[Icann-see] Notes of ICANN-SEE informal meeting at ICANN54 in Dublin

[Jean-Jacques Sahel]

Dear all,
You will find below notes of the informal ICANN-SEE meeting held in Dublin last Tuesday.

Please let me know if I have forgotten anything or you have a correction or addition to make. Also, please do share these notes with those you know who are not yet on the ICANN-SEE mailing list.

Thanks, and I look forward to seeing you all very soon,
Jean-Jacques


ICANN 54 South Eastern Europe, 20 October 2015
18 participants, as well as all ICANN GSE Europe (Gabriella, Andrea, Renate, JJS) plus Sandra Hoferichter (Eurodig)

In informal introductions, ICANN Vice-President for Europe Jean-Jacques Sahel noted how ICANN SEE was born from a similar informal meeting held during the ICANN50 meeting in London just over 1 year ago. Only 8-9 people from the region gathered, who created the ICANN-SEE mailing list, which within weeks reached 70 people, and helped catalyse the organisation of several events in the region. One of the most notable events was the first ever ‘South East Europe Dialogue on Internet Governance’ (SEEDIG), which took place in Sofia, Bulgaria, on June 3rd, in the run-up to the Eurodig. Today’s face to face ICANN-SEE meeting was an occasion to exchange informally among participants, including on ideas for the second SEEDIG.


1.       SEEDIG
Sorina Teleanu (Romania) noted that the Region has specific concerns and challenges. We should discuss them, and report them to the EuroDIG - we can go and present what happens. Specific issues include how Human Rights online are protected, IDNs, the Multi-StakeHolder model in Internet Governance. At the 1st SEEDIG this year, we had 150 participants from the region and beyond. The first SEEDIG had a capacity building aspect – what is IG, which are the organisations involved, what are the relevant issues for the region, how can we raise awareness in the region. Issues discussed including human rights in the region.

The idea is to have the following process:

o   The plan is to have an annual meeting, with the next SEEDIG to be hosted in Belgrade, Serbia in April. The whole event is being built as a bottom-up initiative, dependent on the community.

o   There is an organising committee, not directing the process but only coordinating, dependent on community involvement.

o   A call for issues has been launched in conjunction with EuroDIG, for topics to be discussed in the meeting. Sandra Hoferichter (Eurodig) explained that proposing ideas under the call for issues is a simple way to input, not the same as committing to organising a workshop: the contribution is broad (ideas, speakers, moderators, topics).

o   The Joint call for issues is open until the end of December. The organising committee will then compile the proposals, and organise an online meeting to discuss them and progress the preparations by putting together a programme. This will be advertised on the ICANN-SEE mailing list.

o   We will feed SEEDIG’s conclusions to Eurodig (to be held in June in Brussels).
Action – all: register to the mailing list if you are not on it already – please contact icann-see at rnids.rs<mailto:icann-see at rnids.rs>

Action – all: we are looking for issues for SEEDIG, so please submit ideas for topics now, so as to build a programme based on the interest of the community. Also, do explain how you would like to contribute, eg if you can be a remote participation manager, or if you can be a speaker for an issue, or have speakers in mind. www.eurodig.org<http://www.eurodig.org>

For now, the SEEDIG website is hosted by the EURODIG website, which helps keep it in the same family, although long term evolution has to be decided by the local community of course.


2.       Making the link between Eurodig, national, subregional and global IGFs
Sandra Hoferichter (Eurodig) explained that making the link between regional (Eurodig) and subregional (SEEDIG) is in the same vein as linking from the local to the global IGF, linking all these related initiatives together. We should try to reinforce links with national IGFs too.
There is also an emergent idea of establishing a Northern or Baltic IGF, and we should make sure to link these initiatives – and avoid duplication, as there are few resources and people involved in organising.

Action – all: Please make sure to bring reports of national / subregional meetings to Eurodig so it gets publicised at the global IGF.

Oksana: for the Ukrainian IGF it is extremely important to link to the global IGF. Ahead of IGF Brazil, there will be both an informal and formal meeting related to the Ukraine IGF.

Liana: we just had recently the first IGF Armenia which was linked and publicised by Eurodig, and Europe is indeed a leader with 20+ national IGFs – we should make the most of, and reinforce, our links between various IGFs.

Action – JJS / Sandra to discuss how best to link national IGfs with Eurodig, starting with publicising / linking with the Eurodig website.


3.       Other events
Action – ALL: all were encouraged to communicate on the mailing list not just about events that we are planning but also events that we are attending, eg RIPE in Bucharest in November.
We went around the table to hear of upcoming initiatives:

Iliya mentioned that he is organising the next edition of the annual Domain forum on 4 December in Sofia, Bulgaria.

Sorina is preparing to organise an event on Internet Governance in Bucharest early 2016, tentatively to be hosted by the national parliament; details to be circulated.

Croatia HR: preparing the next Croatia IGF for 2016; no specific date in mind yet.

Anna: thinking of organising an IGF in Georgia in 2016; some support has already been promised by both RIPE NCC and ICANN.

Anja: Serbia will have many activities next year with the Regional Internet Forum and DIDS; Dusan to provide details on the mailing list.

Sorina: SEEDIG has benefited from support by Eurodig and ICANN, and going forwards also from the Council of Europe, as well as ‘moral’ support from the European Commission.

Dusan: Tirana will be the host for the next RIPE SEE meeting, which will take place just after SEEDIG in April 2016.


4.       An SEE engagement strategy?
Oksana suggested that maybe we can develop a Stakeholder Engagement Strategy specifically for SEE, mirroring what has been coordinated by ICANN in other regions.
Mirena of RNIDS strongly supported the idea of an ICANN subregional strategy for SEE. She explained that people don’t know where to start and how to collect people interested in something, and would benefit from some sort of guidelines on how to engage people. It would be good if some kind of initiative could start on that, she thought.

Sorina suggested that this could be brought up during the ICANN European coordination session to be held on Wednesday 21 October at ICANN54, 1730-1830.

Note that there was not much discussion on this point at the European coordination session. However, Jean-Jacques would circulate information on existing ICANN regional strategies on the mailing list, to facilitate any future discussion among ICANN-SEE members on this topic.


-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://lists.rnids.rs/pipermail/seedig/attachments/20151026/6bd2f836/attachment.htm>