This year sees the seventh Internet conference, DIDS 2016, held 15th and 16th March, at the Hyatt Regency Belgrade hotel, under the slogan Living the Internet Globally – Securely – Locally, organised by the Serbian National Internet Domain Registry Foundation (RNIDS).
The first block of the DIDS 2016 Internet conference will, as tradition dictates, be dedicated to current events in the Internet industry at the global level, trying to answer questions relating to the running of the global Internet – “who, what, when, where and why”. “High politics” directly impacts trends and precedents in the way we live and work on the Internet globally: from the nature of global regulation, to the rights and obligations of companies, to acceptable practices of security services in regard to surveillance – and the rights (and obligations) of users. Do we, as ordinary users, even have any influence on the creation of the policies that decide on the future of the Internet, and what are the global, regional and national mechanisms of our influence?
DIDS 2016 will be opened by Gabriella Schittek, ICANN Global Stakeholder Engagement Manager CEE; ICANN as an organisation is supporting this year’s event, too. Danko Jevtović, the Director, and Vojislav Rodić, Chair of the RNIDS Board of Governors, will be giving words of introduction on behalf of the host.
A panel debate, moderated by Vladimir Radunović, will be joined by the international guests of the DIDS conference: Marília Maciel from Brazil, coordinator of the Center for Technology and Society at the Getulio Vargas Foundation, Mike Silber from South Africa, member of the ICANN Board and Head Legal and Commercial at Liquid Telecom and Wolf Ludwig from Switzerland, Chair of the European Regional At-Large Organization (EURALO) within ICANN and Program Coordinator of the European Dialogue on Internet Governance (EuroDIG).
DIDS, as previously, will be free to all participants, subject to registration, which is necessary due to the limited number of places. Registration of participants begins at the end of February on the site set up at dids.rs.