Day 1:
This was the first day of our Internet Governance Youth Camp in 078 Kobe Festival!
After traveling for a long period of time and pushing the cumbersome luggages, we were exhausted, but we were still filled of excitement to start our first initiated youth booth camp!
078 Kobe Festival is an annual event of music, film, interactive media, fashion, kids, anime, and food that will take place in late-April in Kobe, Japan. Paying great respect to SXSW, 078 Kobe Festival aims to gather creative young people from all over the world, and to make Kobe a wonderful city. One of the reasons of organizing such booth camp is because Kobe is going to hold the ICANN meeting in 2019 March, it is our earnest hope to booth up some of the youngsters in Kobe, and empower them to speak up in the ICANN meeting next year.
In the morning, we began our sessions with some self introductions and a couple of ice-breaking games like “Guess the stakeholders” and “Never had I ever”, we were glad that all the participants were active and willing to express their views and their stories. Our participants were mainly international exchange students, studying in computer science, with various of nationalities, like the US, Pakistan and Middle-east. There were some lecturers from university joining as one of our participants. Their professional and specific background were out of our expectation, their fruitful experience and knowledge do help a lot in making a in-depth discussions.
After that, we started our informative sessions in order to let all the participants have a brief view of all the internet topics like cyber-security, internet accessibility, digital economy and human right online. Next, we began to discuss whether the new gLTD is necessary. And this is the end of the first day.
Day 2
Actually, It was the first time for us to organize and be part of the Internet Governance Youth Boost Camp at 078 Kobe Festival.
This trip to Kobe was like a mixture of everything, we have held a model ICANN meeting and discuss many Internet issues, we had met the local and international students there and played games together, we also met many locals during the last two days of 078 Kobe Fest.
Since ICANN meeting is going to be held in Kobe in 2019, we held this boost camp to engage more young people on Internet governance issues and encourage them to propose their ideas in the coming ICANN meeting. The participants were actively expressing their opinions and view on different topics. Most of the participants are international students from South Asia, Europe, and Africa. Their diverse backgrounds and experiences deepened the discussions and made them represented well for the roles of each stakeholder.
On the second day, we started the discussion by talking about “Internet of Names: Our Digital Future”. Edmond, Tommy San and Maemura San’s experienced and professional sharing gave us fruitful insights and initiated board discussions different internet issues. Participants are also encouraged to voice out their opinions based on the topics. We also discussed some of the debatable issues on some domain names, such as .sex, .wtf and etc. We really enjoyed a lot at the camp.
You must be logged in to post a comment.