The Secretariat of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) is now accepting workshop proposals for its 14th annual meeting, which will be hosted by the Government of Germany in Berlin from November 25 to 29, 2019.
This year, the forum will focus on three priority themes on which to build a focused and cohesive programme which includes, Data Governance, Digital Inclusion as well as Security, Safety, Stability & Resilience.
The themes were identified from the first face-to-face meeting of the IGF Multistakeholder Advisory Group (MAG) held in January 2019 and following extensive discussions on a strategic, thematic direction for IGF activities in 2019.
The priority areas were arrived at based on contributions from 2018 IGF activities, the annual IGF stocktaking process, and the ‘Call for Issues’ for the 2019 programme. These were open to everyone and more than 300 submissions were received in the Call for Issues alone.
These processes formed the basis of the MAG’s discussions and ensured that the programme topics are those that the global community deemed most critical and timely to Internet governance stakeholders and societies at large.
Proposers are invited to make submissions on the three priority themes.
The short narratives developed on each should be used as guidance. Proposals may be tagged with one or more key terms falling under the themes and selectable within the workshop form, with an additional ‘write-in’ option available.
In addition, a number of illustrative policy questions have been provided for each theme, bearing in mind these are examples only and that proposers are encouraged to put forward their own questions. Policy questions are ones that bring together different disciplines or areas of policy research. A policy question should encourage dialogue and discussion, be worded in a neutral way to allow for different answers/views/proposals/solutions to emerge, and not presuppose the outcome.
The six major criteria in the evaluation process will centre on Policy Questions, Relevance, Format, Diversity, Content and Interaction of each proposal. Proposers are strongly advised to pay particular attention to ensuring diversity of viewpoint, supported by gender, region, stakeholder group, and the inclusion of youth and persons from under-represented or marginalized groups, within their organizing teams as well as listed speakers, as these will be reviewed against the key diversity measure.
Proposers are further advised that they should list a minimum of three provisionally confirmed speakers and limit their number of speakers to no more than five wherever possible, so as to ensure space in their session for participant engagement. While the latter is not a disqualifying criterion, excessive numbers of speakers will result in lower support for the proposal.
The final selection of workshops will take place during the IGF 2019 Third Open Consultations and MAG Meeting, scheduled to hold from June 5 to 7, 2019 in Berlin, Germany.
The deadline to submit proposals is April 12, 2019, 23:59 UTC and all proposers should consult the links below for more information.
Resources on IGF 2019 Workshops are available online as follows:
- Workshop Proposal Submission Form
- IGF 2019 Themes
- IGF 2019 Workshop Submission & Review Process
- IGF 2019 Themes
- Outcomes of First Face-to-Face MAG Meeting
- Outcomes of MAG Working Group on Workshop Review and Evaluation Process
- List of Volunteer Resource Persons *information appears as submitted by volunteers
- List of Volunteer Youth Experts/Resource Persons *information appears as submitted by volunteers
For more information, click: https://www.intgovforum.org/multilingual/content/igf-2019-call-for-workshop-proposals-0
