EuroDIG planning meeting

The EuroDIG planning meeting has been held in Tbilisi earlier this month.
Our member Raphaël Beauregard-Lacroix has timely produced these summary notes that I am posting now, apologising for the delay.
Please be aware that the bullet point notes do not cover the whole session but only the part that Raphaël has attended remotely, but you can find a recording of the morning here and the afternoon here.

  • Youth Participation: it is not about separating young and old, but empowering young people and helping them build their confidence so that they can intervene and participate during EuroDIG
  • Start ups participation: it is difficult to engage them, so there will be more efforts on that side for this year. This observation can be extended to private sector in general.
  • High level speakers: there must be some high level speakers to attract a certain type of crowd, and they will usually not participate in a standard panel or workshop. They will have their own 10 min with all attention, but we still limit the number of that kind of speeches.
  • Side events: not much opportunity to hold pre or side-events because of the lack of room in Georgia this year.
  • Hot topic session on Day 0: Saving some space in the programme for new developments of IG that we cannot foresee as of now (precedent of Snowden revelations and sudden rise of surveillance as a topic)
  • Flash sessions: no recording, no microphone. Short in time, “punchy”. There are currently more proposals for flash sessions than slots, but it usually sorts itself out since many do not want their topic to be a flash session.
  • Keynote: there will be a head of state, but as of now no one is confirmed. Maria Gabriel from the EC is almost confirmed.
  • GDPR: Was meant to be covered in an educational session first. There were discussions as to what kind of format GDPR should be presented as. No consensus during the meeting, besides the fact that it should not be (only) an educational session. The EuroDIG secretariat will make a decision on that matter.
  • Schedule organisation: lots of discussion on how to organise the schedule and format the sessions, with workshops, plenaries, keynotes, and open mic. The point being to maintain the interactivity and maybe come up with new formats, such as a debate or “targeted” open mic.
  • Blockchain session(s): EurodDIG secretariat will reach out to a blockchain expert, possibly outside the “circles” of EuroDIG, in order to act as a focal point to help the secretariat organise and manage the session(s) on blockchain.
  • Eurodig principles: several principles, same as previous years. Note that max 5 speakers per plenaries, and they do not recommend speakers in workshops. They use the term “key participants” for workshops rather than speakers.
  • Wiki and session logistics: It was decided that the wiki would serve as a “kitchen” in order to help the org teams for each session organise, while there would be some form of front page, that would feature the highlights of EuroDIG and help private sector and NGO participants justify their participation. The wiki is usually not edited early enough for that, and it is not possible to “force” people and organising teams to edit it. The EuroDIG secretariat also emphasised the difficulty of being very strict with deadlines. One participant was very adamant that the secretariat should be more strict with deadlines. Another participant stressed that having the wiki page for plenary sessions empty up to 1 month before looks bad upon the conference.
  • Venue: Rooms Hotel has been confirmed.
  • Final agenda: will be circulated by the secretariat in the coming weeks, after which organising teams can start to set up the sessions in more details. As a reminder, it is open to everyone to join the organising team of any session, and default emails are provided by the secretariat for that matter (which redirect to the session’s focal point’s email)

 

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