First Symposium’s General Considerations

                 In Session 1, our presenters will focus on opportunities for new legal and dispute resolution structures to improve the online environment better for global micro-commerce, and key factors creating and maintaining a successful legal structure to mediate the online environment. This topic is of interest to people with strong legal and governmental backgrounds. Among the issues explored will be:

 

· The Current Scene

Is there an opportunity for cyberlaw to offer a way forward for business in parts of the world that face economic hardships because they lack a reliable justice system?

What venues are currently available in the online environment for legal redress and dispute resolution?  What are the advantages and disadvantages of these current systems?

What enforcement systems are currently available to back up dispute resolution systems?  What limits do they face because of the differing legal environments around the globe?

· Planning the Way Forward

What are the key components and attributes of a successful cross-cultural legal structure for cyberspace?

How can professional qualifications of lawyers, mediators and other justice professionals be measured/tested and certified in unbiased fashions?

What sectors of commerce, finance and community would most benefit from emerging global systems for cyberlaw?

How can new laws supporting such systems best be proposed and implemented?

How would the system operate across borders? 

Are there places (e.g. Kosovo, Somalia, Kenya) where cyberlaw pilots benefiting micro-commerce could be launched?

 

First Symposium’s Discussed Questions

“The Current Scene” Discussion, what tools are already available and what measures have already been taken for the implementation of an online justice system?

 What are the key components and attributes of a successful cross cultural legal structure? How are they formatted?

How are professional qualifications measured/tested?

How are new laws proposed and implemented?

How do these venues and resources translate across a borderless environment?

Second Symposium’s General Considerations

 

                 In Session 2, presenters will explore strategies for linking the developing world and the legal and economic resources of the developed world. Participants addressing this topic will explore the ways of pooling resources from the developed world and making them available to various constituencies in the developing world in the most efficient and effective manner possible. Of particular focus will be: 

· Microcredit and micro commerce strategies;

· Effective mechanisms for ensuring that legal resources can translate into different cultures;

· Unifying legal requirements to facilitate the objective;

· Challenges and opportunities associated with operating in different countries;

· Empower the economically disadvantaged to become equal partners in society; and

· Special challenges associated with empowering illiterate people who may not have direct access to the necessary technology.

 

 

These objectives should draw people with strong backgrounds in international development and government and people who have experience with international NGOs.

 

Second Symposium’s Discussed Questions

How can we most effectively draw the developed world resources into the developing world (specifically micro commerce and IBO’s legal resource)?

How can we best bridge the gap in respect to micro commerce? What venues can we use? What distribution channels? What technology? Where should we start?

What legal roadblocks will micro commerce face run into and how can we overcome them?

What are the challenges of operating e-commerce and what legal resources are necessary in different countries in order to advance an impoverished population?

What are the issues involved with bringing micro commerce and IBO’s legal resource to people who are impoverished, who don’t speak English, or who maybe illiterate? How do we solve those problems?

 

Third Symposium’s General Considerations

 

                 Session 3 will examine how can the use of technology help achieve our initiatives of poverty alleviation and the legal empowerment of the poor. This question will touch on topics such as:

 

· How to best create a cross-cultural online legal resource with editable content;

· Hosting, managing and operating the online platform;

· Using key technologies ( (PDA’s, cell phones, different types of PCs, etc);

· How to create online training programs and tutorials (including who would be trained, how they would be trained, and how training materials would be distributed);

· How to best connect and transfer/convert monetary resources across the web;

· Mapping the kinds of online institutions needed for micro commerce;

· Maintaining transparency, and building “trusted online
communities”;

· Ensuring verifiable online identities for participants.

This topic is of interest to participants who have strong backgrounds in distribution channels, technology, and finance.

 

Third Symposium’s Discussed Questions

How can we best create a cross cultural online resource with editable content?

How do we host, manage, and operate using an online platform – across different hardware and operating systems (PC’s, Cell phones, one laptop per child laptops, etc).

What training programs and tutorials do we need to create for impoverished foreign users to be able to operate in this environment? How do we create these programs?

How do we best  connect and transfer (or translate) monetary resources across the web?

How do we maintain transparency? How do we create verifiable online identities?