2018 Internet Society Asia-Pacific & Middle East Chapters Meeting

The APAC & Middle East Chapters joined hands to organize their combined Regional Chapters Meeting from 11 to 12 May in Kathmandu, Nepal. 23 Fellows representing 18 regional Chapters and Women SIG were nominated by their respective Chapters/SIGs to participate in this meeting. Half of the meeting focused on collaboratively developing action plans that are aligned with the Internet Society’s 2018 campaigns, while the other half was to discuss and address regional and governance-related issues. At the end of the workshop, 18 concrete plans were ready for implementation:

• 3 Community Networks plans (Afghanistan, Pakistan, Philippines)
• 5 Internet of Things plans (Bangladesh, India Mumbai, Sri Lanka, UAE, Yemen)
• 9 Collaborative Governance plans (India Trivandrum, India Delhi, Indonesia, Lebanon, Malaysia, Nepal, Palestine, PICISOC, Women SIG)
• 1 Mutually Agreed Norms for Routing Security plan (India Kolkata)

During the regional breakout sessions, Fellows from the APAC region voted for and discussed three major regional issues: 1) Cybersecurity, 2) Transition [of the Internet] to the younger generation, 3) Digital Literacy. They engaged in an open discussion and highlighted some of the specific issues under these topics, what is needed in the context of their region, and shared their plans to address them. The regional breakout session for the Middle East was a small group and informally discussed:

• The challenge of mobilizing volunteers in the Middle East regions and potential other approaches to building a community within the region
• Topics of relevance to the Chapters for the creation of content in Arabic (mentioned: the OTA framework, cybersecurity focus on IoT Security courses to mobilize universities)

The meeting was rounded off with a demonstration of the Chapter Portal and few Chapter-related administrative updates. Towards the end of 2018 a report about the overall progress will be shared across the Chapter community for knowledge exchange. Learn more about Chapters and Special Interest Groups!