Stuart's blog

So it’s been quite a day to get to this point…up at 4.45am to brave the rather intense security situation at Tel Aviv airport (casualties last time included my nearly-new laptop (dented) and digital camera (broken beyond repair)), at the gate raring to go to Jordan for my connecting flight to Sharm El Sheikh by 6.30am, finally on board the plane at 10am after delays for fog. A quick stopover in Amman and then on to Sharm. I was expecting at least some mention of the IGF on arrival at the airport but – nothing. No helpful people bearing signs, no sign of the promised shuttle service to the hotel, nothing. No cashpoint even! It was at this point I started wondering if I was actually in the right place at all, and had in fact booked myself a holiday by the Red Sea without realising it…

Because, make no doubt about it, this is a holiday destination. It’s a tremendous looking place from the air, with the Sinai mountains on one side and some of the world’s best diving waters on the other. Sharm sits between the two, a sort of oasis of what looks like 2000 different hotel complexes all vying for a bit of the beach. A rather strange place for a global high-level conference on Internet governance*.

But Internet Governance is why we are here, and its a busy few days. My prolonged stopover enabled me to really review the programme and documents (Tel Aviv joins Cairo and Vienna as two other airports I know with free wi-fi, by the way, anyone know any others?). This year looks like a good programme indeed, even if some of the sessions seem to replicate each other a little – there are three copyright-related sessions and I don’t know which to choose. You can check the workshop schedule here and the main sessions here. IFLA will be represented by Dr. Sohair Wastawy from the Bibliotheca Alexandrina in one session on A Legal Survey on Internet Censorship and Filtering and I’ll be on the panel discussing the promotion of Freedom of Information in Internet Governance. We also have a whole session on libraries, the cultural sector and copyright, where our colleague Ben White from the British Library will represent, alongside others. I noted from the participant list that we have lots of colleagues from the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, Dr. Sadek from Oman, Sanjay Bihani who was with me last year in Hyderabad, and a gentleman from the Zambian Library Association who I shall definitely be tracking down.

Anyway, more on substance tomorrow. For now I am just glad I am online. I am in an official IGF conference hotel, awaiting the arrival of some of the biggest policy makers and geeks in the Internet universe, and it doesn’t support Macs. I am typing this on a loaned laptop, and have had the poor IT support group of the hotel working all afternoon to try to get my computer online, bless them. They were great, but I’m not impressed with the conference organisers so far, to be honest…

*When work is done, I shall indeed do a very library holiday thing. I will visit this place for a day. Libraryholidaytastic!