Thursday Afternoon Main Session

Good Afternoon/Good Morning;

Am in the main session. It started late, and now there's a lot of speakers that have very interesting and important information to share - and they're being cut-off.

Two gentlemen made very good points -

There was NOT enough time to make informal connections with other people - the way that workshops were scheduled, you attend one, run to the next one (as is everyone else), so you don't actually have time to meet people and make connections or have discussions.

Also, the main sessions were always in direct competition with workshops - how do you choose? I've been attending main sessions at the expense of some workshops that I wanted to attend. However, the "Reporting Back" component of the main sessions was somewhat helpful - you then had the opportunity to hear about what happened in the workshops - be it a very brief summary.

However - what I'm seeing now is a real time issue. Speakers are being "encouraged" to be brief, or are being cut-off - I know we can access this stuff online, but it loses it's immediacy, and somewhat, it's respect. It is somewhat disrespectful and/or dismissive to constrain the time that people have to speak to what is important to them, to to constrain them from sharing the information sharing and/or developments that occurred in their particular workshop.

Oh well. That's ok. I guess I'll just have to access the reports and such online later.

Where I am Wednesday Early Afternoon

Good Afternoon, Good Morning Everyone back home!

Right now, it's about 1:55pm here, and I am in the session in room Pardo II.

"Multi-Stakeholder Policy Development - Lessons from actors engaged in institutional processes".
Moderator: Bertrand De La Chapelle, Special Envoy for the Information Society in the French Foriegn Department and Eurpean Affairs Ministry.

Really interesting so far. They are just scratching the surface of this issue, but so far, we've seen the policy development process workflow:

1. Initiation
2. Drafting
3. Adoption
4. Implementation
5. Enforcement

This session is more of a dialogue on the first stage of policy development - Initiation.

How do you engage other organizations to focus on the issue? Who should be included? Governments, NGOs, Civil Society, Education, Industry? Should they all be included in the same group? Just imagine - it seems like this particular topic could be presented in a giant conference of it's own.

Not only that, but it sure is nice to know that there are other people out there wearing multiple hats - being a single person multi-stakeholder. In particular, one lady - Avri Doria, Adjunct Professor at LTU in Sweden - made a really good point that when wearing multiple hats, one is not necessarily able to speak freely in one venue wearing one hat, but then can speak to an issue in another venue wearing a different hat.

Wow. I know exactly how that feels. Sometimes, in different circumstances, I am required to "hold my tongue" as it would be either impolitic, impolite, rude, misunderstood, etc. - yet, in a different time and space I can speak freely as to the issue and what I really think. I really felt this at WSIS - we're there with Industry Canada, specifically allied with the Aboriginal Portal - but... you can't just sound off on that website, even if you do have issues with it. Some of the concerns I had were: The Aboriginal Portal was not designed by an Aboriginal person. The Aboriginal Portal was not administered by an Aboriginal person. AND a non-Aboriginal person decides who qualifies as "Aboriginal enough" to make it on the portal or to be linked to.

All sorts of interesting questions floating through my head - and there was NO WAY I was actually going to say anything there, considering I was sponsored there by the Government of Canada and was taking up space at the Aboriginal Portal booth. But, you'd better believe that I had serious concerns.

Anyways, I will continue this later. Other session coming in.

Where I Am Right Now

This is the main session I am in right now. A picture of the panelists.

Here's a shot of Gilberto Gil, Minister of Culture. He looks pretty serious, eh?

But really - he's extremely passionate about his concerns regarding diversity and recognizes many key issues that are global in nature and the need to focus on enabling people to participate - as well as the importance of Culture as our common human heritage.

Tuesday Dialogues

Well, Good Afternoon - Good Morning to all those back home.

I'm sending this in while waiting for the main session to start. It looks like it will be pretty interesting. Has anyone been in a session that was even half-full? It doesn't seem like there are all that many people here - oh well, at least we're here.

I attended the session "Coalition Dynamique pour la Diversité Linguistique" (Dynamic Coalition for Linguistic Diversity). Tatiana Ershova (Institute of the Information Society, Moscow, Russia) presented "Aspects multipartenarials et multilinguistiques de la gouvernance de l'Internet" or Multilingual Aspects of Internet Governance - the presentation that I found most interesting and robust out of all the presentations in this session.

Ms. Ershova covered some of the challenges that face us as we try to make the Internet truly multilingual. The number of non-english speaking Internet users has grown to 470 million since the 1990's which has highlighted the limited amount of non-english resources online - and spurred the need to take a really serious look at multilingual issues and possible solutions.

One area of the presentation pointed out that online communication is dependent on the ability and literacy to access information. This is something that I work with everyday in my community, and it's something that I find is overlooked far too often in greater society. For example, INAC (Indian and Northern Affairs Canada, FYI) touts their website where aboriginal peoples could access for information on various issues, programs, etc. Okay. Great.

Except.

Except there are not all that many people in my home community with Internet access.
Except that a lot of people in my home community don't have the technical literacy skill to access this information.
Except for the fact that the people who do have access are necessarily the people who make decisions or even care about the issues.

Huh. Great website though. Just - where is the training to enable people to attain the technical literacy skills to enable them to participate? Where's the Universal Access?

What really grabbed my attention was when she presented on the need for a lingua franca for the Internet. We do need one to ease communications between peoples - but this may result in more language "deaths" - especially indigenous languages. BUT, we can use the internet and related resources to preserve these languages - but do we need a lingua franca to communicate to do so? Kind of a tail-chasing argument.

Will type my fingers off later. Am in session now.

Salutations!

I am Ula Shirt, a member of Piikani First Nation. My home community is located in South-Western Alberta, Canada, and we are proud members of the Blackfoot Confederacy. I moved here from Calgary, Alberta, when I was 6 years old and have lived here ever since - with brief periods away for education and work.

In 1999 I completed a compressed course of studies with a focus on computer programming - directly after completion, I came home and began working with the Peigan Board of Education - an on-reserve non-profit organization that runs a Kindergarten through Grade 12 school and an Alternative Education / Technology Centre. That's a really brief background. Let's move on to the present and what I do, what I am working towards today.

I am currently the IT & Education Manager of The Mii Kyaa Pii Centre, Peigan Board of Education. Here at the Mii Kyaa Pii Centre we have the following projects supported by Government of Canada programs:

• Peigan Nation CAP Centre (Community Access Program) - Industry Canada
• Alternative Education Program - Indian and Northern Affairs Canada
• Alberta Computers For Schools Shop - Industry Canada
• First Nations Schoolnet - Indian and Northern Affairs Canada

We also have several other programs running at our Centre, most notably Sunchild E-Learning Community (http://www.sccyber.net).

Due to budget constraints and availability of personnel, I have worked on integrating every single program that runs here at the Mii Kyaa Pii Centre. Everyone who works here works at everything - in the shop to refurbish computers, in the main computer lab to supervise and help people, in the Alternative Education program to help students, secretarial tasks, etc. Every single employee here at the Mii Kyaa Pii Centre is an essential part of our team.

Anyhow, that is a really, really brief summary of what I do at work. I will probably expand on different aspects as I go.