Planning for IGF 2008

**This is the first IGF meeting in Asia-Pacific region. IGF is now calling for workshops, best practice forums and open forums. The deadline for submission is April 30.

Here is a Workshop Proposal drafted by Hong Xue (April 30, 2008)

1. Name of proposed workshop

An Asian Prospective on Internationalization

2. Provide a concise description of the proposed workshop theme, including its importance and relevance to the IGF.

Despite its largest Internet population in the
world, Asia-Pacific Region is still very marginalized in and detached
from the Internet policy-making process and governance regime. The
language barrier and ASCII-only DNS hinder the Asian users' effective
and meaningful participation in the Internet governance.

Asia-Pacific
Regional At-Large Organization (APRALO), which is representing and
advocating for the interest of Internet users and serves as the only
ICANN regional interface for users in Asia-Pacific, has the
responsibility to bring the real Asian users' voice to the important
international forum. The workshop will be a genuine forum for the
ordinary internet users to discuss the language and culture diversity
in Internet governance, particularly on Internet users' multilingual
participation in ICANN activities, multilingual DNS (IDNs),
multilingual services and multilingual policy-making.

3. Provide the names and affiliations of the panellists you are planning to invite. Describe the main actors in the field and whether you have you approached them about their willingness to participate in proposed workshop.

ICANN: Nick Ashton-Hart

ALAC: Cheryl Langdon-Orr

APRALO: Hong Xue

ALSes representatives: Raj Singh

APRALO will request funding from ICANN but the fund could be very limited. For budgetary purpose, could ALSes submit if they would like to participate the meeting and if they need the funding for travel. There may well be a few people who will attend the IGF anyway, so they won't need any funding. If you need to be funded or perferrably partially funded, please leave your name, ALS affiliation and contact info. below.

Update on June 6, 2008

A list of proposals on IGF workshops is available at http://www.intgovforum.org/workshops_08/wrkshplist.php. A handful of them are on IDNs or multilingualism. The following ones are directly relevant:

1) APRALO: An Asian Prospective on Internationalization

2) ICANN: IDNs: myths and opportunities

3) Cyberlaw: LEGAL CHALLENGES BEFORE INTERNATIONALIZED DOMAIN NAMES ( IDNs)

4) ITU: Multilingualization and Internazionalization of Internet

5) ISOC: Steps toward an Internet that is multilingual, yet remains global

According to our discussion at the Monthly Call on June 3, 2008, we are open to work with any or all of them, provided that the workshop will be able to reflect the interests of the AP Internet users. Could Mr. Peake forward us the contacts of the other four proposals? I cannot find their email addresses on the IGF website.

Message from IGF Secretariat (June 22, 2008)

At our Tuesday meeting, I suggest we add an item on agenda on the
APRALO workshop at the IGF. Please read the message below. The IGF
secretariat has kindly invited us to join the main session. We may
need to decide and get back to IGF very soon on whether we would like
to merge with the other similar workshop proposals. Based on our
discussion at the last call, we generally agreed to work with the
other proposers. After the meeting, I identified the potential
workshops that we could possibly merge with. Now, we've got the real
opportunity and should be shy to go ahead.

From: IGF <IGF@unog.ch>
Date: Wed, Jun 18, 2008 at 8:43 PM
Subject: IGF Main Session Workshops
To: hongxueipr@gmail.com

Dear Miss Xue,

You have submitted a proposal for a workshop entitled 'An Asian
Perspective on Internationalization' for the IGF Hyderabad Meeting. As
you may have noted when reading the last Multistakeholder Advisory
Group (MAG) Meeting and Program Outline, we plan to introduce new type
of workshops into the programme of the Hyderabad Meeting called 'Main
Session Workshops'.

The main session workshops will be held in the main meeting hall and
benefit from being Web cast (video and audio). They will also have
real-time transcription and thus be part of the verbatim written
record of the meeting. In addition, the main session workshops will
have interpretation into all six UN languages (Arabic, Chinese,
English, French, Russian and Spanish). The main session workshops will
be co-organized with and overseen by the MAG and supported/facilitated
by the IGF Secretariat.

The main session workshops will focus on the main themes described in
the program paper. We have identified your proposed workshop as a
potential component for one of the main session workshops and
therefore offer you an opportunity to pool resources with other
workshop proponents and join the main session workshop under the
''Multilingualism' 'sub-theme under the main heading '' Reaching the
Next Billion'' . However your workshop would not retain its original
identity if it is merged into a main session workshop.

Right now we are also in the process of approaching other workshop
proponents with the same request. Please find attached what we think
are related workshops as candidates for merging into a main session
workshop. This list is not final and conclusive. You can view our
website for more information on the workshops http://www.intgovforum.org/workshops_08/wrkshplist.php

However you are free to maintain your original workshop proposals.
Please note that at this stage we cannot confirm whether we will have
available slots, as the request for workshops exceeds the time and
space available. Therefore we are encouraging mergers of workshops
with similar proposals (and this independently from setting up the
main session workshops.)

Please let us know whether or not you will be interested to join one
of the main workshops under the sub-theme 'Multilingualism'.

Thank you,

IGF Secretariat

Reply to IGF Secretariat (28 June 2008)

Dear IGF Secretariat,

After consulting with my colleagues at the APRALO (Asia-Pacific Regional At-Large Organization), I'm pleased to confirm that we are willing to join the main session workshop, if possible, to access multilingual translation, webcasting and other audience-facilitating services in the main conference room. We understand that our workshop may not maintain the original identify once fit in the main session. After reading the other similar proposals, we find that No. 21-23 might contain the similar theme with ours. As far as the end-users' prospective can be preserved, we are open to merge with any or all of them, in particular, the one proposed by the ISOC (No. 23).

We are looking forward to hearing from you and making adjustment to our proposal accordingly.

Regards

Hong Xue

Budgetary Planning (29 August 2008)

The IGF has confirmed that the APRALO proposed workshop will be merging
with the Main Session, along with the ones proposed by ICANN and ITU.
It is the time to make a budgetary plan for this.

According to the discussion at the call on August 29, the staff will
find out whether there could be a regional budget for APRALO and how
much it could be. Hong, Cheryl and other made the following points:

a) The budget could be maintain at the last year's level (staff will find out the costs of last year);

b) The funding will cover up to 5 people's airfares and hotels to Hyderabad.

c) The speakers from local community or having no budgetary impact
(self-funded) should be prioritized. APNIC, APTLD and AP*, which could
send delegates to IGF, will be approached for the speakers/participants
recruitment.

d) Regional funding sources, such as UNDP, will be contacted.

Updates on Planning on November 25, 2008

The third Internet Governance Forum (IGF) meeting is to be held in Hyderabad, India from 3-6 December 2008. Please see the IGF schedule. APRALO organizes the following two events:

a) The First Main Session and Open Dialogue on Day One: Realizing a Multilingual Internet; and,

b) Workshop 4 on Day Two: Internationalized Domain Names: Myths and Opportunities.

I wish all the APRALO people who could be at the IGF will join us at
these two events, showing the supporing, asking the quetions or giving
the comments. All are cordially welcome. Live Webcasting and
simultanenous translation will be available for both sessions. We do
encourage remote participation via the Internet.

Updates on Main Session Workshop on December 3, 2008

On December 3, 2008,
when the APRALO representative, Hong, attended the
pre-meeting for the Open Dialogue following the Main Sessions on
Multilingualism and Access, she was specifically excluded
by Mr. Adam Peak, whom we heard is representing the IGF Secretariat.
Mr. Peak's explanation that it was supposed to be a working session
without any irrelevant persons.

However, the pre-meeting message was circulated in the multilingual
list and it should be interpreted as a meeting for all co-organizers.
APRALO is relevant indeed. Why APRALO was the one that was excluded? We
believe we deserve an answer here.

We hope the secretariat could be consistent with the WSIS
Principles on multistakeholdership. As an UN event held in Asia, the
participation of the Asia Internet user community is important. We
regret that the users who are genuinly willing to contribute to IGF
process are deprived of such opportunity.

Updates on IGF Secretariat's Reply

My apologies for not getting back to you earlier, but, as you can
imagine, I had very little time to check my emails the past few days.
I do apologize for what seems to be an unfortunate mix-up. Let me
assure you that the IGF Secretariat does not engage in passing judgment
on any individual stakeholder.

I am also happy to meet you face-to-face in order to clarify the incident.

Once again, please accept my apologies and I look forward to our future cooperation.

Best regards
Markus

Report on APRALO's Participation at IGF 2008 (December 8, 2008)

Main Session on Realizing a Multilingual Internet

Since IGF confirmed that APRALO would be one of the co-organizers of the Main Session on "multilingualism" in August, the APRALO's representatives, Hong Xue and other colleagues, have been working diligently with the other co-organizers. Since June 2008, IGF workshop planning has been discussed at every monthly meeting of APRALO.

On behalf of the APRALO, Hong, since September 2008, has been working on document drafting, program development and other arrangement. She attende all the face-to-face meetings in Geneva, Cairo and Hyderabad and joined the discussions on the list. APRALO has always been a responsible and responsive stakeholder and organizer of the Main Session.

On December 3, 2008, the first IGF Main Session on Realizing a Multilingual Internet was successfully held in Hyderabad. Although some invited speakers canceled the trip for security concern, Hong and others at the program committee did all they could to complete a balanced and interesting program.

The Panel was chaired by Mr. Ajit Balakrishnan, Chief Executive Officer at Rediff.Com, and moderated by Ms. Miriam Nisbet, Director of the UNESCO Information Society Division. The panel discussed issues related to multilingualism and promoting diversity on the Internet, including accessibility and the importance of enabling access for people with disabilities. The Chair of the session underlined the challenge of making the Internet available to people of all languages and drew attention to the situation in India, a case in point. As the world is looking to increase Internet users by a billion, India would have to contribute at least 250 million of that, from an estimated present user base of roughly 40 million. The session identified five issues for the afternoon dialog to consider:
The importance of having content in local languages, and that people must be able to create and receive information in their local language to express themselves in ways that their peers can understand.
The importance of localization and availability of tools, including both software and hardware, for example, as well as keyboards and other devices, search engines, browsers, translation tools which should be available in multiple languages.
Efforts to internationalize domain names were emphasized by many, with a number of speakers pointing to the technological difficulties as well as the complex policy and political aspects, such as the work undertaken by Arabic script IDN Working Group and how that model could be taken to other language groups to move that issue forward.
The session noted that online communication was increasingly occurring in media other than in written forms, and that multilingualism in mobile and multiple media was something that needed to be considered.
Lastly, there was no common framework and a common ‘language’ for addressing these issues and it was in this context in particular that the IGF might move the discussion forward.

Workshop on Internationalized Domain Names: Myths and Opportunities

****The workshop, co-organized by APRALO, ALAC and ICANN, was held on December 4. The workshop explored how the domain name system itself

create new possibilities for broader Internet accessibility and discuss the effect the proposed standard changes have on
additional scripts and mnemonics and on applicability of possible
existing registrations. Hong, along with the reprentatives from IETF, ccNSO, Egyptian Government and ICANN Board, talked about the technology, policy and legal issues on IDN imminent implementation. Hong particularly addressed the individual users' concerns and expectations for IDNs.