SEEDIG 5 Session principles

When working on building the sessions included in the programme of SEEDIG annual meetings, the organising teams are to follow the session principles outlined below:

• When planning the sessions, organising teams should strive to work on the basis of consensus. All members of the organising teams are equal, irrespective of their affiliation or stakeholder group.
• Session organising teams are open to any interested individual, throughout the entire planning process. When new members join, teams are not expected to re-open discussions on issues already agreed upon. Rather, new members are to add their contributions to the work ahead, starting the moment they join the team.
• Sessions should focus on specific current and emerging Internet governance issues that are of particular interest to the Internet community in South Eastern Europe and the neighbouring area.
• Sessions should ensure diversity of views, in terms of multistakeholder, national, regional and gender representation. Efforts should be made to include youth views into the discussions. A mix of both experts and new voices should be included in the sessions.
• Innovative sessions formats (other than the panel type sessions) are encouraged. PowerPoint presentations are not recommended.
• (Self-) promotion for speaking slots or ‘speaker placement’, without contribution to programming and session designs, is not appreciated.
• Efforts should be made to avoid having key participants/moderators repeated in different sessions.
• Where applicable, sessions should not include more than five (5) key participants/resource persons. It is NOT a must for sessions to have key participants or resource persons. Some sessions can only rely on moderators who will guide the discussions among all participants.
• Irrespective of the session format, ample time should be allocated to interactive discussions among all session participants (key participants, resource persons, attendees, etc.). It is recommended that the session moderator engage all participants on a sustained basis throughout the session.
• Online participation is an integral part of the sessions. All sessions should have a designated online moderator. On-site session moderators should pay equal attention to both on-site and online participants. Active engagement with social media may also be used to feed inputs in the sessions.
• All sessions should be reflected in key messages. The process for preparing these key messages is the following: Each session should have a rapporteur who will be responsible for taking notes during the session and preparing, in an objective manner (trying to reflect all views expressed, including the divergent ones), 3-5 bullet points representing the main results of the debates. These bullet points should, to the extent possible, be forward looking, through, for example, reflecting goals and proposals for activities that could be initiated after SEEDIG. The rapporteur will present these bullet points at the end of the session, asking for agreement or disagreement (NOT a debate, just a “yes” or a “no”) from the audience. Those bullet points accepted by the audience will be considered the session key messages.