Asia Pacific regional IGF

IGF 2010
VILNIUS, LITHUANIA
17 SEPTEMBER 10
0900
ROUNDTABLE 3


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Note: The following is the output of the real-time captioning taken during Fifth Meeting of the IGF, in Vilnius. 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 session, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.
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>>  It's been a pleasure working with Edmon, very forthcoming and helpful and as you know, in Asia, it's kind of a low key way of looking.  There were very key supporters.  Paul Wilson, director general of APNIC.  Please come and see me for some counseling.  Of course, we have supporters coming in, Robert Guerra.  Robert, are you here?  Robert was supposed to be here.  He has also been a supporter.  Because there was a first meeting ever, we were feeling our way around.  So we hope that we can push this forward, bring this forward and make this a more meaningful event.  
The first part of our session this morning, we're going to talk about planning.  I guess you can talk about some lessons learned.  Our format that we will have this session for about 40 minutes because we will devote the bulk of time talking about the future, the lessons learned, the future and the way forward.  
I'm going to have Jeremy Godfrey of the Hong Kong government office talk about why he and some lessons that he might share with us.  Jeremy?

>> JEREMY GODFREY:  Thanks.  As Pingma said, the idea came from Sharm el Sheik, which was the first time I had been at the IGF.  I came away very, I think, inspired, particularly by the involvement of Egyptian youth in the IGF of that event and reaching out to civil society and to people with disabilities also very well supported.  On the long journey back from Sharm el Sheik, there was a long layover in the Amman airport.  I said to Edmon that I thought it would be really good just to do something for Hong Kong, to do a Hong Kong IGF, to raise the awareness among young people in civil society on internet governance issues.  
Edmon accused me of being sufficiently ambitious.  With all the other conversations that have been going on in Sharm el Sheik about an Asian regional IGF, Edmon said to me, we should do an Asian one.  I was a little bit cautious of whether that could be done.  
I'm very grateful to him and Stephen and all the other organizing committee members for putting together what were three events in Hong Kong.  So as well as the regional roundtable, there was a Hong Kong event and a youth camp.  
So I think from our point of view, we certainly achieved the objective of engaging more people in Hong Kong and raising the level of awareness.  I also felt coming away from Sharm el Sheik that the major benefit of the IGF is that whichever kind of stakeholder group anybody comes from is a great opportunity to meet people, understand perspectives of different stakeholders so that in other forums, other decision making forums, for example, you can do a better job.  We achieved that objective in Hong Kong.  We were excited to host the regional event which also benefited the Hong Kong people because again, it was a great way to see that, for people in Hong Kong to see that international perspective.  
I think certainly as I've had to deal with internet governance issues particularly around the introduction of the Chinese language TLD for Hong Kong, the discussions I've had both at Sharm el Sheik and at the regional IGF were very helpful in steering our way through those discussions.  From the government perspective, we've certainly got something out of it.  I hope the other participants did as well.

>> Thank you, Jeremy.  I think the involvement of the youth, some of them here    I'm still a youth yesterday.  Yesterday I was a youth.  Today I'm just a bit older.  It was very imaginative and something to think about.  In Singapore, looking at the Hong Kong model to see how we can use that and what we can take away from that, from the Hong Kong experience.  
Next I want to ask Steven to get involved.  He was a member of MAG.

>> STEPHEN LAU:  Thank you.  Just to follow up on what my colleagues have mentioned, it was already decided that we would be ambitious and host three events.  We only had less than six months to devote ourselves to organizing that.  With the support of many that we like to believe that it was really, those were really successful events.  
When you talk about organizing IGF events, obviously we have to adhere to and observe the spirit of IGF in particular, two particular aspects.  One is the multistakeholders approach.  And so I was responsible for the local organizing committee.  And adopting a multistakeholder approach, Jeremy being an advisor and myself, it was kind of the private sector.  And also the other stakeholders.  I will be talking mainly about organizing the local conference.  
The local IGF conference, it was then believed that the government, through its involvement in IGF and also ICANN, the industry or the private sector, commercial sector also have been involved in IGF and ICANN.  Local conference was more with the objective, first of all, to introduce internet governance issues to Hong Kong.  
We thought particularly the NGO sector, the community for the mentally and physically challenged, for the poor as well definitely for our use, that's our second objective, and through the event to be able to enhance Hong Kong's participation in coming to the IGF.  
So those were the three objectives.  Because of the focus on the community and youth, we have definitely invited the council of social services which is an umbrella organisation of over 300 NGO's in Hong Kong, we have the Hong Kong federation of youth group which is a government sponsored organisation in looking across the spectrum of answers relating to youth.  So we went ahead and organised the local IGF event conference.  I wish to make a point about the timing or the date we chose.  It was actually over a seven day period for these three events.  It was from June 12 to June 18th, starting with the internet governance cam, and then the regional Hong Kong conference.  
The date chosen was very specific.  This is actually to facilitate the attendance of distinguished speakers from various parts of Asia and time for the ICANN meetings in Brussels for seven days.  We had speakers coming from north Asia, Taiwan, Korea, Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, all the way down to Australia and New Zealand.  And then some of them would make their headway into the ICANN meeting in Brussels.  The timing and, therefore, the number of speakers and all of that would be greatly enhanced.  
We have a lot of sponsors, Microsoft, APNIC, SSR, and all of that, through which that we have from planning point of view, I think I'll stop there.  Thank you.

>>  Thank you, Stephen.  Next I want to ask Paul Wilson, the Director General of APNIC, to talk about the involvement of APNIC in this IGF.

>> PAUL WILSON:  Thank you very much.  It was a great pleasure and privilege for APNIC to be involved with the first Asia regional IGF.  And I think we'd be very keen to be involved in future and hope that along with IGF itself that the regional events will also continue.  I think perhaps most people know that the role of my organisation, APNIC, is in the allocation and management of IP addresses in the Asia Pacific region.  We are one of five regional internet registries around the world who share this responsibility.  So we exist and operate in some sense within the narrow definition of internet governance, specifically in the critical internet resources area.  
For APNIC and to some extent, we've also concerned ourselves with the broader definition of internet governance and dedicated ourselves and considerable resources to the building and the maintenance of a healthy internet in our regions.  So we've been involved for many years, over a decade, in training and education, focused primarily in the technical arena but more and more in areas of policy and education of a broader community of people with interests and influence in terms of internet development and internet management.  
So there are quite a few cross overs of issues between the narrow and the broad definitions.  We have IPv6, which has huge technical and policy implications.  We have various regulatory and policy related matters.  
These are all within the scope of concern and interest of not only APNIC but the regional internet registries collectively.  We've been involved since the early days of WSIS.  We had very active involvement in the working group on internet governance and now with IGF.  
(So we see, we've always seen the IGF itself as a very important platform and venue in which many issues have been involved.  The internet collective registries is one of the top five financial supporters of the IGF.  We've made pretty considerable financial contributions to help ensure the success of the IGF.  And APNIC, of course, is one of those contributors.  
Likewise, not only is the global meeting important but these regional meetings have become quite important, not only regional but also national meetings.  And those meetings have been important mechanisms for disseminating information, the results of IGF processes and also for aggregating influence opinions and inputs at the national level, at the regional level.  
So these events all work together in the Asia Pacific IGF was one of and one important component of that whole process.  So we were very keen to see it happen torques see it succeed and provide some financial support, also some staffing support and participation, content and promotion.  And we're very happy to see the success of the meeting.  As I say, I hope that it will    it actually will be the first of quite a number of such events.  Thanks.

>> Thank you, Paul.  For those of you who are not familiar with Paul, he is one of the pioneers in this internet space.  And we in Asia Pacific are very lucky to have someone like him heading APNIC.  A number of the    a lot of the policies and processes that Paul has implemented for APNIC are actually being implemented.  So in a very great way, can you see Asia Pacific is blazing a path here for another NIC's as well to follow.  
If you know, the internet, the IP address space is a critical net resource.  You could say the Asia Pacific is setting a part here, for what is critical intent.  So thanks, Paul.  
Next I want to invite Xiansheng Shi, who is the general manager of the Asia Pacific top level domain association.  Before that speaker speaks, I want to ask those who just came in, if you are not hearing very well, it's your ears.  It's acoustics.  The headsets in the corner of the room, you plug them into this device, you will hear a lot better.

>>  XIANG:  Hi, everyone.  I'm the manager of APTID, the Asian Pacific top level domain region.  We're one of four level country code domains.  Our definition extends from middle east to Pacific islands.  It is an enormous region.  The organisation itself is a membership based organisation.  Membership is for the ccTLD managers for the region.  And more than half of the country code in the region are members now.  Members meet to share general good practice ideas and enhancement to the security and the stability of our own country code operations.  With support of multistakeholder consensus based forum from the ICANN provides that we participate in a lot of inputs to ICANN, why range of operations.  
APTLD provides an open space platform for managers.  Naturally, they endorse the concept of IGF as a multistakeholder, nondecision making forum for awareness raising in the internet community.  
Our focus has been in the stability, security internet development, critical resource, international domain names.  At CPC, a lot of those topics are heavily discussed here in IGF.  
AP region is probably the most diversified region with many culture and language and all kinds of regimes.  So that makes development of our internet in AP region has its own character and its own needs.  Among that, we have ccTLD managers with all kinds of models.  So we really need a forum to discuss internet related issues, especially issues concerned by our region at the first AP regional IGF provided such a platform to bring together major stakeholders together to debate on an equal footing about internet governance and related public policy issues, exchange information, and share good practice, especially related and of topic interest of Asia Pacific.  So we're really glad to be one of the sponsors of the first AP regional IGF.  
APTLD hasn't been actively involved with IGF as an organisation before this regional IGF, although many members of our members have been engaged with IGF from the very beginning.  But we are fully aware of the importance of IGF.  And I'm sure we'll be more engaged with national, regional, and global IGF in the future.  
So next year actually, we will assist the first Pacific IGF and the ccTLD workshop for 2011.  Our chairman will talk more about that later on.  So I'm really glad to be here today.  Thank you.

>>  Okay.  Thank you.  Our next speaker is Edmon, CEO of DotAsia.  I think he needs no introduction.  

>> EDMON CHUNG:  Thank you.  DotAsia was actually formed from the community that's actually sitting here.  So right from the beginning, I think our mission and mandate really points towards participating and contributing to the collaborative dialogue within the internet community in Asia.  
So supporting a regional IGF is really comes quite naturally, especially look back at DotAsia's only history through the ICANN process and through the processes for, you know, engaging the different stakeholders within Asia to participate and then eventually to support us to become a reality.  DotAsia ourselves run the DotAsia top level domain.  
But we do have a larger mission to promote internet development and adoption around Asia.  And I think the IGF is one of the important aspects of which, and we're real excited to be able to    I guess we put ourselves out and volunteered to be the    for the secretariat for this regional IGF.  And I could definitely say that DotAsia is willing to and definitely willing to work with any interested host.  
We were able to, I guess, arm lock the Hong Kong government, willing to host this year's event earlier in June.  And we would be more than glad to work with any other host to keep this momentum and keep this going because as I mentioned from the very beginning, it is the collaborative nature, the collaborative dialogue between the internet community and Asia has been critical to DotAsia's success and, therefore, we are both thankful to that support when we were going through the ICANN process and we are also excited to be able now, with the launch of DotAsia and some funds coming in from the DotAsia operations, be able to contribute back to the community
I guess with that I wanted to talk about some of the secretariat work for those who might be interested in the future, I think DotAsia will continue to be willing to support not only the regional IGF, perhaps also subregional.  I think we'll hear from the Pacific, interest from the Pacific region for Pacific IGF.  And I can say that DotAsia would be more than happy to share our experiences and participate and also contribute to that initiative.  
I guess when I first talked about it with Jeremy and with Penua and with Stephen, we know very well, the initiative which we really intend to be relatively bottom up process, we understand that we might not be able to reach everyone around Asia.  Asia is very diverse and a very large region.  And we went in knowing that we might not be able to reach everyone.  But I guess DotAsia tried to reassure everyone that yes, we might get some    we might end up not being able to reach everyone.  But still I think we were willing to, I guess, take the heat, if you will, but continue to work hard in future, in the future to continue to engage and get more people to participate.  
It's sort of similar to the history of DotAsia ourselves as well.  We know fairly well that when we started, we won't be able to reach the whole community.  But I think over time and I think our activities and our work have shown that we continue to engage, we continue to engage and reach out to more and more participants so that we can help in the collaborative nature of the dialogue in the internet community in Asia.  Thank you.

>> Edmon, you raised points, issues that were sort of behind the scenes.  That's the first issue of course, was legitimacy, who are we to organise this.  I guess somebody must pick up the ball and run with it.  As Edmon said, prepared to take some of the heat.  Fortunately, there wasn't that much heat.  A bit warm, but not hot.  So we managed to get it running.  
The next person I'm going to invite is Robert Guerra.  I don't think he is here in the room but I think we're going to acknowledge his contribution.  Robert runs the director internet Freedom Project from the Freedom House.  He brought in people who would not have ordinarily made it to the regional IGF or in IGF.  So we want to recognize his contribution.  
I want to pause at this stage and invite questions or comments about planning.  Yes, can you please identify unfortunately previously and raise your point.

>> BLOGIE ROBILO:  Good morning.  And thank you.  Robert is in another session, but if you like, I could give a very brief backgrounder.

>> Yes, sure, please.

>> BLOGIE ROBILO:  I'm Blogie Robilo from the Philippines.  I represent civil society.  I was part of the group that Freedom House brought to Hong Kong during the APRIGF.  Freedom House, there were 16 civil service society representatives from all over southeast Asia that were represented in Hong Kong.  So there were two of us from the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia.  Help me out, guys.  Laos, Mianmar.  So it was a significant representation for southeast Asia at the APR IGF.  And without their support, our voices would not have been heard.  
So before Freedom House brought us to Hong Kong, two or three days before so that we could plan and talk about the IGF and because all of us were newbies, so to speak, in IGF and we had no idea what was going to happen.  Freedom House gave us orientation sessions right before the IGF in Hong Kong.  And after that, we stayed and formulated our statement, in fact.  And Xian, do we have copies here?  If not, it's online on Scribe.  If you will follow me on Twitter at Blogie, I will post a link to the Asia Pacific    I'm sorry, the southeast Asia and civil society statement on the regional IGF.  Thank you very much.

>>  Okay.  Thank you, Blogie.  If you can get on to the remote participation, you can also post a link there.  And others will get it.  Okay.  
Any other questions, points for clarification, comments?  
Okay.  It looks like we are all happy campers here.  If not    Keith?  Okay.  Please.

>> KEITH:  Just really to make a quick observation, I think, as with all such first time meetings as with the IGF in Athens, these steps and concerns about whether you're going to have the audience and right audience or so on were the concerns going through the organiser's minds at all times.  And I think it's with immense relief when you get to the event and you actually see the people in the room.  
So for the organisers who took those first brave steps and their nervous moments, I think they got their rewards.

>>  Keith, I think you're right.  We're all smiling now because yes, at the time we were pretty nervous.  Who would turn out?  Would we have enough people to fill an MPV?  But in the end, yes, things turned out very well.  All of the credit, of course, goes to Edmon.  Bianca, who doesn't sleep.  
Okay.  Thank you.  We're going to move on now.  This next part of our session this morning we're going to talk about the outcomes    sorry.  Okay.

>>  RAVI SHANKER:  Thank you for the opportunity to speak.  My name is Ravi Shanker.  I'm from India.  I represent the department of technology, government of India.  I would like to thank the organisers who helped host Asia Pacific regional IGF in Hong Kong a few months ago.  
It's a vast region, Asia Pacific.  As Edmon pointed out, there needs to be a bottom up approach to see that this diverse region would have people from all parts of Asia Pacific participate.  A fact that I would like to mention is that India has played host to the third IGF in Hyderabad.  We had the opportunity of having a number of participants from the Asia Pacific region also in addition to the rest of the world.  
While we are for the continuation of the process of the IGF as such, regional IGF's would definitely fortify our efforts to see that the IGF mechanism gains ground and is able to have its voice, though it may not be an outcome organisation.  The initiative of the Asia Pacific regional idea is quite laudable and needs to be inclusive in its ambit.  The inclusiveness meaning that while there's a large region of the southeast Asia, which is to my mind perhaps unrepresented, I would like to point out that India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Nepal, Myanmar, this is also a subgrouping within the Asia Pacific region.  
Inevitably, whenever we are talking Shea Pacific, I have this feeling that there is a Pacific Rim or something which is looked at as Asia Pacific.  When we are talking about Asia Pacific, we need to look at inclusiveness.  I would ask that while we are from the bottom up, we are from multistakeholderism, we need to see that this inclusive approach really gives a future course of action in regard to planning.  
We have a very vibrant civil society in the country.  I am a government representative, but I wish to mention that the private sector, the civil society in India, are very vibrant but the fact that during deliberations, we need to ensure that the civil society in India, back stand, bang La    owe Pakistan, Bangladesh, they could also be part of the regional IGF process.  
I would mention this year because that's the way issues of southeast Asia are quite different from issues of some other countries across the Pacific.  Thank you.

>> MODERATOR:  Thank you for that comment.  We set aside some time at the end, I hope you can stay to the end to talk about your efforts of organizing the IGF in Hyderabad.  We did try to reach out to India in particular.  My own interest being that I have lived in Hyderabad for a year.  Many Indians say, I survived India.  Edmon, do you want to clarify, there were some issues

>> EDMON CHUNG:  I guess overall, I think as I mentioned, we worked very hard to reach out to as much people as we can.  But I take Robie's comments, and I think as a whole, we should work harder in the future to really engage the internet community, especially civil society across Asia.  And I actually take Robie's comments as sort of somewhat volunteering for helping us reach those civil society, especially in India in the south Asia region.  We should definitely work harder with yourself and try to do better in the future.

>>  Moderator:  Okay.  We're going to move on to talk about outcomes.  This part of our session, we're going to talk about events that have come about subsequent to the regional IGF.  We have three persons speaking.  Samantha Dickinson.  Samantha?  And then Stephen and Bianca, in that order.  So Samantha Dickinson is a senior policy specialist at APNIC.

>>  SAMANTHA DICKINSON:  I do apologize for the silence.  I'm Tweeting at the same time.  At the Asia Pacific regional IGF, there were seven main topics.  I'll be talking about the discussion that happened on those topics at the APR IGF.  The first topic that was discussed was security, subsecurity and network confidence.  Many perspectives were included in the discussions.  They look at internet users, the vendors, network operators, government, and civil society.  
What came out of that was the definition of cyber threats differs depending on what perspective you're looking at, whether you're a government or internet user.  Governments are interested in maintaining stability of their country, whereas internet users are interested in maintaining the security and privacy of their information.  
Some of the other issues that came out of that discussion was that there has been a convergence of internal and external threats.  So previously, you would have insider threats but these are now being    so would you have an insider in the organisation providing information to outsiders who will then direct malware within an organisation at a targeted individual.  So there's also an emerging of online and physical world threats.  For example, pacemakers may now be connected to the internet.  So you don't actually have to go up to someone and physically attack them.  You could hack their pacemaker.  
There is also a balance needed between security, which is about closing vulnerabilities, versus the openness of the internet model itself and the privacy of users.  What came out of the discussion was that there needs to be education.  The rapid growth of the internet has amplified security issues as new people have come on board and perhaps don't know the dangers.  What needs to happen is that online security needs to be treated as seriously as real world security.  If you wouldn't leave your front door unlock, why would you leave your internet connection unsecure.  
A lot of internet operators actually don't have security as their first thought.  So that there is a need for internet operators to understand the needs of security.  
One of the issues that came out specific to the Asia Pacific region is many of the threats appear to come from this region.  This has implications for network operators.  I'm sure many of us have experienced the problem that Asia Pacific domain names or IP addresses may be blocked by people in other parts of the world because we seem to be a threat.  
The second session was on openness.  And it look at the challenges and criticalness of an open internet culture.  The discussion about openness was at all layers of the internet, and technical specifications.  On the internet, openness can influence political and societal openness.  So it's the online world possibly having an impact on the real world.  And it also allows civil society to provide dissenting voices to media and government positions.  It also linked back to safety, talking about protecting children on the internet because if you have open content, how do you stop children accessing that sort of material.  
There was also a look at the other side, where if you don't have openness, what can happen is if you know that something potentially may come back and bite you, you may self censor yourself on the internet.  But one of the outcomes of that is there can be some very creative work arounds.  
The third session at the AP IGF looked at the digital divide in Asia.  It looks at the two types of digital divide.  It look at providing connectivity and providing relevant content and applications that would make people want to use the internet.  You can take a horse to wart but you can't make    water but you can't make it drink.  This is an attempt to make it attractive.  
A digital divide can be based on many factors.  It can be based on economic, advantage, age, disability, or cultural or linguistic difference.  If you have a digital divide, what it can do is those that are not on the internet are further disadvantaged by any real world divide that they have.  For example, if you're, say, disabled and can't use a computer, you have enough issues in the real world but you then can't even get a job in an office using a computer.  
One of the issues with the digital divide is it's competing with a lot of other worthy issues in terms of funding attention from organisations around the world.  
The session also looked at bridging strategies.  It looked at how government policies could help.  However, there was also a concern, and this links back to the opening session, that if there is too much government regulation, it could actually stifle stifle people's desire to join the internet.  Other potential ways to bridge it is to have public/private partnerships or bottom up community initiatives.  It was noted that statistics don't always tell the story.  
So you may appear to have a low penetration rate, but if there is internet access for free from, say, libraries, why would you need to connect from home if you need to pay for that connection.  
So the concept was that you need to understand what the real problem is before you can apply the correct solution.  
As this digital divide is bridged, it is bringing the majority of developing world on to the internet.  And this will have a significant impact on how the internet operates.  There needs to be capacity building for those new users and operators in those regions.  And the diversity, particularly the Asia Pacific region, means there's a diversity of needs as those new users come on board.  So in terms of multicultural content, international domain names.  So that means that often there is not going to be a global solution but looking perhaps for a local or regional solution to specific needs.  
The digital divide, it was talked about empowering users, not just business who is could make a profit out of new customers.  
There was also a discussion about the comparison of digital divides in both the developed and developing worlds.  So there was, in particular, discussion about Hong Kong which has a digital divide between the aged, the disabled, and there is less economically    those less economically secure.  However, in developing countries, the entire society may have trouble getting online.  So for Hong Kong, the issue is getting from about 80 percent up to 100 percent penetration, whereas in many developing countries, 50 percent penetration would be a good goal.  
It was also noted that the global IGF has a new mandate to discuss incentives for using the internet.  But that didn't stop what was discussed at regional or country IGF's.  
The fourth session that was on the agenda was looking at critical internet resources.  It looked at the IP address issue, looking at IPv4, to IPv6.  Two major areas were identified.  One was the distribution of addresses.  And it was determined that IPv6 addresses are readily available.  However, the primary issue is achieving widespread IPv6 deployment, looking at issues like potential cost barriers, staff training, and funding of business case.  
It was also noted that the organisations that manage critical internet resources like IP addresses and domain names use open bottom up transparent processes.  And these are the same processes that have been reflected in the IGF model.  
One of the food for thought statements that was raised in that issue was that the definition of "critical internet resources" very much depends on your perspective.  For some people, it could be a domain name, but if you're in a location where electricity is a problem, that can be a critical internet resource.  
The fifth session looked at diversity and the challenge for international domain names.  As we probably know by now, it allows non ASCII users to enter addresses on the internet in their nature script.  It was explained that many of the issues are still being ironed out.  Some characters in different scripts look the same.  Some languages use the same script, so you'll have all three, languages using the one script.  Some character sets are used by more than one economy, so where do you have clashes.  There was also discussion about the intellectual property challenges that this creates.  If you have an IDN ccTLD, should that automatically go to the management of the people managing the ASCII version of that ccTLD.  
The second last issue that was discussed was emerging issues.  This looked at the role of the civil society in internet governance.  It was noted that civil society is now firmly in the room, but it's not just about participation.  It's about equity of use.  There's also discussion about whether you're a participant or a complainant, that you need to be in the room to have your opinion heard.  If you're not in the room and your view is not included, can you complain or should you complain.  You've got to be there to be heard.  
But there was also a discussion that civil society has an awful lot on its plate and it can be very difficult for civil society to keep up to date with all issues including internet governance.  So there needs to be a way for newcomers to come into the IGF process and understand the environment and processes being used.  
Looking at the benefits of civil society can add to the IGF processes and internet governance.  Civil society can challenge authoritarian government views of the internet governance as internet control, and it can argue for human rights and development agenda and internet governance.  I think we've seen this at this IGF where we've had the internet governance development session yesterday.  
It was also noted that the internet    sorry, civil society versus government debate goes well beyond the internet governance debate.  It's as old as time.  So it's nothing new.  The final session looked at the way forward and what the model of the future IGF may be.  In that session, there was overwhelming support for the IGF's continuation.  There was also discussion about the fact that regional and national IGF's are a very important venue for discussing IGF activities and for challenging regional and national concerns to the global IGF.  That session ended with a lot of people being very enthusiastic about holding national IGF's and volunteering for future AP RIGF's.

>> Thank you, Samantha.  That's an excellent summary of what transpired in Hong Kong.  I'm going to ask Stephen to summarize the Hong Kong IGF discussions.

>> STEPHEN LAU:  Thank you.  Distinct from the regional roundtable whereby we have a group of very informed experts, various issues particularly pertinent to Asia and Asia Pacific as was reported by Sam just now.  I just want to reemphasize that the Hong Kong local IGF conference is actually more an educational one, to educate our community and particularly the NGO community, particularly the youth, in understanding what internet governance is and also the issues as pertinent to Hong Kong.  
We have building vibrant community and realising internet possibilities, that is the theme of the conference.  It's an educational one.  And as an IGF conference, expectedly we follow the format of the global IGF in terms of having sessions on access and diversity, on security openness and piracy, emerging issues as well as managing critical resources.  
On access and diversity, we have Dr. Michael Gertstein.  Actually the programme was talked, I thought I would highlight a few of those, Dr. Michael Gertstein from Canada talking about the success of telecentres.
We have Mr. Anthony Wong, who was the director of China and southeast Asia for the famous OLPC project, one laptop per child.  We're talking about the progress of, in Asia, particularly southeast Asia and in China, for the education of the deprived in terms of bridging the digital divide.  We obviously, as I mentioned, the objective was more for the community, particularly for the disadvantaged.  
We have a session, web accessibility for the visually impaired.  The speaker was a very long speaker in Hong Kong.  He was actually visually impaired.  He devoted his entire life on enhancing the quality of life for the visually impaired.  
We talked about Cybercrime, online threats, privacy, and topics to the audience.  We had over 200 plus people in the local conference.  
On emerging issues, obviously cloud computing was involved, bridging local and global contents.  We also had two very interesting speakers from China on having an open dialogue model between censors and users as well as talking about the internet profile currently in China now being on most internet connections.  It's bigger opportunities but even bigger challenges with regard to internet scenario in China.  
We also had a speaker from Taiwan talking on the status of development of social media and its challenges in Taiwan and part of Asia.  
The last session was a marriage in critical resource, it's    managing critical resource, managing critical resource 101.  We were talking about, what are top level domain names.  What are domain names, what are generic TLD's, what's IPv6, what's cyber squatting and the corresponding dispute resolution mechanisms and also obviously, the hot topic of Chinese domain name, IDN in China.  
As I said, it's educational sessions and not really some sort of conclusive sort of actions or otherwise.  It was mainly educational.  But obviously, we also have two reporting sessions to bridge the three events for that seven days.  We have the organisers, the moderators of the various sessions in the AP regional roundtable to brief the local conference delegates on what happened in the roundtable and what were the issues and what were the challenges and all that.  
Similarly, we had a reporting session or a panel session as well as a reporting session from the leaders and participants of the youth and internet summer camp in Hong Kong.  So therefore, through this conference, local conference, we actually have bridge and report back on all three events for the IGF week in Hong Kong.  
Looking at a comprehensive basis, particularly relating to the local Hong Kong IGF, reassessment in terms of objectives.  So we like to believe as an organiser and also being affirmed by a survey of the delegates who came to the local conference that indeed, we have reached the objective successfully of the    three major objectives.  One is the educational aspects of IG issues for the Hong Kong community for the specific segment of the community and understanding of issues pertinent to Hong Kong in IG.  So we achieved that.  
And we also talk about, one of the objectives is actually also to enhance our participation, at least from the Hong Kong representation, to this particular IGF.  And you notice around this table, we actually have eight students from high school and universities who actually are participating in the IGF at this time, eight of them here to enhance our delegation.  
Just some food for thought, I think I mentioned that in another workshop is that to encourage youth to participate in IGF I think is a wonderful and necessary objective and necessary goal.  In the discretion of our sponsors, as you know that some sponsor, particularly some government sponsors, is they give you a certain amount of monitoring sponsor sort of dollars.  And usually accounting wise, if you don't spend it, then you have to return it to the government or to the sponsor.  
But in this case, you might like to do, treat it as food for thought, if you do other similar events in your part of the world or your economy, one of our requests was accepted, if we have any surplus, then we would like to use that to sponsor youth activities, including attendance to IGF and other activities.  And you find that they're usually    that that's usually very, very well received by sponsors with such a respected and noble goal.  
So that's my part in looking at the Hong Kong local IGF.  I'd like to finish off this short intervention, it's just now earlier we talked about heat and warmth in terms of organising the particular division of IGF.  Using a simile, it was a spark, the way I look at it.  We took the idea, the challenge and a spark.  And a spark in the sense of igniting further aspirations with regard to the organising of various IGF activities in Asia Pacific, a spark that has ignited a constructive dialogue like with India, Sri Lanka, with conclusion, can come in there on sort of inclusion for rigorous, civil society participation.  It also sparked off and encourages the aspiration of various economies in Asia Pacific.  We would like to conduct a national IGF, and we'll conduct, helped to conduct the regional IGF.  And later on, I think we will have other intervention, which would reflect this kind of pursuit as I hope our efforts in Hong Kong have sparked off in terms of such productive activities to come.  Thank you.

>>  MODERATOR:  Thank you, Stephen.  I think some lessons we can learn from Hong Kong, I will ask you to hold your questions after this session.  
Next we'll have Bianca.  She is very active in supporting the whole organisation, very amazing.  She's going to talk about the youth activities of the IG.

>> BIANCA:  Thank you and everyone for giving youth a chance to actually participate in the national IGF and also in the Asia Pacific one.  Basically I want to tell you why it happened.  Same as Jeremy, we got inspired, we were sent by DotAsia to go to the IGF last year.  And we think, you know, there's got to be a better way to engage youth.  As Desiree really emphasized, being in a conference room and sitting down for two hours is not really the very engaging way for youth to participate in internet governance.  So we decided to do something else, which is having a role play.  So we actually have a lot of youth delegates right here to my right.  Clement, Haiki, Flora, Ken, they were the youth IGF participants.  Basically, they're given a role in the beginning, which is representing NGO, government, civil societies, and even youth themselves.  And then they discuss on three major topics of specific interest to Hong Kong youth, I guess.  
So we have censorship, privacy, and also digital divide.  And we had external and internal meetings, which means internal meetings means establishing a mutual understanding between the other stakeholders within your group.  So all the government comes up with a stance.  And then an in external meetings, they represent government to speak on the issues, for example, digital divide, what they think they should do.  It's more a solution base.  It's more for their understanding of, you know, what internet governance is.  And it's a place for them to voice out what they think.  
We actually have the executive summary here available.  We're more than happy to send it to you.  Please approach us if you're interested.  The timing that happened right before the APR IGF and we had a lot of guest speakers including Edmon and Stephen right here, also Marcus, Cheryl, and also Wolfgang to be at the youth IGF to give us comments on their experience before.  That helped us put it in context.  
We had another panel at the Hong Kong IGF specifically to talk about what we thought about the issues.  So it was really helpful that we could actually input into the Hong Kong IGF.  
Another thing I would like to mention and really appreciate all the organisers is that they really focus on having youth on the secretariat and also in the local OC meetings that I personally sit in a couple of those.  I think Matthew is another one of our NetMission ambassadors sat in one of those.  They actually had input directly into the Asia Pacific or IGF logistics, planning, and all of that.  So that really helped, direct participation of youth in the APR IGF.  
So here again I would like thank all the organisers for all their help and effort to really put youth into perspective and really listen to them.  So yes, that's my report.

>> Moderator:  Thank you.  Bianca, you are a graduate student?

>> BIANCA:  No, I'm undergraduate.

>>  Moderator:  I think if you can find a clone    she is very efficient.  Okay.  Thank you, Bianca.  
Questions for our speakers and the organisers and what they have done with respect to the Hong Kong experience?  Please.

>>  Audience:  First I'd like to congratulate everyone for what sounded like a really vibrant and    yes, really cool Asia Pacific IGF.  Unfortunately, I wasn't able to make it because I only found out about it a little bit too late.

>> Moderator:  Can you identify yourself.

>> My name is Jaci.  I'm from the women's support programme    sorry.  That's a very long title.  Congratulations.  I would ask around a process issue.  So I find very heartening that specific attention was paid to particular sections of civil society.  So for example, the differently abled groups and the youth.  I would like to ask also if similar attention was paid to, for example, the participation of women and also the participation of perhaps LGPT groups to talk around issues of privacy, security, and openness because this is one of the topics that we are also bringing to the table and off academia as part of the civil society representation as well.  
And how has kind of like the models of multistakeholderism and openness that has been really developed through a lot of trial and error and sweat and blood in the IGF process and how that has also been brought forward in the regional processes and international processes.  I'm very excited to see this continue.  I think that it will be really great for the Asian region to be able to come together in this kind of configuration to talk about regional IG agendas and priorities.

>>  Moderator:  I think    what I can say is that we did try to include issues that seemed to be most significant given that it's our first meeting.  But most significant, I don't mean that other issues are not significant, but kind of the priorities that we face so that, you know, we get people on board, especially this being our first time.  
I think that before it was okay on women.  I think we did try to do some kind of outreach for women.  LGBT was not on our radar screen, frankly.  Youth was mentioned.  So to the extent that we could, I think that given the time that we had and especially in planning, we did try to include, I guess you would say, the minority groups.  Edmon or Stephen, any comment here?

>> Stephen:  Thank you, Chair.  The organisers, those involved in organizing, we all are aware that we are very familiar with IG issues and the various stakeholding scenarios and all that.  I just want to emphasize one thing, we have considered all the issues that actually you have talked, you were talking about.  But I just want to say that, one, this is a first attempt.  It's a pioneering kind of attempt.  
And secondly, given the time we had, as I mentioned right at the beginning, we had less than six months to organise this.  And so conscientiously, we would not have parallel sessions because of the additional effort of organizing sessions.  So without parallel sessions, whereby maybe some specific focus could be brought to bear in some specific issues.  So we were organizing kind of a main session and it's only a two day compared to a four day kind of IGF.  
And so therefore, some issues were not significant.  It's a matter of choice.  We had a post review of the local conference and regional and next time if anybody does it, in Hong Kong or otherwise, we should actually be    have parallel sessions as well as to extend to other equally important issues which were limited and restricted for the time we had.  Thank you, Chair.

>> Moderator:  Edmon?  

>> EDMON CHUNG:  Just quickly to answer the question, we actually did reach out to those groups.  I would talk a little bit more about that, but just to let you know that part of    some of the supporting organisations include like a women's organisation in Hong Kong, actually a couple of them, one for island area around Hong Kong, one for another area where a lot of the new immigrants are from Hong Kong and also what is called the life workshop.  So there are a number of the groups that we did try to engage.  It is very tough to get them to engage.  I'll talk more about that in a bit.

>>  SALANIETA TAMANIKAIWAIMARO:  I'm Sala from Fiji.  I wear a couple of hats.  I'm the group legal regulator, although I'm not here for Telecom Fiji.  I'm the national chair for a committee that was summoned by development to develop the cybercrimes policy, slash, ICT policy.  I also am the treasurer in publications of the criminal community of the national bar association and cybercrimes is a relative theme that's not really discussed in depth.  I can see potential for development.  
I'm very excited to be here.  I'd like to congratulate the organisers of the first Asia Pacific IGF.  It's not easy.  I know what it's like to pioneer.  I would like to congratulate them on behalf of the 14 island countries that are not here.  I'm one of the founders of the professional training forum, which is an initiative with, under the PIF umbrella.  It is a privilege and an honour to see you guys finally, and I'd like to congratulate you.  
I'd also like to say Kudos for youth participation.  I think it's increasingly imperative that we engage the next generation and the amazing partnership is a testament.  And it should be sort of a template for all organisations to follow and to model after.  And I look forward to increased participation, and I'm looking forward to what Keith has to say.

>>  Moderator:  Okay.  Thank you.  Are you commenting?  Can you hold it until the end because we're going to move forward a little bit.  I'm concerned for the time.  
Edmon, do you want to talk now about the survey results?  

>> EDMON CHUNG:  Sure.  I'll try to be as quick as possible.  Just a quick summary of the, I guess, statistics and some of the survey results.  We did a survey during the APR IGF.  As I think we mentioned, there are three component events.  The Asia Pacific regional IGF roundtable and the Hong Kong IGF conference and the youth IGF camp.  In terms of participants, the youth IGF camp, there were 68 people including students and moderators and guests.  There were 200 participating in the Asia Pacific regional IGF roundtable.  There were 250 at the Hong Kong IGF conference.  And the total unique participants, because some of them overlapped between the three events, so the total unique participants is about 400.  
The event attracted participants from over 20 countries, so 25 economies.  I'll quickly read through them so you can get a sense of who the participants are coming from.  Australia, Bangladesh, Burma, Cambodia, Canada, China, Denmark, France, Germany, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Laos, Malaysia, New Zealand, Nigeria, Pakistan, Philippines, Singapore, Switzerland, Taiwan, Thailand, and the United States.  
So I think we had a pretty good mix of people.  We got back almost 25, 30 percent of the forms of those attending the conferences and the roundtable.  The survey consisted of 15 questions.  99 percent agreed to hold an APR IGF again.  98 percent thought it was, if they are given the chance, they would try to attend on site again.  76 percent said even if they didn't attend on site, they would try to attend remotely.  
Here is a more stranger statistic, more than half think that we should move around different host cities, but about half actually thought we should stay in Hong Kong.  I just want to say that this is a biased, probably a biased statistic because a lot of people participating came from Hong Kong.  
A lot of people, about 88 percent, thought that about two to three days was just about right.  90 percent agreed that the event itself is important for them.  And here is a number of more interesting ones, about three quarters thought that the multistakeholder mixture was good, which also means that about a quarter of them thought that we could do better.  
Then the final question was, in terms of the interaction part, about 40 percent felt it was appropriate.  About 40 percent was neutral.  20 percent thought there should be more interaction.  There again is an area that should be improved.  
In terms of learnings, I guess I just wanted to quickly talk a little bit about the learning.  I think Stephen mentioned just now, in one of the important learning is that for the first time, we were a little bit nervous about how many people we could actually get in the room and, therefore, we sort of had one main session.  But I guess one of the learning, we have enough people so interested, so it's really    I think in the future, we should have break out sessions so that more interactions and more discussion could happen and also drive towards, I guess, building more outcomes and perhaps developing best practices or consensus around different issues.  
In terms of, another learning that I think was important is that it's very difficult to engage non IT or non internet civil society, which I think was brought up just earlier, women's associations from the LGBT groups, and other groups that are non IT or non internet.  It's very difficult, at least from Hong Kong and perhaps in Asia as well, a lot of things on the internet today now relates to those issues.  But a lot of the organisations that were formed are not    I guess don't understand the IGF and the IGF process enough to be participating, even like elderly, disadvantaged groups or even child abuse groups in Asia are relatively slower and more difficult to engage them.  
So there again needs to be more work.  
And finally, I guess one of the learnings was that it's four regional IGF's is not    as we try to be a bottom up process, it's not as easy to engage participation from governments, especially with the diverse and large region.  I think that's an area again that we could try to do better.  And in fact, I guess speaking from the secretariat, I think we would    it would be    we could use some help from the global IGF secretariat as well I think on that point.  
So that concludes the brief summary on statistics.

>>  Moderator:  Okay.  Thank you.  I wonder who is the one person who didn't support the original IGF.  We will find out.  I'm kidding.  
Okay.  We are supposed to have time for some discussion, but because of our shorter time now, I'm going to invite the speakers and then we will talk about other learnings and the way forward.  This section, we're talking about the actions that developed as a result of the IGF or kind of subsequent to, whether it's caused by or not.  We're going to have four persons.  Robert, Yvonne.  Isumi Iza, Keith Davidson, Samantha, and Robert.  Isumi first.  Isumi is a pioneer of the internet, has translated books into Japanese from famous authors.  And he's very well networked.

>>  ISUMI:  Thank you for your kind introduction.  My name is Usumi Iuza from Tokyo.  Heavily inspired by the regional IGF, on my right from the Japan internet providers association, it's a national ISP association.  And the association proposed to hold a Japan's IGF or IGF Japan in two months time or less than so from now, end of October, 29th and 30th, in Okinawa, the southmost island.  
Together the ministerial meeting of the APAC countries to take place there.  Why Okinawa?  There's some story behind that, especially it's sort of relatively underdeveloped economically.  They have a unique history and culture between China and Japan, so to speak.  But over the ten years, last ten years, they made a substantial economic development utilizing ICT.  And starting from the call centre, they have special treatment of long distance calls being exempted.  Surprising it's much less, thereby getting a lot of call centre businesses.  These are turning into a backup when the mainland gets an earthquake or international lines.  They have sort of an interesting strategy.  More than 100 ITC customers over the last ten years emerged.  And making local economy as well.  
There are some of these coming from Tokyo or Japan mainland.  The local economic development is quite significant.  With that background, the Okinawa government asked to propose some kind of event.  And we proposed back IGF.  As much as it will be a national event, but also taking the lessons from Hong Kong that we'd like to extend to some degree of our meeting as regional, Asia Pacific, and international, anybody on the globe.  
Hong Kong has three months of serious preparation time.  We had less than three months from now.  But we got a very good support from both local and national government to make it as a multistakeholder.  We regret that at this point, we don't have enough funding secured to invite speakers or participants from outside the country.  We'll try very hard at least to bring some.  But we appreciate if you could participate remotely or physically or sponsor together or propose, you know, the issues to be discussed, it will be a learning exercise for the Japanese internet community and the outside internet community but related to interests, from all the experience of IGF.  
Interestingly, American people also expressed very good support.  They would like to participate in the context of APAC, but also there is bilateral discussion about internet economy and governance.  
So these are the areas that we are looking into.  And it's closer from many Asian countries like Hong Kong, Thailand, China, Korea.  Basically, if you have anything....

>> I am from Japanese Asia Pacific Association.  I don't know why we in Japan we never do such an IGF activities.  But when I attended Hong Kong, AP IGF, so we do something immediately.  So we'll do IGF kick off meeting in Okinawa.  So I hope many people come to Okinawa, not only for the meeting but also Okinawa itself the island.  The atmosphere is very relaxed.

>>  Excuse me just for 20 seconds.  This IGF Japan is not only annual event per se.  He envisioned that to be a standing kind of forum as a continuous body to bring in issues, make recommendations in the working groups.  But it's largely a non binding group.  It's not an annual event per se.  Many industry associations, civil society, academic institutions, business associations, are showing an interest to have such a thing so that it will become sort of a mother hub of any issues relevant to the internet governance.  That's the kind of idea we have.

>>  That is an interesting model.  The IGF as we know it    but what the group is proposal, therefore, is sending    a standing forum where people can come and meet on a regular basis several times a year.  So that would be an interesting model to consider
Next we want to get Keith Davidson, chairman of the APD.  The organizing of the Asia Pacific.

>> KEITH DAVIDSON:  Thank you.  My name is Keith Davidson.  I'm the external relations director for internet, the operator of the dot NZ ID domain space for New Zealand and the chair, they have to report to me in life.  And also amongst some of the heads, I am also a facilitator for a small structure called the Pacific internet partnership which has been running for some six or seven years.  And I'll talk more about that in a moment.  
I think one of the great learning experiences that comes from participation in events is the knowledge of what to do and what not to do by observing what has happened.  And I think the AP IGF in Hong Kong provides a fantastic template, particularly in terms of the resource of the Web site and so on, on how an organisation or a country or territory could run an IGF at a local or regional basis.  I think it's a useful methodology.  Its commitment to its programme building through an open and transparent consensus based bidding process was very, very good.  
So I think in part that gave us the stimulation to have a structure by which we could organise an event within the Pacific arena.  And I think also just being the meeting place of many friends, both organizationally and individually, who have had a long term commitment to helping in the Pacific.  It was good to be able to meet and have the corridor conversations by which you can facilitate the possibility of an event.  
Of course, the Pacific islands are a group of some individual countries and territories.  Some are self governing states.  Some are in cooperation with the New Zealand, dependencies of New Zealand and Australia and so on; very challenging set of economies involved.  
Of course, nothing would be successful in terms of a multistakeholder dialogue without a full government commitment to that concept.  And so we took out of the Hong Kong event the need to engage with the Pacific governments.  And June and Tong are the ministers of ICT, the Pacific forum, met and resolved that they would support Pacific IGF.  To that end, we finally had a commitment from government.  And we know that with their contacts within the NGO business and civil society sectors that there is a willingness and a desire and a need for the Pacific to engage in an IGF discussion.  
We then set about trying to fine the place that we are in.  Next year, there are two quite interesting events, Caledonia is already scheduled.  One is the Pacific ministers meeting which runs for a week and then the very following week is the annual meeting of the Pacific islands telecommunications association.  So that left us an ideal opportunity for the weekend in between the two to actually stage the Pacific IGF.  So that is the 9th and 10th of April.  And New Caledonia, it is the home of the secretariat to the Pacific community who assists the ministerial meetings and so on.  We have the venue provided courtesy of them.  
We have nothing formal in terms of communications at this stage because it has been through the continuing conversations here and the simultaneous Pacific island chapter of ISOC's meeting that is happened in Vinuatu that we have been able to connect the last of the dots.  But we will have a formal communications programme.  And I am collecting e mail addresses of people who want to be included, gain more information about this event which should be emerging over the next week or two.  
Cooperation for funding and organisational assistance has been enormous.  Our very good friends, DotAsia, APNIC, dot NU, dot NZ, have provide add substantial amount of funding to help this event occur.  Given the developing nature of the economies in the Pacific, the financial requirements are extreme in order to finance the difficult travel across the Pacific for the participants.  
So there is a need for more funds.  So if anyone has any ideas of places where we might be able to get more funds, I'd be extremely grateful to hear.  And more funds means more participants.  That means greater success, of course.  
My view is that the Pacific does share some problems in common.  They have tiny countries of 900 population up to some more significant populations of over 5 million.  But compared to Asia central, those are not particularly big numbers.  They are probably just city sized in some instances.  There are common issues of connectivity and so on.  
My hope is that the first outcome from the Pacific IGF next year will be an enablement to get Pacific island participation in a much fuller sense at future AP IGF or full regional meetings and ultimately to the global IGF, with the expectation that the global IGF will continue in the future.  
So my thanks to the AP IGF organisers for both providing the template and the stimulation for me to carry on with a plan and work with our friends in the Pacific islands and outside to start to make this event a reality.  Thank you.

>> MODERATOR:  Okay.  Thank you.  Samantha, quickly to summarize the work of APNIC.

>>  SAMANTHA DICKINSON:  Mine is really short.  From the APRIGF, we got very enthusiastic and we helped organise four remote hubs for this IGF.  We organised one in Manilla.  There were 16 participants on the first day.  I'm not sure on the following days.  Jakarta, 19 on the first very which is very good considering they came out of Ramadan.  Dhaka, 50 people.  There was media coverage.  Edmon I think is probably the best person.  

>> EDMON CHUNG:  Just quickly, a lot of the campers actually from the youth IGF camp was connecting.  We set it up in the DotAsia meeting room.  Charles and some participants are connecting.  I think they should be connecting right now and also for this afternoon's session as well.

>>  MODERATOR:  Okay.  Thank you for the prompt and quick report.  Next we're going to get Robert now to talk a bit about subsequent actions and things following on to the work that they brought into the IGF.

>>  ROBERT GUERRA:  First, my apologies in coming late.  Had I another panel that I had to be on this morning.  I want to talk about Freedom House's involvement in IGF and how we had the meeting.  And then some of outcomes of not only that meeting but how it is fed into this meeting as well.  
Freedom House has been following issues related to internet governance for a long while, ever since I've started working there.  And I've been following these processes for almost a decade.  And in realising and looking at the Asia region, we did an analysis and we recognized that there were a few folks from civil society particularly working on issues of freedom of expression, bloggers and elsewhere participating in the process.  
And after a lot of internal discussion, we were able to find a source of funding that helped bring 14 people from southeast Asia to the Asia regional IGF.  And subsequently bringing 6 people to this IGF.  The format was that we brought the people to Hong Kong.  This was in collaboration with DotAsia for the Asia IGF.  And we've been organizing the delegation to this meeting.  
Our structure is very simple.  We spent two days before the meeting just going over, doing an IGF    IG capacity building exercise, going through some of the key issues that have been discussed at previous Internet Governance Forums, and went through the programme to help participants engage in a very strategic way.  And then after the meeting concluded, we spent the day together to go over and summarize what the participation was like for them, their observations and their recommendations going forward.  
We were very happy that within days of the meeting concluding, at their own initiative, the delegation that we put together, put together what's called the southeast Asian declaration on internet governance.  It's being distributed here.  I'll go through some very quick points.  First of all, there are some key observations that critical, from their perspective, critical issues of governance in Asia should guide future discussions on government policy on related areas of openness, access, cyber security; that opportunities do exist to continue to improve the IG process.  And there are some specific requests that were made to the Internet Governance Forum.  First of all, the lack of really understanding in terms of that this process is taking place.  There are ten specific points.  I won't go through them.  They are available after here.  
But what we also realise is that there is a great interest to participate in this process.  Going sure, we weren't sure they would be of interest, and they were very keen, for this meeting as well, we've organised, as I mentioned, six people coming.  With two days of prep and for a meeting of this size with over 143 panels?  It can be very intimidating for a newcomer.  We spent almost a day and a half going through the programme.  The southeast Asian perspective has managed to follow a lot of the sessions and have been able to engage.  
We're very keen that, I can say that the Asia regional meeting helped catalyze this meeting.  There is interest to develop almost national IGF's.  That's a good catalyst.  I will make one point that has been made as kind of the issue of freedom of expression and how that gets raised and the involvement of civil society.  There are groups in the past like APC and others who have been very active in the region.  They weren't too represented in the Asia regional IGF.  And it's very important going forward that the knowledge of these issues going forward get involved.  
In terms of a follow up for this specific meeting, we are getting together tomorrow to evaluate how the sessions were.  One issue that's come up is that we're very concerned that at this IGF, there's been a significant decrease in the participation from Asia in the sense of the people that are here.  And I hope that gets improved going forward.  I'll maybe defer to some of the participants if there's time in the discussion later to express from their point of view how important and how good the Asia regional meeting was for them but also to engage and catalyze others in their countries.

>> MODERATOR:  I'm afraid time is really pressing on us, so I'm going to move quickly now.  We're going to have some input from south Asia.  I'm going to spring it as a surprise, Bangladesh representative, Chaudri, invited to speak.  First I'm going to have Mr. Robie Chanka, then Chaudri, and then from Pakistan.  
Tell us about the effort that you took in organizing the event in Hyderabad, some things we should do and some things we should avoid, would be very helpful.

>>  Thank you.  At the outset, I'd like to say that since we are in the process of crystallizing the Asia Pacific regional IGF.  We could think perhaps in terms of having a multistakeholder advisory group, which is truly representative in character and has members from the academia, civil society N. and the government.  That to my mind is important that could let the whole process of the Asia Pacific regional IGF on a springboard level to a truly multistakeholder character.  Thank you.

>>  MODERATOR:  Okay.  We'll take that on board.  Mr. Chaudri, he is a member of parliament of Bangladesh and also heading the E parliament effort in Bangladesh, among other things.

>> Thank you, Mr. Chair.  I first of all express my heartfelt thanks and gratitude to the organisers of the Asia IGF, especially DotAsia and also Edmon, Stephen Lau, Jeremy Godfrey, Markus Kummer.  And we also had a meeting with you.  
I like the title, building communities utilizing internet possibilities.  Actually, it created a advance in the participation, I believe.  Before joining the IGF issue, we actually organised a couple of centre for parliament as such.  It was an idea that a city can be used for importing the MP, the constituency, the people with whom he works.  The inspiration came from my leader, who is the prime minister of Bangladesh, who actually focused in our election manifesto digital Bangladesh.  And she defines digital Bangladesh that everybody    I mean, through digital Bangladesh, she wants to see that people, each people should take part in the government decision making, public decision making, and then the service giving to the people should go to most of the people and the production be increased.  Then that should be everywhere transparent and accountability.  And the country should develop toward medium income level country.  
So therefore, with that as an inspiration, we build a centre for E parliament.  I got a lot of ideas in Hong Kong.  I'm really grateful to all of you that I could participate and bring me a lot of ideas.  I try to now develop my own concept of how I could use ICT, you know, to help my people and myself empowered.  Like for example, I talked to my minister, the ICT minister.  I invited him to my constituency and he declared, you know, I have two in my command.  So he declared one union, like in India, they call, one union from each.  And he declared that the government supported me digitalizing that.  
So how you could do that.  And the consultation of the minister, we'll submit the project.  That's why I also am speaking here because I want to share your experience on that development of the project and implementation of the project.  I know Professor Ang will be going to talk, that's a great advantage for me.  I'll try to help you to meet my minister, my city minister, and also have a consultant.  If you dare, we can also take your ideas.  
Mr. Chairman, actually the centre for E parliament research would like to, you know, develop a programme through which MP can also constantly be in touch with its people because after two months, we have a station.  And that time people are not actually connected to me.  So it is a great heartness for them to get things done.  So therefore, we are developing a process through which MP, even not in the constituency, can connect with the people, let's say, through video conferencing or SMS, like that.  So you know, the ideas came up.  We had our ICT moment.  
I have developed one thing that MP should be accountable to and transparent to the constituency, therefore I have developed a kind of, what I call face to face with people, like this government centre, people come and I actually present the report of activity that the government has done to my constituency.  I myself also am committed to do something.  What I've done or what I have not done, why I could not have done it.  So I need to explain it.  So I organised for the first time in Bangladesh the face to face with the people where ministers and advisors have gone there in a remote spot and share our experiences.  
It is because my leader wants me to be very transparent and accountable so, therefore, this is the way I could show my transparency and accountability.  But I think it can be a great help because the data I have collected from the officials are, you know, manually done.  And there are a lot of mistakes so you cannot verify it.  So therefore, the idea came up to develop a database so that the official can put their data, what they're doing in a month so that we can compile all those things and present it to, or have it face to face with people.  
So that actually gave me a really boost and enthusiasm in getting it forward.  My plan is also, you know, my plan is also develop, for example, mapping for road constructions because we have been allocated some money for construction of road.  But you know, you never know why it is developed, why the engineers are doing it in their own way.  I told the engineers, no, you cannot do that.  You have to develop a map for me.  And what you have done this year, you mark it in green color and for the next year, the money allocated for the next year and have developed, you mark it red color like that.  
So this is the idea actually.  I'm trying to derive from your experiences.  So I want that ICT could help not only in piece to communicate constantly with the population but people also can get connection with the MP's on a regular basis.  For example, in the evening, I can answer all the calls and, you know, take care of things.  
MP sometimes has to do with the government, especially the minister and secretaries.  So you know, sometimes it is important to send them a letter for getting a project approved so, therefore, we can do it by internet and then follow it by my secretary or something like that.  And then we can, the parliament, we are entitled to raise some questions through some procedure.  So we can gather information and we can send it to our speaker without any delay.  While I'm in the car, I can collect information and send it to the speaker.  It would be interesting to put together a speaker list.  
These are ideas actually.  I really am inspired by your IGF, Asia, IGF in Hong Kong.  But I am putting all those things to get feedback from you, even if it is not today but you can be in touch with me by e mail so that, you know, it could be a very vibrant programme, ICT programme in Bangladesh.  
And it will also help empower other MP's because other MP's also watching what I'm doing.  And once I be successful, I can sell those ideas to them so that they can also develop similar kind of ICT programme for the people.  Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

>> MODERATOR:  Thank you, Mr. Chaudri.  It is also very inspiring, heartwarming to know that the little event has helped you in some way.  And hopefully will drive Bangladesh forward.  
Our next speaker is going to read from participation in Pakistan.

>>  Thank you very much.  I am the remote moderator for your session.  You may be interested to know that currently, we have ten remote participants.  There have been others who have popped in and out.  And some of these are people who are in the room.  But I know that we do have people at least from Pakistan and from Urdu, from Philippines.  
This intervention is from Imron from the Urdu internet society in Pakistan.  "My name is Imron Ahmad Shah from Pakistan.  I belong to the UIS.  The Urdu internet Society is an internation membership for the support of Urdu community.  The society provides support for ITC and security policies policy for the betterment of the related users and the nation.  It also facilitates users to communicate their problems, promote solutions, highlight achievements as well as to conduct surveys and to publish statistical analysis and survey reports.  
We also help to coordinate with experts for policies development services.  The Urdu Internet Society and Pakistan information security Association, or PISA, has engaged international information security certification or consortium, or ISC2, to conduct the information security conference 2011 in Pakistan.  This will be the first international information security conference in Pakistan.  
I make a note that that says, seven st, so it might be seven or first.  
The Urdu has offered its services as organizing partner of the conference.  The ministry of science and technology    sorry.  And the ministry of science and technology and the Pakistan technology board have principally agreed to become primary partner to organise and host the event.  With the context of global and regional policies development and social society partnership, I would like to apply for the support of the UN, IGF, and IGC, the formation of the Asia Pacific regional IGF working group in Pakistan.  
We also proposed a dedication of a regional Web site, IGF PAK.com, to host contents and meeting information in English and Urdu languages.  Our aim was a regional IGF working group, is to provide the IGF policies, documents, discussions, and important issues in the local language for the regional community, professionals, academia, IT industry, Cybercrimes and fighting groups, the public and private sector.  Finally we seek support from the UN, IGF, IGC in this case is the internet governance caucus and other supporting organisations and working groups.  
And thank you very much to our moderator and collaborative efforts."

>>  Moderator:  Thank you.  So just briefly introduce yourself.

>>  Audience:  Good morning, everyone.  I am from Pakistan.  My background is that I participated with the internet governance caucus of the civil society.  And I'm a MAG member as well.  And my background has been on the advocacy of issues in Pakistan
I've also been recently introduced to the ICANN affair since last year.  I currently am the vice chair of the Asia Pacific region at large, of the at large organisation in ICANN.  
And when we were introduced earlier this year to the Asia Pacific IGF, it was introduced to us by my colleague Stefan.  It definitely came as a surprise because there has always been discussion amongst us for the past half a decade about organizing country level IGF's.  There have been certain hurdles because you might be well aware that Pakistan has been continuously hit by certain disasters, since the past five years, as well as the ongoing war on terror, which motivates us to gather large gatherings of people publicly.  
In 2005 with the earthquake, lost the government's presence within the IGF activities.  You must be well aware that the process was actively moderated by a Pakistani investor.  So we have an important role within the process in how the IGF has come about.  
And we as civil society members invite the participation of private sector members such as the old Pakistan software house association, the internet service providers association of Pakistan, the technical community such as the ISOC Pakistan.  We have been there advocating certain issues whereby we also went up to the level of holding the first multistakeholder meeting for the redrafting of the national policy of Pakistan, which was initially done in 2000.  And this happened a year or two ago, the redraft activity.  
After that, once again, as I said, the situation in the country, we'll have to wait until we get a new IT policy.  But that does not stop us from being one of the region's most advanced internet networks and a great human resource base that participates within the knowledge economy and the information society in Pakistan.  
Generally, I feel that, okay, if we cannot organise our own at the moment, we can definitely participate within the Asia Pacific IGF, this is important, to keep the discussions going because we have commonalities amongst our countries.  We have things to learn from each other.  We have common concerns to share within the civil society space.  We have similar business ambitions within the private sector.  We have almost commonalities with internet policies.  So there's a great deal of synergies that our country can benefit from the Asia Pacific IGF.  
At the same time, just some suggestions.  First of all, my apology that I couldn't participate within the Asia Pacific IGF though I was in communication with Edmon.  The meetings were just could he inciting with the ICANN meeting    coinciding with the ICANN meeting in Brussels.  So I could not participate.  But still I was following the procedures.  The outcome was very interesting.  Though I have feelings that maybe if we could have a broader participation, there could be more deep investigation into certain issues which are common to us like the freedom of expression, the human rights with regards to the internet, the development agenda with regards to internet governance, and the issue about openness and security because we have various different kind of regimes in our regions.  
One thing I always feel within our part of the world is that our governments are very closely in contact with each other, despite the fact it might be an issue to fix southeast or central Asia.  And this contact is something that we have to stimulate within the Asia Pacific IGF.  And that is where I would like to back the suggestion that maybe if we    maybe take an example but not be too rigid in this example to have some sort of grouping or focal points or maybe some ideas from the MAG that help us have this multistakeholder group representatives that help work together to organise the Asia Pacific IGF.  
And this equal distribution will help us to get voices, ideas, and approaches from these cross    these different stakeholder groups into the Asia Pacific IGF organisation.  
I would also suggest that we explore the possibility, we take away from here the possibility that we have regional focal points or country focal points that act as those catalyst to engage more people from their countries within the Asia Pacific IGF.  They would also be able to help in issue identification.  They may be also help in contributing speakers.  They may also help into organizing joint workshops.  
Having a session on regional inputs would be a really good idea, where IGF is happening, or if the local IGF's are not happening in countries, there may be a stimulation session which could help start that.  
The balancing issue, I also discussed that.  Another component would be when we travel for IGF for ICANN meetings, there is a certain level of attention that the secretariats in both of these organisations give attention to the visa issues.  As you know, the visa issue is for all of us.  That is why I could apply for the European visa but I didn't have time to go for the Hong Kong visa.  And there are certain requirements from the embassies which require you to show yourself as a businessperson when you're a civil society person.  
So maybe we'll have to organise this as well, that some people take particular attention to just the management of the visa and participation.  Meeting formats    okay.  We have organisations.

>> Moderator:  I don't mean to cut it off but give some time to somebody else.

>> I'm going to wrap it up.  Like the critical resources, we do hear from a number of sources in the network centre.  I think a more balanced approach to our organisation would be a really good improvement.  Thank you.

>> Moderator:  Okay.  Somebody here had a comment.  Can you please make it brief.

>> Audience:  Yes.  Thank you for all of your kindness because time actually has run out.  I'm Ken, I'm from Hong Kong.  I'm one of the participants of the YIGF camp.  Actually I want to    I have expectation, I hope more programmes like NetMission can help in Asia Pacific.  Actually, NetMission is a programme that brings together a network of dedicated young volunteers in promoting and contributing toward digital inclusion and internet governance.  Because I think IGF needs more young people.  So when I hear that, Bangladesh is interested in organizing one, I am very happy because our work is seen by everyone.  
So why IGF needs more young people is not only because our voice can be    we can voice our ideas and voices here but also bring what we learn to our own country.  We can introduce IGF to our peers and influence them and, finally, make them become interested in IGF.  For example, we can encourage them to join the international summer school and YIGF camp.  So therefore, one can join the IGF.  
Finally, I think that everyone here ought to believe that the future of internet belongs to youngsters who are the major and active user by now.  If we want to build a harmonious and respectable internet environment, more voice from youth is needed.  And I hope what I think can come true.

>> Moderator:  Unfortunately, we have to wrap up very soon.  I'm going to give a minute afterwards to Jeremy, Stephen, and Edmon.  Just before    okay.  And Asumi as well.  One minute.

>>  My name is Jean.  Very quickly, there is a mention of remote participation, agree, but the thing is, to enhance remote participation, there's a lot... already.  I'm proposing that future remote participation will be a factor, the more capacity for remote participation because we cannot get civil society or individuals to participate.  They need to go to the process.  And this requires some training.  So maybe we should set up some funds so they can be trained to understand the issue and more important is for not for them to digress too much from the actual mandate of IGF.  Number two is, when people participate remotely, okay, let's assume 1,000 or 2000 people, what they want to know is, hey this, is my issue.  How has this issue been taken up.  There's a already a lot of, how issues can be met.  So maybe the secretariat can consider looking at various applications or models of how an issue, okay, how an issue is linked to the higher level team.
A person may talk with some overlap, look, my issue overlaps with another person or this is a unique issue at this level.  Maybe some kind of labelling or things like that.  And finally, in this model, we also need to know, based on this issue, what happened to this issue.  So these things need to be communicated based on an industry model before remote participation, during, and after.  And finally, one more point is, regarding this digital divide, I noted that countries, that certain countries can have some targets for least connected countries and whether this platform could be used for have the uptake of the internet.  Thank you.

>> Moderator:  30 seconds each.

>>  May I touch upon one other thing?

>> Three things.  One is that I seriously would like to take, make it up to some kind of advisory group as a sounding board and would like to have, if you may, Hong Kong to be or the organisers of Hong Kong to continue to be a hosting body so that we can happily discuss the way forward
The third point is, with the permission of my friend, Mr. Hotesan, that is a kind sponsor of this event, we'd like to consider to host a future IGF but we'll come to some multiple bidding or whatever based on the MAG selection, we means Japan, for the next year perhaps.  So we need to consider these processes before or after.  That's my third point.  Thank you.

>> Moderator:  We have a bid for Indonesia but in the year 2012.

>>  We meant 2011.

>> Moderator:  I know.  I know.

>> Thank you.  Just a quick comment, from the Asia Pacific regional at large organisation, AP RIAL is a civil society, ICANN, we actually are very active in the region and we're very willing to join this regional IGF discussion and actually I'm a vice chair, he is sitting right there with IGF, he is on MAG.  So he's our ambassador.  
We really want to work with all the stakeholder groups and especially Izumi and Edmon, they are all leaders.  We want to be institutionally involved in this great regional initiative.  Back to you, Chair.

>> Moderator:  Thank you.  Jeremy, Stephen, and Edmon.

>> Jeremy:  I think it's been great to hear the discussion and how much everybody had got out of the first IGF and all the suggestions for improvement.  I can't speak for Edmon about whether DotAsia would like to take on the role of secretariat for the regional IGF permanently.  I think the idea of having a MAG struck me as being a good idea except one thing to say is the MAG has to have somebody to advise.  It's an advisory group.  With the UN IGF, the advisor group advises the secretariat.  Where we had the secretariat for the first IGF, going to institutionalize things, we're going to need to find a home for a more permanent secretariat.  Other things I would reflect on, there is a continuing role of national IGF as well as the Asia Pacific IGF.  

Somebody talked about capacity building.  So for people to come to a regional IGF and get the most out of it, it will be good for them if they have had an opportunity to do internet governance 101 as Stephen put it.  The youth camp was great.  I'd love to see that become a more inter national activity as well so that we actually will bring together youth from across the region, if not next year, then as soon as we possibly could.  
So thanks very much.  For the discussions.  Certainly I'd love to continue to contribute in whatever way I can.

>> Moderator:  Thank you.  Stephen?

>> STEPHEN LAU:  Very quickly, I fully support this idea about having a multistakeholder advisory group for Asia Pacific.  We already have an ad hoc group in organizing the AP, but I think it's a matter of, you're enhancing it.  At the end of the day, I think we need to have somebody who coordinates it, is my first point.  
Second is, anybody can organise a national IGF, any economy.  As long as it observes, my understanding is, two major attributes.  One it has to be multistakeholder in organisation.  Second, it is open to all.  I think that was quite sort of    I think from the IGF secretariat, those seem to be the two major upon which you can use this IGF label, if I may say so.  So that's what I want to say.  
Sorry.  One thing about the regional IGF is concerned, it would be nice if the coordinator is... but I think at the end of the day as long as you fulfill the two attributes and have the right funding, any economy if they so wish can contribute and have a regional IGF.  Now, can you have two or three IGF, regional IGF in one year, but I presume the MAG would be able to compromise, discuss and coordinate or to ensure that they don't sort of follow each other and so on and so forth.  
The final point, I have to acknowledge, which I did not, from the Hong Kong perspective was the support from the IGF secretariat, particularly Markus Kummer.  He was in all three events.  He kicked off two of them and was involved in a dialogue at the youth camp.  I must acknowledge his support.  Thank you.

>>  Moderator:  And then Edmon?  

>> EDMON CHUNG:  Very quickly, DotAsia would be more than happy to continue to help with the process and also act as a secretariat if we have the trust from the different stakeholders.  I'm happy to hear that Japan would be a potential host for next year and really excited to hear all the enthusiastic conversation.  As I mentioned earlier on, it was a very cautionary try this year.  Next year we really hope that the dialogue can bring more fruits and more inputs into the global IGF process.

>> Moderator:  Okay.  Just some quick remarks then, we had a little MAG of sorts.  We had two committees, one was an inner quantity group, which is quantity events and a larger group to get some advice about the event itself.  So in a way, we did, but I think they were talking about a more formal MAG.  So that will be taken on board.  
Thank you for your inputs.  It's been a wonderful discussion.  I apologize for going over time.  I try to be on time.
(End of meeting.)