IGF 2014

The impact of disseminating local content extends beyond national, and linguistic boundaries. It shapes up the diversified cultural identities of nations while catalyzing the interweaving of the information and knowledge societies.

The workshop brings together prominent entities with different backgrounds that have significantly hit the headlines as pioneers and promoters of multilingual content creation and dissemination. Speakers will highlight the different approaches in creating and availing digital content and present monitoring tools while opening a vivid channel of discussion with the audience. The dialog aims to reveal the challenges encountered to fulfill accessibility in terms of policy making and other issues.

The diversified approaches presented by the panel will shed light on how cultural and linguistic diversity can be maintained within the information and knowledge societies using information and communication technologies, while inspiring decision makers on how the enabling environment can be created and supported by governments. Speakers from Australia, Europe, USA, Africa,the Middle East and representatives of International Organizations, illustrate best practices of modeling digital content in several contexts.

Special attention will be paid to monitoring and promotion of local content creation and access in lesser-used and languages in danger. Over 50% of some 6700 languages spoken today are in danger of disappearing. Many other languages will disappear in near future and some will lose their influence and relevance at global, national and local levels.

The workshop aims to be a common ground opening rich discussion between diverse stakeholders aiming to safeguard unbounded access while respecting, preserving and promoting the diversity within the information society.

The session aims at identifying new trends in the production, distribution and sharing of creative content in the digital environment. We are in the middle of a great migration of content from analogue to digital. There is a change in roles of the different players along the value chain and an accompanying shift in how each of these players will be compensated for their work.
The online environment is providing access to an unprecedented, and, in some instances, overwhelming quantity of information and content. In the analogue environment, media, news, education, music, and gaming products are primarily created and distributed by the content industry. The Internet however is awash with a huge number of accessible creations generated by individuals. User-generated content (UGC) is experiencing a steady growth in terms of social and economic importance. The session will look at the main economic, legal and social challenges linked to emerging platforms and innovative business models flourishing on the web. In particular panelists will contribute to the ongoing debate around the intertwined relations between industry-generated content and UGC. Understanding their roles in sectors such as media, education or social networks will be crucial to approach challenges linked to IP regulation, both law and policy. Increasingly, media industry proactively engages with consumers and approaches UGC as an asset rather than an alternative to their business. Values of Paragraph 72 of the Tunis Agenda, such as “Facilitate the exchange of Information and best practices...” and “Identify emerging issues, bring them to the attention of the relevant bodies and the general public...” will serve as a framework for the discussion.

The development of local content and applications are key drivers to spur the development of the Internet economy. However, a closer look at content and apps production reveals that the majority of content is produced by a few leading economies. A very moderate level of content is produced IN emerging and developing economies FOR these economies. In addition, apart from some few successful applications and content platforms, the local content and applications market has not scaled up in emerging countries and is currently fragmented.

Existing studies in Asia and Latin America have shown that a barrier to a higher adoption of the Internet and Internet services and applications, especially among low-income groups, is often that these income groups do not perceive the need of an Internet connection because no appropriate content is available for them that would add value to their businesses or lives.

If we managed to develop and promote policies that would significantly enhance content production and distribution in emerging and developing countries at a large scale, we would not only foster economic growth and social development in these countries, but also diversify the Internet economy and make it truly global.

This workshop intends to identify innovative policies and programmes that truly foster the development of content and applications in emerging and developing economies and that promote a local content ecosystem in these countries. Entrepreneurs producing local content in emerging economies will connect remotely from different continents to integrate their views on needs of developers in these economies.

Agenda:

1.Opening remarks on the production and distribution of local content and applications by moderator Andrew Wyckoff

2.Interventions by
a.Minister Diego Molano Vega – Local content and apps development in Colombia
b.Helani Galpaya – LIRNEasia research on developping an app ecosystem in India and Sri Lanka

3.Invitation to entrepreneurs from emerging countries to report remotely about their experience

4.Interventions by
a.Patricia Senghor – Fostering content development in Africa through the FIRE program
b.Konstantinos Komaitis – ISOC’s work and partnerships for local content

5.Discussion

Sustainability and development of the Internet can only be ensured if the net becomes a truly multilingual platform which can support everyone’s right to freedom of opinion and expression online.
The workshop aims to continue the study and investigation of how Internet can become more multilingual through the full deployment of Internationalised Domain Names (IDNs). The yearly EURid-UNESCO World Report on IDNs in cooperation with Verisign includes new chapters about the human perception of the language in its different scripts and the introduction of the first IDN generic top-level domains. It also features an extended section on the universal acceptance of IDNs from the technical perspective. Geographical distribution and gender balance of the speakers will be one of the workshop guarantees as well as the time left for discussion with the participants.
The workshop will be organised as a round table with key speakers who have been working hard at multiple levels to ensure that Internet becomes more and more multilingual. At the time of finalising the list of the speakers, the organisers have contacted multilingual content creators to expand the discussion to the Internet multilingual content aspect.
It will be also moderated at social media level with a dedicated social media moderator.
The EURid-UNESCO World Report on IDN deployment is a yearly study that is going to be continued in the future in closer cooperation with the ccTLD regional organisations Secretariats as well as with the representatives of industry leaders who can contribute to make the Internet a truly multilingual environment. At the same time, the workshop will consider to produce a bullet point chart to be distributed at all levels to illustrate the actions that should be enforced for the aforementioned objective.