How Can NCSG get the most out of ICANN68? Preparing for Virtual Meetings in the Future

[Stephanie E Perrin]

Hi everyone!  I hope you are all keeping well and isolating yourselves 
in this time of crisis! Best wishes to all of you who are celebrating 
religious festivals this week remotely on the Internet!  We can do this, 
if we all stick together virtually.

Given the unprecedented chaos we are currently experiencing globally as 
a result of Covid19, I think it is safe to say that most of us are very 
grateful that ICANN67 was cancelled and converted to a virtual 
meeting.We commend staff and leadership for changing directions rapidly 
and managing to conduct our first virtual meeting.However, if this is 
going to be our future for ICANN 68 and potentially even ICANN 69, the 
NCSG/NPOC/NCUC leadership team believes that we ought to brainstorm a 
bit and try to figure out how we can reach our goals through this new 
medium of the virtual public meeting.

ICANN Org did a quick survey on feedback on the Cancun meeting, but we 
have yet to come up with new ideas on how to do better next time.The 
community leaders are planning for a virtual ICANN 68, and we would 
appreciate hearing from members how we can better meet your needs.We do 
not need to “pave the cow-path”, a virtual meeting is not the same as a 
public 2000 person meeting in a conference facility, it could be very 
different, utilizing the best that technology can offer.Unmeetings, 
webinars, extended discussion groups etc. are possible.Please help us 
with your ideas in the attached google document.The usual caveat applies 
in brainstorming…..there are no silly questions, not ideas too crazy to 
put forward.


https://docs.google.com/document/d/1OsSmNhKSAh1zYMYZuLuQn_gq2BCsWfz7MBS-dKsfIWI/edit?usp=sharing


For those who are unable to access Google docs, I have copied the draft 
text below.  Feel free to comment on the list, although comments on the 
document would be preferred.




*Preparing for Virtual Meetings in the Future*

**

ICANN67 was successfully re-imagined at the last minute, and some of the 
feedback that we obtained from NCSG members follows:

·Having all the meetings in a 09:00-17:00 period in one time zone can 
make it very difficult for our members to attend if they live in zones 
about 8 hours away

·Being able to follow parallel sessions depends on how many devices one 
has, and how much available bandwidth.Zoom is not the most user friendly 
interface for this kind of toggling between meetings, it is certainly 
not as easy as face to face, where we often can sit in one meeting and 
follow another.

·Most folks think it is fair to have the next meeting in the Kuala 
Lumpur time zone as it would have been, but many more people will find 
that time zone challenging their participation.We need to find a way to 
have them participate or it will be a very small group in the meeting.

·Many of our members have day jobs and responsibilities that prevent 
them from taking a whole week off during work hours to participate 
remotely in the ICANN meeting.Now that many are home self-isolating, 
possibly with children and others to look after, it can be even more 
difficult, particularly for those who have bandwidth challenges.

Here are some of the real restraints that ICANN has indicated we have to 
work with.

·Technical staff are in many cases working from home.We cannot have an 
unlimited schedule, we have to stick to the work day.There are strict 
limits to how many parallel sessions we have.

·Translation will be limited as it was the last time, for similar reasons.

·If NCSG decides to do more meetings, we will have to juggle resources 
very carefully, as we do not have the staff resources that others like 
ALAC do.

Here are a few of the ideas we have come up with to try to mitigate some 
of the downsides of a virtual meeting.Please add yours!We are scheduling 
a two hour discussion meeting in a week, to brainstorm about this so 
that leaders can provide useful input to the meeting planning discussions.

Timing

·Do we need to cram the meeting into one week?Could we instead have a 
month of ICANN regular webinars on policy topics? (This is the policy 
meeting, after all).

·Can we arrange some kind of call to discuss topics that were dealt with 
during that day, for the folks who are in difficult other time zones?

·Can our regional groups in NCUC help us arrange some kind of engagement 
activities in parallel?

Engagement

·Let’s be honest, it is hard to beat face to face for engaging new 
members.How can we sustain the interest in NCSG work when we are virtual 
for 2/3 of this year, if not 3/3?Can the regions create more buzz with 
some virtual non-meetings, google hangouts, zoom webinars, etc.?

·Does ICANN have regional resources that can help us with this effort? 
If so, who are the contact points?

·What training shall we engage in?We had plans to do some face to face 
work in leadership training, and are working on making that virtual.What 
do members think we need to do here?

·Outreach in the region will be tough, with no face to face meeting.Can 
Asia-Pacific members help move us forward on local engagement?

Cross Community Interaction

·At the last meeting, our regular meetings with contracted parties and 
the public safety group were cancelled.We had some interaction with 
ALAC, but it was not a major focus.This time we should get ahead of 
planning and propose some group meetings to share perspectives on some 
key issues.

Content

·This is the policy meeting, so we need to have some deep dives into 
what is going on in the various policy arenas.Possible topics for 
webinars followed by discussions include

oThe human rights cross community group

oEPDP (it’s true, it never ends…)

oRights protection measures

oMandatory reviews

oSub pro

Please suggest your ideas on how to make this next meeting work for you!

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