Nitin Desai Draws on We Media Inspiration at Pre-IGF Public Hearing

I think the We Media Global Forum made a good impression on Nitin Desai, special advisor to the United Nations Secretary-General and a keynoter at the We Media Global Forum. At a pre-IGF public hearing in Geneva today, he said:

So I was in a meeting recently in London which was organized by the BBC, Reuters, and Media Center. And that meeting was much more interactive than many — very little preparation, very little paper. It wasn’t as if papers were prepared and circulated in advance on the theme for discussion. They relied much more on panels, directed panels, keynotes, et cetera. But more than that, what struck me was the way in which they brought the outside in, through the blogs.

There were people inside the room who were putting what was going on onto a blog and getting immediate responses. And a space was created there where, let’s say, in the course of a discussion, the chair would turn to the — a person who was keeping track of the blogs, and say, “Now tell us, what’s come from the blogs so far on the topic of our discussion?” And I was amazed at the distances from which comments were coming for this meeting. There are obviously many insomniacs out there in the East, because they must have been doing this at 3:00 at night or something, from as far as I could figure out. There were instantaneous responses coming from Japan, Malaysia, Egypt, India, China. And it was quite interesting.

And I thought, these are the things we must do.