This page includes links to a series of one-on-one interviews recorded at the second of five annual Internet Governance Forums facilitated by the United Nations to allow people to come together to discuss key issues and find common ground for cooperation.
These global events focus on discussion of the overarching issues tied to the future of information and communications technologies, including control over the internet architecture and numbering and naming system, security, intellectual property, openness, connectivity, cost and multilingualism. Nearly 1,400 participants shared information, experiences and best practices. This video content is shared under a restricted Creative Commons Noncommercial license.
(Click here to return to the home page for IGF Rio 2007 content.)
The biographies below represent the people’s lives at the time of this forum, in 2007.
The following links allow you to enjoy a series of 10- to 30-minute video pieces featuring people of the Internet at IGF …
Vinton Cerf – Vice president and chief Internet evangelist for Google; former chairman of the board for ICANN; co-designer of the internet’s enabling TCP/IP protocols and the basic architecture of the internet; founding president of the Internet Society. He travels the world regularly in support of internet projects; his home base is in Herndon, Virginia, USA.
Nitin Desai- Former UN under-secretary-general for economic and social affairs, now special advisor to the secretary-general of the UN. He has been a leader of activities tied to the World Summit on the Information Society, and chairs the Mutistakeholder Advisory Group that plans IGF meetings; previously was a leader in the work of the government of India; his background is economics.
Robert Kahn – Chairman, CEO and president of the Corporation for National Research Initiatives, a nonprofit he founded in 1986 to effectively engineer the National Information Infrastructure of the US, also making a difference globally; leader in DARPA and US Strategic Computing Program; co-designer of the Internet’s enabling TCP/IP protocols and the Internet’s architecture.
Peter Dengate-Thrush– Chairman of the Board of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers and New Zealand-based barrister specializing in Internet and intellectual property law; involved in ICANN since its inception and a leader in the ccTLD and ccNSO communities.
Paul Twomey- President and CEO of ICANN, formerly founding chief executive officer of Australia’s National Office for the Information Economy; expert on information economy and technology priorities and strategies; widely published in academic and popular journals; Cambridge Ph.D. in international relations.
Wolfgang Kleinwächter – Professor for international communication policy and regulation at the University of Aarhus in Denmark; author of research on Internet regulation; involved in the development of policies for the DNS since the mid-1990s; leader from civil society in Internet Governance Forum activities.
Norbert Klein – Established the first connection from Cambodia to the Internet; a co-founder of the Internet Society chapter in Cambodia and developer of a standard Khmer language script for computers; instrumental in ICTs for development in Cambodia and in open source projects in that region of the world
Thomas Vinje- Partner working in the European competition and regulation group of the major international law firm Clifford Chance, based in Brussels; expert on antitrust matters who has been active in litigation tied to Microsoft’s international business practices; specializes in high-technology issues including intellectual property law and has written articles and book chapters on the topic.
Michael Aisenberg – Special assistant and counselor to the president at EWA Information and Infrastructure Technologies; formerly worked with government relations at VeriSign, as a director of strategy and policy at Digital Equipment Corporation and as an attorney at the Federal Communications Commission; specialties are network security and impacts of information networks.
Alex Gakuru – Chairman of the Kenya ICT Consumer Society and chair of the ISOC Chapter Formation Committee of Kenya; his consumer group is working to assure that the people of Kenya gain access to affordable, reliable networked communications from competitive carriers.
Hiroshi Kawamura- President of the DAISY Consortium, a group formed to lead the worldwide transition from analog to digital talking books – DAISY stands for DIGITAL Accessible Information SYstem; librarian at the University of Tokyo who co-founded DAISY and later branched out to direct efforts in support of all people with disabilities; works to promote digital opportunities.
Reza Salim – Works to improve lives and communities’ health status, including work with a rural development project (www. amadergram.org) for which he creates knowledge-management tools appropriate for the grassroots people of Bangladesh; developed the concept of KT4D (knowledge transfer for development) that includes empowerment of rural women; also involved in WSIS.
Ugo Vallauri – Technical research and development officer for Computer Aid International, working in the Nairobi office, where the issues include connectivity in rural areas, alternative power solutions and adaptive technology applications; he has consulted for a UN ICT project and also works on independent journalism projects; his degree in communications is from the University of Bologna, Italy.
George Victor Salama – Works as an international technical coordinator for the National Telecom Regulatory Authority of Egypt; master of science in business information technology from Middlesex University in the UK, undergraduate degree in computer science from the American University in Cairo.
Sheraan Amod- Electrical engineer and entrepreneur based in Cape Town, South Africa; International Telecommunications Union Fellow with the Diplo Foundation at IGF-Rio; focus is on youth involvement in ICTs, and he has been a facilitator at the International Youth Leadership Conference in Prague.
Iffat Rose Gill – Chief executive for the People’s Development Organization of Pakistan; Diplo Foundation ITU Fellow at IGF-Rio focusing on youth and Internet governance issues; member of Expert Forum-Pakistan Telecommunication Authority; Human Rights Commission of Pakistan Youth Caucus Working Group; World Summit on Sustainable Development;.
Luis Henrique Almeida de Oliveira – Telecommunications Agency of Brazil; Diplo Foundation Fellow.
Vint Cerf statement at CIR panel – Vint Cerf participates in the main session on Critical Internet Resources.
The videos on this site are offered for use under a Creative Commons Noncommercial License allowing no derivative works. Executive producer, Janna Quitney Anderson; associate producers, Daniel Anderson and Connie Book; videographer and editor J McMerty; and reporters, Anne Nicholson, Michele Hammerbacher, Dannika Lewis and Eryn Gradwell; video editors, Janus Rogerson and Tyler West.