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Jonas Öberg
Free Software Foundation Europe
Phone. +46-31-31 31 310 (extension 4001)
The workshop on WSIS, Internet Governance and Human Rights were organised
on the 3rd of October 2005 by the Collegium for Development Studies at
Uppsala University, Sweden. Chairing the workshop was Johan Hellström
from the Collegium.
In general, the workshop was focused on the human rights issues in relation
to the WGIG, but some other issues crept into the discussions as well. The
guest list was by invitation only and I participated on behalf of the Free
Software Foundation Europe. Mathias Klang participated on behalf of the
Unversity of Gothenburg and Creative Commons.
The workshop was divided into a number of speakers first, followed by a
discussion on internet governance in subgroups and later a joint session
summarising the thoughts of the groups. In between the speakers, I also
managed to get some contacts with people attending.
My general feeling from the workshop was that the WSIS discussion in Sweden
is very disorganised and the ones present from the government seemed
relatively knowledgable, more so than I expected, so it was good to get a
face to the persons from Sweden that's behind our representation in the EU
group in the WSIS process.
Not the best workshop I've been to in terms of contacts made, but I think
it was important to be there, and some of them has the potential of evolving.
* Anders Granlund <anders.granlund(a)sida.se>
>From the ICT division of Sida. Generally interesting and laid back guy that
unfortunately has no influence over the money distributed by Sida any more
:-) Will keep the contact though and see what the ICT division is actually
doing and what role Free Software has. Could be interesting to point him in
the direction fo Dimo and UNCTAD.
* Astrid Dufborg <astrid.dufborg(a)foreign.ministry.se>
Special ICT adviser at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and one of those doing
most of the work with WSIS for Sweden. Interesting to keep because it's a
government contact, but generally I didn't get any particular feeling from
her. Also acknowledged herself that much of the work was more diplomacy
and consensus building more than anything else.
* Avri Doria <avri.doria(a)ltu.se>
Now this is an interesting contact that I'm sure Georg will be able to comment
on. She was apparently one of the people participating from Civil Society in
the WGIG. If I understood things correctly, her mandate was somehow backed by
Astrid Dufborg, but I didn't get the details.
Her and I had some discussions on the WGIG and the resulting papers and she
agreed that they were bad, but that it was "the best they'd been able to find
consenus on". Generally, she seemed happy with the results, pointing out that
"it could easily have been much worse."
Is now involved in ICANN and ISOC in various forms, and seemed to be on a
first-name basis with several high level people from ISOC. It was apparently
very much her doing that ISOC actually started discussing WSIS and drafting
comments from their members only a short while ago.
* Jörgen Samuelsson <jorgen.samuelsson(a)industry.ministry.se>
>From the Ministry of Industry, Employment and Communication. Also one of the
people responsible for Swedens position on software patents. Had an interesting
discussion with him, where he actually agreed to our line of reasoning, ie that
a decision in the parliament with the proposed amendments, possibly with some
tweaking in the process, would have been better than a clear rejection.
This was a very good connection to make. It places us in the "present in the
same circles" group, rather than the "lobbying group".
* Olof Hallström <olof.hallstrom(a)iis.se>
>From the Internet infrastructure foundation (IIS) in Sweden, one of the
organisations we have applied for some money from to organise conferences in
Sweden on Free Software. However, not involving himself in the actual
decisions. Will try to get in touch with him regarding other funding
opportunities, in particular for the GPL3.
* Johan Martin-Löf <johan.martin-lof(a)telia.com>
>From the National Post and Telecommunications Agency in Sweden. Interesting
person with a lot of contacts on his side, but a little too "damaged" by the
telecommunication side of things (ie, black fibers to him indicate the
beginning of a telecommunication line, and he didn't seem too responsive when
Avri and I pointed out that you can just as easily run IP on the fiber and
run the telephony on top of that. :-)
* Anna Nyström <anna.nystrom(a)sr.se>
>From the Swedish Radio. No direct comments about her, but could be
interesting to keep in touch with when we do things in WSIS/WIPO.
* Afzal Sher <afzal(a)dsv.su.se>
Director of SPIDER in Sweden, a grant giving organisation that organises and
distributed funds for various projects among participating universities. Is
very interested to get the University of Gothenburg on board, so we will try
to make that happen to possibly find some funds through them.
* Moses Ssemakula <globenetsmit(a)gmail.com>
>From Self-Management and Globenet (Uganda). No idea about him at all really,
but the Collegium will arrange a similar workshop that we had in Sweden also
in Uganda, and I assume he will somehow be involved.