I was at the United Nations in Geneva last week to watch what was happening to the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) as it prepares for its third outing, this December in Hyderabad, India.

Actually I was there for a different reason – an ICANN consultative meeting on the future of the organization the morning before the UN meeting – but it seemed daft to fly all that way and not check out the day of open discussions about the IGF. Plus I have a real soft spot for the IGF and the people that have worked extremely hard to make it a success.

I was a witness to the IGF’s creation, on paper, at the World Summit on the Information Society back in 2005, and then followed it all the way through various preparatory sessions as a reporter.

At the inaugural IGF in Athens, I was asked to be the conference’s “blogger-in-chief” – a position that, ironically enough, my current employer tried to veto. As a semi-official part of the IGF, I also got to see behind the scenes, and was impressed with the hard work, dedication and calm handling of what was an enormous and risky experiment. A lot of people at the time confessed to turning up just to see what would happen – spectators to what could have been the biggest diplomatic car crash for a decade. In the end, despite the odds, it shone through.

Her name was Rio

Inspired by the meeting’s efforts to find Internet-style solutions to some very big problems, I also helped set up one of the new “dynamic coalitions” – for “online collaboration”. The extremely limited resources the IGF team had meant that their Internet options were extremely limited – and this at a time when everyone was talking about Web 2.0.

By the time the second IGF came around, this time in Rio de Janeiro, I had made the unusual choice of taking a job with ICANN which unfortunately put a whole different complexion on things. The Brazilian hosts were making it very plain they intended to make ICANN a central discussion point of their meeting – and not in a positive way. ICANN instinctively went into a defensive crouch, and you can hardly blame it considering the organisation was nearly torn limb-from-limb during the WSIS process.

As a result, I stepped back from helping out the IGF organizers – something I still wish I could have avoided. Although since I helped ICANN to become more open and forthcoming in Rio, I am content with the belief that I helped ensure that the IGF didn’t come to represent a place of combat rather than a location for collaboration and open discussion.

The Rio meeting also saw the collapse of the dynamic coalition I had worked hard at. Partly it was due to the fact that my new job left me with no free time, but more so it was thanks to several people trying to use the credibility that had been built up behind it as a political platform for their personal agendas.

I explain all this because from a personal perspective my natural bias would likely be to see the IGF as going down the tubes. It has only a five-year mandate from the UN Secretary-General and the Rio meeting saw a lot of people pondering whether they would bother to attend the next.

It’s not as if there aren’t already 1,000 different conferences about the Internet. Governments appeared to be stepping back from the process; the fight-fans who had hoped to get ringside tickets to a global Net bout felt cheated; what were the dynamic coalitions actually achieving anyway; and, what exactly was the point of going to India? What would you miss if you didn’t go?

Muffled movement

I’ve not followed the progress of IGF 3, so I have to say it was a delight to see that, far from it falling apart, the whole Internet Governance Forum seems to be coming together.

Don’t get me wrong, if any normal person off the street walked into Room XIX in the Palais des Nations last Tuesday, they would have been overcome with the sense of self-interested individuals having an incredibly long and incredibly boring discussion about something that should somehow be exciting and riveting but very clearly wasn’t.

The IGF process remains the domain of insiders, geeks, paid advocates and people with too much time on their hands. A significant number of the Meeting Advisory Group (MAG) that makes most of the decisions surrounding the IGF don’t even bother turning up to the open consultations. I was tempted to do a headcount but for some reason my natural trouble-making inclinations failed me.

So if it was the same old rigmarole, the same people talking to the same people saying the same things in a heavily padded room through little plastic ear cups, where does my optimism come from?

Almost entirely I think from the IGF Secretariat. The UN staff has been given some stark assessments from headquarters in New York. It is fortunate that the IGF hardly costs the UN anything, relying instead on voluntary contributions, but it is still a big show put on by the United Nations so it has to show its value, and show it soon.

A review of the forum has been ordered and despite efforts to socialize the idea among the great and good gathered in Geneva, it is going to start at the Hyderabad meeting whether people like it or not.

The IGF has to show progress, it has to start carving out its own role, demonstrating its value, and produce something of real originality. Otherwise it’s a goner in 2010. And the IGF Secretariat has started work on that, very carefully and cleverly and with all the diplomatic nous that its main figure, Markus Kummer, is renowned for.

The most significant example of this is in the colour-coding of workshops that will take place in Hyderabad. The emphasis of the IGF has always been on multistakeholderism, which means, basically, getting governments, business, the technical community and civil society talking together.

The workshops are supposed to be multistakeholder i.e. have someone from each group, but this has been frequently ignored, or given lip-service to, or somehow not quite managed in the past. This year, the workshops were listed online and given a colour code – green for fully multistakeholder; amber for not fully multistakeholder; and red for more work needs to be done.

The pressure is then placed on the organizers to get to a green status. And this process has also had the effect of getting people to work together to merge different workshops in order to get the full quotient of people. It has forced people to work together to a common goal. And it has worked in large part. I counted 88 workshops for a possible 98 spots with 1 red, 15 amber and the rest green.

Officialdom

There will be three main issues at the 2008 IGF, and they are:

• Reaching the next billion
• Promoting cyber-security and trust, and
• Managing critical Internet resources

For these three, there are two “official” workshops each, and the same gentle pressure has been applied as with the other workshops – albeit with less success – to get those jostling for position to work together.

This is a step forward from last year where the workshops often proved more valuable than the main sessions. By getting egos to clash over workshops, it may be that the main sessions aren’t dragged down through bureaucratic compromise.

There will still be the need for people – especially government ministers – to have set pieces, but there have been requests this time for moderators to be expert in the field, rather than simply expert moderators. And that shows that there is a hope for more in-depth discussion of the issues this time around. A depth that you get from policymakers, not politicians.

Dead dynamics

The IGF seems to be finding its feet and becoming more structured. Panels in the morning will “distill lessons” that will then “focus the debate” in the afternoon. It won’t work like that in reality of course, but the stated intent is there and everyone agrees with it, which is a clear step forward.

The IGF website is also far more organized. It still looks horrendous, and it is difficult to find material, but the amount and quality of information has taken a big step forward – particularly the inclusion of carefully edited MAG list emails. Only a handful of people will ever read them, but it is the act of having them that is important.

There was also an effort by Nitin Desai – the UN-SG’s special representative – to press the dynamic coalitions into coming up with the goods. Those coalitions that haven’t produce reports on their activities have been threatened with being “archived”. The IGF Secretariat was very careful not to come across as making demands but it is clear that a clean-up is underway (to arrive at a “reasonably tidy house”, according to Desai) – and rightly so. That the coalition I formed (and resigned from just after the Rio meeting) is more than likely to be swept up with the broom can only be a good thing.

It is also worth noting that one or two governments and businesses are also taking a bit of a punt of the IGF and have contributed significant sums of money this time around, lifting at least some of the pressure off. The Canadian government in particular is said to have donated a couple of hundred thousands dollars just to allow for increased participation in the Hyderabad meeting.

The prep meeting

So, what actually happened at the all-day Geneva meeting?

Well, from my perspective, there were five things of note:

1. The usual prepared statements were fewer in number – thank god
2. The governments seemed to be taking less of a public role – not a good thing and also the explanation for why there were fewer prepared statements
3. The Brazilians have decided to use the emotive issue of child pornography to political ends. What political ends people will find out in December, but the cynical powerplay is disheartening
4. The IGF Secretariat were larger, more prepared and more confident
5. Some people – notably civil society – still don’t get it

On the Brazilian thing: the Brazilians, who I very much like on a personal basis, flew over a Senator who has been heading a drive against child pornography at home. He then provided a very loud, almost-ranting political speech about the subject, claiming that Brazil was three years ahead of the rest of the world.

I have a very significant distrust of anyone using child pornography on the Internet as an argument for doing anything with the Internet. As a UK citizen, I have seen my Parliament’s main committee on the Internet completely overrun by zealots for all sorts of controls using the emotive shield of child porn to deflect perfectly reasonable questioning. I have seen efforts to introduce ridiculous laws written through the distorting lens of child porn. And I have seen upfront and in person the lives of innocent people ruined because political pressure opened the door to flawed police investigations.

Every time someone raises the issue of child pornography online, they come armed with a rhetorical question: why aren’t we doing more about this? And then proceed to outline a series of measures that would see them laughed out the room if they were discussing any other subject.

As such, when I hear a Senator boasting about how his country is so much more advanced on fighting child porn than anyone else – which, incidentally, is exactly what the UK claimed last year – I become immediately concerned. My prediction is that shortly after the Brazilians outline the fantastic work they have done removing this repulsive (and extremely niche) activity, they will then outline how everyone else can do the same. And that it will just so happen that those methods fit perfectly with their political goals.

Debate and dialogue

But onto the fact that some people just don’t get it. The most notable case is an academic who I’ve known for a number of years and who I know from experience never tires from railing against imagined malignant influence.

There was a semantic argument at one point in which someone asked for the main sessions to be called “debate and dialogue” rather than just “debate”. The idea being that people don’t necessarily want to just argue with one another, that there should also be some sharing of ideas and experiences.

It was a fairly harmless proposition, subsequently agreed to by others, but in the eyes of some the suggestion represented something far more grave and sinister. And so a false debate started on the issue of debate. The proposition was that the word “dialogue” be added to the title, but it was misrepresented as having been put forward as a sole replacement – and then furiously denounced as such.

The issue of debate thus became that day’s controversy, and speakers, bored from having flown halfway across the world to sit in a huge beige hall, found something to fight over. It was a complete waste of everyone’s time but it does demonstrate that some people still haven’t got it.

Got what? That the IGF’s unique selling point, it’s original nature, its very value and essence comes in getting people from different backgrounds and cultures to overcome their suspicions and differences and find a solution that they can all agree on in furtherance of an Internet that everyone benefits from and which no one can control. And a big part of that process is people letting go of the chips on their shoulders.

Civil society, for example, wants public policy debates where advocates thrash it out, firing facts and figures at their opponents, uncovering misdeeds and through this approach define the best way forward.

What it fails to realise is that the people that actually make those decisions in the real world – governments mostly, but also industry actors in democratic states – don’t use that approach for the simple reason that it doesn’t work. All you end up with is bold but unworkable statements from parties that are now in a confrontational relationship. It’s the opposite of arriving at policy decisions. Fine in a courtroom; pointless in a drafting office.

The people’s representative

It’s not just civil society that still has problems adjusting. Governments have terrible trouble grasping the idea of being an equal stakeholder rather than the decider. They failed miserably when the MAG was being readjusted to provide non-government actors with more power and insisted on retaining their majority position. Likewise, government representatives still can’t bring themselves to participate in the debate, preferring instead to read prepared statements or react only to statements for which they know the official line.

Government representatives also rarely mix with the others in the room. Many shun public meetings altogether. And they provide only a minimum of interactivity with the IGF’s flagship products: workshops and dynamic coalitions. Their placid behaviour in public is, sadly, matched by petulant and unreasonable behaviour behind closed doors.

But it is all very much better than it was. Three years ago, no one trusted anyone else. As the IGF processes have continued and no one has “lost” anything, so the focus has gradually drawn into the issues and solutions to the issues.

There is still paranoia and its flipside, plotting, but what the Geneva meeting demonstrated through its glorious tedium was that the multistakeholderites are just as content planning a meeting together as they fighting with one another.

The longer the IGF continues in the same vein – finding a way to avoid pressing one another’s buttons – the more this understanding will be allowed to foster. And then we will really have a forum worth visiting. It won’t be sexy, it won’t be good TV and it won’t be particularly interesting but it will get some serious work done on an enormously complex subject – namely, figuring out how to deal with this Internet thingy.

You reach a certain level of frustration and then, suddenly, you relax. The struggle becomes impossible and then you realise that, ultimately, it’s not that important. You’re still breathing air, you still have legs, this will come to an end.

What on earth am I talking about? The mild insanity of hosting a global, revolutionary Internet conference and then failing to allow anyone to actually access it – the Internet, that is. The wireless access, despite endless complaints yesterday, is still not working at the Internet Governance Forum. This is a mild irritation for most people, but as the mug who is supposed to be officially reporting on what is being discussed online but who is unable to be in the room and online at the same time, it is mind-meltingly annoying.

It isn’t helped by the fact that the Greek hosts have assured me – and others far more senior than me – that providing me with a wired connection is “impossible”. That is except for the enormous Ethernet junction at the back of the room, monopolised by Greek TV. If it isn’t sorted out very soon, I am going to tear out a router out from the *wired* PCs in another room in the hotel and I am installing a connection myself – and god help anyone that gets in my way.

/rant

That rant aside, how is it going today at the IGF? Well, unfortunately we still have the same platform, the same desks, the same rectangular talk-down by those up on the stage (I am told the Greek hosts said it was “impossible” for the platform to be removed – even though I was here two days ago when it was put in place). Now there are vague claims that there are UN regulations that dictate how the room is set up. This is, to use a classic British expression, bollocks.

The real reason is that governments are not comfortable with being touchy feely – they live and so they shall die by desks and authority. Personally I think if you killed the platform and desks, you’d take a *huge* jump in multi-stakeholder discussions. For that to happen though, civil society would also have to meet governments halfway and be more diplomatic and less aggressive in their criticism.

And the way the Chinese government was hounded in the Openness session is a case in point. One of the biggest lessons that civil society has to learn is the line to draw when addressing governments – because they are hoping that the government will listen to what they have to say. It will always be stronger language than the careful diplomatic language governments are used to, but it’s self-defeating to round on a government official. Gentle prodding, careful rebukes – if people want the multi-stakeholder model to work, and it is in everyone’s interests to do so – this is the compromise you have to make.

Everything in moderation

Nik Gowing – a BBC World presenter – was the Openness meeting moderator and was taking no nonsense. As a result he livened up the room. He consistently told the people wandering around the room with microphones to hurry up, and to turn the mics on before they gave them to people. Again and again, there was 30 seconds of silence while a microphone was slowly handed over. Gowing was absolutely right to chivvy things along, it added a touch of pace, and I think it has helped create a different ambience in the room.

The problem in the Security session after lunch is that without this active hounding and pushing, the session has slowed right down again. I think what this needs is two moderators. It’s simply too big a job to put on one person’s shoulders – the room is too big, the people are too numerous and the cultures are so different.

There was some interesting stuff in the Openness meeting. It was high-level stuff – intelligent people, talking broadly and knowledgeably. But there is still a sense that the ball is being dropped. The Greek minister, acting as chairman, was less that happy about the Greek blogger arrest being brought up, and I’m pleased to say I am completely to blame for it.

Arrested!

The wireless connection finally arrived in the very last 15 minutes of a three-hour session (I had been downstairs, scribbling notes on pads and saving on Word documents and then coming back into the room – the most unbelievably hopeless and tiring effort). And the fact is that the bloggers were talking about the Greek aggregator’s arrest. Nik Gowing pushed it, and I pushed it further. Am I contradicting what I said earlier about not hounding governments? Yes and No. It was pressure on the host government – and this a Western government where ministers are used to this approach plus Greece – and so it sits in a special box when it chooses to host such an event – as was found out by Tunisia when it hosted the World Summit last November.

I have more criticisms.

The Workshops – at least the ones I’ve stuck my head in – are NOT following the new-style model that the IGF tried to introduce. They have lapsed into conference mode – people rehashing the same Powerpoint presentation that gave last year, but with a few updates. There is not enough interaction.

The IGF is supposed to be more open, inclusive, moving. I think it was Vittorio Bertola who complained earlier that he doesn’t want to step back to the same non-specific, semi-educational boring yarns. He knows this, he’s heard it 100 times before. He wants to move forward – get to the specifics. If others in the room have to learn fast, so be it – this is the Internet Governance Forum not the Web Kindergarten. I agree with him.

And if you don’t believe me – I have been asking everyone I meet whether they are happy with the way things are going. The only people that are happy? Governments. They like it. It’s free research and they still feel comfortable. If government officials aren’t stretched – made slightly uncomfortable but in a energetic and productive way – by the end of the IGF, this forum is in trouble.

The question is: with so much of the process ending up in the hands of the moderators, do we have the personality here in Athens that can pull it off? We have a Japanese and a French moderator tomorrow. The Japanese man will be polite – maybe that will work. I have yet to meet the Frenchman.

The future of the IGF may well rest in their hands.

I don’t know how it happened but Vint Cerf’s on his feet, Paul Twomey is being pulled into the conversation and despite a panel of 16 people, all pretty much determined not to talk about ICANN, we are talking about, yes, ICANN.

I’ve not been able to get a feel for how this first session of the IGF has gone as I’ve been in and out of the room trying to find a wireless connection so I can find out what the blogs are discussing. Even when in the room, I’m pre-occupied with hoping that suddenly the network will go up.

But my feeling is this: there are two many people on the stage. It is hard to harrie people if there is safety in numbers. Kenn Cukier is doing a good job in listening and expanding on questions – and also a good journalistic job is not letting platitudes get by. But even so, there are too many people.

The second problem is that the session is too long. It gets tiring about an hour-and-a-half and people starting switching off – leaving only those so driven by one point to get up and make a point. These people are very rarely, if ever, debate expanders.

All that said, there is still a feeling here that something new is happening. I’ve been to alot of conferences over the Internet and after a while, it begins to feel like the same old thing. The razzle-dazzle and star-gazing worlds are gradually subsumed into the fact that for the people in the room, it is also just their day-to-day job.

That sense of staleness isn’t here – make clear by the fact that the room is still full. I can’t remember the last time I saw so many people stick out a three-hour discussion.

As for my job, I am not being helped out either by the moribund wireless network or the fact that the blogosphere is stubbornly retaining its habit of being obsessed with trivia and – especially ironic considering its speed – what happened hours ago, rather than what is happening now.

All the bloggers that can be guaranteed to be interested in what is going on in the room are actually in the room – and because the network is down, are not able to write any blogs. It is with some irony then that during the small windows they have managed to open, they have taken only the opportunity to complain about not being able to write any posts.

This is my overriding thought: people have a very difficult time getting used to something new – especially when it is happening quickly in front of them. There is a gradually evolving system of interaction being built by the volunteers and conference organisers that by the time of the next session will be tighter. The hope then will be that the rest of the audience catches up. I have a horrible feeling that bringing up the rear though will be the very epitome of this new super-democracy that everyone tells us the Net has produced: yes, the bloggers.

But there was a clear oversight which I shall take blame for because it was my job to push it when it wasn’t going to occur to others – there is no crystal-clear method for people online to interact.

I have built a collaborative website at http://igf2006.info, and done my best to publicise it, but even so, there is no email address set aside for IGF comments. The reason is because of the split of authority between the UN and my semi-official role – but no one cares about that outside a very small group.

We’ve solved it: comments@igf2006.info. You live and you learn.

The Internet Governance Forum will start on Monday morning but already the debate has started – and it is surrounding freedom of speech online.

There are several reports that the Greek authorities arrested a man for linking – not writing, but linking – to blog posts that had satirised a businessman (possibly a TV evangelist). The businessman complained to the police and the police picked up the adminstrator of blog aggregation site blogme.gr – and charged him.

Update: The man arrested was Antonis Tsipropoulos and the target of the satire was Dimosthenis Liakopoulos – a controversial Greek tele-evangelist. The satire site that mocks Mr Liakopoulos can be found at funel.blogspot.com, but since it is hosted in the US, neither the Greek authorities nor even Mr Liakopoulos can get at it.
What Mr Tsipropoulos has been charged with, god only knows. But this is a spectactular own goal by the Greek authorites on the eve of the IGF. Particularly since making a crime of linking to someone else’s content is pure, and legally foolhardy, censorship.

It’s all over the Greek blogosphere, but I can’t understand the majority of it. Except for the fact that there appears to be movement building to protest outside the conference hotel as a statement against the arrest.

Yesterday, Amnesty International started a campaign to draw attention to those blogger across the world that have been imprisoned because of information they have posted online.

I caught a bit of the news at lunch today and they were at Stonehenge talking about the *new* Seven Wonders of the World.

This rang a very vague bell, I remember someone going on about this ages ago – the idea of coming with a new list of seven amazing things in the world. I think this is a brilliant idea – especially since only one of the original Seven Wonders still exists.

Click here to find out which sites were eventually chosen

Anyone can register and vote and they claim to have already gathered 20 million votes – which is all very possible. The shortlist has been cut down to 21 by UNESCO and now its ex-head Professor Dr Federico Mayor is going on a world tour of each location drumming up press coverage. He was in the UK, hence Stonehenge, hence the news report.

I’ve been chased off Stonehenge at 2am in the morning by security men with dogs because I was so irritated that you couldn’t walk up to them without super-special permission. And even though they’re nice, I would never consider them a Wonder of the World – even when intoxicated on a moody dark autumn night. So it doesn’t get my vote.

But I think the idea is brilliant. After all, it gives everyone a good reason to go check out the other far-flung parts of this planet and see the incredible things that are possible. So I’ve registered and voted online, and here is my full list and why:

I should note that my selection may well be biased because I have been to some of them, and so the wonder may have worn off (I wonder if that’s the case with all of them?).

• Giza Pyramid: No brainer. It is the only remaining original Wonder and to my mind it should be in by default.

• Great Wall of China: Also, to my mind, startingly obvious. Absolutely extraordinary achievement. Everyone should go see it at some point in their life. Including me. I should say at this point, I’m very disappointed that more engineering feats weren’t included, like, off the top of my head, the Hoover Dam – or, better, the Panama Canal.

• Easter Island, near Chile: The strange haunting statues are much more interesting than Stonehenge – although far, far harder to get to. Have to be a Wonder for no reason more complicated than they fill you with wonder. I haven’t been able to find out if you are allowed to get near the stones themselves. Why hasn’t someone blogged about this? What’s the Internet for anyway?

• Christ Redeemer, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil: Also a clear one in my mind. An extraordinary statue, reminiscent of old Wonder, the Colossus of Rhodes. A huge figure protecting a city, it’s a lovely grand image. I also hear it is extraordinary.

• Taj Mahal, Agra, India: Because of its beauty, and its symbolism.

• Neuschwanstein Castle, Frussen, Germany: This is just a monument to what the human mind can do in the fantastic realm. My understanding is that it was created purely for that reason – as a fantasy land. It has been bored into my mind since a kid because of the film Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. I think it’s a wonder.

• The Kremlin, Moscow, Russia: I don’t know what it is about this building but I have always been fascinated by it. It’s just so, unusual. Far more unusual, oddly, to my mind than say Oriental architecture. I’ve always wanted to go see it. And see Russia.

The others on the shortlist that I haven’t chosen:

• Acropolis, Athens, Greece: Been there. Lovely walk up but it’s a crumpled mess. There’s no wonder there.

• Chichen Itza, Mexico: Also been there. Impressive. Very steep and hard to walk up. Very hot, humid and mildly claustrophobic inside. Does a great thing on the side it, shaped as a dragon, lines up perfectly with various times of year. But, it’s not burned in my mind and I have no real desire to return.

• Colosseum, Rome, Italy: Big, but, like the Acropolis, just a load of crumbling stone. I have been to Rome several times and after the first time, never bothered to look round the Colosseum again. What’s the point?

• Eiffel Tower, Paris, France: A great building. I love it. Have been up it several times. Really like strolling around the gardens around it as well. But a wonder? Not for me. Not with the competition.

• Statue of Libery, New York, USA: I get the feeling that all the media hubs of the world get a wonder thrown in for pragmatic reasons. The Statue of Liberty is impressive and obviously has huge symbolism but it doesn’t do it for me. Also I gave up climbing it after being in an unbelievably slow queue surrounded by fat, irritating, moaning Americans. I wanted to look through the crown at the top but frankly I was on the steps for over two hours and was bored out of my mind. That’s not a wonder, it’s a nightmare.

• Stonehenge, just off the A303, Salisbury, England: Nah.

• Macchu Picchu, Peru: Have always wanted to go see this. But I still have a bias for Wonders in that they should actually still be in one piece, rather than ruins. I don’t remember the original Wonders listing “Lighthouse at Alexandria, collapsed”. No, you want a wonder, it has to be up and running.

• Petra, Jordan: Maybe I should have chosen this. It is that extraordinary building and inner constrcutions built into the sheer rockface – sandstone I think. Surely this has to be seen before you die.

• Sydney Opera House, Australia: Remarkable. Beautiful. But I’d still rather go see the Kremlin.

• Timbuktu, Mali: Now I was going to drive through the desert and hopefully see the mud walls and buildings earlier this year but it fell through. I plan to make the trip at some point. The thing is though that Timbuktu is remarkable in that it was once the centre of commerce because of the Sahara trade routes but is now virtually dried up. Is it really a wonder? Or was it just a thing of its time?

And the last group of places which I have to confess I have little or no knowledge of, which is why they’re off my list but also serve as a useful counterpoint to my wider sense of disappointment over this New Seven Wonders idea.

Considering what the Internet can do these days: videos, modelling, images, blogs, interactive quizzes – anything you put your mind to – I find the whole Seven Wonders website extremely disappointing.

You click on each wonder and get a tiny box of information. Fine, but click on the link for more information and all you get is a one-page text-only description of the place. This is *really* poor and I think the people behind the site should really show some willing and spend some of the money they can undoubtedly make from this whole enterprise creating a magnificent resource of the most extraordinary places on the planet.

I was appalled to see how little imagination had gone into the website when the subject it is dealing with is construction and imagination. Very poor show. That rant aside:

• Alhambra, Granada, Spain

• Angkor, Cambodia

• Hagia Sophia, Istanbul, Turkey

• Kiyomizu Temple, Kyoto, Japan

I look forward to hearing the result. Not out for another 263 days, apparently.

There is a big meeting on the future of the Internet in London tomorrow, run by Nominet, where I will be acting as the “chief blogger”. As such, I need your help.

In fact, I am the official chief blogger for the Internet Governance Forum itself in Athens at the end of this month. That basically means that I will spend a good chunk of the conference reading what others have to say about the meeting online and I will occasionally be asked to summarise to the room what is being said by the rest of the world. At which point I will read out the most interesting and incisive blog posts to the assembled masses.

I actually see this as a vitally important role as it gives a voice to the people that haven’t flown to Athens and who have nothing more than a Net connection and a good point to make. That’s why I accepted the role and now I need your help to make the most of it.

Update: You can now see exactly what is happening at the IGF meeting, and simply and easily interact with events there through a website at IGF2006.info.

The role of a chief blogger was actually created by IGF head Nitin Desai when he attended the We Media conference in London in May and they had a chief blogger there (Alf Hermida, the BBC’s online news editor) reading out people’s responses from the wider Internet.

The advantage that We Media has over the IGF though was that We Media was very much a media event since media companies had invested large sums of money in it. And media folk love nothing more than writing about themselves and their friends in the media. The IGF however has been notable by people’s reluctance to provide money and does not have any big media companies in tow so the ready availability of bloggers is in question.

The IGF is in fact incredibly and wonderfully important – it is the first time that governments, business and everyday ordinary folk will sit down as almost-equal partners in something that hasn’t been pre-decided. It is a vast experiment and everyone is watching to see if the chemistry either creates an incredible new compound or blows up.

I think it’s important enough to involve myself a little deeper than I am usually comfortable with since I like to remain an independent observer. But then no one else appeared to be able to get stuck in and be in the middle of things, reflecting what the wider world things of United Nations discussions.

To get very rapidly back to my point – Nominet is having an IGF meeting tomorrow. The agenda is here [pdf], and it will be webcast here. I implore anyone who is interested in this area (i.e. anyone who cares about where the Internet goes) to check it out and to write their feelings about it – and then make me aware of the those feelings so I can tell everyone in the room.

To this end – and for the bigger IGF meeting in Athens, I have set up an open blog which I hope will serve as an interesting discussion point. You can find it at http://igf2006.info/blog/, and the site itself (http://igf2006.info) will soon have a range of interesting collaborative tools.

Get involved. Listen to what people have to say, then write what you think, and I will do my best to make sure that everyone knows what it is.