Ottawa, ON

--- Upon commencing on Wednesday, October 3, 2007 at 9:13 a.m.

MR. OXLEY: If everybody could please start taking their seats we will get going here. That would be wonderful.

We have a full line-up of wonderful speakers today and a great panellist. This day is going to be jam packed with some wonderful conversation. So if you could grab your seats, I'm pretty excited to get going here and let's get the conversation going.

--- Pause

MR. OXLEY: I think everybody is starting to get down, so without further ado I think the best way to kick this day off is by introducing Michael Binder, Assistant Deputy Minister, Spectrum, Information Technologies and Telecommunications.

Michael, do you want to share your thoughts and kick us off for a great conversation?

MR. BINDER: Thank you, John.

Bonjour, mesdames et messieurs. Bienvenue au Canada.

On behalf the Government of Canada it is indeed my pleasure to welcome all of you to the forum in Ottawa. In particular, I would like to thank our co-host, the OECD, for helping us put together such a dynamic program.

Canada has a long history of working with this organization. In fact, I think it was in this room -- actually I have to figure out where it was -- 10 years ago we hosted another OECD event, the 1998 Milestone Ministerial Conference on Electronic Commerce. Some of us believe we actually started the Internet revolution right here. But it was 10 years ago, in 1998.

The conference formed the basis for policies that have greatly influenced the growth and development of the Internet over the past decade.

Our Minister of Industry opened that event with the following quote:

"In a borderless world, no one country holds the answers to the pressing issues surrounding electronic commerce, and that is why we have come together as a global community to find solutions to the unique challenges of conducting business electronically."

A pretty insightful statement. Right? Ministers can sometimes say something very useful. I can tell you that with more than a billion active Internet users worldwide today, this is indeed just as true today as it was 10 years ago.

However, a lot has changed over the last 10 years in cyberspace, Google, eBay, You Tube, Second Life and the thousands of bloggers online. All of these people, events, activities did not exist 10 years ago. Very few of us imagined in 1998 the incredible growth and the impact of the Internet on all aspects of our lives.

People today are not only using the Internet more, but contributing directly to its development and transformation. This participative environment is driving innovation in business, in research and in social activities. It is therefore very timely that this Technology Foresight Forum on the Participative Web is taking place.

Looking at the agenda, I'm impressed by the calibre and diversity of the speakers here today. They are representative of the vastness and variety of the Internet economy of today. Bringing them all together should provide the basis for a lively discussion and policy debate.

I would like to thank our sponsors for their generosity: IBM Canada for providing lunch; and Research In Motion, our Blackberry people; for the reception that will follow today's program.

The OECD and Industry Canada have put together a great, but full, agenda for today. I look forward to an active and participative discussion.

With that, I would like to welcome my co-host, Susanne Huttner from the OECD, and turn the floor over to her.

Thank you. Merci beaucoup.

--- Applause

MS HUTTNER: Good morning. I welcome you as well; bienvenue.

This is my first meeting as a Director at OECD and it is a wonderful way to start out my relationship with this organization that drew me to it because it presents a remarkable opportunity to discuss today's issues with a very large number of countries. There are 30 members, there are 80 observer countries.

So when we are thinking about the Internet economy today, when we are thinking about the future of the Web and how people use the Internet, keep in mind that in today's audience there is 33 countries represented, including people from developing nations.

In OECD we have countries that are just thinking about how to develop their economies at the same time that they already have wireless communication technologies on the ground and in their citizen's hands.

Then of course we have the big countries.

This is a terrific opportunity and it's what brought me to OECD, that we could talk about new technologies, their opportunities and their challenges, especially around governments, with such a remarkable array of interests.

As Michael just pointed out, the 1998 conference here in Ottawa set the ball rolling with OECD and with the member countries.

An enormous amount has happened since then. Back then, Google was operating out of a garage with three employees and some of their neighbour fledgling businesses included Amazon and eBay, and within this remarkably short period of time they have created entirely new ways of doing business, entirely new ways of using the Internet. They created the foundations for markets that are still expanding and changing. That was only 10 years ago.

Today's meeting and the Ministerial in Seoul gives us a tremendous opportunity to check course. Checking course on a technology forum, a social forum, a governmental forum that is as fast paced, changeable and unpredictable as this one is remarkably difficult.

OECD is stepping up to the plate to create places where people can get together and talk on a level playing field. That's what today is about.

So the kinds of things that have changed have to do with the drivers and the different ways of using the Internet.

I think you all know broadband speeds are a lot faster. Just as important, upload speeds have become faster so people can share information and more information than they ever could before, balancing out the way the Internet works.

There is much wider access. One OECD study showed that by 2006, 37 per cent of households in all 30 countries in the OECD had broadband access. With all these people engaging, it was natural that the way they used the Internet would start to change, because the opportunities for new services would develop faster.

But what is the most interesting thing about this is that individuals are creating new demand for Internet services. Individuals are defining new ways to use the Internet.

If you have just watched the news over the last week, you have seen that individuals are changing journalism. They are enabling us to get information in real time on things that are happening locally that we would have never known about, and that information then spreads around the world.

Individuals are changing the way in which we have political dialogue. This is a remarkable technology.

So one of the challenges and the discussion today and in Ministerial will be how you balance the needs to govern efficiently and effectively and fairly against the remarkable opportunities that a set of technologies like this present and how quickly they change and how unpredictably they change.

I come from the University of California. I spent 20 years there working at the level of the entire UC system, which has ten university campuses and three Department of Energy national laboratories and an agricultural experiment station. My job was to figure out how to get all of our researchers that had public investment, primarily from the federal agencies, to hook up better with companies that could take their knowledge and turn it into new business opportunities.

What I learned there was that it happens very easily if you allow it to happen, if you foster it and you say it is an appropriate thing to do.

We had to overcome some barriers to get to that cultural understanding in many fields, in the life sciences, for instances, and even in engineering to some sense. But in the Internet it is just happening and in real time. For me it's a watershed event in the history of technology and commercialization and more importantly public access, and I find that thrilling.

So I am happy to be part of the OECD and to have this be my first introduction to the work of the OECD. I'm delighted that Canada has promoted this topic so aggressively over the last decade and is continuing to make sure that it is a primary focus in our work.

Thank you, all.

--- Applause

MR. OXLEY: I want to thank both Michael and Susanne for giving us some great comments to start. It is a remarkable opportunity. I think everybody in the room needs to take the onus on themselves to take a look at the great words that Michael talked about and Susanne talked about and see what we can come out of today.

Thank you so much. I really appreciate that.

--- Applause

MR. OXLEY: You saw both of them speak from their hearts because they are living it today. The participative Web is the participative Web.

For today, we are going to have the main room in here. Then we are going to break up into two different streams.

Out in the anteroom will be Stream B and following on, we will have Stream A in this room.

In the anteroom is a whole bunch of technologies, some great demonstration technologies, and we have devised the room up in such a way that, as you go through it, you are exposed to all the different technologies.

Please take the time to take a look there.

As well, IBM has graciously offered a lunch today and there will be a keynote at 1 o'clock. Please take advantage of that.