2015 11 12 Open Forum DiploFoundation And The Geneva Internet Platform Workshop Room 3 FINISHED

The following are the outputs of the real-time captioning taken during the Tenth Annual Meeting of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) in João Pessoa, Brazil, from 10 to 13 November 2015. Although it is largely accurate, in some cases it may be incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. It is posted as an aid to understanding the proceedings at the event, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.

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>> MODERATOR: Good afternoon. Okay. Good afternoon. So I presume that the sound is okay. So good afternoon, everybody, I would like to welcome you at this Open Forum that we have organized to present to you the activities of the DiploFoundation and Internet platform. While there are more of us here at the IGF from my team with quite a few supporting us from Europe, I’m unfortunately the only one at this session because my colleagues are speaking in other workshops so I’m sorry about this.

I guess some of you are familiar with our work. I hope that we have some alumnae among you, but I would like to prepare the session that is useful both for those of you who have not it information about dip, and the Geneva Internet platform, but also to you that are quite familiar, and I would like to take the opportunity then to have you interact with Diplo through me about what we can do further to assist you.

I will be joined quite soon by Thomas Snyder from the Swiss Government which is a supporter of the Geneva Internet platform who will give you a few insights about why Switzerland is supporting us. I have a technical issue I have to raise because I did not know about the room set up. I did not take earphones myself. So unless somebody brings them from me, I won’t be able to hear the questions in the room.

So for those of you who are not familiar with our work, DiploFoundation is a noon Government, not‑for‑profit organization. I would like to summarize quickly our mission here. Our main objective is to try to increase the power of small and developing states, to influence their own future, and development. We want to increase international accountability and inclusivity. We want to increase the legitimacy of international policy making, and we want to improve global governance and international policy development.

Now, how are we actually doing this? Diplo is a training institution. The main projects that we are running concentrate on capacity development. We organize a lot of events, both in Geneva and abroad, and I will also get in detail much more about what are the events that are coming up. Being a training institution, we organize courses. We have been involved in online training for more than ten years and many of the people that are currently in IG have entered the world of Internet Governance through Diplo courses.

There are over 20 subjects that we cover in the courses that enable us to reach out to communities that are far away. They are designed for diplomats and busy professionals that are able on your online learning platform to learn from each other and interact with each other with the help of trained Diplo tutors. We pay a lot of attention to a very specific methodology that we have for our teaching which I wouldn’t call teaching as such, but rather coaching. Being here at the IGF I wanted to stress a few courses that we are currently offering and that you can review more in detail on the diplomacy.EDU website. We have the basic introduction courses on Internet Governance. We have courses on a wide range of topics starting with cybersecurity to critical Internet infrastructure, eParticipation, intellectual property rights and so on.

We do research, so some of our research projects can also be a review more in detail on the website, and we do publish quite heavily. Some of you may be familiar with introduction to Internet Governance which is our signature publication by our Director, Dr. Jovan Kurbalija which has up to date been translated into ten languages and is in the sixth edition. You can download the books for free. The newest edition is available in English, French, Indonesian and Thai and we are in touch in French, and in touch with many other partners trying to find ways to having this resource translated into other languages.

We are fundraising for an initiative with the efforts having this book translated into all UN languages, and Portuguese. So you are interested in discussing more in detail on this aspect, please let me know.

We very proud that in our network, we have quite a high number of alumnae and it is always a pleasure to see them around here. We currently have more than 4,000 alumnae and I think there are about two countries currently globally that are missing on our alumnae map. You can check this map online own diplomacy.EDU/alumnae and you will be able to see who from your country has gone through our courses and we would hope to have you involved in enlarging the alumnae community even more.

For those of you who are Diplo alumnae, I hope you are aware of the informal Diplo alumnae gathering that you are organising. If you are not, please make sure to stop by at the end of the session and I will provide you with more details. Being here at the IGF which is very well known for its heavy focus on remote participation Orion line participation, I also wanted to say a few words about our work in this regard. Diplo is a big promoting of online participation, and we have been ‑‑ we are involved right now, my colleague Virginia who is around, the MAG member is involved heavily in the remote participation work that IGF is currently undertaking but we have been involved in the very early innovation of remote hubs in the Internet Governance process and have supported the IGF Secretariat yacht in participation since the IGF held in 2008 in India.

Very new development is that the eParticipation principles of the IGF workshops have been heavily supported and organized by DiploFoundation. We are planning a Conference onion line participation and Smart event organizations and how to make events more interactive. In Geneva at the beginning of December this year I have left some leaflets for you in front. Please do not be blocked by the idea that this is a Geneva event. It is happening in Geneva, but because it is called Geneva engage, this conference should try to bring more engagement, discover possible ways how to make events happening in Geneva more accessible to others and how to strengthen the eParticipation of that.

You can follow it either with us in Switzerland or on line with full remote participation and I can already now promise you a very different and interactive event. So this is just one of the highlights of what we coming up in the next few weeks. This is a general introduction about Diplo. I wouldn’t like to talk for too long because we can then get more to the interaction, but I would like to now focus on one of our key projects that we are running currently, the Geneva Internet platform.

Again, while this is called Geneva Internet platform, this is a project with a global impact, and I would briefly introduce you what our aims are. It is an initiative that is supported by the Swiss authorities and operated by DiploFoundation. So we are an operator of this project which has an intention to become a capacity development centre supporting both Permanent Missions to the UN present in Geneva to participate more effectively in the Internet Governance processes happening on line, also to promote Geneva as the global hub of Internet Governance, overcome policy silos that exist so extensively in Internet Governance by trying to bring various actors together.

Our work at the Geneva Internet platform has three main pillars. The first is the physical pillar. It’s the work that we do in Geneva on the spot. These are various events for the local communities. Those are briefings for diplomats and other stakeholders in the work that we undertake on the spot. The pillar that paying more understanding for you is the online pillar of the Geneva Internet Platform which is basically an online observatory.

Some of you may have attended the session that I held on Tuesday morning on the GAB digital watch, which is repository of resources, one stop shop that may help you navigate better through the work, through the Internet Governance field and I will talk a bit more about this in detail. And finally, the third pillar is cyber lab experiment that we are trying to establish in Geneva with the help of the Swiss private sector.

Talking about the GIP digital watch and here I would encourage you to browse on line at digital watch.GIplatform.org. It’s a program we have created. It is a strictly neutral and independent source that should seven as a one stop shop for diplomats and other target groups. As you may be aware, there is quite a large number of areas observatory exercises, but what I would like to suggest is that each observatory should be adjusted to the specific context that is happening. So for us in particular we have tried to take the diplomats’ concerns and needs in regard and to create a tool that would provide them to explore a bit more what they need.

I will show you interactively in detail what this looks like. We are supporters of so called integrated approach for the GIP digital watch. What does that mean? Is there is not only an online observatory where you could browse, but there is much more to this. In addition to the online observatory, every last Tuesday of the month at 1:00 CET, which is a reasonable time to adjust to other time zones as well for some of you in the morning, for some of you late in the afternoon, if you are lucky enough, we organize very short 60 minute briefings that are planned to give you a clear summary of what has been happening in Internet Governance, what has mattered in the month that has passed, and gives you an outlook for the month ahead.

This is important because as we work mainly for people who probably cover various number of issues and do not have the time to follow IG as such in much detail, this is an opportunity how to get kind of on a silver plate all of this information available. Most of these briefings are moderated by Jovan Kurbalija, our Director, these are for you, if you are based in Geneva, but they are with full remote participation, active remote participation meaning that you do not only listen to a webcast, but can participate actively and ask questions.

Every month we also public so‑called Geneva Internet Platform Digital Watch newsletter. It is an eight page extension of what has been covered in the briefings, but in a printed format, which, of course, can be accessed on line as well. If you want to receive this neutral, unbiased summary of Internet Governance developments, please just subscribe to our mailing list of the GAP website and you will be getting it in your mailbox every month. And we provide, because we want to have some fun elements to our work, every month we also provide so called monthly barometer on Internet Governance which takes some of the major Internet Governance issues and shows you what we feel has gone up and down in the relevance of the debate in the given month.

Talking about various complimentary activities to the GAP digital watch, we also as you may have noticed or I hope you have noticed, we are providing comprehensive coverage of sessions held here at the Internet Governance Forum just as I’m speaking now, we have a rapporteur here in the room who is very busy over there, thank you, Michael, very busy preparing the notes from this session to serve you a summary that you should? An ideal case have available on the Geneva platform digital watch within let’s say one hour and a half after the end of the session including some data mining analysis from this session.

So this is quite exciting project. You can really see quite an intensive piece of work at the GIP Digital Watch from this particular IGF and every day in the morning we have IGF Daily Watch, again, gives you the highlights of the day that has passed and tries to provide you for guidance for the day that is coming. This is quite useful because as you know in the IGF it can be a very confusing environment. It’s difficult to navigate through with so many sessions running in parallel. It’s difficult to get the idea, so what actually matters, what has mattered that particular day? So this is the work that we are trying to do because our team doesn’t sleep and doesn’t eat and just wakes up at 4:00 in the morning with no problem to get it printed for you here in Brazil. I have, again, left some copies on the first table in front.

This is what the tool looks like but I think it will be better when I finish my presentation to actually go to the website itself and provide you with some basic navigation through it. For the work of the Geneva Internet Platform digital watch, what is the highlight that I would like to stress is that there are curated content, meaning that this is not just machines producing what comes to the website, but there are humans doing a lot of work.

So through this human aspect, you can really rely on the fact that you get the most important developments covered there. We also combine which I have hinted when I was talking about the IGF daily, analyzes both of the qualitative and quantitative work, so we do use quite extensively various data mining exercises just as a little taster. And this is something that you can always find quite extensively in the IGF daily and our reporting from the IGF.

This is for instance the prefix monitor. Prefix meaning what prefixes are used in the current IGF on the words that we, on the, let’s say cyber digital E. What prefixes are popular? And what you can see here are actually the trends how it looks like each day compared with the trends and the previous IGFs between 2006 and 2014.

So for instance, cyber, you can see has been very high. Why? Because cyber is usually then linked to the security aspects. Digital prefix is often used for the developmental discussions so that it was for instance quite heavy in day one in the Opening Sessions when a lot of focus was given on the Sustainable Development Goals.

E, net being quite low compared to what was the trend some years ago. So this is a lot, you know, we can really play around and you can discover much more at the GAP digital watch website. Now, if I manage, let me switch off and go to the online tool. So right now, you are on the home page of the GIP digital watch. I will try to tell you about the basic navigation. So the GIP digital watch is based on a taxonomy that DiploFoundation was been using over the last more than ten years, and our taxonomy as you may be aware is based on a categorization of 42 Internet Governance issues into so called seven baskets. These baskets are the infrastructure and standardization, security, Human Rights, legal, economic basket, development basket and social cultural basket. In these baskets, we try to put the issues. So I have clicked, for example, on the cybersecurity basket, on the security basket and here I can choose any sub issue.

So let’s say I click on cybercrime, and this is what you get. This should really serve you hopefully and please give us your feedback afterward as a one stop shop. At this page hopefully you get the information in a condensed format that you need. First of all, you have the updates. Here you have at least once a week a very important update happening in the field of cybersecurity.

So it should give you an opportunity not to miss anything that is of relevance. How does this work? This does work through our network of curators that have specific expertise in Internet Governance issues in this particular issues in this example, and they will take care of making sure that what matters is available. We again have data mining experiments, part of the issue page as much, so this is the computed relevance of cybersecurity in online media in October 2015 including information about what is the preferential difference in comparison to the previous month?

When you extend this, here you get the basic write-up about what is cybersecurity so let’s imagine you are new to the field and you would like to get updated information about what is this about, what matters, what is the basic, you know, basic material to simply start off and you get it here. At the same issue page you also have the relevant events, so it should help you really not to miss my specific event in the field of cybersecurity that would be coming up and that you should be aware of.

But it also gives you an opportunity to see actors that are related to cybersecurity as much, and in addition very important, especially for diplomats and policy people, an overview of instruments, instruments can be anything from significant reports to treaties that are relevant to this particular topic. Again, tagged to come on the right page.

So please feel free to discover this a bit more in depth. I will just click here on, you know, the IGF reporting project that I have been mentioning to you. So this page you have reports from each day that we are covering the IGF, so you will see that for now most of the morning sessions are already there. You click on the report and you get an information what has been the summary of this report including who has been the author. So we believe that this is quite a useful tool.

We have now with us before giving the floor to you to ask questions, I would like to finish here with the formal part of my presentation, but we have here Thomas Snyder who is the deputy head of the international department at the Swiss Federal Office of Communication and I would like Thomas to say a few words because Switzerland as I have said is the main supporter of the Geneva Internet Platform. So I would like Thomas to tell us a few words about your motivations for this.

>> THOMAS SCHNEIDER: Thank you, Theresa. And hello to everybody, and I’m sorry for being late. The Swiss Government actually we are discussing in 2010, 11, 12, what could we do to support in particular stakeholders from Developing Countries to find easier access to this very complex environment or ecosystem on Internet Governance and given the fact that we have a number of institutions, intergovernmental institutions but also private institutions and NGOs in Geneva that all work in the silos on issues that are somehow at least related to Internet Governance, that it would be a useful service from us as host Government of all of these institutions to provide for some support to find, to better find the way in who is doing what, what is going on, I guess you have already explained what the GIP is and then this is where the Foreign Ministry and us the Ministry of Communication decided jointly to start, to launch the Geneva Internet Platform, which is three pillars. Have you explained the three pillars? Okay. So I will not go into this.

Our motivation that was actually strengthened by the clash of cultures of positions at the WCIT, this famous ITU Conference on ITR, international telecom regulations in 2012 that we wanted to help with more factual information instead of political or ideological rumors or alliances. So the attempt for us it’s important that Geneva Internet Platform is a neutral platform. It’s not about promoting Swiss views but rather based on the values or tradition of neutrality that we would help all of those who seek for factual information, transparent information in terms of where they come from an easy access for the courses, physical courses in Geneva, for the online courses, but also for one stop shop online tool which has started small last year in 2014 earlier, and has now been developed step by step into the digital watch which is what you have already seen.

I will stop here and, of course, we are very happy to work with Diplo, we have been working with Diplo for a very long time and we know what they are worth and how hard they work and how good they are connected so thank you, Theresa and your team for doing this good work.

>> MODERATOR: Thank you, Thomas very much for your kind words. I would now maybe like to give the floor to you if there are questions either from you here in the room or from our remote participants, please.

>> AUDIENCE: Are they planning to develop cooperation with different countries including Russia.

>> MODERATOR: We work strongly with a number of Governments. This session in particular, yes, we have concentrated on presenting our cooperation with Switzerland which is also the country in which DiploFoundation has an office, however, there are a number of other Governments with whom we cooperate, to whom we provide training for their diplomats. We have very established cooperation.

I can highlight and name, for instance, what countries, like Mexico with countries like South Africa. We have very strong cooperation links with Indonesia. I have recently worked quite intensively on links with other countries in Asia including Thailand, Malaysia, and other countries. In Europe, of course, we cooperate very closely besides Switzerland with the European Union with the European external action service and providing training from them and, of course, being in Geneva where you have close to 200 missions, there is cooperation on the local level with many, many countries including the Russian Federation. We do have established links. We are do have participants from Russia in our courses that we provide capacity development support for Geneva‑based diplomats, but there are also a number of alumnae from Russia and we also do have lecturers from the Russian Federation.

We are always interested in exploring other links on how we can help you or assist you.

I hope I have answered your question. If not, get me back on track.

>> AUDIENCE: I have another question, for example, is it possible to make a doctoral program on Internet Governance and diplomacy and how possible to arrange? Thank you very much.

>> MODERATOR: Supporting research on Internet and diplomacy is extremely close to our heart. In general, supporting research that students are doing on Internet and various disciplines, because here is what I would like to stress. We would like to see research on Internet happening not only in social sciences, not only in technical subjects, it’s really crucial, and we are trying to experiment a bit with projects in this area which I am very happily give you some information on. Now, Diplo in cooperation with the University of Malta provides a master degree in contemporary diplomacy with specialization on Internet Governance, this is a master degree and you can get information about this at the Diplo website.

We do not, as such we are not a higher education institution. We are a NGO that is a training provider. So we do not ourselves run this program. It is with an established academic institution. For the Ph.D. degree, there is nothing we would have established and could have offer from our point of view, but you could definitely count on support from us in assisting you on this research and I would be very interested in our directory I’m sure in hearing a bit more about your plans but I actually if I remember our conversation some time ago, you are actually involved in a Ph.D. research on this topic. Thank you for this question. I guess, Michael, for before you start speaking, Michael is one of our rapporteurs here at the IGF, so when you read one of the reports he is one of the team.

>> AUDIENCE: I’m an Internet Society Ambassador. I want to underscore a specific comment and that is that I am incredibly, I have become incredibly thankful for the Geneva Internet Platform in everybody the DiploFoundation does. The digital watch is already on its fourth, maybe Fifth Edition and I have to say I absolutely look forward to having it every month. I’m somewhat of a newcomer to the IG space and I can’t, I mean, for me, there is so much going on, there are so many meetings, everything. It has become a one stop shop.

And, I mean, especially for you, Thomas somebody who is involved in overseeing this at the governmental level, I cannot stress enough how wonderful this initiative is and how hard working they are, and how much Jovan Kurbalija and the whole team really dedicates to this. It is inspiring and really, I think the IG space would be lacking a lot if this wasn’t here.

>> MODERATOR: I promise I didn’t pay Michael anything for this.

>> AUDIENCE: I meant to say I don’t have any affiliation to DiploFoundation or Digital Watch or any affiliates.

>> MODERATOR: Thank you. It’s warm to hear this. The Digital Watch Monthly issue that Michael was talking about was exactly the newsletter that is available still in the front desk and that I mentioned in my presentation. Carolyn has another question. Please go ahead.

>> My name is Carolyn Wiser from Oxford University. I am also not paid for this, but I’m a frequent user of your outputs and the cybersecurity portal most recently and we already integrated the Digital Watch in this portal as an important actor in cybersecurity capacity building and these things are very useful to learn more about the landscape. And I appreciate the courageous content. I think it’s also very useful not only like showing you what is happening, but enhances a quality, I think, of the different platforms you have, and I’m very happy to cooperate with you. Thank you.

>> MODERATOR: Thank you very much, Carolyn for these warm wards. We are having a conversation tomorrow exactly about how to complement our expertise and work a bit more together tomorrow. So I’m looking forward to this. Yes, please. James.

>> JAMES WENDORF: I’m Jim Wendorf of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. I have a questions about your vision. Maybe you could elaborate on your vision for the future. If you have an opportunity to expand on the work you want to do, if you got additional sponsors or more sponsorship from your Swiss Government providing you some of the funding or others, what would you do? What are your dreams about new things to do?

>> MODERATOR: This is a great question. Okay. I will try to provide one pragmatic answer and then of the more dreamy answers. Diplo is a project financed organization so our projects and plans are not entirely in our hands. We need always to have funding support for the work that we are doing. So this directs our future in a way while still, of course, insisting on being very neutral and commits to the mission that we have. Nothing changes in this respect.

Now, what do I see as the possible future? I personally, it’s a total privilege for me to be involved in the exciting project of the Geneva Internet Platform and the GIP Digital Watch. This is a project that I think if we do not have to take very low consideration such as enough resources into account, can be scaled to really, really high levels. The sky is the limit if I can say.

What we want to ‑‑ how do we want to take it further? This is a very newborn baby. It was born two months ago. So it’s still in its naps and it is becoming quite established and we are proud of that, however, there are many ways how this can be taken really levels higher. Thanks to our cooperation with the Internet Society, we are one of the directions we are heading is strengthening more the curatorship aspect, the aspect that Carolyn has highlighted.

So we have issued the call for curators in partnership with ISOC for GIP Digital Watch. That should enrich let’s say the regional focus of the observatory. Why? Because specific context is always extremely important and extremely relevant. Privacy issues would have very different significance in the U.S. than they would have in Europe or Asia. So this is just an example how we want to enlarge the curator network to get a bit more of these aspects.

Another direction in which we can, you know, think and dream about is the creation of the multilingual content. This is something that was discussed very briefly in a session we had just two hours ago when various of the observatory initiatives met to discuss what the plans could be, but my dream would really be to develop this tool to establish this tool as much as possible while at the same time having the opportunity, broader general DiploFoundation sense to work further on our basic mission, that is to really enable small and Developing Countries to participate more effectively in the global policy governance processes. That can be done with capacity development activities, training, publications and research projects. So that would be my, you know, spontaneous answer on this. Having mentioned a call for curators, I have again, left leaflets on this particular work on the front desk. Please feel free to grab a couple or go to the digital website/about us and you will find more information. Another question from you, please go ahead.

>> AUDIENCE: My name is Camelia. I’m a student of Master of Diplomacy in Internet Governance. I learned a lot about Internet Governance from Government and Civil Society perspective, and I think I didn’t see that much of specific focus study on Internet Governance so it’s been great to enjoy the class. My question is from my all lessons learned from the master study, but when it comes to the Internet Governance Forum, for example, or Internet Governance meetings in real world, sometimes I feel lots of complaints from the Civil Society how they feel so difficult to work with the Government, and the Government also feel like how it is hard to work with Civil Society because they are like there is nothing point or how we can discuss better as a multistakeholder model.

So could you please tell me your experience? Are you working as a bridging aspect of Government, Civil Society, technical aspect? Or do you have good examples for multistakeholder model from your work using Internet Geneva platform? Thank you.

>> MODERATOR: Thank you very much for your question, and good to hear you are enrolled in our master degree. I personally do not work that much on the master degree, so I don’t get as much opportunity to meet our students so thank you for giving me this opportunity here. Yes, to answer your questions, of course, I cannot speak for other stakeholders, and here again us we have a certain advantage because we do really pamper our kind of neutral position, and in this we are very rigid. For instance, we do not take positions, we do not advocate for any specific approach to Internet Governance or other areas.

Now, one of the goals of the Geneva Internet Platform is to exactly address the problem that you have raised, that the various stakeholder groups actually do not communicate with each other and stay within their silos. This is something that is not very good. It is, of course, always more comfortable to stay in your field because the people around you, they speak your language, the same language, more comfortable you use the same acronyms and as soon as you get to another stakeholder group you get really out of your comfort zone, which is very natural for us as humans in general, you always feel safer with your peers.

So that is why we are really trying to locality or establish the Geneva Internet Platform as a place where the various stakeholders would feel comfortable. We pay most attention to persons when we organize events that we always have various views represented, that we have various stakeholder groups represented, and this is how we try very softly, you know, provide a space where this interaction can be encouraged a bit more.

It is not easy, but we are trying to work on this. I hope I tackled your question.

>> AUDIENCE: Good afternoon. I am Dave Fenicot, Ambassador in the real world, not in you the virtual world for Belgium at the Council of Europe where I am responsible for the Information Society group and activities that I coordinate. My question to you is first of all, I go like to congratulate you for the work you are doing here. You are making my life easy. Every day you bring out an excellent report, and I will use it. That’s one thing. However, it’s my first time here, and I don’t have any thorough knowledge of the foundation’s work. So I run risk with my question to push open an open door. When we are talking about Internet and Internet across borders, we are talking about also rights across borders and people that would like to have remedies if their rights would be infringed upon.

Could you explain how the Human Rights dimension is included in your training or in your work and then, of course, the obvious, the freedom of expression, the data protection, the right to privacy, and in what way are you already in contact with the organization I’m working for, the Council of Europe? Are you familiar or do you make your students familiar with the products? Thank you.

>> MODERATOR: Thank you very much Ambassador, again, for your kind words. We are pleased that we are making your life easier at the IGF because this is exactly in our mind when we came with this crazy idea of preparing the session reports. Answering first your question, and I don’t know what’s going on, concerning Council of Europe, we, we work with you intensely. Other expert colleagues are in touch with many people working for your organization, and we do have them included in our activities.

Currently at the GIP Digital Watch, we would, of course, have you covered as one of the actors with the basic information about the work you are doing including, of course, the topics that you are working on. So this is an example for the GIP Digital Watch. Now, on the issues that you have named being present in our training, so, yes, because we provide basic introductory courses to Internet Governance which follow the taxonomy or the classification that Diplo has of Internet Governance issues, having them divided into so called seven baskets, for instance, Human Rights basket is really one of them. So we try to really see Internet Governance in its entirety, in his way and have these aspects integrated. I would be pleased to share with you more details about these activities.

>> AUDIENCE: My name is Shri and I’m one of the Diplo fellows. I was there in 2009. I did the capacity building program then. My question to you Asia‑Pacific is quite growing, right, and it is quite coming up. Do you have specific plans targeting Asia‑Pacific in regard to the capacity building programs because we need better capacity programs as well as we need to build leaders who are more facilitated with Internet Governance process? Apart from that, there is this new terminology that is coming in, collaborative leadership. So in terms of, you know, in terms of Diplo collaborating with Internet Society, are you guys trying to come up with further programs as well? That’s my question. Thank you.

>> MODERATOR: Thank you very much and I’m looking forward to seeing you at our gathering and see another alumnae or fellow at this session. Again, the projects that we are running and the capacity development activities that we can provide, again, depend on the projects that we have available. We have had some very specification activities now for the Asian region. I misunderstood which country you were from?

>> AUDIENCE: I’m from Nepal.

>> MODERATOR: To name a few now we have them by coincidence both of these projects supported by the Swiss Government by the federal department of foreign affairs. We have recently and we are running and negotiating for a continuation a project on Asia Europe public diplomacy because it’s not only Internet Governance, it’s diplomacy also in the wider sense. So this is a project that we are running and that is available for all countries that are members of the Asia Europe meeting process which Nepal is, if I’m not mistaken.

So I can give you more information about this project. We concluded recently one of the most beautiful projects I have worked for which was capacity development project in material diplomacy for Pacific Island states so this was a project tailored specifically for small Pacific Island stated and have them participate effectively in multiple areas, Internet Governance being one of them and we are currently negotiating with the donors to have the possibility to continue this activities.

At this moment, nothing concrete that I can mention to you, but please let us keep in touch and I suppose that you are under the Diplo mailing list so any time there is news, you can be sure that we would send this information. Is there any question from the remote participants as we are approaching the end of the session?

>> Thank you, Chair. No, we do not have questions from remote participants.

>> MODERATOR: Thank you very much. Is there any other question here in the room? Traci, being one of our lecturers, would you like to add anything to what has been said here?

>> AUDIENCE: Thank you, Theresa. I’m glad to be here. I just wanted to say that I think DiploFoundation has done an extremely powerful job at bringing countries and people from the developing world together. There is a strong bond from the fellowship moving from the early 2000s until now and even to today we see that happening. Many of the Diplo fellows that have come through the system are at the IGF today in various roles. It’s important to realize, I think, that the DiploFoundation has done a lot of work on the capacity building side and continues to do so. I also think it’s important to realize that the new work that they are doing with the Geneva Internet Platform and the documents that are coming out from this meeting are very unique and they are very different.

And it kind of brings the IGF to a level that people are wanting to see where there is some level of rapid reporting, there is some level of analysis, and some level of trying to understand exactly what’s happening in the session. So I think it has done a very good job of getting that going. I want to encourage them on continuing and reaching out to developing world especially to small island developing states and to insure that we as, in those communities who have challenges with understanding where the Internet is taking us, that we can get the assistance from groups like Diplo to move forward. Thank you.

>> MODERATOR: Thank you very much Traci, Traci is one of our lecturers on the cybersecurity course and another one as well, right?

>> Yes, I do the cybersecurity security course as well as the introduction to Internet Governance on location, but right now cybersecurity.

>> MODERATOR: I’m just giving here on line the courses that we are running for your idea. There is another question, please go ahead.

>> AUDIENCE: I’m from Armenia and I’m Diplo since 2007. I would like to thank Diplo because huge work had been done at least at the time when I was fellow for the people from Developing Countries to come on board and learn about IG, and for me specially, Diplo was the starting point ever to this world, and I’m proud to say that due to Diplo course, I learned about ICANN summer school on Internet Governance, ISOC fellowship, so I got through all of them due to the information provided by Diplo, so my great thanks to the team who is working there.

My concern for this current couple of years I’m following, and I don’t see many people participating from my country, Armenia. And this is the reason of paid services, some kind of courses you should pay for the courses. At my time when I was studying this capacity building program, this was fellowship, full fellowship for people from Developing Countries, and at least there were a couple of people who were interested and applied and who passed this course. And who actually got another step developed from that, but now unfortunately I don’t see many people there, and this is the reason like lack of funds, lack of money to participate, and I know that now Diplo is another level, more developed level than it was ten years or seven years, eight years ago at least. And if there is any possibility I would just echo Traci as well to involve more people from Developing Countries without additional payment. That would be great and helpful for them because many of them need this. Thank you.

>> MODERATOR: Thank you very much for your question, and comment and the kind words. Of course, I will pass this to my colleagues because this credit should go to my colleagues who have been with Diplo longer than I have been. Personally I have been with Diplo 3.5 years, so the credit goes mainly to them. On the point you have made, it’s a very important and very fair point but let me, again, explain the basic logics. In any projects in which we manage to fund raise and for which we have a donor, training, online courses is always, always integrated in the package. So when you were participating in our capacity development program back in 2007, you mentioned if I remember well, there was thanks to a project that was funded by a donor, otherwise our courses are paid if they are not part of the package.

So there are always two possibilities and it really depends on what is currently very simply said what projects we are running. So you as an individual can always decide to apply individually, and depending on what are the, what are the limitations of each project, sometimes it’s a project dedicated to a specific country, specific stakeholder group, specific region, specific topic, then we try as much as possible to bring these opportunities.

But there is a very clear reason why we can’t do it, because the funding, funding is always the limitation. We do not profit, so we need to fund raise for all of our activities, but very important point. Traci?

>> AUDIENCE: Just to echo the point, I think it’s important that the funding aspect is looked at and in particular I think the alumnae of the Diplo program should really be able to step up to the plate and perhaps provide some assistance to their colleagues who are coming up through the system because we have benefited. We have been through the system. We have seen a lot, so there is an opportunity now for us to contribute in some way, and I think that if we step up to the plate and assist not only in contributing, but also in asking others to assist in contributing, another Diplo funding mechanism where you can contribute utilizing people, I believe, and other systems like that. So once we can get that going, I think there is an opportunity to have more people from different countries coming in, including Armenia, and insure that we don’t let the system, you know, drop, that’s what I want to say.

Allow us to continue facilitate any process at providing that support where we can. Thank you.

>> MODERATOR: Thank you, and please that will probably be the last words as we have exhausted the time rest assured that we are doing all we can to be able to continue the mission that we have for Diplo. And.

>> AUDIENCE: Which is highly appreciated.

>> MODERATOR: Thank you very much for the kind words. It looks like we very rich because I paid you all for the kind words, but thank you very much for coming. Thanks to those that have followed us remotely, and I’m looking forward to see you around, and please come by to Diplo booth tomorrow morning to grab your issue of IGF daily. Good afternoon, good evening, bye‑bye.

(Concluded at 1700)