Hi

On Nov 27, 2014, at 11:35 PM, Ron Wickersham <[log in to unmask]> wrote:



On Thu, 27 Nov 2014, William Drake wrote:

Hi

On Nov 26, 2014, at 8:16 PM, Sam Lanfranco <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

According to Fadi’s comments in New York (see:  http://youtu.be/huI6PucrL7c <http://youtu.be/huI6PucrL7c> ) the WEF is no longer involved in NMI, but is pursuing its own WEF events, linked initial to European Internet privacy concerns. Now NMI is apparently completely independent of WEF. I raise this because the Internet Governance Civil Society Coordination Group (CSCG) letter to the NMI Transitional Council, as currently written seems not to reflect this change in engagement in the NMI.

Just a brief correction for the record.  There have always been two tracks of activity. One is WEF’s regular activities, its Strategic Dialogues for its members at its meetings and such.  The other is the NMI, which is joint with CGI.br <http://cgi.br/> and ICANN.  Fadi was referring to the first of these. He confuses people with intermingled references sometimes, which given the larger confusion over the scope of the activity (irrespective of anything NMI says on the website etc) and modalities has proven to be rather unhelpful.

hi Bill,

please confirm that I understand ... WEF is still participating in NMI.

Yes.  NMI is agreed to be a joint project facilitation platform initiated by ICANN/CGI.br/WEF that will hopefully draw in other participants who will shape it and keep it limited in scope so there’s no wandering into governance policies that need to be worked out in more fully open and inclusive forums.  

Separately, WEF has its own discussions about issues, just like ICANN, CGI.br, or anyone else who wants to.  At Davos there will be perhaps six events related to the Internet.  Some will likely be broadly focused e.g. on the future of the Internet economy, others will take up more bounded hot topics (the  privacy/surveillance session moderated by Angela Merkl could be rather interesting if Eric Schmidt et al agree to participate, could be a newsmaker).  I’m told there might be a discussion that includes the IG clearinghouse stuff I’ve been pushing as NM Roadmap implementation, and something related to CGI.br’s project on facilitating national/regional multistakeholderism.  Whether there will also be a session on stuff closer to home here like the IANA transition is too early to tell, nobody from the US Dept. of Commerce is on the participant list yet, but government people often are the last to confirm. All in development and TBD.

Best

Bill