Reviewed by Hugo Carrion of IMAGINE - Ecuador

FOURTH REGIONAL LATIN AMERICAN AND THE CARIBBEAN PREPARATORY MEETING FOR THE INTERNET GOVERNANCE FORUM (IGF)

The Caribbean Telecomunications Union, the Association for the Progress of Communications (APC), the Internet Society, the NUPEF Institute, and the Regional Internet Address Registry for Latin America and the Caribbean (LACNIC) are pleased to announce the Fourth Regional Preparatory Meeting for the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) which will take place from August 8th to 11th, 2011 in the city of Port Spain, Trinidad and Tobago. The event will be held at the Grand Hyatt Hotel.

As in previous editions, the purpose of the meeting is to provide a space for multistakeholder political dialogue between governments, the private sector, the technical community, academia, and civil society organizations. The region has made progress in understanding the challenges currently posed by Internet governance; further debate will contribute to identify regional priorities and broaden the region's participation at the 2011 Internet Governance Forum (IGF), which will meet in Kenya in September.

Likewise, as in previous editions, one of the meeting's goals is to inform the region's stakeholders on the issues and trends observed in the debates and discussions of the global IGF. The process of regionalizing the discussion around the agenda established by the IGF has been taking shape since 2008, when LACNIC, APC and NUPEF summoned the first preparatory meeting for Latin America and the Caribbean in Montevideo, Uruguay. The second preparatory meeting was held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil and the third in Quito, Ecuador.

CTU, LACNIC, NUPEF, ISOC and APC want to encourage the community to participate and hope to join the highest amount of regional actors as possible.