Over the next two days (9-10 June), the European Dialogue on Internet Governance (EuroDIG) takes place in Brussels, Belgium. With a theme of “Embracing the digital (r)evolution“, EuroDIG has a full agenda and Internet Society staff will be participating in many aspects of the programme.
For us, the highlight will be at 11:30 CEST on Thursday, June 9, when our President and CEO Kathy Brown opens the first Plenary with a keynote speech. She plans to speak about how we can use our Collaborative Security approach to build trust in the Internet. (Read her blog post for a preview of her session tomorrow.) Our Regional Bureau Director for Europe, Frédéric Donck, will be moderating that Plenary session and after her speech he will have a series of questions for Kathy and the other outstanding panelists. After a lunch, Frédéric will moderate a new session continuing this discussion and involving audience members.
All EuroDIG sessions will have live video streams so that even if you can’t be in Brussels you can still join us remotely. There are also Adobe Connect sessions available for remote participants who would like to ask questions or engage in the discussions.
Our EuroDIG event page has the links to more details about all our sessions, including the live stream links, but here is a quick overview.
In the afternoon on Thursday, at the same time that Frédéric is continuing the Plenary session discussion, Tommi Karttaavi, our Chapter Development Manager for Europe, will be a panelist in a session that, as someone involved with communications, I am personally looking forward to. Revisiting the idea that “Content is the king”, the session will explore the changing roles of media, search engines, business models and more. It will dive into the role of media as gatekeepers and the challenging questions around hate speech and the appropriate policies around content issues.
On Friday, we will have three simultaneous tracks with Internet Society participation.
Frédéric will be moderating two panels discussing the whole topic of “Zero Rating” – what is it? and what impact does it have? He has excellent panelists to dive deep into these topics and our colleague Konstantinos Komaitis will assist him as the session reporter.
Meanwhile, our Chief Internet Technology Office (CITO) Olaf Kolkman will be in a nearby room moderating two sessions about cybersecurity. In one session, his panel will be discussing whether security best practices are really the best approach and discussing the ideas around Collaborative Security. In the second session, the topic will be “the future of cybersecurity in Europe.” Maarit Palovirta, our Manager for European Regional Affairs, will be one of the panelists in that session.
Finally, in the 11:30-13:00 morning session Tommi will be a panelist in a session discussing the European Internet governance ecosystem and how it can be strengthened through existing initiatives and potential new ideas.
Beyond those sessions we’ll be actively engaged in discussions around improving Internet access, the Internet of Things (IoT), human rights and many other policy topics. Please watch our EuroDIG event page and follow us on social media.
I look forward to another exciting EuroDIG and invite you all to join us in this dialogue. Together we can shape the future of the Internet!
P.S. Due to a scheduling conflict, I am not attending EuroDIG in person. But thanks to the amazing opportunities provided by the Internet, I will be joining in using the different remote participation methods.