I’m spending this week in Barcelona and Madrid. As I mentioned a couple of days ago the APWG meeting is being held in Barcelona, so I’ve been attending some of its sessions.
Tomorrow, however, I’ll be attending and speaking at the Spanish IGF.
What exactly is the IGF?
It’s the “internet governance forum”, so it’s a good venue to exchange views between business, civil society and government. There are IGFs of some kind in many countries around the world which feed in to the global IGF.
It’s important that businesses such as ours actively engage in these sorts of dialogue. While governments may act in what they view as being the public’s best interest it’s important that they get input from business. While some governments take a pretty much “hands off” approach to the internet and digital economy, others are much more like “a bull in a china shop”!
I’ve been invited to join a panel tomorrow afternoon entitled:
La dimensión política en las decisiones técnicas: cómo afectan las decisiones de ICANN
which roughly translates as:
The political dimension in technical decisions – how they impact ICANN’s decisions
Hopefully it’ll be an interesting and engaging discussion.
Of course the event covers more than just ICANN. The agenda covers topics such as “net neutrality”, cybersecurity, e-business / economy, privacy, intellectual property, politics and youth engagement online.
There’s full information, including the session specific hashtags, on the event’s official site (in Spanish).