I want to welcome everyone and thanks for joining us today for a conversation on exploring collaboration opportunities to faster cross sectors initiative, we want to talk about how the Internet is true in the Internet that enables collaboration. I hear in we have a phase one, the parents from the GC, president of the Puerto Rico telecommunications Alliance. And then we have the NMR from the Department of Economic Development of Puerto Rico and Hawaii, Aruba. Have you Who are you representing today? We have another panelist that what it's it was he is the president of the Puerto Rico information technology organization. And he called me this morning and said, I got COVID. You know, COVID still is still running. So we are is representing here the private sector from the collaborations we have government, telecommunications and and the private sector on how they collaborate and how the Internet enables that collaboration. So, think of Internet, it is a huge network that show us how much we can achieve when we join forces guided by effective governance that ensures openness, fairness, and today's theme, which is truth. Today, we will look at how teaming up across government telecom and tech sparks new ideas, I help skip the Internet plays we can all trust. We got some fantastic speakers who would share their stories and tips on building partnerships that truly captured that what the Internet is all about bringing people together sparking innovation, and moving forward underpinned by a governance framework that supports our collective efforts. Like I said, again, I'm going to introduce them that we have three this distinguished panelists, Wanda Paris, from President of the Puerto Rico telecommunications Alliance and pace when you're talking, you know, you can talk about where you're coming from, so they can put you in context, by the way, you can always go to the page and look at the faculty. And so they can, you can read their their bios. So Jenny, Mark, and Yan from the Department of Justice, the Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Department of Economic Development of the government of Puerto Rico, so she's representing the government sector. And Javier Rua, who is representing here, the private sector. Okay. So let's now let's, in some of these, let's start the presentation. I mean, the the session, and I'm going to be asking them some questions. And I'm going to turn some questions. So the audience, so please, you know, this is all about collaboration. So we're going to warm up the session by asking the following question to Jenny first, how does the government encourage different sectors to collaborate on Internet related projects?
So good morning, everyone. Thank you for the invitation. At the Department of Economic Development and commerce, we've been working very aggressively in, you know, identifying what are the new or the upcoming trends in order to, you know, continue promoting the economic development of Puerto Rico. And part of our Strategic Economic Dialogue is basically geared towards technology. We've identified a need importantly, going in order to invest in all technology oriented industries also invest in the workforce that is related to the technology industry to industry. So right now, it's one of the those pillars of our economic, our economic plans. So for the government, it is top priority right now to try to collaborate or support all of these emerging industries that want to you know, that want to work or participate in what is technology, what is tech recently, last year, we announced the 21st century tech force initiative, where the government identified funding in order to support providers to give training or or develop stackable credentials for the citizens for people who are interested, you know, and learning more about technology or getting credentials, credentials, such as software development, AI, web development, etcetera. I mean, it's it's, it's the trend, it's what the 21st century requires, and we know that Puerto Rico cannot you know, Stay behind. So the government is very committed in investing in this type of industry, it is a top priority for the economic development of the island. We want to make Puerto Rico a smart Island, a very smart and technological Island. That's a webpage that we have. So, basically, if I were to summarize, or you know, summarize my answer is that the government of Puerto Rico is supremely committed, we have lots of initiatives running at the same time. Also, the federal government, federal government has, is investing a lot of money in this. We have infrastructure funding, specifically for technology and broadband areas. We also have money from the workforce from from different agencies, federal agencies, who are who want to support the development of workforce and these technological areas. So again, I mean, that is the future and we need as a tourist as a society to adapt to these changes, and these rapid growing changes.
Thank you, Jenny, wonder what role do telecom companies play in supporting cross sector collaborations on the Internet?
So I think telecommunications companies are the backbone of the Internet, you some of you might agree might agree or disagree. I, I, apart from being president of the telecommunications, vertical telecommunications alliances, I work on Government Affairs Council for liberty. So I work with the government and a lot of other enterprises, to make sure our Internet works appropriately. So the telecommunications sector provides the backbone for the Internet, and that is connectivity, data, transmission, equipment, etc. Part of the what we're most concerned about, every time there's cross collaboration, and we're part of it is, of course, data security, this is a very big issue for for everyone. And we that one that we take very seriously. So So we believe that we're an integral integral, integral part of cloud cross collaboration in the Internet, and that all of the equipment and all of the software improvements are going to help that but without the telecommunication sectors, that cross collaboration couldn't happen. Thank
you run a node? How can you describe a successful collaboration between technology companies and other sectors, and even when the company you think you're working
for? If I can, I'd like to flip that around a bit. I think if it's not collaboration, it's not successful. So what I strive to, is that everything is collaboration. If not, if it's forced upon, if it's just prescriptive, it's, it's not as productive, and it's not calling upon the better angels of view of humanity. So specific examples. So. So what do I do so right? Right now, my, my professional life has is not specifically within the ICT sphere, I'm more in renewables energy policy, and I'm in an association just like, like one day, I'm in the solar and storage association of Puerto Rico, which is the companies that do business in the solar energy and battery space, including electric vehicles. So all we do is look first amongst ourselves is collaborate as an industry, right? And that is in person and also virtual all the time is just zoom calls all the time. You're just like, No, Brady, bunch of little boxes of the board members, etc. But also our meetings with outside entities and with government. So for example, Jenny runs a key agency in Puerto Rico, or she's a deputy director in that agency, department of economic development within the Department of Economic Development is the Energy Office of Puerto Rico. So we have in person and online meetings all the time with the entity offense for sector specific topics, you know, the universe of sector specific topics that have to do from regulatory things from from policy topics, whatever. So, so what we strive for is that everything is a collaboration, right? And it is mostly because you try, you know, I kind of Jen, I'm an attorney, but genetically I tried to avoid litigation. Litigation is not the best path for solutions. Usually the best path for solution is just collaboration, diplomacy, engagement, meeting people halfway, giving and taking negotiating positions and The industrial collaborating is not winning is like kind of like racing. Like all ships with the water with the tide at the same time, everybody. So that's what we tried to do in terms of very specific things that have to do with the with ICT. Well back Back in my day in telecom, for your own benefit, I was a chairman of the Puerto Rico telecoms regulator. So a telecoms regulator was one stakeholder stakeholder in something that Eduardo was in the Puerto Rico broadband Task Force, which was specifically a multi stakeholder collaborative group that produced the first Puerto Rico broadband plan back in the day 2015. So it was industry, it was a company. So we have the telecom companies in there we had, I don't think the association existed yet as such. A actually the association was born responding to something. A, there's a, there's a story there. But anyways, government, private sector, technical community was there, the broadband plan was produced, and it was a policy that is still what's called the gigabit gigabit Island plan. And we're seeing results. And more recently in the in the in the ICANN world, one thing that's very specific, I think, a good example. Within the ICANN world in the policymaking world, you have the policymaking processes, there was something something called the The PDP, the policy development process for for subsequent procedures, that's wonky, but there was a sub group within this group called the work track five the Geographic Names group, Geographic Names, meaning geographic top level domains, or geographic domain names. And the group itself was crafted to be all trade representative. Not to force collaboration, but what the when you craft a group and multi group what so So specifically, you had a representative from from the domain names GNSO. You have representative from the country codes, Annabeth lunch. I remember you had I was coming. I was at the at large representative at that moment, another community with within ICANN, a and and I think all geca rally from the GAC. So it was so I guess GNSO was more kind of like industry, you would say it was system certain Martin's certain. That was more industry that DNSSEC that you had the GAC or like, I believe more government, more governmental views, you had the CCNSO, which was kind of like, you had some views in there that were more like governments other that that were not, and then at large, which was like the users individual users perspective, or their Internet users perspective. And that, you know, worked as a collaboration that resulted. Some people like some people don't, but it was a collaborative process for sure. Okay.
So that brings us into the to the next question, which you already touched on that? And is, what are the key factors for successful collaboration across different sectors when it comes to governing the Internet? By governing the Internet? I mean, the processes and policies that determine how the Internet is managed in us included an access security and regulation. how can government telecom and technology sectors work together effectively in this context, and I know you already mentioned a, you know, DNSSEC scene. So with all this, these are organizations within the ICANN and they represent different points of views. That's that's the main thing and other than the this nomenklatura, the idea behind that is that you have a multi stakeholder group that come from different perspective working on a problem, okay. So, that is a key factor in that place in that example. So, one day this what are the what what key factors, you see for successful collaboration across different sectors? So,
I think the, the main idea or the main goal, in in starting a collaboration is to share ideas and goals, what is your goal? So with Internet governance, we might think of a goal like transparency on on the use of the Internet, universal access, privacy there. So there are a few things that we might agree that we want to have like a common idea of how these things should work right in order to have the Internet work appropriately. So I think we you know, any collaboration in Internet governance govern ment, a governance should start with those key principles. What are we looking for, what do we want to I don't want to say regulate but what what Do we want to see happen with the Internet? So then after you get all those initial criteria, which the IGF talks about frequently? And you agree on that, then you go on into the detail. Right? So how do we work on this transparently? How do we make sure our interests align? While we're not? Probably not representing the same types of group? So how do we make the universal benefit? The Universe benefit from our work, even though we're representing different areas, and I think also, and heavier mentioned this a little bit. Having a multi stakeholder approach is essential for any governance we want to do on regarding the Internet. And I think education is also essential. So people need to get educated about what the Internet is, what the appropriate use of the Internet is, and how they can achieve that. So I think that's very important. And the multi stakeholder approach, I think we also need to integrate young people, younger people. So we have the panels I've participated and I've seen are usually very similar to this. And the geography is very similar to you guys. So educated people, we work in the industry, you're similar, something similar to that. But I haven't seen a lot of integration of younger people, I think we need to get that integration. These people are the ones that are going to be running the Internet, and talking about Internet governance in a couple of years. So I think that is is very important. Also.
Thank you when that so what I hear from what you're saying, there's three key factors there. One is you have to have clarity of purpose. You know, why do you want to collaborate? And what do you want to collaborate on? Second? You talked about transparency, as to be open trust. So you create trust on this collaboration. And the other one that you're mentioning in your demo is inclusion, you should include different apps, different perspectives, different people, young, old, you know. So those are key factors, their journey, you have to want to add to that, based on your experience work. Yeah,
I think just to add a little bit from the government side, one of the things I want to mention, and I think I just want to add, I mean, having all of the required stakeholders, that is something that takes a little bit of time from the government side. But definitely through powerful partnerships, we can develop a lot of initiatives. And I think that that is something that we've been trying to work on. And when trying to implement policies, having feedback from the private sector, having feedback from community based organizations, and having, you know, feedback from different types of association definitely is going to lead to better policy. We don't want to, you know, enter into, you know, the policy or the governments of the Internet, because we we've been trying to be very careful with that. But we do know, there is, you know, a need, and we've been trying to work towards trying to give more access to the, to the public, better access of Internet, you know, and also trying to, you know, regulate, but not as much, because we know, the government's is very regulated. So we've been very careful with that as an economic development level, because a lot of regulation can also slow down economic growth. So, so what we but we do believe that through powerful partnerships, we can we can definitely promote better policy and governance. So thank you. Oh, yeah. Do
you want to add,
I would emphasize wonder set to further landed, you know, within at least within the ICANN world, one way that clarity and rules of engagement and purpose is landed is, you know, when you have a working group setup on an X topic, you you come you by consensus, you build a charter of what it in this act of self governance, you build your own charter of what the mission is. And that's key, because you have to hurt your inner cats and although also hurt all the other cats, you need clarity of purpose, and that's good to have in a charter. We're trying to solve Ax. So there has to be a problem to solve because a lot of conversations are about you know, But problems that don't exist. So let's, let's decide this something is a problem. And then that requires a solution. Right. That's one thing. You learned that in a charter and a bylaw. But also one thing that I've seen that is important is to also have good, good a good leadership not that is determinative and prescriptive, but good moderation of conversations. So also, because also you can have a great charter and then talk about something else. So have good moderation of conversation, good leadership that is selected by that same group is also as I've seen, important, and also one thing that that you also need is like a back office, you need to, you need some sort of staff, some sort of, you know, like infrastructure to deal with stuff, your papers and things and recording. And so you need some sort of infrastructure to not have your the same converts, same conversation over and over, you have to, if you're going to have a working group that meets in an iterated fashion from time to time, you need to grow up and some things have some sort of minutes. And so what's what are the decisions? What are some to keep going forward? So it seems like common sense, but there's, but it's not the you need to work on, on having clarity to have working groups that get stuff done. And you have to like, have some rules and write them down?
Thank you. Yes, sure. Oh,
sorry. I would, I would like to drawing upon both of their comments. As I'm an attorney to as attorneys, we, we usually want to regulate something, you know, we want laws, and we want regulations that we want, you know, everything to be very specific. And I think the Internet requires very light touch regulation, just like she mentioned, you have to be very careful about what you want to either legislate regulate, specifically, here because it's it's such a such an important topic. And you don't want to have different countries attempting to regulate the Internet in different ways. You don't want people without the knowledge, which sometimes unfortunately happens, trying to regulate something that they don't understand. So So I think that's why the Collaborate, cross collaboration is important and having all the stakeholders involved without necessarily it ending up in legal specific requirements that would make probably the Internet hard to work with or obsolete. Well,
look, we're talking here about true is collaboration, right? But collaboration X is X has existed before the Internet, right? We collaborate and we do things. So while we're talking about collaboration in the Internet, and I can think about one thing, transparency, you know, before the Internet, how do you get that transparency, you work on something that affects everyone, nobody knows what you are doing. But with the Internet is its enabler that provides transparency for collaboration, because part of the one of the key factors, transparency, so you build trust, and not talking about encryption on all the other stuff that is there that is going to be done. We're going to talk about that next time. So now I want to ask a question to the audience. And I know everybody will go like this. Can anyone share an example of a successful team project or collaboration you have been part of? And what key factors made it work? And remember, we're talking about on the, on the Internet, not only about before, but now. So anyone wants to share with us? successful project? Yes, you're
Hi, everyone, Georgia from the DNS research Federation. Just sort of thinking about the theme here, which is truth. I think one of the main issues that we have is what truth which truth is, which especially because there's so many players in in this, you know, Internet governance world, one project we've been working on as the DNS analytics platform, which has a combination of different data. Now, which truth do you trust, because there's so many different agendas. In this, you've got the DNS industry, you've got governments, you've got different kinds of factors playing into this. And I think the best thing we can do is have data accurate data as much data and collaborate with as many parties as possible. So that's an example of one which is, has been really successful.
catch me on my way, on your way, I'll be a good virtual participant. So just to follow up on George's comment, think about the specific project. So we have a number of projects where we use GitHub for collaboration. And one of the things that's exciting about collaborative coding using GitHub is that there's a level of truth in terms of the code itself. So you have a repository that has the master or the main code, you can have distributed persons accessing that. So before they start to work, they pull down the current version of the main code, they can see that they can work on it, they can then commit and send that back up to the repository. And what they work on. They're drawing down truth, they're working on their code. They're uploading the code, and where there are discrepancies. The code points it out. And you can decide which truth do you want? Do you want my truth? Or do you want your truth, but it's a way of making widespread globally distributed coding projects work? Because the infrastructure supports that.
So exactly. So before the Internet, that was impossible. Okay, now, the Internet is so enabler, you know, for like I said, another key collaborator, factor, that you can collaborate not only locally, but you can work worldwide.
So not only did the Internet enable that, but it's also the technology standard that get the technology standard allows that to happen.
You want to say something?
Maybe there was some interesting thing said what about through how they said something about having a established goal, and you said something about having established goal set. And I think, I think making that goal as small as possible is a big key to success and collaboration. Because, you know, we have a in the US, at least, we have a distinction between a coalition and a trade association. And a coalition is a bunch of very, very different players, that are able to coalesce around a single issue, the trade associations, a bunch of very similar players that coalesce around a large number of issues. And so the way to get the broadest perspective into a collaboration is to have the most finite possible goal, so that they so that the accomplishment is shared among a greater number of people that otherwise have divergent interests. I remember being the the Department of Commerce, did an experiment in multistakeholder ism, around the issue of privacy notices for apps. And that was all these stakeholders, right from all over the tech industry. And I remember being there representing actual app developers, and saying, It's great having all these stakeholders, but sometimes you feel like the stake. Because if you're the only one that as for whom the conclusion has implications, then it's too easy for others to participate. And that collaboration. So there has to be a shared output and a shared pain associated with the goal for it to be a legitimate outcome, I think as well.
Let me let me say something to what I said right now. It's so true, so about coalition's and to associations. So I found that it's easier to hold a coalition together, when what you have is a common enemy. And so So and to learn that further, in a very specific Puerto Rico case, there was a Puerto Rico has been a perennial, getting out of a better like a state of national bankruptcy. And, and the power utility is bankrupt. And, and so bondholders like the debt holders have been looking for ways to get money out of everywhere. And so one proposal was something that we were able to successfully name or call a solar tax or industry, right. So we're against solar taxes, no solar tax. Everybody's against taxes, right. And so like taxes more so so we have this super broad coalition from like environmentalist, from the hard left, to our businesses and the right. That's a coalition that was easy to define. And the enemy was so clear, and it held together and it won, right. That's very different from having a coalition based on specific positive outcome, like a solution? That's very hard like to say, okay, no solar tax, that's not what so so so that those are easier those type of proposal propulsive or, or prescriptive solutions are easier. For trade associations, we were very, very similar interest. This is our industry solution to x problem. So, so yeah, so just an observation, you just remind them. So,
so the three factors I mentioned before transparency, clear purpose, what was the other one inclusion, we are implementation going into a granular thing, you know, make it small. And we're here assuming that we are working as volunteers in something like this, and, and, you know, strategies when another one that I can I can mention, so I was going to ask you something, but I'm going to ask you something else. Thank you so much for that insight. So, the next question for the panelists will be what challenge Do you sectors face? I mean, the sectors that you represent, in, you know, what challenges are there for the cross, you know, to promote cross collaboration between the sectors, and, you know, if you can give us an idea of how you address them. So you take those barriers out? You know, looking at it from the perspective of your sector. So how, yeah,
so I think this is similar to the PowerPoint. So so when you have very coherent sectorial interests, it's easier to collaborate, when when interests diverge, and it's harder, right. So even in similar so for example, our association, the Solar Energy Trust Association, at one point was the the association of all things solar, and all things storage, but then there was a divergence between large scale solar which, and rooftop solar, because they're very different conversations with the utility, different solutions different, you spend money in different ways. It's either spending in transmission or spending distribution. So you start getting this divergent interest, and that creates difficulties in collaboration, because your priorities are different. So the challenges is how to find ways to to not make them divergent, or find what's the sweet spot between the different groups. And that's even within the solar industry writ large. Imagine a couple of different industries or sectors so. So yeah, that's it's always a challenge. I think it's it's always a matter of, it's always possible to collaborate, it requires a lot of goodwill. It requires a lot of patience and work, because the easy path out is Oh, yeah, this is impossible to collaborate. And in. And sometimes that's a default position. It's not, let's not find a way but so even in our case, we had kind of like a friendly separation. But to get that separation, to be friendly, was also a lot of work. Because you have a lot of a lot of people that are natural secret psychopaths that want to make things hard and bad. And so you have to like, keep to stay truthful. Stay goodwill, I mean, stay up front. And sometimes human nature is not that way. Sometimes human nature is secretive and Turf War fairy, you know, and so it takes it takes like really calling up the better angels of human nature to, to collaborate among, you know, amongst divergent interests, is easy to collaborate with people when people think the same things. It's hard when people don't so so it requires work, it requires work and there's some people are very skilled at this type of diplomacy and, and, and also expert kind of like, like, moderation is something that is work. It's really positive when you have really divergent positions. One thing that happened in Puerto Rico that was very positive after Hurricane Maria we all knew that Puerto Rico's energy system didn't work and we had to do something else. And there were some very good, like multistakeholder proceedings in Puerto Rico professionally moderated to have everybody on board to, to like kind of like, agree on what's our consensus. It was like the basic the basic consensus that was agreed there, okay, you're our energy system sucks. We have to move into some sort of more distributed resilient system. And to get to that point, you know, it was hard, but then to land that even further. So what are the energy sources? That's another level so and then renewables and wood storage seems to be good, but it requires In this like back office like expert, moderation, because it's hard to have conversations also. And sometimes we are, we teach ourselves to not to converse with each ourselves to talk over the other, the other person, right, you have to learn, kind of like the rules of engagement and actual productive conversation, which is listening, you know, asking questions in ways that are not, at Hominem or attacks, just ask questions to really learn a position on the other side to try to meet the other person halfway. And those are skills that that you have to learn and work work on.
So what I'm willing to hear from you here is that some of the challenges that you have is this thing about not able to collaborate because of communication problems and have a strong moderation. So what I hear is that sometimes it helps to bring professional people that know how to do that to make a cohesive group. So, Jenny, you want me to ask the question?
I think I, I think I got it. Yeah. So I mean, it's very, from the government side, and I am representing the government, I guess, it is a little bit more difficult to do collaborations, not because we don't, I mean, government doesn't want to, but obviously, there are certain bureaucracy aspects, that, you know, that needs to be done, or that are already in place, that maybe, sometimes it's out of our control. But I believe that there has to, in order to have successful projects or successful initiatives, you know, collaboration is key. But, you know, even even we even if we do have good collaboration, I think that what really needs to, to happen is continuity. And what really needs to happen is commitment, I mean, we can have a great collaboration, we can have a great meeting, where we collaborate, and we we we submit great ideas, but if if we don't have an owner of that collaboration, who you know, decides to, to be the champion, and let's continue doing this and you know, and try to promote this and, and, in order for it to continue on for, for for it to be implemented, it's not going to be successful. So I think that we, we have to talk about collaboration, but we need to have empowerment and people and we need to empower the people or the stakeholders of that collaboration order for it to continue. And I think that government as a whole, we can develop a lot of initiatives. But I think that the the lack of continuity is a big problem. And that is where the private sector and these organizations come in, you know, and they can champion these type of initiatives. And, you know, and also, you know, put into accountability, the government, hey, we collaborated in this initiative, and we need to continue it, you know, it's something that needs to continue, because this is going to have this positive outcome. So I mean, I believe that collaboration in the government, it's a little bit more complicated, but it's not something that cannot be done. We do have a lot of boards that have our, our require collaboration, but again, I think it can be done.
Yeah, you know, I don't think this is only in Puerto Rico, but one of the factors that makes it government to have a hard time collaborating between agencies, and its laws that are in place, so you can now do x, y, and then the challenge there is going, you know, putting all the efforts in changing the law. And the meantime, you know, government stands to change, and people and then you lose that continuity. And then it's just like a, like a wall, you know, it's then someone comes in, and they have to start this again, and go back and forth. So that's a big challenge. But I have seen projects from coming from Puerto Rico to have that I've been amazed. That was amazing that they were done. You know, because I knew what was behind in terms of effort and continuity. So that's, that's pretty important. So
So I want to take expand a little bit on the continuity side. Sure. Before being in the private sector. I was also in the I think we all were in the heavier was also in the government. And you see how every term, the administration works on something on a great idea to awesome technological process or implementation of X, Y and Z project. Add makes life easier or work easier, and then the continuity aspects come in. So I think that's very important maybe to sort of drill into our heads, you know, and our government just processes, you know, we do need that continuity, because great things have have been done in the government and in the private sector. But in the private sector, you usually have that continuity in the government, you usually lose it. I mean, in the Puerto Rican government, you usually every every four years. So so it's, it's harder to see what the, you know, sometimes we get that, oh, government does work, or they don't do they do a lot. But but we sort of lose that every four years. So and, you know, you talked about, I always try to answer in three points, you talked a little bit about regulation. In terms of the telecommunications industry, I think regulation is a very big challenge. In Puerto Rico, we are regulated by the FCC in some aspects, and we are regulated by the Puerto Rican government. In other aspects, we have a regulator here, a federal regulator. So it's, it can become kind of crazy, whenever you try to collaborate on on a particularly complicated processes or projects, because you have so much regulation around you that you need to review, make sure you comply with, make sure you're following, you know, detailed steps, so you're not in compliance with federal law or local law. So definitely, again, I, every time I speak to anyone, I read it to read this idea, you know, light touch, regulation is so important for Internet governance for the whole telecommunications industry, otherwise, we are really on on unable to move faster, probably we don't have the bureaucracy, we are very, very lean organizations. So we can do a lot of things. But regulations are sometimes just there to prevent us from moving as fast as we want. Another thing I think it's important is are a challenge our resources. So we have limited resources, collaborations take time, as my fellow panelists have mentioned. And you you need to commit to the idea to whatever idea you're working with, and be be able to put in the resources, and this is human resources, financial resources, etc, which sometimes companies don't have. So So that's definitely a challenge. And it depends on the commitment. It depends on how committed they are to the idea how much they can, they can put, put their resources in, and I love the idea, or I don't know your name, they're very cool guy in the front.
They're very, both very cool.
You know, I think I could. So it's easier when collaborations are very, are specific or specific to a limited topic. And so So collaboration, you know, trying to change the world in one collaboration, it'll take a lot of resources, it will take a lot of time it's going to people are going to get bored, it's going to be complicated. So having a very specific idea on what you want to collaborate in, it's easier for telecommunications companies then to say, Okay, I'm committed to that process, because you have a very specific goal, probably a very specific timeline, it can change a little bit, but but you can tell, you know, your, your stakeholders, you know, this person is going to be committed to this, but only for, you know, a year or two and it's going to work out and so, so resources are very important to the private sector in general, but the telecommunications companies as well. And finally, data protection. So we we do collaborate a lot with the government and we do collaborate a lot with each other actually, telecommunications companies naturally collaborate with each other this this, most people don't see this because we we we you know, Puerto Rico has a very competitive environment. But but we behind the scenes, we have roaming agreements, we have collaboration agreements, so when Hurricane Fiona comes then you know I can use your network you can use mine. We have different if a pole is is a It falls down then what the first company comes. And if it's not mine, I'll protect it until you come. So So telecommunications companies are naturally collaborative companies. But when it comes to collaborating with third parties, data protection is very important. So I, we are very Yes, pretend that word but yeah, yes, yes. About our network our information. So we do have a lot of how do we manage it, we do have a lot of NDAs, we do have a lot of confidentiality clauses in order to get some collaborations working.
Okay. Well, look, collaboration happens before the Internet. Okay, but she's talking about data protection. Now, before the Internet, you talk about data protection? Maybe, maybe not. I mean, it says, the fact that the Internet has enabled this type of collaboration, it makes it more efficient or less efficient dependent. So how you do it, but things like you mentioned that data protection and collaboration between, you know, telecom, you know, it's I think it's the Internet, the Internet has made it more enabler in this collaboration to happen faster. In any case, I wanted to mention something about inclusion, one of the key factors that we talk about truth and in. In Internet, I want to make sure that the, for example, in ICANN in the large group, part of the inclusions that we had, since the beginning of the group that brings the end users into the into the ICANN sphere, is at all our meetings are interpreted in English, Spanish and French. And the idea behind it is so people can communicate in their own language, which is something that is an enabler to make that collaboration and that inclusion. Further. Non note, I think we are the only one that uses that most, you know, for all our meetings, not all the other organism organization within ICANN does that. And the idea is that we can bring people from all over the world and participate in the ICANN processes. So I wanted to mention that in.
Yes, sure. But also be helpful to the extent to which you can have sign language interpretation or closed captioning also plays a role in closed captioning in particular is, is certainly great for people who are deaf or hard of hearing to be able to see the captioning on the screen. But it's also helpful for people for whom English is not their first language or whatever the case may be. So I think pushing the extra mile, you know, to try to have closed captioning for all the sessions will also be extremely helpful. Yes, I believe.
When we use in meetings, and remotely, we have closed captioning it so people can look at it. And
on that I just saw on locked in zoom like in the past month. In zoom, you have the you had closed captioning, but now you have real time translation from any language to any language in zoom. So I can speak in Spanish, and it's translated into Chinese with Chinese script. Okay, so just a bunch of AI apps are being are making this a lot easier and cheaper. So and then you have a can have a an AI transcription of a meeting and led language and any script. So so this is super important. It's not expensive anymore. So
we have to see something like that for sign language, which is not there yet. We're not there yet. I think yes, that's very true. So I have a question for the audience. We have some time. But please, you know, there are a lot of people out there that having heard, but this is a very easy question to response to. have you faced any challenges working in teams, especially online? And how do you overcome them?
Is that Microsoft Teams? I hate it.
So if can anyone want to share something like that? Do you have any problem working in, you know, challenges working with teams or working groups, especially online? And you know, how do you overcome that?
Hello, my name is Gladys Niro's. I'm the president of VDP University and I was just thinking about the word challenge right before when they were think talking about collaborations is interesting that this community is usually driven by challenges. I remember when I first came to EDP University, it was the time where they were we were approaching the y2k. And, and that's I mean, it was this challenge that brought everyone together to solve the problem. So instead of thinking about how challenging this collaboration among people in the Internet, I mean, among people who are in different places, and and it's more like how the challenge itself is what brings us together. That's, that's exactly what she said when I when we have a common problem, and we need to solve it together. And we cannot start, like reinventing the wheel all the time, because the same problem that I have here now, they may have somewhere else, or they may have had somewhere else before. So it's very interesting how we get driven specially technology, like I said before, like we nurture on computer nerds, I mean, because they are usually the hackers are the one who solved the problems. And we we tend to think about hackers, as bad people. And they're like, really problem solvers. So what what the challenge is what drives them? Obviously, sometimes the challenge is against the law, or is against the regulation or is challenging the status school or is challenging? The I mean, the current technologies to see how safe they are? Obviously, I always said that, because I always said, you know, who who do we mean, we educate hackers, I mean, we need to make ourselves aware that whoever makes the law usually knows how to break it. So it's, it's some, it's very interesting how we how a challenge, it may become actually the answer to many questions or the the answer to many problems. So instead of I mean, I feel like the pandemic brought us in together in so many ways, by taking us each, each one to stay home. Because now we know how many things we can do from afar and still solve problems that are I mean, we are not looking at the same problem the same way. But we may be looking at the same problem. And and I think that that the Internet is is I mean, I always say that before y2k. I mean, there was no Internet. I mean, we didn't think about the Internet, the way we think now, and especially collaboration and education and training and zoom, and teams that those were were terms that we probably didn't think about before the pandemic came and unchanged everything. So I just it was so interesting that I was thinking about the challenges and how they technology is driven by those challenges, instead of making it a challenge in itself. I don't know if I explained myself. But that's that was my comment. I just wanted to I think that's the right.
The right way of looking at the do anyone wants to add to that.
Thank you, for such an interesting discussion on the panel and heavy and the others. I really related to the way that you described working in the ICANN process and and and reaching consensus through that, though, I have two examples that very quickly, if I may. Try to answer your question. One was a long time ago, I was chair of the first who is review under the affirmation of commitments. And we were the first and only set of people in the ICANN environment to ever reach consensus recommendations on who is and we got there with a group who started the process unable to be in the same room as each other. And I ended up you know, best of friends with consensus recommendations. Now they were never implemented. But that's a different story. I was then several years later on the ePdP first round, where every single stakeholder group entered a minority report on the final report. And so basically, it was torpedoed completely. And those people who had worked as volunteers for about two years to put together this report, and yet every single stakeholder group disappear unit had put in a consider a minority report. So the the, I think having a really nailed some of the real challenges in reaching consensus, people have got to have an incentive to collaborate. And they have to work in good faith. And also they have to, to, to really sort of focus on the things they can agree with, rather than trying to agree on absolutely everything. But if at the end of it, every stakeholder group disagrees with the outcome, what have everybody been doing for the last? Well, 20 years with who is and and it really makes you reflect on? You know, are we saying to the rest of the world that this is how you do governance, and governments have this problem all the time of stakeholder groups who have a strong opinion on an issue, and will not yield on it. But governments have to move forward. And that is the incentive, and I'm not sure that we've actually managed that within the multistakeholder environment successfully yet. Thank you. Thank you, gentlemen.
Yeah, um, thanks. So Jonathan zoek. Here, I think I've been I've sort of been going back and forth on a similar vein. And I think you're going down that path as well that the pain has to be shared, both the pain of the status quo and the pain of implementation of the solution. And when there's a different large differentiation, in terms of how much the status quo hurts, versus how much the new solution will hurt, then it's very difficult to achieve a collaborative outcome. Because if there's, if, if it's a bunch of a bunch of stakeholders, but one is the real stakeholder in that they're the one that's going to be responsible for implementing the solution the group comes up with, there isn't enough empathy in that group for the challenges of the one that has to implement. And and if and if and if one group really likes how things are now, then they're not incentive to try and and collaborate for a change as well. So having shared pain, both of the status quo, and of implementation, I think is a critical factor in finding a solution. And the question you asked was about online. And I, I, I'm a big fan and of the Internet, as you might imagine. But I think that the Internet has the capacity to accentuate cooperation and dissonance. And so in other words, if you if you have an adversarial set of collaborators, I think the distance in the separation that the Internet represents actually worsens that dissonance between them. And so I mean, what I saw during the two years of lockdowns were people retreating into their silos, trolling via the chat, it was a very different kind of environment than when people were face to face. And so I don't think there's anything inherently mystical about the Internet for purposes of collaboration. Instead, virtual collaboration can be handicapped by the isolation associated with the Internet.
I can make I can make a slightly contrary view. You're in my in my wheelhouse here. So you know, we were talking a little bit about the echo chambers that exists and certainly have gotten exacerbated during the pandemic. So no question about that. But I really love what the President said. And I want to double down just a little bit on that in terms of some of the silver lining that occurred from the pandemic. I've been working on virtual collaboration for a very long time. Some of you may know, in the mid 90s, you know, I first started teaching virtually between six universities in 1996. And so imagine what the technologies were like during that time to be able to do this kind of virtual collaboration. And so I was a proponent of remote participation. And I can remote participation in the wishlist process, remote participation and gig in it. And I'm thrilled now that it's gotten to the point where it has become infrastructure, and it's just common to be able to have this kind of virtual collaboration, but it wasn't. It was it was a struggle to be able to have remote participation in these remote hubs that emerged and so forth. We take a lot of that for granted now. But it now has as a result of the pandemic become commonplace people who doubted that you could have a remote classroom or remote meeting, you know, now see that it is possible. So that was the first First point, and there are ways to do it ways to do it. Well, you know, what you've done here, this kind of infrastructure helps to demonstrate that it's absolutely possible to do this. Well. One other thing I wanted to just double down on the President's comments, is this idea that presenting challenges to this community is exactly the right thing to do. You know, we were just sitting here, you know, saying, you know, when you were talking about the AI, generated closed captions, and multiple languages and so forth, and then we said, but not in sign language. And we just said, that's something that can be solved. I mean, that's a challenge. It can be we can address that. Yeah. Absolutely. You know, so when you pose challenges to this community, you know, it's certainly something that that they love that challenge, and they love to work on those problems. So, okay.
Hi, yeah, thank you, Lucien, again, sorry, from the DNS research Federation, we were charged last year in Lisbon by a multi stakeholder group to put together with the global anti scam Alliance, a global data sharing hub, because in the world of cyber problems, particularly around the domain name system, there's not enough data sharing, and there's not enough data out there. And we're sort of quite some way into that. And that's going well, and I just wanted to thank the panel for a fantastic discussion, I've got a few takeaways from that I've learned from pain, some of the things that you were saying do and don't do. One is, you know, work on strategy to build trust and think of goals, but keep them quite light, you know, don't, this is really how I felt we've got to be really strong about our goals and what we're trying to do. And actually, people are suspicious, I was thinking about that thing of like people being evil underneath. And you've got to try and get out I collaborative, sort of warm culture and trust building. But the main thing Jonathan said, you know, the pain has to be shared. You know, if you're all trying to do something that actually people don't want to do, it's not going to work so and wonder your point about watch out for regulation. That's the same thing I've heard this month from somebody a really big stakeholder and nearly blew the whole discussion by saying, well, the regulators need better information. No, they don't need anything at all. We don't want any regulation at all. It's too too heavy. But in answer to your question about teamwork, yes, I think you know, you need you need to, I used to I was once an actor, okay. And people try to look good online, and well lit, good cameras, good microphones, you know, and like you need like you're doing here, people have to look good, they shouldn't switch off their cameras. You know, if you're moderating a session with an online team, make sure people don't kind of switch it off and go and do the dog and stuff like that, you know, just work on work on the sound work on the lighting work on the visuals as well. Thank you. Thank you,
if I can, if I can quickly, just very well know. Okay.
I just had a quick question less about how public partner public private partnerships relate to challenges, but rather about innovation. So there's obviously a usual debate on what drives innovation, whether it's government incentives, or through government contracts, or regulation that causes a different type of technology to emerge, or whether it's market based forces for profit. So my question is, have you seen in your experiences, both in government and in your current roles, whether that source of innovation shifts, one way more than the other when it comes to Internet technologies and emerging technologies? Thanks.
Well, for my experience in government, I would say the time has come for us to step up. So at least the the time that I've been here. Well, we have a very innovative secretary and a very innovative governor. So they have challenges and pushed us to develop a lot of initiatives. So from what I've, you know, experienced and the three years, almost four years that we've been working, we have developed, I think, and that's my perspective, but I income from the government. I think we have developed a lot of initiatives, a lot of positive initiatives, a lot of collaborations. From the economic development standpoint, I think we have done a lot of collaboration with the private sector. We we, we have a lot of committed we have a lot of commitment from our part, especially in the technology sector, as I mentioned, you know, the government doesn't have a lot of money to play with, in order to give sort of or develop this sort of initiatives. But since we started and 2021, and one of our biggest initiatives was how do we invest in, in the workforce specifically related to tech. And right now Puerto Rico, we know we've had a massive exodus of young people or students who are, who are leaving the island. And, you know, and because they don't have access to, you know, all of these great jobs, or they don't have access to the right education. So, you know, the government knew we have a problem, how do we solve it? And we had to ask for money. But you know, we found the money through through negotiating with the fiscal oversight board, the fiscal Oh, where does he go is under a plan a fiscal plan, so we had to negotiate with the fiscal oversight board, but you know, it was presented, and they approved that, and we, we have funding identified to support this initiative. It's the 21st century tech force. And we are supporting these different types of providers in order to develop all of these stackable credentials, to support technology in Puerto Rico development of technology. And the good thing about this is that we are leveraging federal funding. So when the state money runs out, we have federal funding that can come in. And that's where, you know, we've been using funding such as we all are wishes Workforce Innovation Opportunity, I can order to support this. So again, we do have a lot of limitations. But I do believe there are a lot of great initiatives that have come from the government. I just mentioned that one. Just yesterday, we had roundtable of workforce. And the President participated from that, where we integrated both private public and educational institutes. And the main industries were energy, construction, and broadband technology. So again, the government knows there is a need in those specific industries and how we can collaborate. So that was an initiative that was done by the government. But I think that, you know, we can identify certain owners that can continue the work and can continue the conversation. But yeah, I mean, it's my perspective. I mean, they come from the private sector, maybe they have another vision. But I do believe we have been very, we have tried to develop initiatives, and we have tried to push the needle to make a positive change.
We have five minutes. So if you want to do that, just
quickly, just I'll take it quickly. I don't think there's like a one sweet model to do innovation. But I think in general, I think that's with the with the challenge, like necessity is the mother of invention. So there's a problem to solve. You put a lot of smart people to try and solve a problem, they'll failed, or they'll succeed. But for that machine to happen, a smart people think they know how to solve problems, you need funding, sometimes it's governments. I mean, you we couldn't get to the moon with NASA. But it was a bunch of engineers doing math. And, and and you have, you know, so So sometimes it's purely private, sometimes it has government involved. I think there's some key infrastructural things that have to be in place that government does for it to happen. I mean, like intellectual property protection is critical. But in terms of financing mechanism, you can have public private ways of doing things. Or you can have a very free market failing, or succeeding and inventing and creating and destroying things. But it's smart people facing problems and solving them and protecting those ideas and marketing marketing them if it's possible in that society.
I agree. I think it's, it's, it's a little bit of both. I think, for example, right now, the NTIA in the federal government is actually awarding money to create labs for innovation, etc. So, you know, as a telecommunications company, everyone is like, oh, that's, that's awesome, because I wanted to dig into that and I want to, you know, create some some new alternative for that issue. And now we're getting money for this. This is awesome. So that's one way. The other way, of course, is through the regular day to day operations. You know, you get utilities calling you Oh, you know, could we do some solution for my meter not to be, you know, connected to a direct line or could we implement some something to make my I don't know my Network faster. You know, I don't have the best signal here. So what can we do? So we we are continuously innovating, particularly because we want to provide the best product and the best service, but definitely government money definitely helps a lot.
We don't have more time for questions. I know everyone's want to ask a question, but we're going to finish this and raise a runner for plus for this fantastic panelists and the conversation
