on the management of critical Internet resources.  And it is a very powerful thing if you can work it through dialogue and discussion, implications of universalization of the Internet.
 And that will certainly require greater attention to the sorts of issues of the last mile, which were raised by David.
 So I think this has been a very valuable and rich discussion.  And certainly we have to make an effort to make every IGF something which adds value to the very effective processes that we have for Internet governance in many different spaces.
 The real strength of the IGF is that it brings together people who normally tend to meet separately.
 The Internet community which is involved in the running of the Internet, the corporate secretary, the business, governments, and the civil society and so on.
 It has a capacity for bringing people together who generally tend to meet separately, and that's its strength.  Can it be moved beyond dialogue to, actually, engender cooperation through what we would call coalitions of the beginning?  A beginning has been made with the dynamic coalitions which were launched, in fact, in Athens itself.
 And let us see how that evolves.
 I think it's very important to remember that our focus is Internet governance.
 I cannot see the forum diversifying into the whole range of issues subsumed under ICT for development.  And there are fora which do handle this and I think it's very important that we keep that in mind because there will be this tendency to see this as a forum where we will talk about issues which are really about ICT for development.
 It is an Internet Governance Forum, not an information Internet society forum.
 Because otherwise I think you would end up duplicating work because this sort of work is also being done in other places.
 But nevertheless, the idea of engendering cooperation, not just dialogue, is a very valuable one, and let us see how we can build on that.
 A final thought to our Indian host.  One very important message I got from Brazil was the great importance of mobilizing not just the resources of the government and the governmental departments but mobilizing local civil society.  Because that becomes very important for a forum like the Internet Governance Forum, which is a multistakeholder forum and not really an intergovernmental body.
 So I hope that we can pay some attention to how do we mobilize the very vigorous civil society that we have in India working in these areas.
 So you have been a very quiet audience, but nevertheless, this has been a constructive and useful discussion, and certainly Markus and I will take away very many important lessons from this and when we discuss these things in February and later in Geneva.
 Thank you very much.
 [ Applause ]