| Comment Close Date | Statement Name | Status | Assignee(s) and | Call for Comments | Call for Comments Close | Vote Announcement | Vote Open | Vote Reminder | Vote Close | Date of Submission | Staff Contact and Email | Statement Number |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 21.04.2014 | ICANN Future Meetings Strategy | ADOPTED14Y, 0N, 0A | Tijani Ben Jemaa | 07.04.2014 | 12.04.2014 23:59 UTC | 14.04.2014 00:00 UTC | 14.04.2014 00:00 UTC | 18.04.2014 | 19.04.2014 00:00 UTC | 21.04.2014 | Tanzanica King tanzanica.king@icann.org | AL-ALAC-ST-0414-01-00-EN |
FINAL VERSION TO BE SUBMITTED IF RATIFIED
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FINAL DRAFT VERSION TO BE VOTED UPON BY THE ALAC
The At-Large Advisory Committee supports the recommendations of the Meeting Strategy Working Group report.
The differentiation of the 3 annual meetings looks interesting and would permit to:
- Improve the geographic rotation allowing ICANN to go to countries where no large meeting venues are available
- Minimize the number of conflicting sessions through the separation of the constituencies’ internal work and the cross community sessions.
- Give more opportunities the cross community interaction
- Increase concentrated time of policy work
- Undertake outreach to engage with local Internet communities
- Increase opportunities for thematic, regional and or language-based interactions.
The ALAC also appreciates very much that visa deliverance becomes one of the main criteria for the selection of the meetings venue.
In addition, the ALAC suggests the following:
- that local availability of an open Internet without hindrance should also be added to the selection criteria.
- that venues without facilities for the easy participation of disabled communities should not be considered
- that video coverage of meetings using cameras and camera-work (pan and zoom) rather than a stationary Webcam would make the meetings more engaging for remote participants thus putting less pressure on face to face meetings
Finally, we welcome the recommendation not restricting rotation of any meeting to ICANN hub cities.
FIRST DRAFT SUBMITTED
The At-Large Advisory Committee supports the recommendations of the Meeting Strategy Working Group report.
The differentiation of the 3 annual meetings looks interesting and would permit to:
- Improve the geographic rotation allowing ICANN to go to countries where no large meeting rooms are available
- Minimize the number of conflicting sessions through the separation of the constituencies’ internal work and the cross community sessions.
- Give more opportunities for the cross community interaction
- Increase concentrated time of policy work
- Undertake outreach to engage with the local Internet communities
- Increase opportunities for thematic, regional and or language-based interactions.
Also, the ALAC appreciates very much that the visa deliverance becomes one of the main criteria for the selection of the meetings venue.
On the other hand, we welcome the recommendation not restricting rotation of any meeting to ICANN hub cities.
5 Comments
Glenn McKnight
The idea of taking the ICANN meetings to smaller markets is a good thing but we need to consider a few things in the location selection
Other considerations
Suggest usiing USTEAM or LIVESTREAM with broad participation, with monitored chat to properly capture the event. ICANN's meetings video is poor and a closed room with Adobe.
Maureen Hilyard
Taking the issues that Glenn has raised above into consideration, I also like the idea of a differentiation between the 3 meetings. To replace one meeting a year, ICANN should go out to its members rather than the other way around. Then, issues of concern to smaller regional areas could be dealt with. High level issues are of little relevance to the user on the ground who only has limited access to remote attendance of ICANN meetings anyway.
For the Pacific, outreach into the region and inviting stakeholder input from the grassroots level and as a smaller group which Pacific countries would be able to host, would also give ICANN staff a personal view of what Pacific peoples are experiencing with regards to internet services and the governance of DNS related activities in the Pacific. But the content of the outreach activity must be relevant to regional needs rather than any top-down approach to training or information.
PacINET (the conference of PICISOC) is held annually in a different Pacific country each year. This year's conference will be held on Rarotonga in the Cook Islands (Sept 22-26). It would be great to get some ICANN staff to this conference not only to inform a Pacific community about ICANN but to also for them to take away some personal perspective about the circumstances of the Pacific. Save is a regular participant at our PacINETs, but I believe that the outreach activities by a wider cross-community representation of ICANN staff would be mutually beneficial.We could have an ICANN Day just as we have incorporated an IGF Day into our PacINET programme.
We would need financial support to get them to our meetings but we already have high-level representation of ICANN even within our own Oceania region (Aust and NZ). For example, Cheryl (NomCom), Holly (ALAC), Julie (SSAC), Keith (ccNSO), Chris (Board) as well as Save and Kuek who is close by - and these are just the ones I know. We must have someone in the region who could represent the gNSO section, or to encourage government reps to join GAC meetings, ccTLDs to join the ccNSO as well as regional internet groups to become ALSes or to hook up to ICANN-Learn. They don't all need to come to the same meeting, but a range of representatives would at least give the people of the Pacific region a taste of the real ICANN and what it does, and to learn more about how they can contribute. I am assuming that its probably what is happening already in Asia and the Middle East (of our AP region).
But, at the same time, I believe that considering all the work that is required at ICANN meetings, at least two meetings have to allow ALAC and other sections to deal with their required discussions face-to-face, in order to meet their obligations to others in the ICANN system.
Glenn McKnight
My turn to followup with Maureen's excellent example of concentrated local engagement
In the North American context we have a ICANN Outreach strategy and NARALO Outreach strategy in the North American market including the more distant locations ie. American Samoa, Guam, Alaska and Hawaii
The genuine engagement to civil society, consumer groups, university students and more in Washington and /or Los Angeles would be cost effective to bring the multistakers to these locations rather than do a dog and pony show. It would coincide with the ongoing events that mark the calendar. Much shorter event. Perhaps two days with a clear agenda.
G
Dev Anand Teelucksingh
I like to thank the members of MSWG for their efforts and appreciate the use of infographics in the report to convey concepts and recommendations.
I support the majority of the recommendations. The format of the Meeting B focused on SO/AC policy work raising the possibility of having ICANN meetings in geographies unable to host the larger meetings is especially intriguing.
However, I have a concern regarding the continuation of the three meeting schedule annually. In spite of the restructuring of the format of the meetings, a volunteer involved in a AC/SO still has to allocate 4 weeks or 1 month away from their job and family to physically attend the three meetings.
This is a significant challenge to find new volunteers with the financial job security to become deeply involved in the participatory multistakeholder model of ICANN, and I daresay moreso for persons in developing economies and small island developing states.
If ICANN wants more and more stakeholders outside of ICANN's AC/SOs to participate and be more involved in ICANN's policy work, then ICANN needs to research and support methods for ICANN and its ACs and SOs to discuss policy and do cross-community engagement and outreach virtually to achieve similar benefits of a F2F meeting, making the multistakeholder model of ICANN more accessible to more people, including those unable to attend F2F meetings.
Some comments on "IX. RECOMMENDATIONS ON MEETING SUPPORT AND ENGAGEMENT ACTIVITIES"
A lot of capacity building and outreach opportunities (and marketing of the multi-stakeholder model in action at ICANN) are lost during, and after a F2F meeting. I have great admiration for ICANN's meeting logistics and services including audio recording, real time scribing, transcription and language interpretation.
During meetings, remote participants should be able to be "in the room" ; to see who is talking, not just hear audio. However, many AC/SO meetings at the ICANN meeting are often covered by a stationary camera in one corner of the room. This is inadequate.
Better cameras and camerawork are needed to have cameras focus on the speakers in the room. This would require more cameras and a camera operator to perform the camerawork (switching camera views, focusing, etc) for each of the AC/SO rooms to make this happen. This would make the meetings more engaging for remote participants.
Also, after the meeting, the video footage should be recorded and made available to ICANN and the AC/SOs for creating video clips for capacity building and outreach purposes. Such videos would make the work of ICANN and the discussions of the AC/SOs more accessible to those who are not fortunate to attend the F2F meetings.
Another suggestion for ensuring a better ICANN meeting for participants at the ICANN meeting including remote participants is the use of real-time scribing for all of the AC/SO meetings. I am not aware of what the costs are, but I assume that its is on par with the costs to provide live interpretation (and appreciate clarification as to what the costs are).
For persons at the ICANN meeting but unable to be in the room for a AC/SO meeting (often due to overlapping meetings), having a rough transcript enables meeting attendees to review the meeting afterwards and be able to raise questions that can be answered by the people at the meeting (meeting in the corridor, etc). ICANN Meeting attendees would not have time at the end of a meeting day to listen to the complete audio of a missed AC/SO meeting. Also, excerpts from rough transcripts can be shared during the ICANN meeting to raise awareness of what is happening at the ICANN meeting.
Real time scribing of AC/SO meetings also makes the meeting more accessible to remote participant particularly for those with low bandwidth connections (including mobile) and for those persons that are differently-abled.
Finally, as the multi-stakeholder model at ICANN continues to evolve, the meeting strategy would probably need to be reviewed every few years by a similarly composed MSWG.
Tijani Ben Jemaa
High spead connectivity is one of the requirements of the application for hosting an ICANN meeting; it's included in the technical specifications that can change without changing the meeting strategy.
Outreach to local community is now included in the proposed new strategy.
The report on which we are commenting is about the ICANN meetings strategy. Anything related to non ICANN meetings is not included
I included Open Internet and special facilities for the participation of disabled communities as additional criteria for the selection of the venue.
I also included better Video coverage for significant remote participation