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Day 1 of the UN WSIS+10 Final Review Meeting!

 
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Maurice Ali



Joined: 09 Jul 2006
Posts: 284
Location: Toronto, Canada

PostPosted: Sat Dec 19, 2015 3:45 pm    Post subject: Day 1 of the UN WSIS+10 Final Review Meeting! Reply with quote

Day 1 of the UN WSIS+10 Final Review Meeting!



By Maurice Ali - IAIJ Inc.




What follow is a quick review of the first day events:




Here is the conference room with the welcoming panelists!



First was the WSIS+10 welcome with a panel of experts from the IT field. The one I was really interested in hearing from is the guy that runs Google/Alphabet which is Eric Schmidt. This guy is worth over 9 billion dollars and I wanted to see if he was really sincere about his statements about the future of the internet. My opinion – he seems genuinely sincere but I guess time will tell.








The guy that took the shot is also from Toronto, he is a prof at Ryerson - small world! That is me in the General Assembly Hall pointing to our statement we had a part in and started back in the first WSIS+10 Review Meeting in Paris in 2013.


So as you could see above we made it to the General Assembly Hall. Not a monumental accomplishment if you just wanted to poke your head in there to see what it looked like though this is a restricted area and enforced. What made it special is that we started from the bottom and worked our way to the top. What made it special is that we were there on real official business. What made it special is that we were on the floor of the General Assembly Hall at the United Nations as nation after nation talked about the agreed outcome statement of which a part of us resides. The best thing in the morning was a minister from the UK talking about citizen journalism – that made my day!



I took this photo from my desk behind The State of Palestine.



In the morning we were at one end of the floor and in the afternoon I was at the other end. In the morning we were beside special agencies of the UN like the ITU and in the afternoon we were behind the State of Palestine. That position is as close as you can get to being in a member nation's position on the floor of the General Assembly Hall! The seat we lucky ones got to inhabit will soon be used up by new member states and everyone else will then be relegated to the balcony seats off the fourth floor. But for now I was where the actions is! This is the place where the world is run and you had a spot, a desk there. You could come and go as you please and an armed guard opened the door for you. Just a unique experience.....



The reception held by the co-facilitators of the WSIS+10 Review!



After the afternoon session I went to that reception held by the United Arab Emirates and the Republic of Latvia. You entered as part of a line up and shook hands with the permanent representatives and ministers of those nations and I had a quick talk with the Permanent Representative from the United Arab Emirates about her speech she had just given in General Assembly. That was nice!

And that was how the first day went. The second day should see adoption of the final agreed outcome statement.
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