The report of the May meeting of the IGF's MAG (Multistakeholder Advisory Group, formerly just Advisory Group) was posted yesterday. It is the third such report, and the first to contain a schedule listing all those who participated in the meeting, not just the appointed members. These include such shadowy figures as the "Regional Coordinators" - who had never been identified by name before now - and those who are worrying classed together as "Advisors and Others".

The MAG has also regressed to having a sole Chairman; one might therefore read between the lines that the Brazilian co-chair's challenge to Desai's authority was not received well (indeed, there are hints of this in the excerpts of the MAG's mailing list discussions, but I am not privy to the details).

The schedule upon which the MAG has settled for the Hyderabad meeting is exciting in some ways, and disappointing in others. On the positive side, it was decided, despite the misgivings of the less progressive speakers at the open consultation, not only to precede each main sessions with a preparatory workshop, but also to follow it with a moderated debate. Although debates are something of a blunt instrument for encouraging participants to deliberate upon the issues before them, and in unskilled hands can be more apt to promote division than consensus, at least they should prevent the IGF from sinking further into the mire of banality and generalism that characterised the Athens and Rio meetings.

Less promising are the actual topics selected for the Hyderabad schedule:

Day 1:	Reaching the next billion:
	Access
	Multilingualism
Day 2:	Promoting cyber-security and trust:
	Are we losing the battle against cyber-crime?
	Fostering security, privacy and openness
Day 3:	Managing critical Internet resources
	Transition from IPv4 to IPv6
	Arrangements for Internet governance – global and national/regional
Day 4:	Emerging issues:
	The Internet of tomorrow - Innovation and the evolution of the Internet

Apart from "Arrangements for Internet governance", most of these issues duplicate those already discussed in previous plenary session, and do not live up to the promise that plenary sessions would be directed to more specific policy issues of Internet governance. For example, how does the session on "Access" differ from the plenary sessions held in Athens and Rio? What discrete policy issues are to be discussed during this session? How will the discussion of these issues advance or inform the development of public policy in other governance fora?

It is also telling that "Arrangements for Internet governance" has been pigeonholed as a "critical Internet resources" topic. Considering Nitin Desai's exchange with Parminder Singh on enhanced cooperation during the open consultation, this may well have been the result of Desai's influence. In fact, of course, the issue of global Internet governance arrangements encompasses far more than critical Internet resources, and indeed extends to the role and mandate of the IGF itself. Despite the miscategorisation of this session, this point will be clearly underlined in Hyderabad, by yours truly if nobody else.