The zero day of the 11th Internet Governance Forum (IGF) 2016 has started with the IGF Flag Raising Ceremony handing over the venue to the United Nations.

This year the IGF 2016 has been themed ‘Enabling Inclusive and Sustainable Growth’ which is being organized at the PALCCO Centre from 6-9 December 2016 in Jalisco, Mexico.

The IGF 2016 is an open platform for consultation with the growing IGF multistakeholder community, with an aim to enhance capacity building and participation from stakeholders from developing countries, youth and those joining the IGF online.

This year the IGF secretariat has changed its format introducing new segments like
1. Newcomers Track: The IGF 2016 Newcomers Track aims to help participants attending the IGF annual meeting for the first time, to understanding the IGF processes and to foster the integration of all new-coming stakeholders into the IGF community.

2. New session Format: These sessions include various sub-session
a. 20-MINUTE LIGHTNING SESSIONS :Lightning sessions are intended as quicker, more informal versions of full-length talks or presentations. High-scoring workshop proposals with compatible formats which were not originally selected during the IGF 2016 workshop evaluation process have been brought in and re-formatted for the lightning sessions programme.

b. CORNER SESSIONS: Corner sessions take place simultaneously in four corners of a room. They emerge based on what the participants present most want to talk about: issues are proposed on post-its placed on a board, and the most popular ones move on to discussion into the corners of the room.

c. UNCONFERENCE SESSIONS: Unconference sessions are talks which are not pre-scheduled. Participants reserve a speaking slot by signing themselves up on a scheduling board on a first-come, first-serve basis on the day of the Unconference.