, original introductions and explanations. Another project in 2012 provided motivation and momentum to review and extend the selection, and update the pdf-file (Version November 2012, 13 MB). These are the (currently: 36) models covered:

Those added in 2012 are in bold:

• 1969 Ladder of citizen participation Sherry Arnstein
• 1992 Ladder of children participation Roger Hart
• 1996 Typology of participation Sarah White
• 1997 Degrees of participation Phil Treseder
• 1998 Wheel of participation Scott Davidson
• 2000 Spectrum of public participation IAP2 [latest version from 2007, see comments below]
• 2001 Active participation framework OECD
• 2001 Pathways to participation Harry Shier
• 2001 Clarity model of participation Clare Lardner
• 2001 Strategic approach to participation UNICEF
• 2002 Triangle of youth participation Jans & de Backer
• 2002 Youth participation in society Jans & de Backer
• 2002 Dimensions of youth participation David Driskell
• 2002 Seven realms of participation Francis & Lorenzo
• 2003 Ladder of volunteer participation Adam Fletcher
• 2003 Youth engagement continuum FCYO
• 2006 Four Cs of online participation Derek Wenmoth
• 2006 Power law of participation Ross Mayfield
• 2006 Levels, spaces and forms of power John Gaventa
• 2006 The CLEAR Participation Model Lawndes & Pratchett
• 2006 Four L Engagement Model Tony Karrer
• 2007 Participation 2.0 Model New Zealand
• 2007 Spectrum of public buy cheap viagra participation IAP2 [first version from 2000, see comments below]
• 2007 Engagement in the policy cycle Diane Warburton
• 2007 Online Participation Behaviour Chain Fogg & Eckles
• 2009 Key dimensions of participation Driskell & Neema
• 2009 Matrix of participation Tim Davies
• 2009 Pathways through participation NCVO & IVR
• 2010 Changing views on participation Pedro Martín
• 2010 Ladder of online participation Bernoff & Li
• 2010 Online participation across age Rick Wicklin
• 2010 Three-lens approach to participation DFID-CSO
• 2010 Behavior Grid BJ Fogg
• 2010 The Participation Tree Harry Shier
• 2011 Typology of Youth Participation Wong et al.
• 2011 Six principles of online participation Tim Davies
• 2012 The Yinyang Model Shier et al.

attempt to reach the Fortress Europe.

This was our scenario:

Europe in 2015: Greece, Spain, Portugal and Ireland are bankrupt. The major banks of Germany, France and the UK have been nationalised and operate under government control. Luxembourg and Austria have given up on their offshore banking strategies, and the City of London has been placed under common legislation. Economic perspectives are depressing. Russia, China and Brazil have offered to lend money to the Europeans.

Meanwhile, the citizens of Europe have lost their last bit of trust in European institutions. The majority is convinced that neither the European Union nor the Council of Europe will survive this fundamental crisis.

In this atmosphere of hopelessness, the Parliament of the European Union and the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe have decided to meet, for the first time, in joint session to discuss and shape the future of Europe.

Each political party has tabled 2 proposals (called motions) about the future of Europe for this joint session. These motions are discussed in joint committees, with members from both Parliaments attending.

One of the most controversial motions comes from viagra the Pirate Party: They suggest to extend the Schengen area to include all member states of the Council of Europe and to change the external border policies to comply with human right principles.

Here are the materials we developed – feel free to download, adapt and use to your liking:

• the scenario: docx | pdf
• the motion: docx | pdf
• the roles: docx | pdf
• a newspaper we used to spice things up: indesign | pdf
• an intro movie we made – careful, the movie clocks in with 210 MB: avi

There were a few things we’d do differently next time around, most importantly probably (1) leave more time (we ran the entire simulation in one morning, including the debriefing, while it could easily consume a day) and (2) prepare fact-sheets as briefing material for the experts in the simulation, to allow them to argue evidence-based rather than invention-based.

More than a thousand methods are listed in Europe’s largest toolbox for training and youth work at www.salto-youth.net/tools/toolbox/. More than a thousand tools, with new ones being added constantly. More than a thousand!

They stand for a growing dilemma and an increasingly frustrating conflict in our work as youth trainers and youth workers – the demand that methods must always be effective, evidence-based, creative, participatory, empowering, stimulating, exciting, new, crazy, surprising, powerful…

Is there a method in the madness?
Photo by Tim Chaborski

Is there a method in the madness?

The more methods you know the better you are. Methods have become a marketing tool, a part of our identities as youth trainers and youth workers. Some of these methods may even become our trademark – when you think of Madzinga, with how many trainers do you associate it? And yet, at the same time, it almost seems as if only a new method is a good method.

We are afraid of repeating ourselves. We don’t want to bore ourselves with what we do. But more importantly: frequent seminar-goers might recognise a method and consider us boring as well… Oh no!

Are we afraid of the medicine?
Photo by Winona Wilhelm

Why are we so afraid of repeating ourselves? Have you ever heard anyone say that you shouldn’t take Aspirin to fight off your headache because, you know, you took it last time already? Nobody gets excited about taking Aspirin twice. Why then are we so often afraid of using the same energiser twice? On the other hand, when in need of more complex medical treatments nobody receives the exact same dose and mix of medication, operation and/or therapy – too much depends on the situation, its circumstances, possible side-effects… It’s too complex to be simplistically repeated. Why then are we so often afraid of adapting a complex simulation exercise to our needs?

The comparison is both far-fetched and lopsided – after all, we are not trying to cure a disease through our youth work and youth training. But both the Methods Fatigue Syndrome (MFS) and the Methods Obsession Syndrome (MOS) appear to be growing stronger among youth trainers and youth workers across Europe.

In the wake of these two syndromes, methods are often fetishized and given fancy names and undeserved status. Over time, their original contexts, meanings and purposes get lost and are replaced by common beliefs and shallow clichés.

Open Space and World Café, Appreciative Inquiry and The Art of Hosting have not only become synonyms of processes for discussions that matter, they have also become catchwords with an almost exclusive focus on their possibilities, power and potential and little to no awareness of their preconditions, limits and weaknesses.

Peter Senge, in his afterword to the World Café Community‘s book “The World Café. Shaping Our Futures Through Conversations That Matter,” observed that

“the World Café is not a technique. It is an invitation into a way of being with one another that is already part of our nature.”

And yet, a technique is what the World Café is often downgraded to. We like the atmosphere, we like the idea, we like the potential of the approach – but we do not spend enough time on considering context and contents, on developing excellent questions and connecting diverse perspectives. And so, instead of discovering collective wisdom, we discover how boring and uninspiring the mechanical process of people talking and moving and reporting back can be, even when arranged in a café setting.

The World Café is only one of many examples of potentially great approaches, which require plenty of hard work to make them powerful, being reduced to a technique of seven quick steps. It’s a symptom of a spreading weakness in youth work and youth training; a widening gap between our ambitions and claims, on the one hand, and our practice and authenticity, on the other hand. Strongly overshadowed by the much-demanded efforts to document and validate learning outcomes, we are increasingly reverting to fixed curricula and reproducible sequences, to known recipes and documented techniques.

On the pathway to the recognition of youth work and non-formal learning, the pressure grows to make our work recognisable. We are writing down what we do more than ever before, and the resulting wealth of material available fuels our temptation to revert to what is already there. In doing so, we quietly open the doors for myths about training and learning to take hold.

The most prominent example is quite likely the learning style myth. Ruth Clark summarises this in her book “Evidence-based training methods: a guide for training professionals:”

“Learning styles represent one of the more wasteful and misleading pervasive learning myths of the past 20 years. From audio learners to visual learners or from ‘sensors’ to ‘intuitive,’ learning styles come in many flavors. (…) For some reason, the idea of a learning style has a kind of cosmic intuitive appeal that is very compelling. (…) The learning style myth leads to some very unproductive training ap-proaches (…) The time and energy spent perpetuating the various learning style myths can be more wisely invested in supporting individual differences that are proven to make a difference—namely, prior knowledge of the learner.”

Ruth Clark makes, beyond her efforts to debunk learning styles as a myth, a fundamentally important observation: what makes most difference to the impact of learning – and should, therefore, make most difference to our design of learning processes – is the prior knowledge of learners.

What is the prior knowledge of our learners?
Photo by Tobias Mittmann

We know this, of course – there is a reason why we are, often intuitively, a little afraid of people joining our workshops, seminars and training courses who (believe to) know a lot about what we do and what we talk about. And indeed, this often complicates our work tremendously, because those participants are way beyond the reasonable variety of levels of prior knowledge that our methodology usually caters for.

This observation – that there is a limit to the deviation of prior knowledge that our methodology can typically handle – is also not exactly new. There are reasons why we normally publish a profile of participants with the announcement of a seminar or training course. One of those reasons is to limit the heterogeneity of the group, also in terms of prior knowledge and experience.

But the connection of cause and action usually stops one step too early in our educational practice as youth trainers and youth workers: if we know that prior experience plays such an important role, why do we still assume that methods, tools and techniques can be universally effective?

They never are. Methods are developed for a specific reason, in a specific context, for a specific group of people and a specific purpose. Within limits, they can be transferred and applied elsewhere. With creativity, their usefulness can be extended by mashing and remixing them. But none is ever universally effective.

Here are the good news: methods are usually not even developed to be universally effective. Their feverish transformation into half religion, half occult happens much after they have proven to be powerful tools. Methods are usually developed in response to a set of questions such as:

• What are our political and educational aims and objectives?
• Who are our learners, what are their needs and their experiences?
• What are our, and their, expected and desired learning outcomes?

These questions stand representatively for the fourfold, progressive sequence of planning and delivering educational experiences: (1) shared learning aims and objectives (2) learners’ needs and prior experiences (3) expected and desired learning outcomes (4) methodology and methods.

Will the cake become stale?
Photo by Livia Kpunkt

There is no reason to be afraid of devising your own method, whether or not it has been used and written down elsewhere: we know what makes a good ice-breaker or energiser; we have learnt how do develop and run a simulation exercise; we are familiar with theatre methods in their various forms… Our collective knowledge, even in small teams of two or three youth workers and youth trainers, is amazing. Let’s use it! And let’s put methods back to where they belong: at the end of our learning design process.

Only a method that serves an objective, responds to a need, takes into account prior experience and works towards a learning outcome can be what it should be: the jewel in our crown of non-formal education, the dot in the i, the icing on the cake. If methods become all there is to our cake, it will start tasting mouldy and stale in no time at all.

“I created the first one in 2009 because at that time there was an energy crisis in Europe. I just created it to amuse my friends but when I put it up on my website so many people liked it that I decided to really focus on the project of mapping the stereotypes based on different places

cialis price

in Europe. I was surprised by the reaction because I never really expected it to take off like this.”

Here are, in alphabetical order, Europe according to Britain and, after the jump, Europe according to Bulgaria, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Poland, Russia, Spain, the United States and the Vatican.

As Yanko put it: “Sense of humor highly recommended.” Indeed :) Enjoy!

Europe according to Britain | Mapping Stereotypes Project | Source

Europe according to Bulgaria | Mapping Stereotypes Project | Source

Europe according to France | Mapping Stereotypes Project | Source

Europe According to Germany | Mapping Stereotypes Project | Source

Europe According to Greece | Mapping Stereotypes Project | Source

Europe According to Italy | Mapping Stereotypes Project | Source

Europe According to Poland | Mapping Stereotypes Project | Source

Europe According to Russia | Mapping Stereotypes Project | Source

Europe According to Spain | Mapping Stereotypes Project | Source

Europe According to the United States | Mapping Stereotypes Project | Source

Europe According to the Vatican | Mapping Stereotypes Project | Source

Whatever intergenerational contracts may have been in place – spoken or unspoken, real or perceived – are largely gone. The promise and hope of previous generations—in the Western world at least, the majority of young people around the world could never dream of such things to begin with—to lead a better life than their parents is a flickering image of the past.

But it’s not the lack of economic prosperity alone that infuriates young people. Not that it wouldn’t be reason enough: close to 90 million young people are unemployed, constituting about half of all unemployed people – and also roughly half of all young people interested in working. And that’s the average – in Syria, to quote but one example, the unemployed young people make up nearly 80% of the working-age unemployed population. The growing youth employment crisis, earmarked by these ballpark figures, has been largely ignored.

Add the unsustainability of the current growth-and-screw-the-environment-mantra and the massively rising social injustice to the colossal employment mess, and you get a highly explosive mix, which keeps bubbling to the surface on the streets across the planet. Young people have to watch how the world as we know it, its economic, social and political fabric, disintegrates, day by day. They don’t like the mélange of the cocktail of political, economic and social disfranchisement, and have begun to show their anger about being robbed of their own future with what Heribert Prantl calls “the sacred rage of the young.”

A global youth revolt in the making.

The exploding and imploding inequalities are one of the most impactful consequences of a well-known dilemma: what Zygmunt Bauman calls the tripod of economic, military and cultural sovereignities has long lost its stability. Economic globalisation and the deterritorialisation of capital and labour leave current political structures crumbling and humbled.

As Bauman puts it in his newest book “Collateral Damage. Social inequalities in a global age (2011)”:

“…the exclusive compound of growing social inequality and the rising volume of human suffering relegated to the status of ‘collaterality’ (marginality, externality, disposability, not a legitimate part of the political agenda) has all the markings of being potentially the most disastrous among the many problems humanity may be forced to confront, deal with and resolve in the current century.” (Bauman 2011:9)

Current events only seem to underline Bauman’s grim analysis:

• whether it’s the civil unrests in 2005 in Clichy-sous-Bois, in 2007 in Villiers-le-Bel or in 2011 in London;
• the England riots and the United Kingdom anti-austerity protests;
• the grassroots protests in 2009 in Iceland, 2010 and 2011 in Greece, 2011 in Portugal and Spain;
• the revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt;
• the civil uprisings in Bahrain, Syria and Yemen;
• the protests in Algeria, Chile, Iraq, Iran, Israel, Jordan, Morocco and Oman;

- and the list doesn’t end here! The calls for change—various kinds of change, for different sets of reasons, caused by different triggers, each unique and standing in their own right—have a decisively amplified tone, scale and intensity.

Much has been written and said about all of these events,

• from different, diverse and disputed opinions on the London riots
• to the role of young people and the role of social media in the Arab spring,
• from the Spanish grassroots protests including nolesvotes.org, the Democracia Real Ya collective and the acampadas
• to the clash of generations in Greece.

Probably Slavoj Žižek has, with this observation:

“Opposition to the system can no longer articulate itself in the form of a realistic alternative,”

offered an analysis widely shared across countries and contexts.

Without wanting to or claiming to offer a definite understanding for the various protests and movements across the globe, Manuel Castells summarises more drastically what seems to be happening:

“The disgust becomes a network.”

The note says, in Catalan, "I want to grow up in a better world"

There is a determined and unifying No! to the increasing inequality and a loud and clear Yes! to much-needed change and a different way of living, and living together. It’s obvious that young people, who are expressing their anger and frustration as much as their desire and hope for change so forcefully these days, are determined to shape our times.

“Will it be revolution, evolution, or resignation?” -

so wonder the minds behind One Young World, the global youth leadership summit, in their new 2011 White Paper Beyond the Long Spring of Dissent.

It certainly doesn’t look too much like resignation right now…

In his article The dead end of globalisation looms before our youth, Pankaj Mishra argues that we are witnessing a fresh political awakening, a world awakening with rage about “a condition of prosperity without equality, wealth without peace.”

Wolfgang Gründiger of the Foundation for the Rights of Future Generations makes an equally strong statement when he writes, and warns, that

“all those who claim this generation is apathetic should know: the revolt of the young has only just begun.”

Current events certainly suggest that Mishra and Gründiger are spot-on.

Yet, the question remains:

Where are we headed?

Image credits: David Barrero, Maxi Failla, Muhammed Muheisen, Dominique Faget, Sara Noorbakhsh and Alex Ballesta.

• 1969 Ladder of citizen participation Sherry Arnstein
• 1992 Ladder of children participation Roger Hart
• 1996 Typology of participation Sarah White
• 1997 Degrees of participation Phil Treseder
• 1998 Wheel of participation Scott Davidson
• 2001 Active participation framework OECD
• 2001 Pathways to participation Harry Shier
• 2001 Clarity model of participation Clare Lardner
• 2001 Strategic approach to participation UNICEF
• 2002 Triangle of youth participation Jans & de Backer
• 2002 Youth participation in society Jans & de Backer
• 2002 Dimensions of youth participation David Driskell
• 2003 Ladder of volunteer participation Adam Fletcher
• 2003 Youth engagement continuum FCYO
• 2006 Four Cs of online participation Derek Wenmoth
• 2006 Power law of participation Ross Mayfield
• 2006 Levels, spaces and forms of power John Gaventa
• 2006 Four L Engagement Model Tony Karrer
• 2007 Participation 2.0 Model New Zealand
• 2007 Spectrum of public participation IAP2
• 2007 Engagement in
  sildenafil on line

  the policy cycle Diane Warburton

• 2007 Online Participation Behaviour Chain Fogg & Eckles
• 2009 Key dimensions of participation Driskell & Neema
• 2009 Matrix of participation Tim Davies
• 2009 Pathways through participation NCVO & IVR
• 2010 Changing views on participation Pedro Martín
• 2010 Ladder of online participation Bernoff & Li
• 2010 Online participation across age Rick Wicklin
• 2010 Three-lens
  buy viagra canadian pharmacy

  approach to participation DFID-CSO

• 2010 Behavior Grid BJ Fogg

Here are twelve starting points to reload EURODIG for 2012.

Photo by ifranz

01. The content. A good conference stands out due to relevant and engaging content. Making reasonable choices about the scope of the entire conference as well as individual sessions are probably among the most difficult decisions to take, but they are crucial: trying to cover everything will almost inevitably lead to broad interventions, vague discussions and little impact. At the 2011 EURODIG Confe­rence, almost all plenary and workshop sessions suffered from the—understandable, yet ruinous—desire to cover too many themes, aspects and angels at a time. My suggestion: In 2012, we give each EURODIG session a relevant and manageable focus, underpinned with three leading questions.

Photo by pablolizardo

02. The context. Making choices about contents priorities allows to zoom in and debate questions in a meaningful way, but it also carries the risk of loosing sight of the larger context. (Not making a choice and scratching the surface of many aspects carries the same risk, of course, which the 2011 EURODIG Conference demonstrated formidably.) Understanding the larger issues and frameworks when debating specific questions helps to make the discourse on internet governance an informed exchange. My suggestion: In 2012, we produce a conference reader ahead of EURODIG, introducing the larger context and framework as well as all sessions with their foci and leading questions.

Photo by spierisf

03. The crowd. EURODIG wants to be a platform for discussions on internet governance between stakeholders from all over Europe. Way too many stake­holders were absent or underrepresented – some by default, some by choice, some by coincidence, some by mistake. Where were the net activists from La Quadrature du Net or Digitale Gesellschaft? Where was the Creative Commons movement? Where was the Euroblogging scene? Where was the open data movement? Where was the digital rights movement? My sug­gestion: By the end of 2011, we have spoken to all missing stakeholder groups, trying to make sure that EURODIG will become relevant and useful for them.

Photo by tudor

04. The dialogue. EURODIG is, in theory, all about dialogue. In practice, the conference featured a series of speakers, followed by a series of audience inter­ventions from the usual suspects. Almost all panels and many workshops followed this pattern – death by powerpoint instead of inspiration by dialogue. Conferen­ces have been re-thought for a while already, and while it’s not useful to flippantly apply the format of unconferences to EURODIG, there is much to be learned from them. Let’s mix in some Pecha Kucha, Open Space, Fish Bowl, Foo Camp, Knowledge Café, Speed Geeking and add our own inventions. My suggestion: In 2012, we run the conference in a completely re-developed format.

Photo by johnmcnab

05. The facilitation. In every conference, there are gaps of knowledge between attendees, there are power differentials at play, and there is often a—perceived— lack of time. In almost all sessions of the 2011 EURODIG Conference, the facili­tation did not address this and was problematic: from acoustic feedback to dying batteries, from introductory monologues to judgemental commentary, from roaring speedtalkers to hushed whisperers, from manipulative openings to biased conclu­sions (sponsors as moderators?!) we had to witness an impressive array of shortcomings. My sugges­tion: In 2012, the entire conference will be facilitated by a team of experienced and, importantly, neutral moderators.

Photo by stuant63

06. The planning. The planning of the EURODIG Conferences is intended and designed to be participatory, with email groups serving as the main tool for communication. It’s easy to join the groups and join the preparation, but the flip-side of all this is that the planning is quite inefficient: it takes long, is documented badly, and de facto the plans are finalised in last minute manoeuvres by some of the key people involved. There is a common misperception about self-organised and anarchic participation vs dominant and hierarchic facilitation at play here… My suggestion: In 2012, we facilitate the session planning in several steps, document it well and finalise it two

months before the event.

Our series of overviews on internet governance in Europe:
(1) Council of Europe | (2) European Union | (3) United Nations | (4) UNESCO | (5) OECD | (6) Civil society

Photo by evilerin

07. The speakers. The line-up of speakers for the 2011 EURODIG Conference was absurd in many ways: too many speakers, too many men, too many persons who had little to say, too many speakers who didn’t know how to present well, and too many panelists unfortunately combining these two weaknesses. It was amusing at the best of times and downright painful at the worst of times. Dialogue does not thrive from dozens of panelists with powerpoint presentations, and it wouldn’t even help if they were great speakers. Let’s please stop this altogether. My suggestion: For 2012, we choose not more than five keynote speakers, men and women who have something to say and who can get their message across.

Photo by opensourceway

08. The website. Wordpress 2.9.1? Cforms 11.4? jQuery 1.3? WP-Tables 1.7? You must be kidding me. I could hack this site and take it down in just a few minutes, and so could many others. I don’t mind that the design of the page is, well, outdated; it can be improved. I don’t mind that the page navigation is, well, confusing; it can be changed. I do mind that the software used to run the site is out-of-date, exploitable and vulnerable; it’s just altogether wrong. An excellent conference site, built with WordPress, is re-publica.de, let’s learn from them. My suggestion: For 2012, we re-develop the website from scratch and make it great: good-looking, easy to navigate and filled to the brim with quality content.

Photo by unanoslucror

09. The venue. I guess oxygen and daylight are overrated, and smelly fitted carpeting and asbestos underappreciated? Sava Center, “erected in 1977 as a modern building complex,” we look at you! Let’s try to find modern convention centers, built with humans and social interaction in mind, respecting modern ecological and energetic standards, and offering decent food for vegetarians. Powerplugs and reliable internet access points are pretty good, but it would be great if they weren’t needed to take attention away from the immediate environ­ment. My suggestion: Before the end of 2011, we develop a concise list of criteria for our conference venues to inform future host countries.

Photo by jona

10. The youth. I was involved in the New Media Summer School, and am thus particularly biased on this point, but why do we perceive young people always as young? This makes no sense — we don’t treat all older attendees as silver surfers, or all civil servants as governmentals, or all business people as money­makers. Why then do we treat young people first and foremost as young people? It’s disempowering and disenfranchising. Let’s put some effort into looking at people’s competences and contexts instead of stereotyping them because of their age. My suggestion: In 2012, we treat young people as we treat everybody else at EURODIG: as experts on internet governance.

Photo by fräuleinschiller

11. The documentation. The documentation of each year’s EURODIG is pretty extensive: reports of the sessions are online as well as complete transcripts, messages from EURODIG ollow each annual conference, and in 2011 some visual documentation was thrown into the documentation mix. Little of it seems to have a noticeable impact though — partly because the docu­men­tation reflects the lack of conclusiveness of many of the debates, partly because the docu­mentation does not manage to convey the progress of the discourse in a way that can be picked up. My suggestion: In 2012, we run the conference with a full reporting team, including a general rapporteur and a visual sensemaking team.

Photo by horiavarlan

12. The outcomes. Discussions are nice, dialogue is great, but it shouldn’t be an infinite loop of indecisive and inconclusive debates. Where are our demands? Where are our commitments? Where are our concise summaries? Where are our state of play documents? Where are our position papers? There are reams of possibilities to trigger, and document, concrete outcomes — they may not hold for everyone in the audience, they may not be the ultimate truth, they may provoke disagreement and friction… And yet! My suggestion: For 2012, we find a way to sum up the conference with some clear recommendations, clever suggestions, new questions and decisive calls for action.

What are your ideas to improve the European Dialogue on Internet Governance?

It’s almost impossible to give a comprehensive overview of all the civil society actors and activities; too much is happening and going on. A few good starting points for globally active civil society organisations, groups and initiatives are:

• the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), defending freedoms in the networked world. The foundation works on issues such as free spech, intellectual property, privacy and transparency;
• the Internet Society (ISOC), one of the leading nonprofit organisation on internet related standards, education and policy;
• the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), the main international standards organisation for the web;
• the Internet Governance Caucus of Civil Society Organizations (IGC), striving for internet governance to become inclusive, people centered and development oriented;
• the Internet Rights and Principles Coalition (IRP), an initiative formed to establish an Internet Governance regime founded upon human rights that has developed a Charter of Human Rights and Principles for the Internet;
• La Quadrature du Net, a collective and advocacy group promoting the rights and freedoms of citizens on the Internet that starts from the assumption that net neutrality means that the internet has no gatekeeper;
• Reporters Without Borders (RWB), advocating and fighting for the freedom of the press, on- and offline;
• the Open Rights Group (ORG), striving to preserve and promote citizens’ rights in the digital age;
• the combined effort of the pirate party movement to bring the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) out into the open at www.stopp-acta.info;
• the Creative Commons Network, working towards the vision of universal access to research and education and full participation;
• the European Digital Rights Initiative (EDRI), founded to defend civil rights in the information society and working, among other issues, on
  online canadian pharmacy

  privacy, governance and freedom of speech;

• the International Modern Media Institute (IMMI), a foundation working to reopen the discussion about how free speech is defined and how it is to be protected for and in the digital age.
• and, last but not least, and of course, WikiLeaks.

Feel free to add organisations, groups and initiatives in the comments!

The work of the United Nations on internet governance spans across several agencies and bodies within the UN work, most notably the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), the United Nations Group on the Information Society (UNGIS), the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA), the United Nations Conference on Trade amd Development (UNCTAD) and UNESCO.

Much of the United Nations’ engagement relates back to the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), the Geneva (2003) and Tunis (2005) conferences aiming to bridge the digital divide and take concrete steps to establish foundations for an information society for all. In Geneva, a common vision of the information society was agreed upon and underpinned with a plan of action, setting out to bring 50 percent of the world’s population online by 2015. This was followed up with the Tunis Commitment and an agenda for the information society in 2005. The World Summit established May 17 as World Information Society Day.

The 11 WSIS Action Lines

The main follow-up process to the World Summit is the WSIS Stocktaking Process, which provides a register of activities carried out by governments, international organisations, the business sector, civil society and other stakeholders with reference to the eleven action lines defined by the World Summit’s Plan of Action. In 2010, the World ICT Development Report (pdf) by ITU focused on monitoring the targets set by the summit. Regular WSIS Fora and a WSIS Community further

contribute to connecting, recording and coordinating stakeholder initiatives to implement the action plan.

The World Summit on the Information Society also called—following a recommendation of the Working Group on Internet Governance—for the establishment of the Internet Governance Forum, which convened for the first time in 2006 as a multi-stakeholder forum for policy dialogue on internet governance. The IGF intends to bring together all stakeholders in the internet governance discourse on an equal basis, from governments and the private sector to civil society and the academic community.

The Internet Governance Forum has met in

2006 in Athens – Report (pdf) | 2007 in Rio de Janeiro – Report (pdf) | 2008 in Hyderabad – Report (pdf) | 2009 in Sharm El Sheikh – Report (pdf) | 2010 in Vilnius – Report (pdf)

and will next meet in Nairobi in September 2011. (Its mandate has been extended by the United Nations’ General Assembly (resolution, pdf) for another five years – from 2011 to 2015).

In May 2011, the UN Special Rapporteur on freedom of opinion and expression, Frank La Rue, published a report on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression (pdf), exploring key trends and challenges to the right of all individuals to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds through the Internet. In its introduction, the report

underscores the unique and transformative nature of the Internet not only to enable individuals to exercise their right to freedom of opinion and expression, but also a range of other human rights, and to promote the progress of society as a

cialis generic

whole. Chapter III of the report underlines the applicability of international human rights norms and standards on the right to freedom of opinion and expression to the Internet as a commu­nication medium (),

La Rue, Frank (2011): report on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression. Page 1.

and the conclusion stresses that

the full guarantee of the right to freedom of expression must be the norm, and any limitation [prescribed by international human rights law] considered as an exception, and that this principle should never be reversed.

La Rue, Frank (2011): report on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression. Page 19.

Further publications of the United Nations on digital governance include:

• Implementing WSIS Outcomes: Experience to Date and Prospects for the Future (2011, pdf)
• Measuring the WSIS targets: A statistical framework (2011, pdf)
• Report on the WSIS Stocktaking 2010: Tracking Progress (2010, pdf)
• Measuring the Information Society (2010, pdf)
• Towards inclusive knowledge societies: implementing the WSIS outcomes (2010, pdf)

The United Nations work on internet governance is coordinated by the United Nations Group on the Information Society (UNGIS) together with the International Telecommunication Union (ITU).

The work of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization on internet governance is based on UNESCO’s basic approach of creating the conditions for dialogue among civilizations, cultures and peoples, a dialogue that aims to achieve sustainable development encompassing human rights, mutual respect and the alleviation of poverty.

UNESCO runs two programmes related to internet governance, namely the International Programme for the Development of Communication (IPDC) and the Information for All Programme (IFAP).

UNESCO’s work on communication and information centres on six thematic areas:

Access to Information | Capacity Building | Content Development |
Freedom of Expression | Media Development | Memory of the World

Publications of UNESCO on digital governance include:

• Freedom of Connection – Freedom of Expression: The Changing Legal and Regulatory Ecology Shaping the Internet (2011, pdf)
• Professional journalism and self-regulation: new media, old dilemmas (2011, pdf)
• The Importance of Self Regulation of the Media in Upholding
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  Freedom of Expression (2011, pdf)

UNESCO published the World Report “Towards Knowledge Societies” (2010, pdf).

Freedom of Expression and Freedom of Information are two core areas of UNESCO’s work. Additionally, UNESCO has a strong focus on information and communication technology in education, starting from the belief that technology can contribute to universal access to and equity in education as well as efficient education management, governance and administration. The organisation maintains a Portal on Open Educational Resources and an OER-Wiki.

UNESCO’s work on internet governance is coordinated by the organisation’s Communication and Information Sector, headed by Jānis Kārkliņš.

The work of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development on internet governance is rooted in the mission of OECD to promote policies that will improve the economic and social well-being of people around the world.

The organisation has developed key indicators on information and communication technologies, which are updated annually, to provide a knowledge-base for digital governance policies. The fifteen indicators mostly cover availability, accessibility, affordability and usage of landline, mobile, broadband and internet connections.

The Information Technology Outlook is a complementary regularly OECD updated publication.

The OECD’s work on internet governance spans across several themes, including information economy, information security and privacy, broadband and telecom and e-government.

The OECD has published a number of Digital Economy Papers, among them

• The Protection of Children Online (May 2011, pdf)
• The Evolving Privacy Landscape: 30 Years After the OECD Privacy Guidelines (April 2011, pdf)
• National Strategies and Policies for Digital Identity Management in OECD Countries (March 2011, pdf)
• More OECD Digital Economy Papers

The OECD has developed a privacy statement generator, building on the OECD guidelines on the protection of privacy. They regularly publish policy guidelines on internet economy issues, reviews of good governance in information society, reports — including “Reducing Systemic Cybersecurity Risks” (January 2011, pdf), a

report outlining what types of cyberattacks and large scale disruptions hold potential for causing a global shock, and “The Economic and Social Role of Internet Intermediaries” (April 2010, pdf) — and OECD Outlooks including the OECD Communications Outlook and the OECD Information Technology Outlook. Additionally, the OECD releases regular statistical updates on the future of the internet economy (June 2011, pdf).

At the occasion of a High Level Meeting entitled “The Internet Economy: Generating Innovation and Growth” in June 2011, the OECD developed an Issues Paper (June 2011, pdf) outlining some background to

the issues discussed at the sessions of the High-Level Meeting, including broadband access, the role of broadband in developing the internet economy, the balance of policy goals to strengthen growth, and policy making principles for an open internet.

Prior to the High Level Meeting, the OECD worked on developing a “Communiqué on Internet Policy-Making Principles” through a multistakeholder discussion. On June 28, the Civil Society Information Society Advisory Council (CSISAC) announced that it has declined to support the Communiqué, stating that it could undermine “online freedom of expression, freedom of information, the right to privacy, and innovation across the world.” More information is available on the website of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) — EFF Declines to Endorse OECD Draft Communiqué on Principles for Internet Policy-Making — the website of the Internet Governance Project (IGP) — Civil Society defects from OECD Internet Policy Principles — and the website of CSISAC — CSISAC Declines to Support OECD Principles on Internet Policy-Making.

The OECD’s work on internet governance is coordinated by the Department of Information and Communications Technologies.

The work of the European Union on internet governance is strongly related by the overarching themes and policy initiatives around economic integration, the single market and the four freedoms of the Union – the free movement of goods, capital, services, and people.

The Digital Agenda is one of the key documents of the EU and is described as Europe’s strategy for a flourishing digital economy by 2020. Starting from the assumption that the free flow of online services is still blocked by too many barriers, the Digital Agenda aims to update the single market rules of the European Union for the digital era. It sets out and defines in total 100 actions for eight pillars:

Digital Single Market | Interoperability and Standards | Trust and Security | Very Fast Internet | Research and Innovation | Enhancing E-Skills | ICT for Social Challenges | International Dimensions

The Council of the European Union, the European Parliament and the European Commission have adopted a number of declarations, directives, recommendations and frameworks related to internet governance, among them:

Communications

• Communication (2011) 287 (pdf) on a single market for intellectual property rights
• Communication (2011) 222 (pdf) on the open internet and net neutrality in Europe
• Communication (2010) 609 (pdf) on a comprehensive strategy on data protection in the European Union
• Communication (2010) 472 (pdf) on European broadband investing
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  in digitally driven growth

• Communication (2010) 245 (pdf) on a digital agenda for Europe
• Communication (2009) 532 (pdf) on copyright in the knowledge economy
• Communication (2009) 277 (pdf) on internet governance: the next steps

Directives

• Directive 2010/13 (pdf) on the provision of audiovisual media services
• Directive 2006/24 (pdf) on the retention of communications traffic data
• Directive 2002/58 (pdf) on privacy and electronic communications
• Directive 2002/22 (pdf) on universal service and users’ rights relating to electronic communications networks and services
• Directive 2002/21 (pdf) on a common regulatory framework for electronic communications networks and services
• Directive 2002/20 (pdf) on the authorisation of electronic communications networks and services
• Directive 2002/19 (pdf) on access to, and interconnection of, electronic communications networks

Resolutions

• European Parliament Resolution 2010/66 on a new digital agenda for Europe: 2015.eu

Recommendations

• Recommendation 2006/952 (pdf) on the Protection of Minors and Human Dignity

Reports

• European Digital Competitiveness report (2010): Volume 1 Main report (pdf) and Volume 2 Country profiles (pdf)
• Background reports on the economic impact of ICT (pdf) and the social impact of ICT (pdf)

The legislative and political work of the EU on digital governance is complemented by initiatives on media literacy, user rights, e-safety, e-health, e-government, e-inclusion as well as a wide range of research projects that are organised in four different strands.

The European Unions work on internet governance

is coordinated by the EU Digital Agenda Commissioner Neelie Kroes and her team.

The work of the Council of Europe on internet governance centres on human rights issues, most notably freedom of expression, data protection, accessibility and cybercrime.

With the Convention on Cybercrime, the Council of Europe created the first (and so far only) binding international treaty on the subject. The convention outlines guidelines for governments wishing to develop legislation against cybercrime. It entered into force in July 2004, has been signed by 43 states and ratified by 20 countries.

Other relevant treaties are the Convention on the Protection of Children against Sexual Exploitation and Sexual Abuse, which entered into force in

July 2010, has been signed by 42 states and ratified by 12 countries, the Convention on Cybercrime, which entered into force in July 2004, has been signed by 47 states and ratified by 31 countries, and the Convention for the Protection of Individuals with regard to Automatic Processing, which entered into force in October 1985, has been signed by 46 states and ratified by 43 countries.

The judgements of the European Court of Human Rights related to new technologies constitute another main pillar of the Council of Europe’s work on digital governance. The Court maintains a fact sheet (pdf) on all rulings on Articles 8 (Right to respect for private and family life) and 10 (Freedom of expression) of the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms.

The Committee of Ministers and Parliamentary Assembly have adopted a number of declarations and recommendations related to internet governance, among them:

• Declarations by the Committee of Ministers
• Declaration, September 2010 on the Digital Agenda for Europe
• Declaration, May 2005 on human rights and the rule of law in the information society
• Declaration, May 2003, pdf on freedom of communication on the internet
• Recommendations by the Committee of Ministers
• Recommendation (2010) 13 on profiling and data protection
• Recommendation (2009) 1 on electronic democracy
• Recommendation (2008) 6 on measures to promote the respect for freedom of expression and information
• Recommendation (2007) 16 on measures to promote the public service value of the internet
• Recommendation (2004) 15 on
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  electronic governance

• Recommendation (2004) 11 on legal, operational and technical standards for e-voting
• Recommendation (2001) 7 on measures to protect copyright and combat piracy
• Recommendations by the Parliamentary Assembly
• Recommendation 1950 (2011) on the protection of journalists’ sources
• Recommendation 1906 (2010) on rethinking creative rights for the internet age
• Recommendation 1860 (2009) on electronic democracy
• Recommendation 1670 (2004) on internet and the law

The Council of Europe is publishing an Internet Literacy Handbook, a guide intended to explain how to get the most out of the Internet and, at the same time, how to protect and maintain privacy. It has developed Human Rights Guidelines for Internet Service Providers (pdf) and Human Rights Guidelines for Online Game Providers (pdf). The organisation also co-hosts the European dialogue on Internet Governance, an open platform for informal and inclusive discussion and exchange on public policy issues related to Internet governance between stakeholders from all over Europe.

Internet Freedom Conference

In May 2009, the Council of Europe organised a conference of ministers responsible for media and new communication services in Reykjavik, for which a background document on internet governance (pdf) was prepared and which led to a declaration by the ministers (pdf).

In April 2011, an Internet Freedom Conference From Principles to Global Treaty Law? took place in Strasbourg to discuss internet governance principles and to explore viable options for creating an architecture for multi-stakeholder participation in international Internet-related public policy-making (Source). A draft document on internet governance principles (pdf) and a draft document on the protection and promotion of the internets universality, integrity and openness (pdf) were prepared for debate at the conference.

An information document entitled Internet Governance — Developing the Future Together (pdf) is regularly updated, last in May 2011.

The Council of Europe’s work on internet governance is coordinated by Lee Hibbard and his team on information society and internet governance.

I am currently in Belgrade to facilitate the New Media Summer School together with Ivana Davidovska. The New Media Summer School is organised by the European Students’ Forum AEGEE, the Young European Federalists JEF, Youth for Exchange and Understanding YEU and the European Youth Press EYP.

It precedes the European Dialogue on Internet Governance 2011 Conference, where various stakeholders from governments, civil society and the private sector will try to answer questions such as

• What should tomorrows internet look, feel and be like?
• Who will decide which content youll be able to find online?
• How can the web strengthen democracy and human rights?

The European Dialogue on Internet Governance was created in 2008 and understands itself as

an open platform for informal and inclusive discussion and exchange on public policy issues related to internet governance between stakeholders from all over Europe. (Source)

The New Media Summer School orchestrates the youth input to the European Dialogue and wants to:

• take stock of the status quo of policies and identify the needs for young people in terms of future policy action in the fields of youth participation, human rights and education related to new media developments
• explore various ways of youth participation in the online world and how to use them effectively for the benefit of society as a whole
• identify the specific needs and channels for education through online media for young people
• bring together young people from various intercultural and social backgrounds to exchange experience, perspectives, roles and needs of participation, human rights and education related to new media
• weave a multicultural European network of young people with an understanding of human rights, education and participation perspectives on new media empowering young people to actively contribute to new media policies and debates

We will be covering the event extensively on newmediasummerschool.eu

and here on nonformality.org, on Twitter with the hashtags #nmss11 and #eurodig.

So Europe’s future lies in the hands of young people? Young people don’t even feature in this onanistic animation

of EU legislation over time. Go watch it, it’s cool to see the bubbles grow – and an entry in the open data challenge to boot.

Much of my work at the junction of online and offline learning draws on the absolutely stellar WordPress community. At the beginning of this month, Matt Mullenweg—founding developer of the open source WordPress software—wrote a piece that instantly resonated with me, “1.0 is the loneliest number.”

Referring to first versions—of software, hardware or anything—Matt argued that

“if

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you’re not embarrassed when you ship your first version you waited too long.”

Oh how well do I know this! The number of iterations articles on Nonformality go through is embarrassing, but at least I am not embarrassed by most of them. The downside? Tardiness; I just wish I could write more and publish sooner.

Whenever I produce something—a report, a book, a website, a concept—I spent soooo much time making sure that the ‘one more thing’ is also perfect. The less likely a product is to be regularly updated, the more time I spent to perfect it. And when I *finally* surrender to mounting time pressure, I usually have plenty of reason to still be embarrassed about this or that or the other…

There is only one manuscript for a report that I can think of from the past five years or so that I did not think of as embarrassing. It was very embarrassing to ship it, however, because it was almost a year late; occasionally, I spend so much time endulging in perfectionism that the resulting delay becomes the most embarrassing part…

Which is why I will press the shiny blue «Publish» button now. Because:

“Real artists ship.” – Steve Jobs, 1983

Our

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biggest advancements in

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4000 years?

Tina Roth Eisenberg, a swiss designer working from New York, asked this as an icebreaker question during a creative morning, a monthly breakfast lecture series.

Some answers—see them all here on Flickr—are predictable, others not. What’s yours?

TALE is one of the long-term training courses in the European youth arena, organised by the Youth Partnership. The course supports European trainers in their professional development to competently design, implement and evaluate training activities.

One of the core features of TALE is its online learning platform LOFT, which was introduced to the world during an

open loft day on December 1, 2009. This September, the talers are going full throttle with an entire «OPEN LOFT WEEK». Curious? Read on!

«Are you interested in e-learning? Are you interested in non formal learning? Are you interested in experiments combining those two? …and you are active in the field of non-formal education and European youth work? If so, then mark in your diary the “TALE’s Open LOFT Week” from 13-17 September 2010.»

So say the talers in their invitation. And with this teaser video, how can we resist? Our diaries are marked :)

The week will combine a variety of formats, time frames, engagement modalities and contents foci – see the programme below. The talers want their initiative to be understood not only “as a mere opportunity to visit LOFT but a chance to share, learn, reflect, debate and exchange altogether and at the same time.”

The programme of the Open Loft Week, also available as a pdf document.

Good luck to all talers, and see you in lofty heights between September 13 and 17, folks!

Attachments: invitation (pdf), programme (pdf), programme (updated), registration info

Fooled by the pink elephant? | Image by neozen

Are you still reading? And did you visualise a pink elephant?

How come? I clearly asked you not to do so!

The simple answer is that our brain tends to ignore “not”, “don’t” etc. and focus on the content words. You thus tend to do exactly the thing that I am asking you not to do.

If I then say “don’t discriminate”, what happens then? Well, some people believe that you might do just that – not out of any bad intentions, but simply because you get so obsessed with the differences that you are not supposed to discriminate against, that it becomes very difficult to see the similarities and treat people equally. Soon then you start—often unconsciously, and often unintendedly—discriminating others, whether through positive or negative discrimination.

Appreciative Inquiry

In their book Appreciative Inquiry: A Positive Revolution in Change, David Cooperrider & Diana Whitney tell a story about Rita Simmel, the president of a New York-based consultancy – a business specialised in mediating heavy conflicts between men and women that often include sexual harassment. This company had spent millions of dollars and many years on trying to solve such conflicts for different companies, but had started to doubt whether they were really making any difference.

A concrete case in point had been one of their current clients who they had worked with for years, but according to all measures things were only getting worse: there had been numerous complaints, law suits, and evaluations showing that people

were getting more and more insecure. After training sessions and workshops on the issue, many participants said that they felt more insecure about how to communicate with the opposite sex, felt increased distance and decreased confidence. Furthermore, no women were promoted – and so Rita Simmel wanted to know how she could use Appreciative Inquiry on this conflict.

Appreciative Inquiry is about the coevolutionary search for the best in people, their organizations, and the relevant world around them. In its broadest focus, it involves systematic discovery of what gives “life” to a living system when it is most alive, most effective, and most constructively capable in economic, ecological, and human terms. AI involves, in a central way, the art and practice of asking questions that strengthen a system’s capacity to apprehend, anticipate, and heighten positive potential. (Source)

In other words: appreciative inquiry is a method where you focus on best experiences and on what you really want instead of the problems and the things you don’t want, as is too often the case.

Cooperrider asked Rita what she really wanted to achieve by the intervention in this company. Rita said that they of course wanted to diminish the cases of discrimination against woman (read: don’t discriminate / don’t think of the pink elephant). Cooperrider asked if that was really all she wanted to achieve. She then got silent and thought for a long while and then said that what she really wanted was to see a completely new organisation with high quality work across the sexual boundaries.

Cooperrider thought that this was a great idea, and asked what would happen if all members of the organisations were invited to nominate themselves in pairs as candidates to share their stories

about how to create and maintain high quality work across sexes?

Nominating mixed-gender pairs
Photo by Sarah Macmillan

Rita accepted Cooperriders proposal and was soon surprised that in this very same company where they had for so long time tried to fight discrimination, hundreds of pairs now nominated themselves. The project kept growing: a group was trained in interviewing colleagues about their best experiences with cross-sex cooperation. They found lots of stories on mutual confidence, constructive leadership and conflict management and good ways to deal with stereotypes about each other. These interviews were used for inspiration when defining a vision for the organisation and designing policies and practices accordingly. Within just a few years, this company won a price for the “best workplace for women”.

Just imagine… | Photo by zen

Now imagine what would happen, if we as youth workers stopped focusing on creating awareness on cultural differences and prejudices and stopped repeating: “don’t discriminate ethnic minorities.” Imagine what would happen if the first we did was to ask our participants: tell me the story of the time where you have experienced the best cooperation ever with ethnic minorities in your work, what happened? What did you do? What was your contribution? Imagine how much information this would give us about how to integrate and include. We would not just get information about and become aware of cultural differences, and about problems of integration or examples of discrimination. However, we would get really cool and useful information about how to include ethnic minorities into our projects and organisations. And imagine what would then happen if we found ways to enlarge and repeat these best practices and to do much more inclusion.

Imagine what would happen if we started the project development phase during training with asking the participants to tell us the story about when they have themselves felt most included and empowered by being involved in a project. And we then asked them to use this information, (enlarge it and repeat it) to plan how to involve and include ethnic minorities into projects and organisations. I believe that none of such stories would be about “how someone made a project for me”, but rather about “how I was involved in the decision-making process from the very beginning, how I was listened to and taken into account” We might then be so lucky to get youth projects where both minority and majority have been truly involved in all phases from defining, planning, implementing and participating, rather than just be seen as the final recipients of the project.

When being presented with such a method, you might think, oh very nice, but isn’t it too superficial when you cannot deal with the things which went wrong… Or you might think very nice but it wouldn’t work in my case because we really have big problems. And yes you are right; this might be the outcome of focusing on the best, if you do not facilitate the process carefully. On the other hand, if you do use the method of appreciative inquiry to its full potential, you will be amazed with the power it has to dissolve problems and turn the focus towards creativity, ideas and energy. And isn’t that exactly what we need for dealing with the challenges of multicultural societies?

This is the sixth and last article of our critical series on intercultural learning by Lene Mogensen from In Dialogue. [1] Start with The Derdians if you have missed the beginning.

_________
1. It was originally written in 2006, and has lost none of its potency. ↑