Stream Brainstorm
We’re starting to brainstorm possible streams and sessions for NetHui 2011 and are talking to potential stream leaders to take a lead in organising each set of sessions.
The list below is a starting point – by no means final. These streams could be expanded, split, trimmed, or otherwise reallocated with your input. Fire your thoughts into the comments or email me at richard@internetnz.net.nz .
If you want to get involved in stream or session leadership then also either post a comment or email me.
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Overall theme: Shaping the Future Together
Access and Diversity – [Edited] Reducing inequalities and ensuring diversity in usage of, and benefit from, the Internet
Digital skills
Digital divide
People with disabilities
Diversity
Cybercitizenship – creating an online environment the public can have confidence in
Online privacy
Online safety
Youth issues (beyond social networking)
Digital citizenship
Cybersecurity
Governance and Legal – addressing the impact of the Internet on society and its laws
Internet governance
Current legal issues
Current regulatory issues
Convergence issues
International issues (including treaties)
Internet & Human rights
E-commerce issues
Government and Openness – exploring how the open nature of the Internet can affect Government
Open government, e-participation
Local government issues
Internet & activism
Politics and the Internet
Innovation and Emerging Issues – dealing with incoming technologies and issues
Cloud computing
Social media
Internet of things/IPv6
Mobile Internet & Apps
Open/linked data
Location based services
Green ICT
Education – preparing youth for the future
Technical education
Distance education
Teacher education
Educational resources
Discuss this now in the Forum
We’ve had a suggestion on the first one that disadvantaged doesn’t cover it and is a pretty ugly word to use anyway, so I’m suggesting the description of the first one change to “Reducing inequalities and ensuring diversity in usage of, and benefit from, the Internet.”
Good call on “disadvantaged”. It’s all about digital inclusion. The RNZFB woudl be happy to provide some content re make your web presence accessible to the blind – which of course has benefits for anyone struggling to read the screen. Probably best as a background resource to any conversations that develop during hui.
Some specific topic suggestions, by way of email:
* censorship, filtering, government IT policies including IPv6
* intercept, cybercrime including the Council of Europe Cybercrime convention, court suppression orders etc.
* infrastructure security etc.
* GST on off-shore Internet purchases
Have you considered putting the transition to IPv6 into a category of its own?
Do we want anything specifically on the elephant in the industry – Industry Structure: the UFB and RBI and Separation?
Good call Richard, I especially like the “ensuring diversity in usage of, and benefit from” piece of it. It is obvious that mere “access”, however we define it, is not enough. A couple of thoughts.
The research over the last decade has suggested that there is a non-trivial percentage of unconnected people (37.8% in this study The two divides in digital access: income and refuseniks) for the second of whom no price will be low enough even to stimulate access, let alone participation. What do we need to do that will enable us to lock in the benefits of ICT when we have to maintain a parallel system to serve those who, almost by definition, have the greatest need?
Another recent piece of research indicates that those who are not competently connected are actually falling behind even faster that before as the majority of the population, and certainly the majority of government and business, move online.
To quote Michael Gurstein who links to the report, “we have a self-reinforcing DD forming among PC users; we have those accessing the Internet via cell phones losing out on many of the opportunities presented to PC Internet users; and we have (some) governments providing their services primarily to those using expensive mobile devices to the exclusion of other means of access. All of which is to suggest that rather than the Digital Divide going away it might better be seen as evolving and becoming even more rigid, more discriminatory and potentially much more damaging and exclusionary even while the opportunities for access become ever greater.
Into this mix our Hungarian colleagues have tossed an idea for a possible solution—they call it “IS Mentors” – read the whole thing, maybe we need a stream at NetHui along the lines of “Running buses on the Information Highway”
Hi Lance
The IPv6 Task Force is looking at options for events and getting the message across at events this year. At NetHui 2011 any focus on IPv6 will need to address policy rather than technical issues, so the Task Force will still need to do something separately, so they can highlight use cases and get vendor showcasing going.
So it comes down to how much of IPv6s challenges lie in the policy arena. For example, in many countries there are much more ambitious plans by government that mandate use through agencies and set deadlines.
Industry structure issues would appear to be in the domain of the NetHui, although when the stream organisers get to prioritising the sessions they may take into account that there already exist a number of events that discuss these topics annually. Thoughts?
Suggestion today to have a Business and Rural stream. So this raises the question of what are the issues that Business and Rural face, as distinct from technical or IT department issues, and would that be overlapping with the Innovation and Emerging Issues?
How about a Health theme with a stream on Health Education Connectivity. Educators need to connect to the existing health workforce who regularly need to undertake on-going professional training. They can be in clinics, hospitals and practices in the remoter parts of the country. Even where bandwidth is available they are often behind strong and necessary firewalls so a diverse media rich learning environment is not possible. These are the places that the tertiary health students (Medicine, Nursing, Physio, Denistry Pharmacy etc.) are increasingly located – embeded in the community facilites. Currently they are often without suitable network connections back to their insitutions and to the wider world of useful resources. This greatly hinders the adoption of new distance learning technologies. The Health Education network problem is getting broadband connectivity to many users in diverse and frequently changing locations at an affordable cost.
As President of DEANZ http://www.deanz.org.nz/ I will propose that we become involved in the Education strand possibly taking a lad in Distance Education, which would include open and distance learning for all sectors. As a teacher educator leading in this area I am involved in preparing future teachers and see that preparation as key to some of the aspects relating to digital divides. I am about to start my course on change with digital technologies in education again!
I am really happy to see the ecological perspective adopted in Earl’s contribution above, which I also find essential as you can hear here. Some people see schools as an important part of the adoption to enable economic benefits to flow from the nation’s investment in broadband. However, there may be an overemphasis on technical infrastructure which will only become effective with appropriate organisational and professional development in education and associated agencies and services.
Perhaps the distance education strand could develop better understanding of the complexity of the changes underway with the aim of improving leadership and policy.
Would that be welcome?
A suggestion has been made that “Shaping the Future Together” while worthy is not representative enough of the breadth of this event. Perhaps “Next 20 years of the Internet”, or something that somehow says these are the issues we need to address to set the scene for the next 20 years.
Thoughts on this are also welcome…
An idea that has evolved through some discussion is to have a separate stream of “Cross-cutting” sessions where streams overlap or to enable a specific meeting of minds on an issue.