The day preceding the IGF's opening has become best known for the GigaNet academic symposium, which ran today to a slightly less than capacity audience, due to the disruption of the terrible events in Mumbai. In fact, there were a few presenters missing too - so that the poster presenters such as myself were invited to fill the missing time by briefly introducing our papers.

During the break I registered for the IGF proper (I wonder how many others will be caught out by not taking a printed copy of their confirmation of registration with them?), and found to my disappointment that the flier for my book that I had sent to Hyderabad more than a month ago had not been included in the registration pack. Apparently another NGO was similarly disappointed, its flier being excluded from the registration bags because it had provided fewer than 1500 copies. I did provide that number of my own flier, so I'm still not sure what happened to it.

The first day was marred by several blackouts that interfered with the GigaNet presentations to some degree. But on the positive side, the catering for IGF delegates is improving year by year. In Athens, we made do with coffee and biscuits. In Rio, the morning and afternoon teas were lavish and filling. Now in Hyderabad it appears that lunch will be provided to all delegates - in addition to the traditional host country dinner to which we are all invited on Thursday. Lunch was laid on today also, albeit hidden away on the top floor and without being publicised, so that most GigaNet attendees missed out on it.