Is the future decentralised and button up?

Editor's Notes

• #3: During one year of intense activities, the Web We Want reached thousands of citizens around the World, achieved a coverage of more than thousand dedicated articles in mainstream media, celebrated important political gains, combining public outreach strategies, the leadership of Sir Tim Berners Lee and an emerging network of grassroots actors, working with up to 50 partners in more than 35 countries, with targeted actions promoting human rights in the digital age, net neutrality and decentralisation.
• #5: Through the year, the Web We Want engaged with different and broader constituencies and listened to the concerns and hopes of Internet users in different regions of the World. The position and current alliances of the World Wide Web Foundation and other partners helped extend bridges and forged alliances of key actors for the future of the Web.   The year of “Web at 25” celebrations created a basic network composed by over hundred organizations from up to 62 countries, which included traditional human rights organizations, hacker spaces, collectives, labs, universities, arts and culture centres and the most engaged internet rights organizations.   The Web We Want efforts were supported through the year by Bertha Foundation and Ford Foundation, with in kind contributions from Thoughtworks and the South Bank Centre. The governments of Brazil through its Presidency and Germany through its Ministry of Foreign Affairs, UNESCO, the UNHCHR and the Council of Europe also supported and were following our developments.   We are presenting here what we have been doing and our perspectives for the future to continue building a movement to protect, defend and engage Internet users, to defend human rights for all, regardless the technology they use to exercise their rights and a more just and fair society for all.
• #10: During 2014, the Web We Want initiative explored different tactics to open up and bring new actors to the Internet Governance discussions and to general initiatives for Internet rights. The first exploration was on February. Web We Want launched a Cartoon Contest for the Day We Fight Back. We received over seventy submissions from all over the world. The first prize winner was 17 year old from Paraguay. But it went beyond that, it helped us build a “commons” pool of creative commons licensed works against surveillance, encouraging others to share their campaign materials. The materials are used up to this date to feed local campaigns. The PDF can be downloaded here.
• #12: At a key event which challenged and changed the dynamics of the Internet Governance space during the Net Mundial Summit, the Web We Want supported a parallel local process, the Arena Net Mundial, in partnership with the Municipality of Sao Paulo and the Secretary of the Presidency launched a popular mechanism to engage citizens in Brazil to take part of the global event which asked everyone what was the Internet Brazilian wants. A delegation from civil society later handed over to the Brazilian Internet Committee its results. The process involved approximately 280,000 citizens from all over the country. During the event, and as an incentive to engage with citizens with different interests, Web We Want sponsored 27 different workshops, talks and activities engaging local activists, makers, hackers and artists. The initiative especially encouraged participants from poor and isolated areas of Brazil. The event took place at a massive cultural center and up to 8000 attendees http://www.brasil.gov.br/governo/2014/04/arena-net-mundial-discute-os-rumos-da-internet-e-a-democracia-2.0  
• #13: The dynamic was repeated at the Internet Ungovernance Forum, in Istanbul, Turkey a parallel event to the Internet Governance Forum, supporting, together with other organizations a parallel event where local students engaged with international activists exploring emerging topics which were not discussed at the main event.
• #16: For the last 6 months we have worked in an alliance with the South Bank Centre. The alliance will create together a year of action for the most important arts and culture centre in the United Kingdom. With up to 27 million visitors every year, over 100,00 attendees are expected to participate in total in three dedicated weekends and different events related to the Web We Want. The event started in May and continued through two dedicated weekends, one in late September, where most of the members of the advisory committee and Sir Tim Berners –Lee took part and the second in late November, which was a “hands on” event with dedicated workshops and interactive spaces engaging a broader audience in the debates of our times. Together with thousands of attendees, it generated over 500K Tweets, over 3.5 impressions and over 800,000 people reached the #WebWeWantFest hashtag. It took place with strong partnerships like the Guardian Newspaper, public schools attending the event and the most avant-garde artists creating together with hundreds of families. The Web We Want Festivals will close next May with a massive three day event and it is expected that it follows the fate of Women of the World Festival (see http://wow.southbankcentre.co.uk/), which now travels across the World. Brazil expressed its interest to carry on with it as the side event of the Internet Governance Forum next November and the Palace of Arts in Hungary also expressed its desire to continue which such impactful work.
• #19: As core of this project we seek to raise and amplify the voices of women and girls within a broader push to galvanize debate and mobilise the public nationally and globally for online rights. Focused resources were invested in enabling women to join and lead policy dialogue, advocacy, cultural activism and popular mobilisation towards national and global ‘rights for the internet’ that have women’s rights at their core.  We participate in the Freedom Fest in Hyderabad, India, in January with the presence of up to 350 female software engineers from the region and engaged in talks on how to empower women to fight for Human Rights and the Internet from their position as system administrators. In February, a Web Women Want panel took place at the Social Media Week in Lagos Nigeria, and then in April a panel of four women and a man also took place in San Francisco. But rather than dedicated panels, we designed the Web We Want as a program which, by principle, will include 50% women and 50% rural population in all its activities. So far it has been achieved without a problem, with slightly higher participation of women in all activities.
• #21: The Web We Want so far has been presented and discussed at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society, Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society, MIT, Oxford Internet Institute, Universidad Francisco Marroquin, INRIA (France) and Technical University (Berlin). The Web We Want participated in a Summer School in Budapest, organized by Central European University and it was the theme of it. Students of 27 different nationalities were involved in the effort. While our closer ally has been the Office of the High Commissioner of Human Rights, we also engaged with the UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom Speech and we also participated in UNESCO, African Union, UNASUR, CELAC and Mercosur processes. http://www.summer.ceu.hu/advocacy-2014
• #25: During the Web We Want year of action and through different engagement mechanisms, which included small grants but also calls for other actions, we received a total of 257 applications from 80 countries. The demand of small grants really overpassed our availability of funds, sadly, as for each call there were at least 75% grantees fulfilling all the requirements and with really good ideas and proposals.