Excerpts from mail posted on31 juil. 2007 17:34

List of Accepted Workshop Proposals

Forewords

Dear workshop proponents,

During the stock-taking phase after the Athens meeting it was generally felt that organizers need to be given more time than last year to prepare their workshops. At the consultations in May we agreed therefore to notify them by 31 July whether or not to go ahead with their projects. We received many excellent proposals , by far exceeding the available slots. Any selection will not, therefore, be satisfactory to eveyone, as it is not possible to accommodate all proposals.

Please find attached a list of workshop proposals that in our view reflect the basic IGF principles. We applied common selection criteria to all proposals. The criteria we used are based on the concept we have been developing in our consultations and Web based discussions since the inception of the IGF. These criteria are the following:

relevance to the agenda of the meeting;
multi-stakeholder approach in planning and carrying out the workshop;
approaching a subject from multiple perspectives (and thus avoiding advocacy positions);
geographical diversity in general and the involvement of experts from developing countries in particular;
the relevance with regard to the cross cutting priorities of development and capacity building.

We stated at the outset that the readiness to cooperate with others was a prerequisite. We therefore also took into account the outreach activities of the various workshop proponents and their responsiveness to cooperation initiatives.

While the workshop proposals contained in the list are solid, most of them could gain from increased geographical diversity, in particular by including more developing country panellists. We therefore appeal to all organizers to make an additional effort and look out for voices from developing countries, or, if approached, to be open and inclusive and give them a say.

We have been appealing to all workshop proponents to consider merging their proposals with similar ones. Some mergers have taken place - some of them at the very last moment - while discussions on other mergers continue. They will be included in the list once they come to an agreement. Others may wish to approach the workshops that deal with similar issues. We would like to encourage the workshop organizers who have been given the green light to be open to any such initiative. We have also been in touch with the proponents of some proposals to discuss the possibility of shifting them into the Best Practice or Open Forum sections. Some have already agreed to this while discussions with others are still under way.

The list is a 'positive list' of workshop proposals which offer solid prospects for staging interesting and successful events. We have not drawn up a 'negative list' of proposals we are rejecting. Other workshops still stand a chance of being chosen, as the selection process will be finalized after taking into account the number of applications we receive for Best Practice and Open Forums.

Best regards
The IGF Secretariat

List of workshops

Critical Internet Resources

The functioning of the Domain Name System

IPv4 and IPv6

***Merged workshops***

The root server system

Legal aspects of managing critical Internet resources

***Merging with “Governance of Critical Internet Resources - Exploring Commons and Public Interest Based Frameworks”***

The Communications Infrastructure of the Internet

Access

Internet Traffic Exchange In Less Developed Internet Markets

Access: the local challenge