One of the first things that strikes the newcomer to the IGF, as it originally struck me in 2006, is how fragmented the programme is. If the IGF were intended to effectively fulfil its mandate as a forum for multi-stakeholder policy dialogue, one might expect that all its participants would be given the opportunity to... er... engage in dialogue.

In fact there is precious little opportunity for this, with the plenary sessions being again crowded out by a multitude of independently-organised (and largely redundant) workshops. Unlike in unlike in most other Internet governance institutions in which plenary sessions and side workshops are held separately, this makes it near-impossible for the IGF to convene as a body to deliberate upon policy issues together.

As a case in point, there are this year no fewer than eight sessions related to children or child protection, running to a grand total of 14 hours. On the final day alone there are five, two pairs of which overlap with each other. These are organised by a variety of different groups with different agendas, who preach to their own converts, rather than engaging with those who differ with them in an endeavour to forge consensus. Madness.

At least there has been some attempt this year, for the first time, to provide briefing material in the form of a background paper to bring participants up to speed on the basic issues before the meeting begins. It would have been preferable for this material not simply to have been presented by the Secretariat, but rather developed in consultation with stakeholders, and even more preferable if this had been part of a year-round online discussion.

In any case, here are my selections from the programme for this year's IGF meeting in Sharm el Sheikh:

Saturday 14 November

• (09:00-18:00) Fourth GigaNet Annual Symposium

Sunday 15 November

• (09:30-11:00) Transnationalization of Internet Governance - The way forward (I'm speaking at this one!)


• (11:30-13:00) Open Standards: A Rights-Based Framework


• (14:00-16:30) Opening Ceremony


• (16:30-18:00) Keynote Panel

Monday 16 November

• (09:30-11:00) Remote Participation: Mapping the Field, Evaluation and Multistakeholder Involvement


• (11:00-12:30) A Legal Survey of Internet Censorship and Filtering


• (15:00-18:00) Security, Openness and Privacy

Tuesday 17 November

• (09:30-12:30) Implementing the WSIS Principles: A Development Agenda for Internet Governance


• (14:30-16:00) Research on Access to Knowledge and Development


• (16:00-18:00) Internet Governance in the light of the WSIS Principles (partial)

Wednesday 18 November

• (08:00-09:30) Towards access - combining intellectual property, competition and human rights


• (10:00-11:15) Host Country Honorary Session


• (11:30-12:30) Taking Stock and Looking Forward - on the desirability of the continuation of the Forum (and returning from 14:00 to 14:30)


• (12:30-14:00) Global State of Copyright and Access to Knowledge (I'm co-organising this one for Consumers International)


• (15:30-18:30) Network Neutality


• (18:00-19:00) Closing Session