so nice having met quite a bunch of you at Wikimania Katowice and how wonderful that the plan from Santiago having a follow up advovacy meeting became reality so soon. Plus, the workshop was simply great, my heartfelt thanks to the organizers and you all!

You remember that we sent our Open Letter before the second Revision of the draft GDC was out to influence its content. Meanwhile, the third (and last) revision ist out, but not public. Why? IT "moved to the Ambassador Level", meaning that only the representatives of the member states were involved. They read the text and just had to remain silent until July 19. However, "several" member states "broke the silence" issuing "concerns" about specific paragraphs. That means, the text ist rejected and negotiations continue, but only about these paragraphs.

Curiously, all interested stakeholders are again invited to speak at Thursday, 22nd of August 2024 (10:00–11:30 ET/16:00–17:30 Uhr MESZ) You have to register.

What exactly can be said if the information about the precise paragraphs remain secret to anyone outside the group of member states remains a mystery to me. The inclusion of civil society stakeholders was called "window dressing" by some experts. 

The technical Community has addressed this process with its shortfalls in inclusivity with a recent Open Letter: https://www.cira.ca/en/resources/news/state-of-internet/joint-statement-tccm-gdc-process-aug2024/

Another Open Letter addressed several concerns by civil society. You can See that the Commons and a robust digital Public infrastructure are not mentioned, making our Open Letter so essential:

I will try to find some more details about paragraphs and such and maybe participate in the said stakeholder event. Normally you have a statement for two minutes. If anyone of you would like to speak, too, we may want to align forces. However, I will not waste too much time in this statements as they may not be very impactful.

Open to comments and advice

Yours, Friederike