Report

UA @ NetHui 2015

July 8-10 2015

Prepared by

Don Hollander

 

NetHui (2015.nethui.nz) is an annual ‘IGF like’ event organized by InternetNZ.  “Hui” is the Māori word used for a gathering.   In many ways, NetHui is an un-conference.   There are planned themed sessions as well as sessions that are developed ‘on the fly’.   By and large, the sessions are not mostly presentations, but instead are community driven discussions that are facilitated.  NetHui are dynamic, organic and community driven.  They can often be very passionate.   This year there were about 400 people present.

 

Universal Acceptance concepts were inserted into a number of sessions as well as many corridor discussions.

 

·      During the PacINET gathering of participants from the Pacific.   During a more structured presentation by Save Vocea of ICANN and interventions by Don Hollander

·      During the Gov 2.0 session that looked at the future of digital government services.

·      During the Domains: Growth, change and transition session (by Don Hollander and Karatiana Taiura).

·      During the InTac session on technologies

·      During the closing plenary on Digital Inclusion

·      During the Code Club Meetup (Code club is an initiative to introduce coding education for young people).

 

New Zealand has a strong focus on inclusiveness, particularly between the indigenous Māori and the Crown.   The Māori language is written with an extended Latin script with macrons above the vowels.  This makes it an IDN.

 

The focus of the interventions was that the DNS now provides for inclusiveness of language, both at the Root and within the .nz name space.  It is now time for the developers of New Zealand to recognize this and adjust their systems to embrace them.