Guest post: The London Conference on Cyberspace
The upcoming London Conference on Cyberspace, on 1-2 November, is going to offer something very different to the sort of discussions the Foreign Office is used to. As an organisation, our ‘approach’ to the digital world – put simply – is in favour of freedom of speech, keen on the social and prosperity upsides to the medium, concerned about possible threats to individuals and countries by misuse, but there is no policy about the digital world, written down in the traditional way.
So the Foreign Office -hosted conference on ‘cyberspace’ is going to be unusual, to say the least. Discussing behaviours that are ungoverned, and possibly even ungovernable, and ways to encourage, but not demand, good behaviour over bad is a different approach – this is not one set of governments trying to reach agreement with another set.
What the conference is supposed to be about is kicking off debates that need to happen, but without setting out an outcome. So the conference is about discussing some key themes – prosperity; social good; freedom of access and expression; cyber crime and international security.
Given that it’s debate, not outcome, that will be the most important thing, we would like as many people as possible get involved. The event itself is full, but there are opportunities to contribute – tweeting questions to the conference, raising points on Facebook, writing your own blogs. Because we’ll be paying attention. Questions or links shared using the #londoncyber hashtag and the Foreign Secretary’s channel will be put to speakers in each of the sessions as we go along and tweeted from our and other Foreign Office social media channels.
Blog posts and tweets will be added to our Storify links. All debate is useful and helpful and we’ll try and encourage and curate it as we go along. After all, you know this better than we do.
Please let us know your thoughts and if you need more information by getting in touch with on twitter.
Anna Lewis
Digital Communications Manager
Digital Diplomacy Department
Communications Directorate
