.
Lee Hibbard, Council of Europe


What worked well:

  1. IGF Preparatory meetings: Efficient and effective Secretariat assistance.

  2. IGF: The variety and volume of workshops worked very well and brought a dynamic to the discussions. They complemented the main sessions by deep-diving into the issues. The openness session was particularly well moderated and debated.

What worked less well:

  1. IGF Preparatory meetings: Not enough discussions on substance and concrete output. Very short deadlines for submission of written contributions. Very late decisions made on main themes and direction of the IGF.
  2. IGF: Main sessions were too ambitious and tried to cover too many issues leaving little time to examine key issues in depth. This made it difficult to retain key messages. Discussions were sometimes overly polemic.  
  3. Moderators interaction with the audience during the main sessions could have been better organised and, where possible, orchestrated. The real meaning of some interventions from the floor/audience was not well captured and explored by the moderators/panels. Not enough time spent on questions/issues coming from the floor.
  4. Several workshops were too general and could have been more focused. Workshop reporting back to main sessions could be improved: wide variations on what/how to report back.

Suggestions for improvements:

  1. IGF Preparatory meetings: more time for written submissions. Earlier agreement on IGF themes and workshop proposals.
  2. IGF: More attention and focus on specific themes/issues. Consider fewer panelists for each main session. Better/more prepration between moderators and panelists. Greater attention on what/how to report back on workshops in main sessions.

Other comments suggestions:

  1. Maintain the technical/expert focus/approach of the IGF. Promote the diversity of expertise in the main sessions and in the workshops.
  2. Preference for roundtable approach to discussions instead of platform face-to-face configuation. Wi-fi access poor. Overpriced and limited provision of food and drinks.  .

Synthesis:

  1. Yes, the synthesis paper provided an interesting and needed overview. Yes, it should be prepared for the IGF 2007 albeit building in more time to submit written contributions and having access to the synthesis paper earlier/before the IGF.