[WSIS CS-Plenary] Quick Thoughts on WSIS Geneva
Amali De Silva
amalidesilva at yahoo.com
Sat Dec 13 22:30:52 GMT 2003
Thank you for this report - very much appreciated by
those communicating virtually.
Amali De Silva - Mitchell
Director Vancouver Community Network, Canada
Director Freedom of Information & Privacy Association,
Canada
--- Rik Panganiban <rikp at bluewin.ch> wrote:
> Greetings to all,
>
> I just wanted to share some quick thoughts
> immediately after
> WSIS-Geneva:
>
> The Good
>
> * ICT4D Exhibitions. I found it quite inspiring
> seeing the hundreds and
> hundreds of great exhibitions and stands in the
> ICT4D. Comparing this
> fair to the Geneva Telecom 2003 last month, one can
> see how colorful
> and vibrant are the many activities being engaged in
> by civil society,
> governments, international institutions and
> businesses. It makes me
> think that we need more frequent gatherings where
> people and groups
> developing ICT applications to meet real human needs
> can assemble and
> celebrate each others work.
>
> * Civil Society Declaration. Great work all around
> assembling such an
> ambitious document, representing a diverse
> assemblage of views and
> vision of hundreds of groups of civil society.
> Kudos to Sally Burch
> and Bill McIver for guiding the process, all the
> drafting committee
> folks, and caucus and working groups for their input
> and refinements.
>
> * Parallel CS Events: It was incredibly frustrating
> knowing that there
> were at any time several interesting meetings going
> on that I wanted to
> attend. I hope that groups will make reports,
> powerpoints, videos and
> other materials available on wsis-online.net and
> their own websites, so
> I can see a flavor of what I missed. I went to lots
> of great events,
> including the CPSR meeting on ICT governance, the
> AMARC community media
> forum, the TRP meeting on "democracy, freedom and
> digital divide" and
> the UBUNTU meeting on global governance and WSIS.
> Congrats to all the
> organizers for your great work.
>
> The Bad
>
> * Overpasses: Turns out there was PLENTY of room in
> the plenary hall,
> hundreds of available seats. So making us come up
> with these complex
> distribution systems, fight with each other, and put
> poor Robert
> through the wringer, was all for nothing.
>
> * WIFI / Internet Access. This was abyssmal how
> substandard our
> internet access was. I confess to being guilty of
> assuming that at the
> information society summit that we would have in
> place adequate
> information technology. WIFI barely worked, even
> after having to pay
> exhorbitant amounts for it. SMTP NEVER worked, so
> sending email was
> impossible for most of us.
>
> * Noise. The noise factor was a significant and
> constant nuisance the
> entire week, with no soundproofing of any meeting
> spaces and frequent
> loud music, booming noises, and the overall buzz of
> a thousand
> conversations. Many people commented that they had
> never been at a
> meeting of this stature where the noise level was so
> bad.
>
> * Official Roundtables. I understand that the
> roundtable speakers only
> got 3 minutes to make their interventions. What
> exactly was the point
> of bringing all this expertise together if no actual
> dialogue was going
> to happen?
>
>
> Anyway it was all in all a wonderful week spent
> seeing old friends,
> making new contacts, going to interesting events,
> and getting renewed
> energy to work on these important civil society
> concerns. I wish you
> all a much-deserved rest, and I look forward to
> getting back to work
> with all of you in the coming year.
>
> In Peace,
>
> Rik Panganiban
> WFM
>
>
> PS My pictures from WSIS will be online soon at
> http://mypage.bluewin.ch/rikp/WSISpics/WSISpics.html
> =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=--=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
> Rik Panganiban email: rikp at bluewin.ch
> Special Adviser Mobile: +41 76 473 3274
> World Federalist Movement www.wfm.org
> =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=--=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
>
=====
Amali De Silva-Mitchell MSc.
Tel: 1-604-736-9012 & Email: amalidesilva at yahoo.com
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