Media Change & Innovation @ the Internet Governance Forum

The Sixth Annual Internet Governance Forum (IGF) Meeting was held at the United Nations Office at Nairobi, Kenya on 27-30 September 2011.  The theme of the meeting was, “Internet as a catalyst for change: access, development, freedoms and innovation.”  Over 2000 participants from around the world participated in the multistakeholder discussions that took place in ten plenary main sessions and 122 workshops, dynamic coalition meetings and open fora.

The Media Change & Innovation Division sponsored a workshop on Institutional Choice in Global Internet Governance.  Organized and moderated by International Fellow William Drake, the event featured leading voices from academia, civil society, the technical community,  and the governments of Argentina, Kenya, and the United States.  Included among the eight institutional co-sponsors were the Federal Office of Communication of the Government of Switzerland, the governments of Argentina and Kenya, and the Council of Europe.  The workshop description is available here and the transcript is available here.

Dr. Drake also co-organized and co-moderated the main session on Critical Internet Resources, which featured a news-making debate on a controversial proposal to establish a new UN body responsible for global Internet governance.  He also co-organized and spoke in the main session on Internet Governance for Development, and spoke in the workshops on, “Teaching Internet Governance” and “Enhanced Intra-Stakeholder Diversity and Intra-stakeholder Balance in Multi-Stakeholder Internet Governance,” as well as at the release event for the Multistakeholder Internet Dialog, Co:llaboratory Discussion Paper Series No. 2, “Internet Policymaking.”  Finally, Drake co-organized and co-moderated a “Roundtable on the state of Internet Rights” at the Sixth Annual Symposium of the Global Internet Governance Academic Network, which was held on the eve of the IGF meeting.

Videos from the meeting are forthcoming on the IGF website.

Media Change and Innovation in Berlin

Prof. Michael Latzer and International Fellow William Drake participated in the 1st Berlin Symposium on Internet and Society on 26-27 October 2011.  The symposium was organized by the new Institute on Internet and Society at Humboldt University, which was launched with financial support from Google.  At the symposium, Dr. Drake spoke in a workshop on Future Internet Architecture.

New Publication

William J. Drake,  “Multistakeholderism: Internal Limitations and External Limits.” In, MIND: Multistakeholder Internet Dialog, Co:llaboratory Discussion Paper Series No. 2, Internet Policymaking. Berlin: Co:llaboratory, 2011, pp. 68-72.