Civil society organisations (CSOs) are continuously putting up ways of sending out information regarding the WSIS Phase 2 in Tunisia as well as discovering and setting up online meeting places where they can begin or enhance topic-specific discussions about the Summit and its processes.

For this purpose, one useful site CSOs can use is the chat room set up by Indymedia at their site. For those used to chatting using IRC, the site is at http://irc.indymedia.org. The chat room is currently frequented by Indymedia members, mostly European and American, and is open 24 hours. The topic agreed upon for the day is flashed at the top of the chat interface. This chat room is mainly used by Indymedia members for organising, debates on issues, exchanges and administrative work, and welcomes participation from non-members.

This dedicated WSIS space could be accessed through the channel #wsis. For those who do not have the software to connect to IRC, this Indymedia chat room could be accessed through any browser that supports java or by using Internet Explorer 4 or Netscape 4 or higher versions of these two browsers. Just type "wsis" in the channel box and log on to the chat room as a guest. A chat room interface will appear, with a discussion screen and the list of chat participants present.

Aside from chat rooms and mailing lists, certain CSOs have been using different kinds of technology to conduct meetings and forums online. Since media advocates following the WSIS are scattered all over the world, the so-called "virtual meeting" has been the most common form of networking to discuss updates and issues. However, the levels of participation in these online meetings vary from region to region, according to the participants' individual technological capacities.

In line with this, a website to conduct a discussion of options and strategies for using a variety of different virtual participation tools was recently set up and is now being promoted in the civil society plenary mailing list. The objective of the discussion is to ascertain if there is enough interest to establish a working group to assess, discuss and develop strategies to bring a variety of different virtual participation tools to help facilitate collaboration among civil society groups involved in the WSIS process. However, this effort could come across as too technical for some CSOs, so it may not be an ideal meeting place for all.

To see and join this effort, visit http://cms.privaterra.org/WSIS_WG_Virtual. The co-moderators are Robert Guerra and Derrick L. Cogburn. To learn more about this virtual meeting process, please e-mail them at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..