ALAC-Registrars Minutes: 5 May 2011
1. Introduction -- 2 min (Olivier)
2. Open/Free Discussion – 40 min (all)
References:
From Mason Cole's email to OCL:
- Desire on ALAC’s part to have registrar channel help educate end users on best utilization of a domain name. Too many service providers have varying policies; end-users don’t know what to expect.
- We discussed whether registrars can / should provide information that ALAC could aggregate for general use and for distribution in their outreach and education efforts
- ICANN the organization is of little help – their website is bad and doesn’t show up on search. It’s an unknown entity for end-users.
- ALAC is forming a group on developing more trust in the domain name system, via education. We committed to providing 3-4 ideas for either our own consumer education effort or as our contributions to ALAC’s effort.
- We asked ALAC to provide information about their purported network of end users (up to 2 million) so we could have a better idea about how to tailor potential messages. They may or may not have detailed information available.
ALAC's action items from Registrar-ALAC meeting in San Francisco (found at https://community.icann.org/display/atlarge/ALAC+Meeting+With+Registrars+-+16.03.11):
- Registrars to produce education information products for end-users/consumers by the next meeting or sooner. – Staff/ALAC to follow up with Tim Cole and Registrars.
- Registrars to develop 3 or 4 more ideas for education/outreach and to identify who among them would be ready to work on this. – Staff/ALAC to follow up with Tim Cole and Registrars.
- ALAC to identify any data that could be shared with the Registrars.
There’s a need for educational materials, put together by a team with skill. These need to make accessible the information people need before they choose a registrar. This material can be video, digital, and/or printed.
The material, of course, should be neutral:
- Not marketing material from any registrar;
- Should be material from ICANN; and
- All registrars must have access to it, so it can not be seen as marketing material.
This should come from ICANN. In the case of videos, for example, ICANN can be the distribution vehicle, where the material resides.
- This could help counter ICANN’s negative reputation for not caring about the end user. So it is important to ICANN.
- And it’s important to consumers that this material not come from a registrar’s sales branch.
- And important to registrars that the material not compare providers.
- Needs to reside at a location where people will be able to find it who do not know registrars – can not be connected to any registrar.
- As a neutral party, ICANN should be the publisher of the material. It should have the ICANN brand.
- However, the www.icann.org site and its sub-sites are particularly bad and not at all user-friendly. It’s very difficult to find anything on them. Therefore, this should not be where this material resides. Instead, the material could reside on a new ICANN Web site geared toward consumers (which is actually user-friendly).
- Possible content: what registrars do, etc. (without comparing registrars).
Note that ICANN already has a lot of educational material, but few people go to the location, actually access it.
The ICANN material should also be popular enough that it ends up on the top of search lists. Also possible that a top spot on searches could be purchased for this material.
>> AI: Marilyn to find out the name of the ICANN staff person who is in charge of making the www.icann.org site more user-friendly (she interviewed Cheryl and Alan).
>> AI: Olivier and staff to find out if ICANN is already working on (or is interested in working on) material/content similar to that which is being discussed in this ALAC-Registrar meeting.
>> AI: Staff to set up a wiki page used to collaborate on content ideas for the educational materials to be developed by At-Large and registrars.
3. Next Steps – 10 min (Olivier, all)
Decision was made to work on the content/material first. Then, if ICANN later gets involved, fine.
Take-away lessons/consensuses from this meeting:
- This educational material will be housed on a neutral Web site.
- The Web site should not be the www.icann.org site, but it can be a (new) ICANN-run site.
- Next step: Must decide what information is the most important to provide to consumers.
