The Fourteenth Annual Meeting of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) is going to be held in Berlin, Germany from 25 to 29 November 2019. IGF aims to bring different stakeholders with diverse backgrounds as equals to discuss public policy issues relating to the Internet. With the theme of One World. One Net. One Vision. this year, we have stronger focuses on Data Governance and Digital Inclusion especially to inform and inspire those with policy-making power in both the public and private sectors.
To exchange information and share good practices with those from other regions, NetMission has submitted three workshop proposals in March earlier this year. After a long and competitive evaluation process, two of our submitted workshops got accepted, namely WS #236 A universal personal data protection framework? How to make it work? and WS #315 Youth in IG for Internet ethics & digital inclusion.
WS #236 is initiated by a group of NetMission ambassadors of class 2018/19, aiming at developing a framework for data protection in the era of globalisation, where the accelerating development of technology enables vast quantities of data to be transmitted within seconds across the world. With the countless efforts and time invested by the team, including Mandy Chan, Stephanie Li, Steven Chen, Aidana Alken, and Sabrina Dong, the preparation work is completed and everything is ready for the IGF.
Two of the workshop organisers, Aidana and Stephanie, will be attending the IGF 2019 as the representatives of NetMission.Asia. They will not only be the on-site facilitators for the workshop but will also be the active delegates to advocate for youth from the Asia Pacific.
Our program coordinator and NetMission ambassador of class 2017/18, Jenna Fung, has also initiated to organise WS #315 with other youth leaders from different parts of the world. The workshop is initiated to engage youth talents from different regions with a focus on Internet ethics. By interacting with participants of different cultures, races, and experiences, we expect to discuss and develop an ethical understanding of the Internet in order to achieve digital inclusion.
This is our first time collaborating with leaders from various youth initiatives for an IGF workshop proposal. Indeed, it is a challenging task yet a priceless experience. With the experiences and inputs from different partnering organisers, including Elisabeth Schauermann (Youth IGF Summit 2019 & EuroDIG), Elliott Mann (Swinburne Law School), Aisyah Shakirah Suhaidi (Internet Society Malaysia Chapter), Joy Wathagi Ndungu (Digital Grassroots), and Jaewon Son (Korea Internet Governance Alliance), a robust foundation is developed for this workshop.
Jenna will also attend Youth IGF Summit 2019 on 24 and 25 November 2019 as the coordinator of Hong Kong Youth IGF and Asia Pacific YIGF. By joining the summit, we will be able to contribute to the relevant topics from a youth perspective by bringing in some Asia-Pacific-related examples to the discussion. We believe it is a valuable opportunity to bond and collaborate with those who are already active in national IGFs or IG-related initiatives all over the world.
We will be attending the IGF 2019 in a month, and we are currently preparing for the conference intensively. Although we cannot bring everyone (except Ajitora) to Berlin, we will try our best to bring our voice to as many workshops as possible and share what we will learn to all of you.
You must be logged in to post a comment.