Okay, I'm sat in the main Plenary Hall at WSIS in Tunis, and the opening ceremony is due to begin in 40 minutes.
I've been watching the various VIPs arriving on the internal TV screens for most of the morning. Apparently in terms of heads of states stakes, the Spanish and Italian prime ministers are coming. In fact, the Spanish PM was eating at Dar Zarrouch – which I mentioned the other day – last night as I walked past.
There is a hell of a lot to blog about. Yesterday was very, very busy and, oddly, now the full Summit is under way I expect it to calm down. No more running around trying to track down ambassadors or spokespeople or so on.
The fundamental news items are:
a) The Net governance issue was finally sorted last night and the US came out on top, and
b) There was a big hubbub after the Tunisian police started manhandling people protesting human rights in the country.
I'll write more about them later, but in the meantime two pieces about both written by me have appeared in the Guardian today (Internet battle ends in stalemate and EU attacks police tactics at Tunis internet conference) and another piece will appear on The Register as soon as the news ed gets in – in fact it may be up now.
Yes, just checked – here it is – US wins Net governance battle. A more rounded story I think as I wrote it after agreement had been reached whereas the Guardian story had a 6pm deadline at which point discussions were still going on.
Okay, more later, and maybe some snaps for good measure.
