IGF 2010: REMOTE HUB IN BURUNDI.
SHORT REPORT
By Jean Paul NKURUNZIZA ()
During the IGF 2010 (14-17 September 2010, two civil society's organizations organized a remote participation hub in Bujumbura, the capital city of Burundi: Burundi Youth Training Centre (B.Y.T.C)and ASASS BURUNDI.
The main goal of this remote hub was to contribute in creation of awareness about IGF issues in our community.
This remote hub was located at «CAMPUS NUMERIQUE FRANCOPHONE of BUJUMBURA»
To prepare the remote hub, we have organized three meetings in order to :
1. Prepare the programme: According to the IGF 2010 schedule, we have chosen which workshops to follow online. The choice was made tating into account the interests of our local community.
2. List people to be invited: Government officials, civil society representatives, Internet Service providers and telecoms, private sector, Universities and youth organisations and media representatives.
3. Prepare some logistics.
During the IGF 2010, we have adopted this methodology:
• Before the start of the event, Jean Paul made an introductory remark about the IGF process and invited them to be active participants by preparing questions to be sent to panellists in Vilnius.
• Before entering in any room, Jean Claude from ASASS and I have briefed the participants to the theme of the chosen workshop.
• At the end of any workshop, a short discussion was done between participants
• Let's note that we beamed a video documentary produced by Diplo Foundation on Internet Governance issues before starting following the event in Vilnius.
For our remote hub, we have sent 35 invitations, but 26 persons were able to attend. Most of them were young students. We got one representative from Government and one representative from media. So far, no one from the private sector was able to attend.
During the event, the participants were very interested by following the workshops being held in Vilnius. This can be atteted by the heavy discussions we use to have during the break times.
In addition to that, four questions and comments were sent to panellist in Vilnius remotely. Three of them have been raised in meeting rooms in Vilnius and we received relevant responses.
Technically, we were unable to get the video stream during the first two days and we only used text streaming. But the issue was sorted on the third day of the IGF.
Globally, we can say that our remote hub organisation was a success. While distributing the invitations, we discovered that we have introduced a new way of participating to meetings: People could hardlyunderstand this way of attending an eventremotely using ICT facilities. To improve attendance, we will have to create more awareness before the event: A kind of public conference before the event willbe a good way to go.
I have attachedthe programme of our remote hub.
More Pictures are available at: http://www.diplointernetgovernance.org/photo/photo/listForContributor?screenName=33ici0nih7nm4