The following are the outputs of the real-time captioning taken during the Twelfth Annual Meeting of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) in Geneva, Switzerland, from 17 to 21 December 2017. 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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>> SATISH BABU: Can we please settle down? So good morning, and welcome to this meeting. We're a bit late due to the fact that there's no buffer time provided in the program so we've had to run from the previous meeting. At the outset ‑‑ well, I'm Satish Babu. I've been recruited by the Asia‑Pacific School of Internet Governance, APSIG, to run this meeting. Although we do not have formal remote participation, we are actually trying to get at least a few of our colleagues to make it to Geneva in person to participate remotely. We're trying to use Zoom, so hopefully that will work out. Now this meeting is the second...
[TECHNICAL DIFFICULTIES]
>> SANDRA HOFERICHTER: My name is Sandra Hoferichter, I'm the general manager of the European summer school on Internet Governance which was the first summer schools on ‑‑ on this globe. And we are very happy to see that so many regional and national schools have emerged over the time. Obviously, not one school can serve the whole globe, so I'm very happy that this network in Asia‑Pacific exists and more national schools on the globe are going to emerge and ‑‑ and most of the time I'm actually doing the European dialogue Internet Governance which is the European IGF. Thank you.
>> UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Hello, good morning, I'm (saying name) from Sri Lanka. I'm representing SIG Sri Lanka, and (?) Sri Lanka, so I hope, again, we can have a very productive meeting here today. Thank you.
>> UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Hello. I'm (saying name). I'm from Bhutan. I work for the Ministry of Information and Communications. And it's my fortunatity to attend this workshop. I'm very fortunate and thank you. I would like to thank the organizer and for the invitation given to us to attend this meeting. Thank you.
>> UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: (Saying name), lecturer and researcher from Nepal.
>> TEREZA HOREJSOVA: Good morning, this is Tereza Horejsova from Diplo Foundation and the Geneva Internet Platform. We've been participating in the calls and are eager to continue the discussion. Thank you.
>> GUNELA ASTBRINK: Hello, I'm Gunela Astbrink from Australia and also an APSIG and a Amazon fellow. Thank you.
>> AMRITA CHOUDHURY: Good morning, I'm Amrita Choudhury. I'm from India School of Internet Governance and also an APSIG Amazon fellow here.
>> UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Hello, I am (saying name), student from Brazil School of Internet Governance, and participated in the India School of Internet Governance and in South School of Internet Governance. Nice to be with you.
>> UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Hi, my name is Sayeed (phonetic). I'm from the part of the team of the organizers of the Afghanistan School of Internet Governance. We held that last year and we're working on the second one now.
>> ADAM PEAKE: Adam Peake, ICANN, and just here to learn about the SIGs that are going on that we participate in quite a lot. And, excuse me, I've got a very, very squeaky chair, so if I move and squeak, I'm just going to get embarrassed and try not to move, thanks.
>> BAHER ESMAT: Good morning, I'm Baher Esmat with ICANN, part of the global stakeholder engagement team, and I'm also part of the School on Internet Governance for Middle East and adjoining companies.
>> LIANNA GALSTYAN: Lianna Galstyan from Armenia, Armenia IGF, and this year we launched our first school, National School for Internet Governance, by the way, with the support of ICANN, so thank you for that. And now we're launching our second circle. It was started from January, mid January, and we'll speak a little bit later, maybe, and discuss all these things. Thank you.
>> OLGA CAVALLI: Thank you. Good morning, everyone, my name is Olga Cavalli, I'm from Argentina. I am the academic director of the South School of Internet Governance that will host its 10th meeting in 2018. And we organize for the first time in 2017, the first Argentina School of Internet Governance in Buenos Aires, Argentina SIG, and thank you for organizing this, and I heard that you organize calls. I would like to see how can we also participate in the calls. Thank you.
>> PATRICIA: Good morning, everyone. My name is Patricia, I'm originally from Peru. I'm currently an SSIG fellow, I'm also a sponsor Amazon fellow here in the IGF. I'm also a (?) candidate at Syracuse University and a while ago I was also a fellow in the European summer school of Internet Governance. Thank you.
>> GLENN McKNIGHT: Good morning. I'm Glenn McKnight, it's great to be here in summer because I'm from Canada, so much warmer than my country. I'm sort of a serial attendee. I help with Olga's school as well as Satish's school, but I've also attended the first African school of Internet Governance and I'm one of the committee members for the first North American school of Internet Governance and I also produced an online resource for IEEE on Internet Governance which is available.
>> UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: My name, (saying name), (?) director of the south school of Internet Governance.
>> SATISH BABU: So thank you, thank you very much. We have some very experienced people here who have been trying their own SIGs for some time; we have Olga, we have Sandra. I'm personally an alumnus of Sandra's school, U.S. SIG, back in 2012.
This meeting is basically to discuss matters relating to SIGs in general, not just Asia‑Pacific but also since the Pacific is running this there will be focus on Asia‑Pacific but it's open to all the participants, wherever they're from. Just since we are being transcribed I'd like to request everybody when speaking to state the names so that we can get the names in the transcript. Otherwise we will not be able to figure out who is speaking.
So we're now trying to see if some of the remote participants can speak. If not, we will kind of skip that part yeah, so Sean, if you can hear us, would you like to say a few words about APSIG itself let me share the agenda for this meeting. We have an overview of APSIG for a maximum ten minutes but we only lost some time right now. We are almost 30 minutes, 21 minutes are up, cut the chart. Update on APSIG 15 minutes, challenges for SIGs, 25 minutes, standard part of this meeting. This covers the current coverage of SIGs and where they're not having coverage, governance, insurance, alumni and community building and collaboration among SIGs, how they can share. Future plans, 15 minutes, any other business. So this is the agenda that we have. If anybody would like to add anything more you can please tell us right now. Yes, Renata.
>> RENATA: Yes, there is a ‑‑ I think we can put an item in the agenda, communications of our SIG because there was a group created, I understand APSIG is also an important list so just to enlighten us on those spaces, thank you, Satish.
>> SATISH BABU: Do you mean about the dynamic coalition or...
>> RENATA: I think what are we going to use, a mailing list or site, Whatsapp.
>> SATISH BABU: Okay, noted. Other points? So otherwise we'll get started with the meeting. We also have Avri who just joined us, thank you for joining, Avri, and welcome to this meeting. Since we aren't able to get (saying name) online, I will go ahead and introduce the APSIG very briefly the Asia‑Pacific School on Internet Governance, APSIG, was founded two years back. 2016 and 2017 are the two years that it was run, the two schools. It was meant to be not a regular school but a trainer's training kind of place where people who are managing their SIGs could come and learn and share. That was the objective. And it also has the self, well, adopted policy of inviting the very best possible, best in Asia, best in the world, and there's an evaluation of every speaker. Now, obviously we'll share the details of that and how it works, how it doesn't work.
APSIG, of course, covers the whole of Asia‑Pacific, but what is Asia‑Pacific is a bit of a confusion because by ICANN terms, we have Lianna here from Armenia, the trans‑caucus countries ‑‑ Armenia, Georgia and Azerbaijan ‑‑ are part of the ICANN's definition of Asia‑Pacific, although it is not there in other definitions. So as of know we do have ‑‑ although APSIG is an original thing, we do have relatively uncovered areas which we'll also touch upon in the next agenda item, vast areas where we don't have any presence.
Now, currently, the feedback that we're getting is that schools of Internet are welcomed by everybody. People feel this is a good thing to do, it builds capacities, it enables ‑‑ hopefully it enables more of the areas of community particularly to come online with their voices so that they can, you know, be heard in the process of policy formulation on Internet Governance.
But despite that, you know, objective, there are also some objectives that APSIG itself has kind of realized in the past when it looks at some regions. Now, APSIG tries to select participants based on the rules in their respective SIGs, but it hasn't always worked very well. And currently the two events, two schools that APSIG has done have been well received, the feedback has been positive, and that one of the ‑‑ being an original school, one of the things that APSIG has decided early on is to have not only a school itself but also a network which is to bring together all the individual initiatives in different countries.
So this particular meeting is organized by the all SIG group of APSIG and all SIG is actually the community of all the SIGs in the region. So in the last session, Sandra was managing that session, and we have the dynamic coalition on schools of Internet Governance now more or less launched and, anyway, I understand that there's a little bit of overlap between what APSIG tries to do and what the dynamic coalition is doing but I think we can also collaborate, there's a great deal of opportunity for collaboration and ‑‑ and currently the APSIG made a list of schools. So I'll just read them out quickly, to know if there is anything that has been left out. The original SIGs are Europe SIG, South SIG, AP, ILP, AfriSIG MIACSIG, APSIG itself, APGA, which is the Asia‑Pacific Governance Academy, it happens in Seoul, Korea, and the new North America SIG which is going to be initiated just now, I mean, in a couple months' time.
Yeah, so then the SIGs in the region are India ‑‑ Pakistan, India, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, Philippines, Bangladesh. This is the ‑‑ Sri Lanka, of course, I mentioned. This is the list that we have. I'm not sure ‑‑ Armenia has not been counted yet because of the geography issue, so you can decide where you want to be. Yeah, so these are the SIGs that ‑‑ Nepal is going to have its first SIG shortly, maybe the next month or so. And here we have most of them present, many of them present and also some of them online. So that is the ‑‑ I'm not able to ‑‑ I have a presentation, but unfortunately it's being controlled by remote, so I'm not able to move my slides here. Yeah, maybe ‑‑ that's okay, it doesn't matter.
Now, why are we having this meeting here? The fundamental idea is we feel there's a lot to be gained by collaboration among the SIGs and in the last ICANN meeting ‑‑ now, uniformly people have been having welcoming schools of Internet Governance, but in the last ICANN meeting, for instance, there was a concern expressed that while schools are good, is there any way to kind of ensure that they work as expected, that they're able to provide to the participants what the participants are looking for. In short, the previous sessions we discussed this issue of quality assurance. So it's more better, some kind of possibility for some guidance that can be given out, best practices. This was discussed in the ICANN meeting, ICANN '16 meeting in Abu Dabi. And consequently, subsequently, we have been ourselves looking at these issues and that's one of the things that we would like to discuss here.
Now I would like to invite the SIG ‑‑ Asia‑Pacific SIGs present here, also the other SIGs, if they want to make a very brief statement about their own initiative. Particularly what is unique in your SIG so that others can at least come to know and what do you think the significant challenges that you feel, you know, have to be overcome for sustained ‑‑ or sustainability for your SIG.
Maybe I'll start myself because our India SIG ‑‑ I would like to speak on the India SIG. So India SIG was started a couple of years back. We've had two additions, '16 and '17. The participants and speakers have been largely international by design because we feel that having both South SIG and EuroSIG, have a model of multiple countries, people coming together and we feel it adds value. So we have, in fact, been subsidizing some of the cost of international participation, things like rooms, for example, we have been ‑‑ also participants ‑‑ in the first round, we tried to make them self‑paying. Didn't work very well, second round we made a fellowship for about 30 people plus open candidates who could come in without.
So in the second time, we found that that fellowship was very useful, people did turn up. And in the second round we had a lot of interest from the local governments also. And finally, in the first part we had about 50 to 60, the drench (phonetic) participants, the second about 80. So we see some traction building up, but funding is important. Fellowships for people to travel and, you know, all of the costs. We have been funded basically by the government of India plus a bunch of smaller support. ISOC has been funded, ICANN has been funded, and the organization of SIGs, who is the body that controls or organizes this? It has been initiated by two Internet Society chapters. Delhi (?) where I come from. Delhi is where Ramadan Dr. Guvent (phonetic) come from. Now, in the second year, there was one more added in (?). So there are three Internet Society chapters. Next year we'll have another couple more. So we're trying to make it as broad‑based as possible. All the syllabus, the speakers, everything is decided by this group only. Although the government does fund us, they don't at all have anything to add ‑‑ I mean, to influence ‑‑ they have not tried to influence us in terms of any of the SIGs.
We feel that government not supports so much but some kind of approval is useful because it gives an official, you know, kind of ‑‑ yes, Sandra.
>> SANDRA HOFERICHTER: Sorry, I don't want to interrupt you, as you were speaking. I wanted to make a comment on the funding issue because this is something which I consider, in particular, important when it comes to fellowships.
Our policy at the European summer school, and I'm not saying that you have to do it the same way but I want to share our experiences with you, is that from the 30 places we usually have, we have half of the people which get a fellowship and half of the people which come on a self‑paying basis. We believe it's a kind of diversity to bring together people who can afford such as a course and who cannot afford such a course because this creates an understanding for each other how the world functions in your part of the world and why can you afford why cannot I afford. And this is something we consider really important that we also not only see diversity in terms of gender and geographical and so on and so forth and stakeholder but also in terms of who can afford it and who cannot. A young person from Africa versus some ‑‑ an employee from Google. And we have this kind of combination. And this really adds a very significant diversity aspect to the whole group.
>> SATISH BABU: I think (?) knows that position. We also have been finding diversity is very important for the dynamics of the school. It's not just the teaching/learning aspect, it's also the interactions, and it really adds value. I see some speakers at this point. Would you like to add on half a minute?
>> UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Yes, answering your question, I do agree with you that those who can pay should pay and those who cannot should be funded, and that's what we've been trying to do. We have the fellowship those who can pay, they have ‑‑ we have paid, people who come in, but we try to subsidize it so that in our parts of the world it's difficult for German people to come, so we're trying to do that. It encourages people.
>> OLGA CAVALLI: Thank you. We have a different model in Latin America. Nobody pays. And kind of half of the ‑‑ of the students do get a fellowship that includes hotel and meals, and the others get the course. Nobody pays for participating. If there are members of companies that want to participate, they also have to apply and they also have to go through the selection process. Why is that? In Latin America it's ‑‑ it's extremely difficult for especially young professionals to pay for such a training. So we ‑‑ we organize the budget in a way that we can afford to invite them, to give them food through all the days and half of them ‑‑ approximately half of them, sometimes it's more than half, depending on the budget, we have also hotel and accommodation and all of that. So we think for our region this is a major thing for ‑‑ for more inclusion and more outreach.
We also have, in all the ten years, simultaneous translation all the time, which is extremely expensive, but it's very enabling. Usually it's Spanish‑English and also the two times it was organized in Brazil, we had Portuguese, Spanish, and English and remote participation.
>> SATISH BABU: Oh, thanks, Olga, for that. Do you also pay for travel?
>> OLGA CAVALLI: That would be nice but we don't have that much money. It's extremely challenging, the translation is very expensive, and also the hotel. But ‑‑ but we think it's rewarding because ‑‑ and also we rotate among countries, so it is a lot of impact in every community that we go.
No, we don't ‑‑ we have paid some ‑‑ some tickets, but sometimes for colleagues from countries that are very difficult for them to travel, but it's an exception. We have done that in, like, ten times, but it's not the usual rule. But if it's someone that it would be very valuable for him or her to participate and in their country they are having many problems, then we can go to some sponsors and ask for a special ticket for them, but that's not the general rule, but it could happen.
>> SATISH BABU: Olga ‑‑ oh, sorry, Avri and then (?).
>> AVRI DORIA: Just to add quickly on the African school. Until this year, all of the fellows participating had been fully accommodated and it created two issues, one we would get something, like, 800 applications for the school and we're only ‑‑ we're talking maybe 30 to 40 slots.
This year, for the first time, there wasn't sufficient funding to be able to do that full level of funding, so it was split and we only got 200 applications. So perhaps there's something in that. But certainly within Africa it's very difficult to find that many people that can actually afford to come down and can stay there.
The other complication that the African school has is that up until now, it's always been the week before the African IGF as sort of a training on what's going to happen there. The problem is that the African IGF is sometimes not scheduled and located until very late in the day, like a month or two before it happens, which makes putting on a school a challenge, and so we've been looking at should we find ourselves a home and sit there. I say "we," I'm obviously not African, but I've been part of that school since the beginning.
>> SATISH BABU: Thank you for that. Renata, please.
>> RENATA: Thank you. So, to clarify, I was a student only of the Brazilian School of Internet Governance, and that was in 2015, but it has travel support for plane and accommodation, and nobody pays registration fees.
My observation, my personal observation in this actually ‑‑ and actually, an interesting fact is that a plane in Brazil is very expensive. It's cheaper to go to the U.S. So that the following year the South school of Internet Governance was in Washington and the Brazilian School of Internet Governance was in São Paulo, so many people from the north and northeast who were selected for the Brazilian School of Internet Governance were actually happy that they will have an opportunity to go to Washington because it was actually cheaper.
So just that point of having whatever arrangements one has to study the local context and the flexibility that one can have to create more inclusion.
>> TEREZA HOREJSOVA: Yes, thank you. Diplo does not organize a school of Internet Governance per se, but I just wanted to comment a little bit on the discussions that have been here about the funding struggles and whether participants should be paying or not. For our courses and training activities, we have experimented with the various models that have been described here, and it's always challenging, even for some, let's say, developed countries that you would presume would be able to afford it, and I'm not talking about the individuals because I don't think that especially if they're representing an institution, it should be the responsibility of the individual to pay out of their pocket training, although it's happening as well, but it's often a problem of a budget line, so we would have participants for our courses that certainly would be able to afford it, but at ‑‑ their respective organization wouldn't have the right budget line for training to ‑‑ to use the money from ‑‑ even if we are talking about relatively small registration fee for the ‑‑ for the course. The model that has worked the best for us was trying ‑‑ and that's the job I'm doing ‑‑ to kind of incorporate it in as many projects as we can so that we have the training and the capacity development courses activities as part of a project that has ‑‑ that has some funding. This has been an example of the Geneva (?) project but also many, many others. Modine (phonetic) has just come and she has participated in our (?) program on multilateral diplomacy for Pacific islands, again, you know, throughout this program we would make sure that we kind of cover the fees for running the course. Just if this helps, yes, that ‑‑
>> SATISH BABU: Thanks very much for that. Lianna.
>> LIANNA GALSTYAN: Yes, Lianna speaking. So for Armenia, we don't have that challenge because basically the country is very small and it's not a challenge to come and participate to the school, but we have an experience only for one school. It was in this summer and it was meant for the students, basically. And they all were living in one city, in Yeveran, and we didn't have that challenge of accommodation, et cetera, we just hired a place, and we had food for them and it was for the whole week, for five days. So it's not a challenge in this sense. But if we go around to different cities, et cetera, it might be. But we came from what we have, I mean, in the budget‑wise, so since we had that challenge, we designed a program in another way. That's about the funding thing.
But about the program also I maybe have this question, if we can discuss it also, you said you have a summer school, and it was for one week. We tried it for this summer, but then we found out that the program is really very, very packed and not everyone can understand it, get the ideas of everything because we went through all the things like economic aspects, social, cultural, legal, I know technical, infrastructure, et cetera, et cetera. So for the newcomers, for those people, for the students, especially, they could not understand thoroughly all these aspects. And we thought that we would design ‑‑ redesign the program for a five months period.
So now the second round that we're launching this January, it will be once in a week, again, for the students, for three, four hours and for five months period. And maybe I will update you about the results of it.
>> UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: That's very interesting aspect you just mentioned, and I want to share some experiences or some of the history back when the school we founded ‑‑ this happened in 2006. It was during a preconference for the IMCR that was taking place in Germany at that time and Professor Kleinwitz (phonetic) gathered some international experts. And during that meeting two initiatives have been founded. One is the GigaNet which is still in place and connected to the global IGF and then the other one was the schools on Internet Governance, or at that time we started with the European School of Internet Governance which is a global, not ‑‑ and, in fact, not a regional one with ‑‑ we stay on one place, so we could consider to be German but that is also not true because we were ‑‑ but the purpose of this SIG at that time was teaching Internet Governance on an academic level. And this is ‑‑ this is the importance, the academic level. There are other levels necessary, entry levels, no question about that, but at that time we found out that there is no university where you can learn about Internet Governance. You can do the certain aspects ‑‑ technology, socioeconomic, and ‑‑ and that's actually quite astonishing that after ten years there is still no university which teaches Internet Governance as such, and here, again, on an academic level.
It's ‑‑ it's very interesting that you realize in your first round already that it's sometimes overwhelming, and when we are doing the selection of participants, our ‑‑ in our school the barrier is very high. If you are an entry‑level on an university we say do your Ph.D. and maybe come two or three years later because, really, this was something important, we should keep that academic level. It's ‑‑ everything else could be something else, but it's probably not an SIG as it was meant to be in the original sense.
With this I will not say that the other levels are not necessary. Diplo Foundation courses, for instance, or ISO courses, for instance, they are absolutely important to get the people into that topic. But the SIG in this original sense was a very advanced academic level, and this is something which we would like to establish with the foundation of the dynamic coalition on schools on Internet Governance to really make at least clear on which level you are getting into Internet Governance, and there are various levels, we all know this. Participating in an IGF is an entry ‑‑ can be an entry‑level as well, an important one. That's ‑‑ and I really like that you realize this in the first year already and that you took action how to ‑‑ to deal with that, yes.
>> SATISH BABU: Yeah, yeah, there's one person in the queue. Adam, did you want to speak as well?
>> ADAM PEAKE: Yes.
>> SATISH BABU: So now we have one, two, and three. Go ahead.
>> UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Just one query about the ‑‑ in the SIGs is there any prerequisites? And I want to know the ‑‑ prerequisites. Because the topic ‑‑
>> UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Prerequisites.
>> SATISH BABU: Yes, we do have prerequisites.
>> UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: How is the prerequisites? Because participants, they do seriously or something ‑‑ just ‑‑ that kind of experience we want to know because we're now going to do Nepal SIG, so what is the participant level or how they interact with the prerequisites and then after in the school.
>> SATISH BABU: OK. Maybe we'll pass this question when we come to the agenda item, we'll take it up then. Yes, Olga.
>> OLGA CAVALLI: Yes, this is a very challenging thing especially in the program. What we want to do in Latin America is to bring people interested but still need to do this first step. So what we do is once we have the selected list of fellows, we share documents and information that we already have and also information sent by the experts that will participate in the program. That helps, although it's usually very challenging.
The value that we see in the school is that they ‑‑ they get to know each other among the fellows and they get to know the experts. So maybe they don't get all the information in that week, but they will get a sense of all the issues that are around and they will get to know who to contact if they need something. All the information is available, but sometimes you need how to digest it and how to review it, so this is what we do.
What we're working now, and I think Sandra makes a relevant point about the academic level. One week is perhaps is not enough for an academic and deep level, but we're working with some universities in Argentina and trying to build perhaps a longer program, half percential on site and half remote to do it really academic focused in Latin America, thank you. And I will have to run to another meeting, so I have to leave in five minutes but thank you. And if you have a list or you make calls or something, if you can include me I would appreciate it.
>> SATISH BABU: Any questions for Olga before she leaves? Yes, please.
>> MARY: Good morning, all. My name is Mary, I'm from Nigeria, and the Nigerian IGF, at the Nigerian IGF, we've been running run the Nigerian School of Internet Governance. And the first challenge is that, first, we don't know where there is a designed ‑‑ designed program, standard program that the whole of the coalition runs or you can just decide your own ‑‑ that relates to your own environment or region. So we are hoping by 2018 we are going to run School of Internet Governance before we do our Internet ‑‑ no more program for the year. So I would ‑‑ just a few that have been doing it so that you can clarify to me, thank you.
>> OLGA CAVALLI: Thank you for the question. I think maybe it's a different answer from different schools. What we do is to have general themes related with Internet Governance and that changes every year because that's dynamic. And then we go into regional and national challenges that, of course, is not the same in Latin America and Europe or Asia or different countries in Latin America. As we rotate among the countries, we design in these three levels. General issues perhaps addressed by international experts, and then you have regional experts, and then you have the national. So we design the program if ‑‑ everything is on the Web site. If you want, you have all the programs from the nine schools so far. Ten ‑‑ the tenth is the next one, so there you can see how it has evolved. And this year will be challenging. We have many new things. And, of course, the vision from Latin America may be different from Nigeria and Africa. So that's part of the challenge.
And to reflect, because if not, it doesn't make sense for the students, if you go to the global things. They need the local favor. And I have to leave now thank you very much.
>> SATISH BABU: Thank you very much, Olga. Adam, please.
>> ADAM PEAKE: Hi, yes, Adam Peake, ICANN. I just wanted to mention some of the things we do from the ICANN perspective and it gives an idea of, you know, the sort of the issues we see around the world. We're.
So we're involved with a lot of the SIGs one way or the other, ICANN either sponsors some activities, we tend to send a lot of staffers, speakers, quite often we're involved in the administration and development of curriculum or evaluation of fellowships or ‑‑ and so on and so forth. So it's a lot of work, and it happens from all of the different regions, so ‑‑ not all of the SIGs, but a lot of the SIGs either have sponsorship, staff, speakers, administrative help, or whatever it would be. And we are seeing a proliferation of SIGs. So it would be very, very helpful to start to see some sort of commonality or understanding of what is the curriculum of these things, because at the moment they seem to be all over the place. The general academic training, introductions to Internet Governance, reviews by industry people who seem to be there, all kinds of different ways of looking at this. So some kind of standardization or at least understanding what the curriculum really are, what you're trying to achieve in standards and what the quality of teaching is is important, because we are beginning to also hear a lot of interest from universities, from colleges who want to start teaching this. And I think we'll see the first postgraduate diploma online quite soon, you know, a serious 140 hours related to Internet Governance and policies. So this is serious business now.
So, you know, can you share all your curriculum, can you share all of these courses? And that would relate to another issue which is the business models for these things. Are they being run for profit, are they being run as a turnover‑based business, or are they completely nonprofit and sort of volunteer‑based, and whether you're able to share curriculum and lesson plans will depend on how much, you know, you can share that intellectual property.
But it's organizations ‑‑ it's not just ICANN, but organizations that people come ‑‑ I love this chair ‑‑ that people come to, you know, seeking support of various types. Then, you know, this is the kind of thing that would help us as we justify budgets, and so on and so forth. And it's not just budgets, it's also people. You know, because if you ask for an ICANN person to attend for a week, that's a lot of time, four or five days of some staff time, and that's almost every SIG, that is a lot of resource, that's more than money in many ways.
So, you know, how is it going to be coordinated? Is it the dynamic coalition? Is it this one? Because you can't keep going to two meetings every day to, you know, do all this and follow two different tracks. So help organizations because it's not just ICANN, I trying to think that you really need an infrastructure of support. So who's it going to be? And you have to help us help you? So these are the things we sort of need, what are you doing, what are the courses, costs and all of the rest of that. Please.
>> SATISH BABU: Thanks, Adam. I think you've asked some very pertinent questions, some of it we will (?).
>> TEREZA HOREJSOVA: There's a comment.
>> SATISH BABU: I'm sorry, please go ahead.
>> TEREZA HOREJSOVA: Yes, Adam. This is important to know exactly, like, what's happening, what are the curricula, universities degrees, and I just want to let others who haven't heard about the study know that the ITU has mandated a study that Diplo worked on, kind of trying to map the gaps in Internet Governance courses, and we've also looked at schools of Internet Governance and, you know, other types of training. And this report is available online, and the ITU is having an open forum on Thursday, 11:20, when I know they intend to kind of continue in the discussion in the capacity of Internet Governance.
>> SATISH BABU: Thanks for that input. One of the related developments ‑‑ I'm sorry. In Asia‑Pacific there is a new organization or consortium formed called APASA in response to some of these issues. Now, earlier the SIGs were approaching for funding at least, ICANN, ISOC, different ‑‑ APNIC, for example, additionally, (?)SIG was applying. But now these organizations have found a kind of consortium called APASA, Asia‑Pacific Alliance in support of schools and academies of Internet Governance, that is the full form, and it's a single window kind of ‑‑ all the requests have to be APASA only, and they will then decide who among their members will support this. I'm just mentioning it as a development, partly maybe as response to the questions that Adam has posed now.
We will now quickly run through the rest of the SIGs, maybe one minute or so. Sri Lanka, can you start?
>> Hello, I'm (saying name) from Sri Lanka. Just want to ‑‑ just ‑‑ I had a query. As APSIG's mission is to create trainers in the region to get national SIGs more (?). So we had to very clearly identify who are the people attending the APSIG. So this is a problematic issue that I had raised here within the group, we can discuss that on ‑‑ regarding SIG Sri Lanka, we had our first SIG. Our mission was just to give strategic support, to acknowledge the participants for Internet Governance formally in Sri Lanka. It was the main idea behind the ‑‑ performing the SIG.
So we had 32 participants for the SIG, all are local, and we tried to get maximum from all the multistakeholder participation, but minimum from the government because normally they are not turning out for these kinds of events, five‑day events. So only one trainer came, otherwise, government participation as a student, it's very ‑‑ it's zero.
Okay, Sri Lanka, SIG has decided to structure the process of IG rather than IGF. So I believe we have a topic to discuss on that in the agenda, so I'm not going to talk more on that.
We have a big challenge. One is language. And we have return stakeholders because we have technical people who are not really coming to the civil parts of the school. So we decided to have six‑day course, so six‑day event in all idea, with different topics, with ‑‑ discussing multiperspectives on the same issue. So that will be the next step that we are going to take.
>> SATISH BABU: Thank you, (saying name). And yes, Renata, please.
>> RENATA: Yeah, just one point about ‑‑ the point that Adam mentioned. To have, for example, an IGF MAG at the SIG, it takes ‑‑ it could take conversation with the whole MAG and with the outreach group and so on, and there's funding as well. So for a whole week to have a MAG would be difficult. But many of us here, Avri, are engaged in the IGF, so my suggestion for the SIGs as well, and given that the SIGs are also entering intersessional activities would be to reach out to the IGF activities more and to integrate more. So, for example, in the main sessions, I have been inviting some dynamic coalitions to give updates. It would be good to have updates also from the people from the SIGs, so, for example, Nepal SIG tell us their views on the digital economy or South School, so I just want to leave that door open and say that you are very needed. Thank you.
>> SATISH BABU: Thanks very much. Glenn, would you like to raise a question now? After that, we will go to the other SIGs.
>> GLENN McKNIGHT: Sure. Because we're in a formation of creating our first School of Internet Governance three days, and it's just before the ICANN 61, what we've done is we've looked at best practices as a participant in the African, Indian, and southern school. We were able to pick their brains and figure what is ‑‑ what is a good curriculum. And as all of you, if it's before the ICANN meetings, you try to take advantage of the talent pool in the community, whether at large, NCUC, ICANN, people to come and speak on particular topics, and we've done the same thing.
One of the things we've been successful at is raising money. And we have 40 fellowships that we're offering to people, that's flight and accommodations during the meeting. Now, that's open to only North Americans. And if it's undersubscribed, I'm not sure what we'll do with that, I can't really speak on that matter now. But we have to ‑‑ the North American's open to mid January.
Got to remember, there was something called a hurricane in Puerto Rico, and that caused a lot of problems, even for our applications to the next gen. So one of the things ‑‑ and I'm going to share this with you ‑‑ is look at the fellows. There's roughly, what, 30 fellows each time within ICANN? I talked to Sarah Nush (phonetic) and talk to Debra of the next‑gen, and those are very interesting people.
We have a database of every fellow that we've created for the ICANN database based on what countries they're from and what their interest is and it's interesting, take the time and look at the last survey done by ICANN. And find out ‑‑ look at how many of them have not continued participating, which is a very interesting survey. But what is critical is looking and talking to those two groups, Sarah Nush and Debra, saying, OK, we're going to be providing accommodation, where, if ‑‑ if we have space, what a great opportunity for the next‑gen and the fellows to participate in your group.
One of the other things that we're approach ‑‑ and, again, this addresses what Adam was saying ‑‑ we were approached by ICANN staff saying, you know, there are several budget items there for board members. So if you want a board member as a panelist or as a speaker, there's a separate budget there, OK, so I'm not telling tales out of school, I'm just telling you that's what they told us.
So, yes, ICANN is one of our sponsors, only one, not the dominant one, but one. And it's ‑‑ ISOC is one, not the dominant one as well. So what we did is we worked closely with the ISOC chapter to do what we're doing, and we went to all the different sponsors. And I strongly suggest looking at who we got as sponsors and do it ‑‑ you know, knock on their door saying, hey, (knocking) they funded you, why not us?
>> SATISH BABU: Thanks, Glenn.
>> UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Just a request, can you bring your mics to yourself and speak? Some of the remote participants are unable to hear clearly.
>> SATISH BABU: Sandra, please.
>> SANDRA HOFERICHTER: I want to do a critical remark on what Glenn just has said and what has ‑‑ also what is an observation.
In Glenn's contribution just the word "ICANN" appeared quite a lot, and why ICANN is a very important stakeholder and a very important issue on summer ‑‑ on schools on Internet Governance, I sometimes have the feeling that we are missing the point of the ‑‑ we concentrate and focus too much on ICANN. Internet Governance has much more. It has a political dimension, there is a history, it's about human rights. And this is something ‑‑ while I really, really understand and appreciate if you're doing a summer school before an ICANN meeting just to have the expertise there. You kind of risk making it too much ICANN‑focused and this would not cover Internet Governance as such. There is an ITU process behind, there's a U.N. process behind, there are lots of issues from what the BRIC states are doing, from what the rest of the world is thinking and what Asia‑Pacific is going on, and all these things you would not cover if you only rely on ICANN as the resource for experts and fellows and so on and so forth.
So I just want us to keep that in mind. I'm not saying that it's a bad thing to connect to an ICANN meeting. Sometimes that's the point to get it started, and that's good, and everyone should take that opportunity, but keep in mind that you have to expand beyond ICANN issues, otherwise you're not getting the full picture of Internet Governance.
>> SATISH BABU: I think that's a very valid point. Thanks for raising that. Sayeed (phonetic), would you like to speak a few words about Afghanistan?
>> SAYEED: Yes, hi, this is Sayeed. We organize an event at the School of Governance in Afghanistan. I think one thing we can see is there are some institutions like APSIG and the South School, and then we have the national SIGs. We deal schools as events, not as institutions on its own in the country. So for us it's slightly different. Our resources are still dependent on APSIG and other organizations such as ICANN and the rest. Again, not emphasizing on ICANN too much, but other regional players in the country.
Also the lectures, we talked about how these courses should be more academic and should it not be ‑‑ in our understanding, their lectures were delivered by the experts available in the country. And they were mostly, like, the professionals working as regulatory authority experts, as form developers and the whole nine yards. So they were more experts who had the expertise of the industry. So there comes that touch of nonacademic presentations and lectures in the courses.
We also tried to customize our school through setting up a team like ‑‑ in the first school, we had a theme of access and infrastructure. And so we focused mainly on talking about issues relating to the fiberoptic connections and access ‑‑ access of Internet to the children, to the youth, and to women in particular.
I also want to talk about the integration that Renata talked about. How do we continue our efforts beyond the school. How can we encourage participants in writing up a blog story or doing up a research article. So this school was not only giving lectures to the participants, but it was also a platform where students or participants were particularly interested in researching a particular topic, then who to talk to.
So, now, in our case, when we did that school, it was the first time that the students said that, oh, we actually know that there was a telecom regulatory authority, and that person is the expert that we should talk to, or that professor from that university has an expertise in a particular topic. So this was also a platform for all the people, not only participants, but also the lecturers who came ‑‑ who also come to learn, learn from students and other speakers. I think that's it. Let me try to unlock my phone.
Also another thing that we were very concerned about is the unavailability of the content in the local language, particularly in our case. So not only do we have to run these schools, but at the same time we are also encouraging people to develop content on the topic of Internet Governance in the local languages. And for that reason, I think we need to, again, integrate with other organizations such as probably Diplo Foundation and APSIG and many others in terms of localizing the content that is already available. Thank you.
>> SATISH BABU: Thank you, Sayeed. Noting that we're running out of time, I'd like to ask any other SIG representatives who are planning or have already done a SIG to very briefly talk about the challenges and any other things that they want to kind of highlight, so (saying name) from Nepal.
>> UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: This is (saying name) from Nepal. Thank you very much. Actually, one major issue of running (?) is a (?) audience, whether it's beginners or middle level or what, and bringing the interest of that new person and the resource person, that also is in somehow ‑‑ I found some gap on that. Very new people who are university graduates, they have their own different interest, and senior people, they have their own different interest. So sometimes this is also a very important thing to manage through the curriculums. So it's very important to have good curriculums with the various stakeholders, thank you.
>> UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: (Saying name).
>> SATISH BABU: Yes.
>> UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: So when you're talking about the schools of Internet Governance, as Sandra pointed, it has to be more than five or six days when people are learning. It has to be making them more resourceful, knowing whom to reach for what, networking, so that they can contribute. At the end of it, they have to be able to contribute to the community.
And I think having mailing lists or the social media groups of Whatsapp or Skype, et cetera, does help, and we're seeing a lot of traction in SIG. People are participating, getting to know about the opportunities, and that possibly, if the other SIGs doing as creator, you might look at it.
>> SATISH BABU: Thank you (saying name). One point in response to what (?) are liking. The continuing ‑‑ the need for continuing activities beyond the three days or one week of the SIG. It's interesting that APSIG has a fellowship program for IGF. For APSIG IGF is a very important activity. APSIG would like to see much more contributions from the Asia‑Pacific region in the IGF. And for that purpose, I'm encouraging people to attend the IGF by providing fellowships. There is a funded, three seats, plus APSIG own funded another three seats more seats. (?) So this support is available, and APSIG would like to enhance it to about ten in the next two to three years subject to availability of funds. Because it considers IGF to be the real proof of the pudding, as it were. You know, you run a school, people come and go. What is the contribution after that? As Glenn is pointing out, many of them do not contribute. But IGF is seen as a kind of way to kind of continue the ongoing engagement with Internet Governance.
Couple of other points about APSIG: One is that it funds most of its participants, like we said, there are trainers training kind of a school. There's a strict selection criteria. The location has been now more or less finalized in Bangkok. We did try other places, but finally we have converged on Bangkok. Yeah, and also a couple of points regarding INSIG, in INSIG case, we are going across different cities. We cover two cities now. The next three years are already charted out. We have ‑‑ in 2020 all the venues are already identified.
Another, there's a use of multiple formats for the actual class sessions. Now lectures obviously are the most because you pump information into people and lectures are very effective but sometimes it gets to be very boring, sometimes overwhelming, and somebody pointed out. So we ‑‑ in Indian SIG, we have a variety of different ‑‑ one of the most successful items in the INSIG edition a few months was a role play, a multistakeholder role play on Internet shutdowns. So we had a very heated debate, and that is exactly what we want to do. And that helped to kind of break the ice on the first day, this was towards the end of the first day. And that really helped people to kind of talk to one another, break all the barriers. So that was a very interactive session. But we also have panels and lightning sessions in addition to the regular ‑‑ and also we heavily use Twitter to introduce participants, you know, to highlight any comments that they have on any of the things discussed and so on.
Yeah. So any other SIG member who wants to add on anything? Otherwise, we'll go on to the next set of topics. Are there any questions for any of the people here who have been ‑‑ who are quite experts at, you know, running SIGs now?
Okay. Not seeing any hands, we'll move on to the next one, the challenges and opportunities. The first point I'd like to cover is the coverage of schools of Internet Governance. Now, we do have like Asia ‑‑ APSIG Asia‑Pacific, but it is a very deceptive kind of coverage because there are huge swaths ‑‑ I mean, huge set of countries where, for example, the Mekong Delta ‑‑ Cambodia, Laos, Viet Nam. So there are these places where we have very limited presence. We're trying to get people from these countries, like Myanmar, which is just coming out of ‑‑ you know, into the democratic processes and they would like to get people to participate in the SIGs and go back to their communities and share their learnings. That is not happening. I would be interested and keen to know from you as to do you have any Pacific ‑‑ Pacific capacity is not an issue, really, because we have people like Maureen who are from the Pacific, there is capacity, but still it's interesting we have not seen a Pacific school, although we've been talking about it for quite some time now. So the imbalance, asymmetry of the coverage is a matter of concern. Are there any thoughts quickly on this? Yes, Maureen.
>> MAUREEN HILYARD: Thank you, Satish for raising the Pacific IGF. It has been ‑‑ I mean, it's been spoken of. But I guess, you know, there's always going to be the challenge of getting the Pacific people together, and I think as one of the great things ‑‑ and, I'm sorry, I arrived late, I was at the SIDS session which only just finished ‑‑ that I should arrive in the middle of Tereza's presentation, but, you know, I mean, like, although we haven't actually had the ‑‑ SIG has not been established as early as it probably could have been within the Pacific, we've been very fortunate to have been able to participate in quite a formal, you know, IG sort of, like, introduction through the Diplo Foundation, I have to sort of say that because my own introduction to IG was actually through Diplo. And I think we've actually promoted that more so.
I know that when we have the APRGF, are considering having a Pacific APRGF component of it during that time, at a time when we can probably get a lot of people together. But those opportunities are actually not very ‑‑ sort of that regular. So we ‑‑ I think we're going to still have to rely on the Internet version. It's going to be important that we can still participate in that because the challenge of getting people, funding people to a SIG is just going to be, you know, not very practical.
>> SATISH BABU: Thanks, Maureen. We agree that the Pacific case is complex because of the fact that people can't easily travel. Are there any other comments on this coverage issue?
Okay. Governance, the structure of ‑‑ the process of organizing the SIGs, who organizes them, who fixes the content, what is the process of getting the participants? Is there a community ownership of this, as Adam was pointing out? Are there any comments? We have seen multiple models in existence, with their own strengths and weaknesses. Would the room have any sense of what is desirable for a new SIG as they're starting out, for example, do we have any advice for them on this matter? Glenn?
>> GLENN McKNIGHT: As a person who has participated in at least four of them, I can tell you from my experience working with Satish, the fact that he did a changeup in the day ‑‑ and I can't speak for you, Sandra, but that's the only one I didn't go to ‑‑ she's looking at me and giving me the evil eye, so I had to defend myself.
You said it earlier, and I have to stress this, especially after lunch, and if people are full, they can't think very well. What he did ‑‑ and, I'm sorry, also Amrita and others ‑‑ what they did is they got them out of their seats, interacting, working in small groups, thinking, dialoguing, so important, it energized the room. Because you can see after lunch, it just drops down. Especially with some speakers, they're really, really boring. So I strongly think, as a suggestion, do not think ‑‑ you know, don't have talking heads the entire time. Make sure you change it up.
>> SATISH BABU: Any other comments? Yes, saying Avri.
>> AVRI DORIA: Hi. I have a question. The African school started doing this practicum where they actually do roles and then the Mison (phonetic) school picked that up. I wonder how many of the other schools do an extended practicum where they take a case where they divide up the fellows into various stakeholder groups that may or may not be their own? Is this something that's been picked up in others? Because I know the two that I work in do it because I do it, but I don't know if other schools have picked up on this kind of practice.
>> LIANNA GALSTYAN: Thank you, Lianna, and I will speak here now on my SIG hat on, the (?) European IGF.
This year we had that experience, youth school. And actually we ‑‑ after the selection process, when we had already our students, we started an online course teaching them ‑‑ giving them the idea of ‑‑ general idea of Internet Governance, and then on the actual day of our meeting with students, and we gave them in prior also, and that was the case of Facebook ‑‑ not Facebook, I'm sorry ‑‑ Apple iPhone and FBI. So we had that actual case, and we had divided the students in two groups. Those who are with Apple and with the human rights and personal data protection, et cetera, so this suggestion, and on the other side we had the ‑‑ the FBI, like the security, et cetera, et cetera. So that was really a very good interaction, a good exercise, and they were all involved in these discussions, and they learned how to ‑‑ in real life, how that could happen, and they're taking different roles. This is a very good thing. Thank you.
>> SATISH BABU: Adam and then Baher.
>> ADAM PEAKE: Yes, one of the Asia‑Pacific groups that we support which is the AP ‑‑ APGA (phonetic) ‑‑ oh, sorry ‑‑ which is ‑‑ it's actually aimed more at university students, it's one of the younger age groups that's sort of targeted, so it's mid 20s, master students level. Yes, there is this sort of practicum sort of activity, but it's organized by Net Mission which some of you may know. It's one of the activities that dot Asia Foundation organizes, and it's a group of young people, mainly from Hong Kong, who get active and help people with sort of practical exercises and do they various things. Not quite the same thing as the stuff you're doing, Avri, but a similar idea for a slightly younger age group.
>> BAHER ESMAT: Thank you, Satish. This is Baher, for the record. So first, your question on how to develop the program. So from the Middle East program experience, we ‑‑ I mean, we've been doing this for four or five years now, and we have always had a group of community members, like four, five, six people, maximum, working as a program committee to propose ideas, publics, and to develop the program. And we do share this with also larger group from community members, this ICANN strategy working group in the Middle East to get feedback and all this.
So it's always good to involve community in the development of the program. It's always also good to learn from other experiences from other programs. One of my colleagues attended the European version of the SIG a couple years ago and he came back with lots of new ideas. And so I think these are two main things in how to develop and also further improve ‑‑ improve the program.
Now, on Avri's question, yes, we did try this at least once, the role‑play kind of model dividing the participants into groups and have them work on topics and, actually, it was designed similar, I guess similar to the European SIG model, where they work on a topic and then they go through several steps of discussing the topic, all the way to maybe making some recommendation. And this would take place over three days, starting with a couple hours the first day to have a general discussion and then move on until they come back with their presentation the last day.
One lesson learned from this experience was that it needs a lot of preparation beforehand to prepare the students to make some readings and come prepared to work on the topic, not only to discuss it, but also to get some outcomes, sort of outcome out of this.
>> SATISH BABU: Thanks, Baher, that was very useful. Yeah, (saying name).
>> UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: One question. Can we create a tool kit for new things to be performed? So as a group there are newcomers like Bhutan, they're asking how to start this. So if we can create a tool kit, because we have experts here, so it will be better.
The second thing that I want to talk about, SIG Sri Lanka. SIG Sri Lanka collaborated idea Sri Lanka, so they all have to be participative in the idea. So it was a special experience for them to be into the practical ‑‑ how they use this in practical. So thank you.
>> SATISH BABU: Thanks so much. In the case of ‑‑ in SIG, the sessions is actually very interactive and successful but we had some challenges in dividing people into groups. The reason was that some of them naturally were from ‑‑ like, some of them were working for the government or industry. They were put in other groups. So we were wondering if that's the best use of their existing knowledge base by doing that. But we went ahead and did it, nevertheless. It was also not too bad, but sometimes the entity tended to slip back to their original land, so it is funny, actually.
Right. So are there any other comments on this? Not seeing any hands up, let's move on. Knowing we only have about six minutes more. Funding sustainability and quality assurance. That's the next agenda, and the next after that is the alumni and community building and collaboration.
So what do we feel regarding funding of SIGs? Now, the India SIG's example is that it is funded, it's not able to raise its own ‑‑ we will charge fees and kind of break in on that, like discussed earlier, fees are actually paid, all their own accommodations and so on. So unless there is funds available from some sources, the SIG cannot go on. It is not sustainable in that sense of internal resources.
APSIG is pretty much the same, there are funding agencies. Fortunately for most SIGs, there are people that are willing to fund. It's not so easy, but if you try a little bit harder you can raise the funds required for that. What is the general sense of the room on this aspect?
>> LIANNA GALSTYAN: Lianna speaking. Yes, the funding is a real challenge, and especially I'm speaking on behalf of Armenia and SIG and IGF. The thing is that all the sponsoring resources are limited. I mean, for us the general event and the valuable thing was the annual meeting of IGF itself. And since the sponsors and donors are basically the same organizations, we had a feeling, and a bad feeling, like if we ask for a school, and then ask for the IGF itself, then we would not be funded for both things. Yet these are the different things. I mean, the school is for capacity building, development, you're teaching those who do not know things, while the IGF is an open‑discussion platform. But the sponsors are the same. This is really very challenging. And that's why we're trying to change the format of the school not to be that much dependent on sponsors. But if we have ‑‑ we are sustained in the funding resources, we could do it a different way.
>> SATISH BABU: Thank you, Lianna. Sandra, please.
>> SANDRA HOFERICHTER: Just to show some experiences from our side, although we take a registration fee for half of the fellows, we would not exist without funding, and we are very thankful for ICANN, ISOC, for all these global organizations that they are supporting all the schools on Internet Governance, including us.
What I would recommend those doing a school on the local level, please look for the local ccTLDs to pledge some money and for the local telecom operators, they might have a real interest in getting the people which are coming out of these courses, and you could actually also ‑‑ this is something that we are doing, we have two possibilities of funding, you can become a fellowship sponsor or you can become a donor, just giving money, and we take it for food, travel, whatsoever. But we also offer the opportunity of giving fellowships. For instance, Council of Europe, they would not give money into the pot, but what they do, they sponsor fellowships, and this brings us the fellows. So that's a very good synergy, and I'm sure you have other organizations, ccTLDs, telecom operators in your country which might be able to add to the fellowship program. Sometimes even they send their people, people in case of sending them, they say we have a new employee here. He has to get on speed on these topics. We send him, we pay for his travel, for his accommodation, and if there's a participation fee, even for this one. So they're sending their people so that they get, actually, the education in order to be fit for the job, what they need to fulfill in their respective organization or company. So these are various models which might also work for other parts in the world.
>> SATISH BABU: Thank you, Sandra. Yes, please. We will very short because we have to vacate the room now.
>> UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Good morning, everybody, This is (saying name) Access (?). I'd like to talk two points regarding the funding. So the problem with funding is that we ‑‑ I'm an AfriNIC fellow, so the problem of funding is that we only depend on Civil Society organizations and NGOs to provide funding, and we do not look for governments to be implemented or work to just participate in that, that's the first thing.
And the second thing is that ‑‑ or the second obstacle is that we do not have funding for sustainable, like, schools and to fund outcomes of these schools, actually, to guarantee that these schools have ‑‑ have reached outcomes, and these fellows really ended up with something. So that's the main problem for me more than sponsors themselves. Thank you.
>> SATISH BABU: Last intervention this side and then over to Gunela.
>> UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Two, I would say, suggestions. One is that, yes, regulatory authorities and ccTLDs are possible funders in that local context, but we have to make sure that we don't get a lot of influence from them because most of the time if they are giving you a lot of money, then you kind of feel obliged in terms of treating the agenda according to their needs and suggestions.
Another approach that we used was that we try ‑‑ it was very hard to get, like, $2,000 or $3,000 from one organization, so what we tried to do is narrow it down in terms of resources. What kind of resources do you need? Do you need a presentation or a photographer, so you reach out to those organizations, and then you can narrow down your immediate monetary fending to minimum, and then probably there will be some organization who would be willing to give that.
>> SATISH BABU: Thank you. Gunela, please.
>> GUNELA ASTBRINK: I've been looking after the remote participants as well as I can, and unfortunately we've had a few technical problems, and therefore, they haven't been able to speak in the beginning, they didn't hear very well either, but I just wanted to say who has been on ‑‑ online remotely. It is Itisham Khalid (phonetic), Professor Kim Non Shon (phonetic) who is the convenor of the Asia‑Pacific SIG, Nadir Anarash (phonetic) and the Secretariat Cai. So thank you for that.
>> SATISH BABU: Thank you, Gunela, and we have not finished the agenda, but we can take off some of the discussions onto the e‑mail list. I'd like to ‑‑
>> UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: There's a participant list going around the table, and I know we have to vacate the room, so rather than filling out all the details about the SIG and the e‑mail address, if you could just quickly put down the name, your name, and pass it around, that would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.
>> SATISH BABU: We can even take it out of the room.
>> UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Yes.
>> SATISH BABU: Yeah, so I'd like to, on behalf of the organizers, thank everybody who has been here and who spent the time with us and also kind of give us your valuable inputs. We will keep this dialogue going, and we will inform all the people on the list about the next activities. Thank you very much.