Long form
- How many IGFs have you been to?
- Has it changed over the years?
- What is the goal of your organization in attending?
- How the event was structured and what it was like shuffling from room to room
- how the IGF fits into the global internet governance regime as a whole
- Multistakeholderism and its challeng{es|ers}
- What trending topics were being covered in the sessions and in the halls
- Some of my memorable sessions and interactions
- Intro (this post)
- Experience
- Stakeholders
- Why Kyoto is the way it is
- The Santiago Boys
- LoFi software and inverting our relationship to The Cloud
- Driving Fukushima: The 3/11 nuclear disaster 12 years later
Attending the Internet Governance Forum - An intro
The Internet Governance Forum is a multistakeholder forum established by the United Nations and held annually around the world since 2006. The 18th edition was held in Kyoto, the city in which I reside, so I decided to attend.
I have been to a few technical conferences, barricaded in rooms with passionate technologists arguing over the most minute details of a newly forming standard, but the IGF promised something different. This is a policy forum to discuss the societal impacts of digital technology worldwide. It is “multistakeholder” in that participants come not just from the national governments of UN member states, but also inter- and non-governmental organizations, private sector, and the technical community. The forum brings together people from all over the globe (11,145 registered participants with 6,279 from 178 countries showing up in person in Kyoto) to talk about how we should govern this supranational resource we call “the internet.” It is certainly my kind of place!
Over the five day period I attended just 21 of 355 sessions. My approach was simply to spend the entire conference listening and learning. I did not speak up during sessions, but approached panelists afterwards or in the halls including people from more familiar technical forae like the IETF, ICANN, and IEEE, but also many human rights activists, politicians, and even more lawyers. High-level speakers included people like Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, former PM Jacinda Ardern, Maria Ressa, Meredith Whittaker, Vint Cerf, and more. I spoke to many people on duty in the vendor booth area, including the policy team of Wikimedia, The Citizen Lab, Github, LEGO, and more. Each time I chatted with someone I would ask the same three questions:
That was usually enough to kick off a conversation, sometimes leading to a second convo, and always to an exchange of business cards.
I wanted to find out a few things: 1) why do people go to IGF? 2) why should the average dev working on an app care? and 3) as someone who works in tech, has an MA in International relations, how have I not heard of this before?!
There are many answers to those above questions, and I spent the five days from morning to night learning a lot about the structures and actors involved in internet governance. Too much for a single blog post, so I think I will post a series of shorter notes in the coming weeks. Some topics I would like broach are:
Outputs from the forum are still being released, so there might be some other topics to report on. If you have any questions or requests please let me know and I will try to cover those as I progress.
Posts in the Attending the Internet Governance Forum series
#IGF2023
Stopping flying considerations
🔗 Should I stop Flying — Outside Online
Appreciate the discussion in this piece. It is something I have thought about for years, and actually one of the reasons I don’t look forward to when I return to Canada where everything is so remote. Imagining a no-fly future — whether due to carbon laws, massively increased expense, or the threat of RPGs (see Ministry for the Future my fav book of 2022 for more on that extreme form of flygskam) — I would rather live some place like Europe or Japan: dense with a good rail system. Even if you could never leave by air, the on-the-ground travel links are so good you could still enjoy the travelling life without the extreme GHG emissions. It is like buying two cakes.
First!
Hello there! 👋 Thought I would give a quick self introduction.
I am a 🇨🇦 in 🇯🇵 interested in tech and society, Buddhism, travel, and more. You can get to know me more here:
micro.chadkohalyk.com/about-me/
I have a large collection of posts at my main site (https://chadkohalyk.com), most recently:
That might give you an idea of my interests.
Over the past couple of years I have been eyeing Micro.blog as an alternative to my “legacy blogger” setup that dates back some time. I plan on focusing my attention here as a way to lower the boundaries of posting. I was really sold on the idea of Mb as an IaaS “indieweb as a service”, and have been following Manton for more than a decade. I still have some customizing and theming to do, but I won’t let that get in the way of posting. 💪
If you have recommended follows or Mb tips, please let me know. Cheers!