EURALO Trip/Event Assessment 1

Response by Ronald Bieber (attended & reported by Walter Hötzendorfer)

EuroDIG 2016 was my first EuroDIG. In the past, I have participated in ICANN50 and in national internet governance fora and activities in Austria. Primarily, I am working in the field of data protection and privacy law and I was very positively surprised that data protection and privacy was of such high importance in so many sessions at EuroDIG 2016 I had the pleasure to participate in. Therefore I had the opportunity to engage actively in many discussions and contribute my experience and opinions. 

I had the opportunity to meet colleagues from academia and public administration from all over Europe as well as activists from several NGOs. It was particularly pleasing to see a group of young people from all over Europe who had the opportunity to prepare for EuroDIG in a summer school and tried to engage actively and share their opinions in the discussions with great success. It was inspiring to talk to them in person. Also, I highly appreciated Olivier Crepin-Leblond’s efforts and ability to bring together the people from the ICANN At-Large Community and to arrange a meeting with Göran Marby.

Response by Yrjö Länsipuro

I would like to thank the CROPP team for selecting me as one of the EURALO people funded to participate at the 2016 EuroDIG in Brussels, 8-10 June.  I don't know if, as someone who has participated at most EuroGIG's, I should have bad conscience for taking the place from someone for whom it would have been a new experience, but I would maintain that the principle of funding a mix of   newcomers and veterans is a sound one, and should be continued.

I had been selected by EuroDIG leadership as the subject matter expert for Worskhop 1 on media and content. Reconciling very different thematic proposals under one heading was not easy, but could be done in the end because the heading selected   was broad enough : "Content is the king, revisited". The idea was to review Bill Gates' famous article from 1996 and to check, which ones among his predictions had been proven right, which ones wrong, and what developments he had not been able to foresee at all. Among the latter, hate speech and the changing roles of "media" and "content". Media has lost its steering role and the content - produced by users without gatekeepers - has become the dog that is  wagging the media tail.  

With unexpected changes in the organization team, my role became perhaps more hands-on than originally intended. There developed a very good working relationship between Michael Oghia, who stepped in as the focal point, and me, even though we had never even met face to face. Together, we were able to recruit a good array of resource persons and even to handle the change of moderators at a very short notice.

Response by Nenad Marinkovic

Although I have several ICANN meetings, one EuroDIG and several national IGF and internet conferences behind, there is always something new noticed at the meeting.

This time I would not say anything about panels in main conference hall. It was more interesting to meet representatives of similar organizations and initiatives like ours "Plug In " is. We were lucky that two of us participated at conference and could cover more sessions.

Most interesting were dealing with intellectual property, human rights and internet governance dialogue initiatives.It was interesting to understand that everybody is minority in some way for example.

If something was missing, I would suggest that education should have more important place on the conference.

Response by Ovidiu Popeti

As a fresh new participant at ICANN meetings, I would like to mention that EuroDIG conference gave me the opportunity to involve actively in Internet Governance debates and express my opinion about topics around capacity building for civil society and the best practices of shaping the future governance models for Internet, along with representatives of EU and CEE.

This event enabled me connect with key members of various organizations with whom I discussed the IG related issues and how to empower different stakeholders' involvement, as government, business sector and civil society, to engage in constructive dialogues of ICANN and other IG events in order to make their voice heard in the global community, then apply the learnings at a regional level.

By taking part to EuroDIG discussions, I gained consistent knowledge about how to evangelize the multi-stakeholder model in the region I represent, as well as persuade citizen engagement in decision-making processes, and the role that Internet performs in privacy, transparency, cybersecurity and Governance surveillance.

Shifting the discussion to a national level, in Romania we have an initiative group which is now developing a plan regarding the organization and financing a national IGF, as well as the establishment of a permanent secretariat.

At this stage, entities as ICANN could support the initiative as a partner in giving sponsorship, in giving the experience to shape the process could also contribute with the best practices of attracting other participants.

On the other hand, as a Microsoft full-time employee, member of the EMEA fast-track career development program (Microsoft Academy for College Hires), I discussed with key-people in the Romanian subsidiary about the involvement of specific representatives to IG debates, but the message was those particular individuals are based in other subsidiaries, there is no such department in Romania who could facilitate the public sector presence at IGF meetings.

Response by Erich Schweighofer

I am doing Internet Governance for a long time – mostly as an international law researcher. The CROPP Programme enabled me to see the reality of Internet Governance as a multi-stakeholder process with its many stakeholders, constituencies, silos and cross-community groups. As a representative of a new At-Large Structure – WZRI Wiener Zentrum für Rechtsinformatik / VCLI – Vienna Centre for Legal Informatics – it was a great opportunity to meet relevant people and to position the ALS in this participatory process.  

EuroDIG is a well organised conference with many topics and multiple options to participate, to speak and to try shaping internet governance topics. The social programme enables to speak directly with many stakeholders on this topic in Europe.

Multi-stakeholder processes are difficult to live in practice, considering the high engagement required, the unavoidable disappointments and also the few but important highlights of success. It is highly relevant to be realistic what is possible and what is not.