[PC-NCSG] Civil Society Roundtables

[Avri Doria]

Hi,

I had a 30 minute phone call with Chris Mondini*.  Still waiting for the write up, which he was going to do for Fadi and send me.  So I had not yet gotten to writing anything up.  But since you ask.

- 'doubling down on splintering'

First things first, I brought up the fact that some of my co-volunteers objected to the split between NGO and Academia that I had proposed.  He not only wanted to keep those separate, he wanted to separate the discussion with NGOs into two groups:

- Those who concerned themselves with Internet Governance - mostly smaller organizations
- Those who have developed methods by which they run gigantic operations in the global public interest - the big organizations

- As for 'leaders.'  

I use the word because they use the word, I am sure you know my innate disdain for the notion of Leaders, but I was wearing my pragmatic attitude in this conversation.  These things are designed as discussions between Fadi and a few other leaders.  So while I think ICANN should be having lots of conversations with lots of Non Commercials and other civil society, in this case, I was presenting an argument for why his roundtable series should extend to Non Commercial leaders.  If we want to present ideas for other events with other kinds of voices, we should develop specific proposals.  In this case, I am not trying to boil the ocean, just get something opened up.  So yes, I am "encouraging a kind of high level event".  My personal suggestion that started the discussions was the simple proposition that he needed to do with Civil Society, and NGOs especially, same kind of leadership roundtable he is having with Business. I would prefer to not turn this into another kind of campaign, though I do support the idea of other types of campaign.

- On individuals not institutions.

His primary interest at this point seems to be meeting the heads of other organizations, so that is what I am suggesting.  Perhaps if/when we get to academic, that can be expanded to other prominent members of Civil society who are not academic.  Don't know.  This particular round of discussions is not about individuals - to be honest I don't know how one picks the 5-10 individuals he should invite to a roundtable.  I think a meeting with the some of the individual people who hate ICANN would be a different sort of beast.  and perhaps this is what NCSG should work up a proposal on - something similar to what is done at ICANn meeting for the business community should be done for the civil society.  It would be good to have an event like we had in Nairobi at more meeting.  Maybe we should be suggesting  one for Durban.  But that is something different than this, and for now, I am working on this.  But if we develop a coherent proposal, I think we should present it.

- When and Where

Mondini wants to try and plan these meetings for times and places where these leaders may already be.  He is worried about the ability to actually pull these leaders to LA or other ICANN offices.  He asked me to suggest possible events.  Obviously I know about Ig events and suggested a Geneva consultation for IGF or Bali would be one of the best opportunities for co-scheduling.  I am looking into other opportunities for the non-Ig NGO leaders.  Suggestions Welcome.  We have not gotten down to specific invitees yet.  

- Topics

As for the topics that would be subjected to his Venn analysis (not at all a new term, though perhaps a new use - i am guessing it is a Biz thing), the topics we discussed:

1. reputation analysis - but turned on its head.  In the roundtables with Fadi, this was the Ry & Rr reputations being talked about.  In terms of discussions with civil society organizations and academic, it would be ICANN's reputation.  I think it is important that ICANN get a clear view of ICANN's reputation especially among Civil society, I really do not think they know.  I think many think that what they do for ALAC is enough to make civil society happy.  I started my work on disabusing them of this notion.

2. how to serve the public interest and yet meet large scale operational requirements

3. multistakeholder participation - where civil society fits in the various ongoing ICANN experiment and how their participation can be facilitated

Other topics I wanted to get in based on conversations with APC where I volunteer, but did not yet, are the Internationalization efforts and issue of institutional capture.

That is about what comes to mind, I have not had my first coffee yet, but wanted to get a quick note off.  When I have a more formal report of the meeting, I will share it.  

Note, I have not been suggesting this expansion of roundtables as a representative of any group.  It was my own idea to presume to tell him what he ought to do.  And it was my own tactical decision to try and do it by semi-private email instead of public assault. Sometimes I think public assault in the blogosphere etc is the way to go; in this case, I decided to try to quiet way.

avri


*  He is Vice President, Business Engagement, ICANN does not have a Vice President, Civil Society Engagement. I have been encouraging Fadi to think about this.  We also discussed this gap during the phone call - I mentioned some of  our disappointment at the way Civil Society / Non Commercials etc were totally ignored in their engagement plans.

On 17 Feb 2013, at 07:48, Rafik Dammak wrote:

> any update about this discussion with ICANN staff?
> for civil society it is diverse, and I am surprised that you used the term "leaders" , are we really encouraging a kind of high level event? I am not sure that only institutions and organizations are only the representative of civil society. I do think that you agree with me that many individuals  highly involved and being part of many communities like free software, FoE etc are no member of any structure, some of those individuals are really doubtful about ICANN and the "centralisation" of DNS for example, that is probably totally different from the perspective of big non-commercial organisations or associations involved in developing world.
> 
> 
> Rafik 
> 
> ps at least I learned that there is yet another diagram for some purpose called vena diagram :)
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>