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The IGF formation meeting is over, at least in terms of formal consultations.

In the next few days, the dates of the first inaugural Internet Governance Forum in Athens will be announced. It will be either late October of middle of November. In the next 10 days, all interested parties have been asked to send their own view of how the “preparation committee” for that meeting should be formed.

The Secretariat – mostly Markus Kummer – will then decide how the meeting will be structured and the new preparation committee will decide what topics are to be covered in Athens.

That aside, I had a brief interview with the chairman, and the man chosen by Kofi Annan, to get the IGF to its first meeting, Nitin Desai. In it, he spoke of how he saw the discussions progressing, what the Forum would end up reviewing and what it’s real value may prove to be.

I have put it here as an MP3 podcast [mp3]. It’s just over 10 minutes in length. I think it neatly captures the entire two-day conference and, crucially, looks forward to what we can expect from the IGF proper.