I have just announced the creation of the “dynamic coalition” for online collaboration in the IGF meeting in Geneva. Effectively this is a group of people who plan to test and run online tools to help governments, businesses, civil society, NGOs and so on, have discussions and arrive at solutions, conclusions, recommendations, whatever. It is open to anyone who wants to constructively contribute. Found out more at http://igf2006.info/wiki/IGF-OCDC. This is what I said:
It is my pleasure to announce the creation of a new dynamic coalition.
The Dynamic Coalition for Online Collaboration has been set up to aid the existing dynamic coalitions and hopes to provide these and future groupings stemming from the IGF with online collaboration tools in order to help them carry out their tasks in the most efficient and effective way possible.
While the IGF process produced a remarkable degree of collaboration, one of the biggest challenges for these self-formed groups will be in holding consultations and discussions with one another since their members are both geographically and politically diverse.
The Internet’s ability to share, discuss, alter and enhance information is unparalleled in human history but this information remains largely one-way. It is to collaborative work, where people work together to accumulate knowledge and thrash out answers to problems, that this global network is turning. And the dynamic coalitions represent the forefront of this movement in global policy terms.
The Dynamic Coalition for Online Collaboration recognises that a good deal of effort and energy is likely to be expended by these groups in an effort to find the optimal way of collaborating online and so intends to devise best practice guidelines alongside and in conjunction with these groups in order to aid the process to its fullest ability.
The coalition will evaluate the available collaboration tools and provide two-way support and advice on what technical solutions and approaches are best suited for multi-stakeholder discussions. We hope that this approach will also result in improvements in accessibility and hence participation from developing countries.
We will be open and transparent, open to all who wish to contribute and focussed on providing practical solutions. Anyone that wishes to know more, or wants to get involved, please visit the collaboration site we set up and run for the Athens meeting at “igf2006.info”, and click on ‘dynamic coalitions’.
Information on another of the coalitions as outlined in Geneva – the Freedom of Expression dynamic coalition – can be seen here on Christian Moeller’s blog.
