The Official Program of IGF 2006 Athens Meeting is available here.

The inaugral meeting of the Internet Governance Forum is next week in Athens, Greece. On Thursday November 2, 2006, CPTech, Sun Microsystems, the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, the Worldwide Web Consortium, the South Centre and the Yale Information Society Project are sponsoring an Open Standards workshop. The purpose of the workshop is to promote understanding of the value of open ICT standards to economic development and social welfare and to collectively discuss related problems and solutions, including the role of government policies and procurement.

The sponsors believe that WSIS and IGF should proactively address the challenges of openness and interoperability in the Information Society by paying particular attention to ICT standards as outlined in paragraph 44 of the WSIS Declaration of Principles. To help frame this requested action, the sponsors are proposing two statements of principles: one on open IT standards and requested IGF action and the other specific to government policies and procurement. Our intent is to create a "dynamic coalition" in IGF around these principles. This coalition will work to refine these principles and suggested solutions with the intent of spurring collective action in WSIS/IGF and relevant fora. The coaliton would also present its progress at next year's IGF.

The Open Standards workshop will share the thoughts and experiences of the participants, who represent a broad range of multi-stakeholders:

Government

Brazil: Rogerio Santanna, Secretary of Information Technology, Ministry of Planning and Budget

Egypt's Library of Alexandria: Prof. Magdy Nagi, Head of ICT Sector, Bibliotheca Alexandrina

Civil Society Organizations

Consumer Project on Technology: Jamie Love

Yale Information Society Project: Laura DeNardis

IP Justice: Robin Gross

Intergovernmental Organization

South Centre, Innovation, Access to Knowledge and Intellectual Property Programme (IAIPP)

Standards Organization

W3C: Daniel Dardailler, Associate Chair for Europe

Industry

Sun Microsystems: Susy Struble, Government Policy

More details on the open standards workshop can be found here.