Youth IGF, London (2-5/8/2010)

Desiree Ho (Class 2009) and Jerry Tam (Class 2009) were invited to be part of the 3-day Youth IGF camp conference held in London, UK, from 2-5 August 2010. They interacted with students coming from different parts of the United Kingdom to learn and discuss main topics surrounding United Nations Internet Governance (UNIGF). The 5 main topics were Openness, Security, Access, Diversity and Privacy. The 3-day forum was held at the London Science Museum, Google London and IFPI offices representatively.

Desiree and Jerry shared their experiences running the NetMission Community Projects and the youth Internet Governance Forum (yIGF) in Hong Kong, while the UK students helped them enhance their knowledge and understanding of the issues from the youth’s perspective, and prepared them to make a useful contribution and the UNIGF in Vilnius in September 2010.

For example those coming from a small Island called Guernsey in the UK suffered from all types of bandwidth problems despite the fact that they came from a “developed” country. How did that affet the businesses in those areas? How did something so simple, such as an unstable internet connection, make them better off or worse off than those in the city? These are some of the issues they aimed to address at the conference. Desiree and Jerry also interacted with representatives from all different backgroundsk, including some representatives from music industry and the IT world.