EuroDIG, first day.

Below you'll find rather a statement of what I've seen and heard at the first day of EuroDIG.

1.Opening statements by stakeholder group
As was mentioned at the first session, Internet is indeed a space of freedom, a space to learn, play and work. It is an essential tool. There was a question raised if it would it be possible to see a dialogue in IG in the European terms and if there is a desire to work in a bigger group of participants, meaning the multi stakeholder approach. Veronique Gigon has mentioned that IGF does not belong to any institution or organization. The IGF was prepared by a group of interested people who were willing to contribute. She was mentioned about the OFCOM support to the ECDPIG program of DiploFoundation. The program was initiated to bring new voices to discuss the IG issue. She also mentioned about the creation of the IG pan-European forum.
Markus Kummer, another speaker of the session, has mentioned about the Caribbean, Latin American, African, Italian, UK and US regional IG initiatives. Even if the IGF will not continue, there is a necessity to continue further discussions in the IG field.
Asa Torstenson has communicated through a video message that multi stakeholder approach has to be followed and a global cooperation should be promoted. She expressed the positive thought on the soon adoption of the Telecom Package.
Mostly all speakers have mentioned about the multi stakeholder approach related to Internet Governance issue.
Wolfgang Kleinwachter has mentioned about more global and holistic approach. There has to be involved more qualified people in the IG issue. Wolfgang has mentioned about the successful work of the Summer School in Internet Governance.
Massimo Lucchina spoke about the importance to have the IG Forum. There is a need for cooperation in both IGF and EuroDIG.
Georgios Kipouros, from European Youth Forum, has attracted the attention on the access to the information of youth generation, about the fundamental rights.


2. Roundtable of European parliamentary perspectives regarding Internet Governance.
The roundtable was intended to find out and understand how the European Parliamentary see the future of Internet Governance. There was mentioned about the role of ICANN as a part of the IG process and a desire to become more internationalized organization, but with less influence from the government. There is a desire for an independent authority, not influenced by any of governments.
Mr. Vita has mentioned about the importance to ensure the neutral access to IT communications networks, to ensure the citizenship rights in order to promote involvement in democratic decision-making process, to ensure the wider use of new communication technologies in schools and also to promote cultural diversity. There was mentioned about the significant influence of some dominant companies that can influence the evolution of the Internet even more than a government can do.
The expectations of the parliamentary from the next IGF were that industry and governments have to take into serious consideration the Internet Governance issues. One of the expectations was improving broadband access and access to the Internet of the entire population. Catherine Trautmann has spoken about the importance of continuity of the IGF.

Workshop 3.
The Internet – critical to our lives: are we sure it’s reliable?
At this workshop was mentioned about the possibility of user community to make rules and laws, and after to make some recommendations to the governments. At this session I’ve heard about the difficulty of changing IS Provider in a developed country – according to what was mentioned at the session, in some countries it takes about 2 weeks to do so. It was also mentioned about the significance of continuous access to the Internet, about the centralized DNS which can not be different because of further impossibility to communicate. IGF, as was mentioned, was started already in many countries. There is still unanswered question about the authority which has to manage the IGF .The collaboration in the IG field should evolve at the both national and international levels.

Workshop 6.
The Internet of 2020. Future services.
At this session I foud out about the eUnion2015 and Green Knowledge Society. During the session was mentioned about the copyright issues, especially that content can not be totally controlled.
Marisa Jimenez from EPC Global spoke about RFID – radio frequency identification (food safety, patient safety etc.). Applications that serve the consumer but also the citizen, the traveler and the individual.
The EC communication in the Internet of things and its action plan can be found here:
http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/policy/rfid/documents/commiot2009.pdf
Another speaker, Georgios Kipouros, spoke about social networking, the benefits and threats. He expressed his concern about the loosing confidence in social networks by young people.
In the conclusion, no one knows how the Internet will be in 2020, but, indeed, it will be different and we should be prepared for this.