I'm a lawyer by training, and before working with two research institutions in India on Internet governance policy, I was briefly a journalist with a national daily. It is the NCUC's spirit of openness and its ability to absorb vastly divergent -- often critical -- views on policy that attracted me to this constituency. It has been very similar to being in an editorial board meeting with a bunch of quibbling journalists who care about the same causes!
Over the last year, I have engaged in modest community-strengthening efforts in India and the Asia Pacific region on Internet governance. I am the vice-chair of the Asia Pacific Internet Governance Forum and the coordinator of CyFy, an annual conference on IG and cyber security hosted by the Observer Researcher Foundation, New Delhi. At CyFy this year, we focused on bringing together nearly 30 researchers and practitioners from Asia and Africa, aided generously by DFID and the Swedish government. Regional consultations are crucial to building consensus in global platforms like ICANN and I hope to continue facilitating discussions among the NCUC Asia Pacific community.
The NCUC itself is in flux with greater representation today from developing regions. First, the constituency's position within ICANN ought to be consolidated, a task that will require our tweaking the bylaws. With the help of our senior colleagues in the NCUC, a small team of us is currently working on this operation, and hope to have results before Marrakech. Second, the constituency should coordinate its strategies and policies, especially as the post-IANA set up may empower some constituencies over others. How can we best synchronise out divergent views on key issues at ICANN? How do we ensure that our GNSO councillors get the support they need from the community? And finally, how do we expand our reach and funding, to ensure travel support and resources to emerging voices?
I have more questions than answers, but I hope to help pitch in with my input to the NCUC community on these issues, whether as EC representative or not. As for the executive committee, let me add here that I have great faith in the Chair candidate and the other probables from across regions, both in their organisational and strategic abilities. My best to all candidates, especially my colleagues from the Asia Pacific region.
REGION: Europe
1. Why do you want to serve on the EC?
Positive impact on NCUC operational and the administrative matters: The Executive Committee (EC) is one of the important pillars of NCUC governance structure. The EC influences the operational and administrative matters of NCUC and allows the members to get engaged with the substance of ICANN policy and makes the non-commercial users participation within ICANN more effective. I have strong policy experience from both my professional and volunteer activities; I will carry out these tasks efficiently, and use my skills to work with and support my colleagues.
In-reach and outreach: I specifically want to serve on EC to help with in-reach and outreach. My strategies consist of reaching out to those active in other Internet governance (IG) organisations and who are not yet active in NCUC. I also would like to conduct outreach beyond those already within the IG field and create interest in wider community especially technical community activists.
I hope to seek out European and other non-commercial users and raise awareness about NCUC's important mission of protecting the rights of non-commercial users on the Internet. I also want to focus on potential members in those countries that have not been active or do not have a member in NCUC. I also would like to organize in-reach, by communicating individually with the new and old NCUC members who are less active and explain what we do and how they can get engaged; ideally I would like to give them a personalized plan of action based on their experience that would allow them to become active in different initiatives.
Strengthening women’s presence: I also have plans for strengthening women's presence within NCUC. To start, this can be done by informing various women IG coalitions, communicating and coordinating to ensure they are informed about NCUC activities, and why our work is relevant to them.
2. Provide a brief biography of recent experience, associations, and affiliations relevant to serving on the Executive Committee. Describe the relevance of your personal and professional experience to serve on the NCUC Executive Committee, and identify any conflicts of interests you might have.
Academic and professional background: I received my bachelor degree from Mazandaran University in Iran, and then moved to England and received my masters’ degree in international law at Kingston University.
I worked in Switzerland for the United Nations Internet Governance Forum and am currently a doctoral candidate at Hamburg University, Germany. I am based in Berlin and a fellow at the Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society. As you can gather, I have lived, studied and worked in a number of European countries, namely the UK, Switzerland and Germany. I speak English, reasonable French and am learning German (and am a native Farsi speaker).
Substantive and operational experience: I work with global and European organizations and think tanks active in IG, for example the Internet Governance Project (Milton Mueller and Brenden Kuerbis) and Internet and Jurisdiction Project (Bertrand de La Chapelle and Paul Fehlinger). I have worked with the UN IGF and EuroDIG (European Internet Governance Forum) and am familiar with their organizational structures and have carried out administrative and operational tasks that facilitate participation in policymaking processes. I have arranged the UN-IGF meeting both in person and remotely, and have organized and managed many of the preparatory processes. I am in close contacts with many IG initiatives in Europe and this will help me recruiting new members.
Experience within ICANN: Within ICANN, I have been active in discussions of the CCWG-accountability of ICANN and have helped promote NCUC goals in the CCWG. I am formulating a working party on visas to overcome the challenges for obtaining visa to attend ICANN meetings. I have been a part of the fellowship program and belong to its mentorship program, this experience help me support new NCUC members as well. I am also working on the transparency issues of ICANN which needs specific attention.
Within broader IG landscape, I am carrying out research on ccTLD policy and on Regional Internet Registries' accountability. I have a broad knowledge of the IG ecosystem. I am active in other Internet governance processes, such as the IGF, at the recent IGF in Brazil I co-organized a workshop on the IANA transition and a dynamic coalition on accountability. I have also organized workshops on online dispute resolution (IGF-Baku) and fiber optic issues (IGF-Turkey).
3. The EC performs several functional responsibilities for the Constituency. What level of time commitment can you bring to your EC role on a weekly and overall basis? Describe any concerns or limitations on your ability to attend online meetings of the Executive Committee and ICANN Meetings in person.
I am fully committed to the EC. I have other projects to work on, however I have considered the time commitment before accepting the nomination. I mainly manage my own work schedule and can commit to being able to join calls at most times of day/night. I am fortunate that my research and work interests often overlap with ICANN, so devoting more time it quite easy. It is also intellectually rewarding. I already travel extensively for my work/research, I understand the potential EC schedule and it is acceptable.
4. Communication with the membership is critical. How would you keep members apprised of your EC-related activities?
Communication strategies: I think we need to be transparent in the work of the EC, and will work with my EC colleagues to make this happen. I will have a separate mailing list for the European members in order to inform them about important issues that are being discussed at ICANN as well as my progress and my role. I will provide a quarterly report of my activities and have quarterly teleconferences and also on demand teleconferences. I will have a separate Twitter account for the Europeans to be able to reach out to me at any time and receive updates easily. I also do not bind myself to one means of communication, if the European members have different preferences as regards to communication tools, I will happily consider them.
5. How do you foresee NCUC’s function, scale, or role changing in the future? What areas of ICANN policy, if any, need more attention and why?
The NCUC will to continue to grow, and we are already a large constituency, putting the membership management system in place is a priority. I would like to see members being able to learn from each other. The skills members have are one of our big assets. I have experience with membership/volunteer management.
The EC is not really a policy body in NCUC, however, in the short term implementing the transition proposals, and supporting non-commercial principles in that process should be on NCUC agenda.
We need to also ensure work stream 2 commitments in CCWG-accountability, are honored and implemented. Protecting privacy, and the work of the human rights working party are also of importance. We should also ensure that the new meeting strategy supports non-commercial user participation and interests. I will be happy to inform the European members about these issues.
REGION: Africa
1. Why do you want to serve on the EC?
My motivation to run for the final term stems from the fact that I continue to be interested in civil society engagement in not only ICANN, but also in Internet governance Issues. The Internet is dynamic and continues to evolve, and with this dynamism, new issues continue to crop up. Most of these issues call for concerted efforts in their management or governance. It is important for Civil Society (CS) to engage in these issues in order to shape them. It is also important for Africa to have a strong voice in concerns usually raised by civil society, and NCUC offers a platform to raise such concerns in ICANN. Toward this end, I will appreciate the opportunity to serve in NCUC as I have experience in civil society engagement and will continue to bring in enthusiasm and energy into NCUC.
2. Provide a brief biography of recent experience, associations, and affiliations relevant to serving on the Executive Committee. Describe the relevance of your personal and professional experience to serve on the NCUC Executive Committee, and identify any conflicts of interests you might have.
I am Co-convening the Kenya ICT Action Network (KICTANet), a role that entails coordination of the various Network debates and activities that touch on policy and regulation in Internet governance matters. In 2015, I was involved in organizing the Kenya IGF, East Africa IGF and the Africa IGF, where KICTANet in conjunction with other partners held a side event to make input into the World Summit on Information Society (WSIS) non-paper. I facilitated the session, and the output was Africa's contribution to the non paper which submitted to the UN. Several of our contributions were reflected in the draft outcome paper. Further, I made a statement on behalf of civil society organisations present on Human rights and building confidence and security in the use of ICTs during the WSIS informal consultations in October. Let me also state that before becoming a member of NCUC, I was an ICANN fellow twice.
Early in the year, I served as a member of the Advisory board on Global Conference on Cyberspace 2015, and was also the civil society speaker in the UNESCO connecting the dots conference, where I gave input in multistakeholderism.
I have continued to encourage potential members to ‘come home’ by joining NCUC. I have no conflict of interests.
3. The EC performs several functional responsibilities for the Constituency. What level of time commitment can you bring to your EC role on a weekly and overall basis?
I will dedicate my time as required by the NCUC and in times when not available, I will endeavor to inform the rest of the EC members in good time. In other words, I am committing to be available.
4. Communication with the membership is critical. How would you keep members apprised of your EC-related activities?
I belong to multiple lists that discuss internet governance issues. I will continue to utilize them to share critical information as well as keep interested stakeholders apprised on the happenings of NCUC. I also interact with some NCUC members on social media and this is also another way of keeping them appraised.
5. How do you foresee NCUC’s function, scale, or role changing in the future? What areas of ICANN policy, if any, need more attention and why? Be concise (200 words maximum).
NCUC as a structure provides a platform where civil society in ICANN can articulate the voices and perspectives of no commercial users (a reason that draws me to NCUC). It offers representation to civil society or the non profits and humanizes the technical aspects in communicating users rights. NCUC should continue to articulate users rights in all aspects, and raise this voice in ICANN.
I humbly request you NCUC members to endorse my candidature by giving me your vote, and look forward to all of us reinforcing NCUC efforts in ICANN.
REGION: Africa
1. Why do you want to serve on the EC?
First, in order to represent the best representation of Africa in this position, and secondly in order to serve and possible all stakeholders to exercise good stewardship cemented in human dignity. We need a period of renewal for another blood in the veins of this organization until the election of new people to the benefit of everyone.To help my continental African and to raise the voice of African in ICANN. To try to support african people in the ICANN community.
2. Provide a brief biography of recent experience, associations, and affiliations relevant to serving on the Executive Committee. Describe the relevance of your personal and professional experience to serve on the NCUC Executive Committee, and identify any conflicts of interests you might have.
I am Electronics Engineer (System Administrator and Network) I completed a Master degree in Computer Engineering and Networks.
MY activities:
I am participating in many activities:
- ICANN Meeting in Cairo, Egypt 2008.
- ICANN Meeting in Sydney, Australia 2009.
- ICANN Meeting in Belgium.-ICANN Meeting in Costa Rica.
- I am a Member of Locking of a Domain Name Subject to UDRP Proceedings PDP WG Working Group, ICANN.
- I am a Member of The Inter Register Transfer Policy Part C working Group, ICANN.
- 3rd Euro-Africa Cooperation Forum On ICT Research, Scandic Marina Congress Centre - Helsinki, Finland.
- 2010 Euro-Africa E-Infrastructures Conference, Scandic Marina Congress Centre -Helsinki, Finland.
- 6th International Conference on ICT for Development, Education and Training, Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.
- AFRINIC Meetings.- NomCom 2011m 2012, AfriNic.
- African Peering Coordinate Forum (AFPIF), Peering Coordinators Day, Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.
- EGM on the Roadmap for Internet Governance in Arab Region, United Nations House, Beirut, Lebanon.
- First and Second African Internet Governance Forum.
- First and Second Arab Internet Governance Forum.
- Internet Governance Forum, Bali, Indonesia.I have no conflicts of interest.
3. The EC performs several functional responsibilities for the Constituency. What level of time commitment can you bring to your EC role on a weekly and overall basis? Describe any concerns or limitations on your ability to attend online meetings of the Executive Committee and ICANN Meetings in person.
I have dedicate about 12 Hours a week and more if there are some more meetings available. I will perform my duties and responsibilities perfectly . Also to increase my contribution in ICANN Meetings in person and online meetings.
4. Communication with the membership is critical. How would you keep members apprised of your EC-related activities?
The Communications for the memberships is very important and it can be available through mailing list and regular announcements.
5. How do you foresee NCUC’s function, scale, or role changing in the future? What areas of ICANN policy, if any, need more attention and why?
I promise to continue to raise issues with NCUC policy and rules. I need to raise the issues in Cyber security, especially in Social Security ( protections of children from the dangers of Internet). We have to continue engaging in the GNSO PDP process.I shall pressure to see new faces in ICANN Board Members especially in developing countries. More about me see my C.V. attached here
REGION: Latin America/Caribbean
1. Why do you want to serve on the EC?
I want to serve the NCUC in this next term to improve their communication, support to new members and accountability. Many hours are invested in debates by discussion groups, webinars, ICANN meetings and other forums and little is recorded and shared to the general public. I intend to understand this process and propose improvements with stakeholders.
I want to share my experience in grassroot activism and coordination and motivation of large workgroups and debates as I did in the past when I coordinated a group of 13,000 users of Macromedia.
2. Provide a brief biography of recent experience, associations, and affiliations relevant to serving on the Executive Committee. Describe the relevance of your personal and professional experience to serve on the NCUC Executive Committee, and identify any conflicts of interests you might have.
I am the policy coordinator and the creator of Movimento Mega <http://movimentomega.org.br/>, a Brazilian collective dedicated to internet policy issues at both national and global levels, Counselor representing Latin America & Caribe Civil Society on NETmundial initiative and creator of Terceira Social Crowdvertasing, a crowdsourced advertising and marketing agency to help small NGOs to spread their word.
Formerly self-called "Movimento Mega Não", the Movimento Mega was created to face the crescent internet freedom menaces as well the civil rights and human rights violations in Brazil through authoritarian bill projects in the Brazilian Parliament. In 2009 the “Mega Não” become a powerful platform for mobilization and information against threats to internet freedom, working from public hearings, lectures, interviews, flash mobs to blogging collective.
It was the one of coordinator for the Brazilian Blackout against SOPA on January 18, achieving membership of over 400 sites in Brazil. In 2011, "Mega Não" won the Frida Prize, in "freedoms" category, as a project with a prominent activity in the public and political level to avoid censorship of the Internet. Prize offered by LACNIC, ISOC and IDRC and delivered during the LACNIC XVI in Buenos Aires <http://programafrida.net/libertades2011>. Movimento Mega is also member of ISOC Brazil, The Internet Defense League, Red Latam, Dynamic Coalition on Network Neutrality and the NCSG at ICANN.
My background is in engineering and marketing, currently I work as independent innovation consulting to private sector and on internet policy processes at national and global levels, with special attention on how decisions taken at international arenas such as UN affect national legislation as well everyday people lives. In the last year both myself and my organization have been working on the Internet Governance Forum (IGF), International Telecommunications Union (ITU) and ICANN, particularly in relation to the non commercial users perspective of the new gTLDs developments. My duties focuses the following activities: to coordinate the overall Movimento Mega's activities; to coordinate the political analyses and online content; to coordinate public hearings and mobilizations; to deliver presentations on internet policy, security, openness and privacy issues at academic and non academic events, congress and meetings. I am also member of Diplo Internet Governance Community.
3. The EC performs several functional responsibilities for the Constituency. What level of time commitment can you bring to your EC role on a weekly and overall basis? Describe any concerns or limitations on your ability to attend online meetings of the Executive Committee and ICANN Meetings in person.
4. Communication with the membership is critical. How would you keep members apprised of your EC-related activities?
5. How do you foresee NCUC’s function, scale, or role changing in the future? What areas of ICANN policy, if any, need more attention and why?
Networking is the key issue to continue strengthening the NCUC, a civil society stakeholder inside ICANN's complex structure, once important strengths of the civil society are directed related to the quantity and quality of capacity building of the citizens in the subjects of our agenda.
REGION: Europe
Here is first of all my background - I'm 27 years old, I live in Moscow, Russia. I got BSc in IT, BA in Management, MSc in IT and PhD in IT.
Currently I'm associate professor, deputy head for international relations at the School of Business Informatics at the National Research University Higher School of Economics (Moscow, Russia) (the most liberal and one of the top universities in Russia), I'm also academic head of the MSc program in "E-Business". I got my small company as well and I know how to deal with "business things". I'm also a public person - serve as PA for different public people in Russia from Parliament and Council of Federation, I'm also an expert for the special commission on development of Information society in Russia and trying to introduce some best practices I get from the IGFs and some other Internet society-related meetings where I participate.
I've been participating at the IGF for 4 years and for 3years I've been co-organizer of different workshops there, which I truly believe, were successful in terms of further implementation of their results.
I'm also a speaker at different international and Russian events related to the Internet development, Business informatics and Standardization of innovations in IT.
I truly believe that experience I can get out of serving at the EC will definitely help me with further development of some policies and introducing some activities in the area of Internet in Russia and CIS on the level of Civil Society and Technical Community at the same time. As I nominated to be at the European level - (I actively collaborate with colleagues from Finland, Estonia, Austria and Germany) - I guess I will try to being deeply involved in collaboration with colleagues from all the European countries, even though I truly believe is it very tough process (thus I asked if there is EC representative from Russia and CIS and not for the whole Europe).
I'm a young person and have to work hard in order to think about my future "prospective" retirement and in general to work for living ( :-)) , thus I work 40h a week (usually even more). But I usually find time for the things I'm interested in, in terms of commitment of time - I believe I can spend from 5 to 8 hours per week on EC. In terms of attending meetings in person - for me it is matter of funding as my University cant fund my participation in those activities as it is not related to any university's activities :-( Thus - if there is some funding available for in person participation at different events and meetings - I commit my participation and I'm sure I can arrange my schedule in order to participate at the events and meetings.
I guess that Social Networks really help to communicate as well as e-mails - thus I will think about Facebook activities and communication via e-mail.
I think that society should be actively involved in control of almost all areas of ICANN policy - why? because most of the time those areas have connection (direct or indirect) to the society and our lifestyle in either short-term or long-term prospective. Society should be involved in domain zone allocation as further society will use those domains and so on.
I guess now the most important topic is the situation with that "transfer of ICANN" which was postponed this summer but which should be performed anyway.
I won't go to any concrete steps so far as I think that all the steps will be introduces together with the community and initiative should go from the community level focusing on the problems community has.
I know I have small chances being elected as I didn't have possibilities to participate in such a nice e-mail discussions about some topics, but I participated in some polls, signed several manifests and corrected some documents, which were shared via e-mail list during 2015.
Thank you very much and I'm looking forward for any answers, comments and of course - results.
p.s. sorry for typos
You can find some of my bio here:
REGION: North America
I have been nominated for the Executive Committee position for North America and have accepted the nomination.
As we have already discussed on the list, there is a need for some major organizational changes in the constituency. This will require a mixture of leadership, experience, institutional memory and vision. We are also facing challenges regarding the role of constituencies in the NCSG that need to be deal with. I think I have a deep understanding of all those issues and thus am in a good position to do something about them.
I would also like to point out that my opponent in this race, Mr. None of the Above, is well-known for never doing any work. There is no record of him ever making a contribution to the NCUC and if you look at our email list archives you will never find a constructive comment from this guy. He has nothing to offer but negative campaigning and negative statements. Further, when the constituency was founded, where was he? Not around, contributed nothing. Typical. None of the Above is really a loser.
POSITION: Chair
1. Why do you want to serve as NCUC chair?
I am looking to continue my volunteering work and serve the non-commercials as I did before. I used to be NCSG chair and after some time of thinking I responded to the request of several members to run for this position. For that reason, I would like to spend the time on continuing the work started before and moving up to a next stage for NCUC. On other hand I would like to prepare the next leaders, making NCUC resilient and stronger.
2. Provide a brief biography of recent experience, associations, and affiliations relevant to serving on the Executive Committee. Describe the relevance of your personal and professional experience to serve on the NCUC Executive Committee, and identify any conflicts of interests you might have.
I have an extensive experience of ICANN and GNSO processes and policies issues: I used to be a GNSO councillor for NCSG from 2009 to 2012, Nomcom representative for NCUC in 2012-2013. I also used to be the NCUC representative to NCSG Executive Committee.
I was the co-chair of the joint new gTLD applicant support working group and I am currently the co-chair of the ICANN cross-community working group on Internet Governance.
I was the chair of NCSG from 2013 to 2015 and I do think that gives me insight on the expectations, requirements and duties of the role of chair: having experience to work with ICANN staff, executive committee and other ICANN groups, planning for meetings, doing the admin work, setting plans etc
In other spaces within civil, I was member of the OECD CSISAC steering committee and I am currently member of Internet Rights and Principles Dynamic Coalition steering committee.
I have no conflict of interests.
3. The EC performs several functional responsibilities for the Constituency. What level of time commitment can you bring to your EC role on a weekly and overall basis? Describe any concerns or limitations on your ability to attend online meetings of the Executive Committee and ICANN Meetings in person.
I am committing 10 hours to 15 hours and more in weekly basis , which can mean 40 hours in monthly basis. From my previous experience as chair, I am familiar with the peak period of work e.g. preparing for ICANN meeting.
I am regularly attending confcall for working group, NCSG confcall etc so able to do the same and organize the online meeting for EC. I am able to attend ICANN meetings.
4. Communication with the membership is critical. How would you keep members apprised of your EC-related activities?
I am planning to focus on engagement and communication among other areas. I will continue the work I used to do in term of informing the membership about ICANN activities, announcements, public comments , ongoing policies discussion, NCUC activities and EC decisions, and any other area of interest for NCUC. I will do that via the mailing list, leveraging existing spaces such NCUC website, wiki, twitter account but also possibly having a regular confcall or webinar.
I am also going to work more on 1-to-1 engagement to tailor it to the specific needs of organizational and individual members for matter of effectiveness: providing clear advices/support about participation in ICANN/GNSO processes, briefing about current policy issues, mentorship for newcomers and participants in working group etc.
I am also planning to blog more using NCUC website to provide briefings, information sharing etc. also levering other approaches such as videos, newsletter etc. Communications will be coordinated with other EC members and involving existing comm team.
5. How do you foresee NCUC’s function, scale, or role changing in the future? What areas of ICANN policy, if any, need more attention and why?
As strategy, I would like to work with new EC to focus on:
* strengthening NCUC operational part: based on what is done before to continue the work on membership management, communication, improving committees and ad-hoc teams work, improving the admin support, improving policy support for NCSG, revamping the website in term of content, experimenting new tools for engaging members.
* strengthening NCUC structurally: incorporating it, increasing its budget, working on partnerships with other groups for specific projects & initiatives, finalising the bylaw update and managing that process.
*Improving NCUC communication: continue the work already done and pushing for more NCUC visibility within and outside ICANN, making regular public statement to indicate NCUC positions.
* working with other stakeholders within its direct environment in GNSO:liaising with other groups, coordinating joint efforts etc
* improving membership engagement and participation: with the steady growth of NCUC, it is important to scale out our membership management effort , improving members involvement in order to expand the pool of volunteers. Listening to our members needs and expectations from NCUC.
* Outreach: continue the work done in that domain and improving it with better evaluation and follow-up, more targeted efforts to bring new players
in term of policy, the focus in mid-term is clearly about the ICANN accountability process and the finalization of IANA stewardship transition. New and critical policy processes are going to start soon or already started and we have to follow them closely: new whois policies, rights protection mechanisms review in particular UDRP, review of new gTLD program and the work on next round. we ought to be heavily involved there.
REGION: Asia/Australia/Pacific
1. Why do you want to serve on the EC?
To me, NCUC is the user’s platform at ICANN. It is where the users’ interests are taken into consideration and are protected, in one way or the other, and the EC of NCUC is the right place to make impactful contributions while trying to protect users’ interest. Coming from a developing country with huge population, different cultural sectors and a diverse set of Internet access and usage, I can represent the region in an effective way while trying to raise voice of underprivileged end user of the Internet. Moreover, being a technical person coming from academia, I feel that there is a strong need for NCUC to have someone from technical background in the EC so as to see and deeply understand the technical aspect of things which can help in the policy development process while safeguarding NCUC’s interests.
On the other hand, I also want to be at the EC so as to be able to do some meaningful and practical work on the outreach strategies and help in realizing what is being committed normally and is hardly realized. There is a strong need to take advantage of such a strong new membership base that has been added to NCUC in past 2 years or so, and I believe that I can be in a position to do more when at the EC in this regard.
2. Provide a brief biography of recent experience, associations, and affiliations relevant to serving on the Executive Committee. Describe the relevance of your personal and professional experience to serve on the NCUC Executive Committee, and identify any conflicts of interests you might have.
I received PhD in Computer Networking with specialization on Internet Naming and Addressing and Communication Architectures from University of Nice, Sophia Antipolis, France, and am currently working as Associate Professor in EE Department at M. A. Jinnah University, Islamabad, Pakistan. Moreover, I am also serving as one of the chapter leaders of ISOC Islamabad Chapter since past one year. Besides, I have been associated with ICANN as fellow and coach (mentor) since ICANN 50 and have got ICANN fellowship for 4 meetings out of the last 5 meetings held (ICANN 50, 52, 53 and 54). Since June 2014, I am working with SSR team of ICANN on security-related matters and got trained as a trainer for the Middle-East region from ICANN and NSRC at Dubai in April 2015. On the other hand, I have also got fellowship for ISOC to attend IETF 92 in March 2015, and am contributing at that forum as well.
Being a member of NCUC for more than a year and an ICANN fellowship coach for past 3 consecutive ICANN meetings, I have motivated and helped a number of new fellows in joining NCUC, NPOC and NCSG, and an increase of new fellows joining NCUC is quite obvious from the data.
I have no conflict of interest.
3. The EC performs several functional responsibilities for the Constituency. What level of time commitment can you bring to your EC role on a weekly and overall basis? Describe any concerns or limitations on your ability to attend online meetings of the Executive Committee and ICANN Meetings in person.
Coming from academia, I have more luxury to manage my time depending on the tasks at hand. My employer is quite open in letting me go out to attend meetings in person and it is counted as an “official assignment” in accordance with the university policy. Hence, I don’t have any problem in attending the meetings either in person or online. Being a member of the EC, I can pledge to spend at least 10 hours per week to do assignments related to my responsibility, which may be increased as well depending upon the requirement and urgency of matter at hand.
4. Communication with the membership is critical. How would you keep members apprised of your EC-related activities?
Communication with the membership is utterly critical, and this is one of the main motivations behind accepting the nomination to serve at the EC of NCUC. I feel that this is an area which has a lot of margin of improvement in its current form. I believe that there is a strong need of engaging regional members and try to keep them alive in the NCUC processes via extensive engagement sessions, and there should be one of the primary responsibilities of the EC member from each region. Currently, I don’t see regional bonding between NCUC members and this have an effect on the local engagement as well. Secondly, more should be done to engage local communities and making them aware of ICANN processes and in particular what NCUC could do for them. Translation could be done in more languages to increase awareness and this is something I plan to do. As an EC member, I would pay strong attention towards engagement of new members into the NCUC activities in order to utilize their potential and making them comfortable in the community sooner rather than later.
5. How do you foresee NCUC’s function, scale, or role changing in the future? What areas of ICANN policy, if any, need more attention and why?
As an EC member of NCUC, I would strongly push the constituency to follow up on the membership engagement survey that we had conducted 6 months ago. At present, I don’t see urgency towards working on the findings of that survey in order to better manage the membership, their active engagement, and outreach management. I believe that the constituency should prioritize this issue before the data collected becomes obsolete. Moreover, I would urge the constituency to do more towards making new members more engaged in the NCUC activities, possibly via some kind of mentorship program, or coming up with a call for volunteers to do a less important piece of a large task for the new members. Moreover, a proper database with members’ interest and their areas of expertise should be published somewhere on the NCUC’s website so that members can work with each other online or offline more effectively.
As an academic having technical background and involved in users’ interest in local community through ISOC platform, I am more interested in the policies relevant to users’ privacy and security related issues. Moreover, ICANN accountability issues should be more carefully addressed and it doesn’t make sense to tie up the accountability issue with the one-time IANA transition activity, as accountability is continuous process. I believe that more attention is required to better understand this issue and to deal with it on its merit.
1. Why do you want to serve on the EC?
In 2016, we may witness a truly globalized ICANN that is accountable to the whole multi-stakeholder community. For the ICANN multi-stakeholder governance model, the AP region is relatively new, especially the Chinese community with 700 million Internet users. It is a much different culture. There are voices to hear for ICANN.
I want to continue my work on the EC representing AP region, serving as a bridge to enable communication between NCUC/ICANN and the AP region.
For the 2014-2015 term, I have made some progress. I expect to do more.
I want to keep going and make my work in NCUC better and make the EC running better and stronger.
Serving on the EC, I aim to promote more diversity in geographical, linguistic and cultural terms in Asia-Pacific region.
2. Provide a brief biography of recent experience, associations, and affiliations relevant to serving on the Executive Committee. Describe the relevance of your personal and professional experience to serve on the NCUC Executive Committee, and identify any conflicts of interests you might have.
For me, the NCUC is a place to get things done first and foremost, not talk about things.
During the past year:
a) I worked with others to create non-English language NCUC brochures. Now there are eight versions in diverse languages. The Chinese version was the first one that’s completed. Please see: http://www.ncuc.org/brochure/.
b) To facilitate travel support for NCUC members, I took to compose a new draft NCUC Travel Support Policy, which was finalized by Bill and fellow EC members. Then we had our first recipient, Benjamin Akinmoyeje from Nigeria, who was funded to attend ICANN 52.
c) When Bill was unable to run the process for selecting NCUC Appointee for the 2016 NomCom, because he was a candidate and asked for recusal, I took control and led the selection process on behalf of my fellow candidates.
d) Uploaded the NCUC video to the most famous Chinese video website—YOUKU(优酷) to promote NCUC in China for the first time.
Please see: http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XMTM3NTMwMjE0NA==.html.
e) Finished the documentation of NCUC Appointments and Allocation of NCUC Travel Slots. So anyone especially new NCUC members could get to know NCUC through lists in the documentation.
In January, 2015, along with fellow incumbent EC members, I participated in the 2nd
Non-Contracted Parties House (NCPH) intersessional meeting, which helps us build cooperation with the CSG party and do outreach work in Washington.
In June 2015, I finished working in Translation and Transliteration of WHOIS Contact Information PDP Working Group, which was started in December, 2013.
In July, 2015, I joined the Universal Acceptance working group to make IDN domain names work better in future.
From March to November 2015, I participated in several workshops with the Chinese community regarding IANA stewardship transition and enhancing ICANN accountability and submitted comments in the comment period on behalf of my employer.
In addition, since March, 2015, I became a member of ISOC Taiwan Taipei Chapter.
I do not have any conflict of interest.
3. The EC performs several functional responsibilities for the Constituency. What level of time commitment can you bring to your EC role on a weekly and overall basis? Describe any concerns or limitations on your ability to attend online meetings of the Executive Committee and ICANN Meetings in person.
Having served as the AP representative on the EC for a complete term, I could contribute approximately 10 to 15 hours per week and could continue to do so, even more hours if the work demands.
I have no problem for remote participation of conference calls.
My employer is open for me to participate in ICANN meetings in person if external funding is available, but I may not be able to arrange funds by myself.
4. Communication with the membership is critical. How would you keep members apprised of your EC-related activities?
In mid-2015, Walid, our former Coordinator of the Membership Affairs Team, finished the NCUC Member Engagement Survey. Currently, we have not yet taken full stock of the results of the survey.
For me, most of the new members do not know what is going on in NCUC and would quite long to know activities of NCUC. Often when they have questions, they are flooded with answers that lack in CONTEXT.
They need answers and words with related context.
So I am inclined to have communication with target members who are having difficulty in understanding activities of NCUC.
I propose to establish the NCUC Head Coach mechanism for new NCUC members.
By the Head Coach, I mean NCUC appoints two qualified persons to coach new members to enable them understand NCUC as soon as possible.
Besides, I have the Fellow-Alumni Mailing list to share and disseminate information.
In our localized Chinese community, we use the most popular social media app—WECHAT-- to inform people instantly.
5. How do you foresee NCUC’s function, scale, or role changing in the future? What areas of ICANN policy, if any, need more attention and why? Be concise (200 words maximum).
There will be a big change in the EC next year. Stefania and Roy both will not be coming back. I will bring pertinence that the EC truly needs. Among the things I hope to do in the next year:
a) Push for work to be done on non propriety software. The use of Google Docs marginalized those of us in countries where it is hard to access or banned. I have written a Letter for ICANN to Address the Google Docs Platform, hoping ICANN could come up with a technical solution.
b) Continue to grow the NCUC in AP. As you see, we have a diverse base of members from AP. However, there is potential to enlarge. NCUC is much new in China. We have only several members from China. In the coming year, I expect to cooperate with the ICANN Beijing Engagement Center as well as Adam Peake—the Civil Society Engagement Coordinator in ICANN to host a series of workshops in China to have more Chinese members. I need to make it done.
c) Follow up on a very important PDP-- the Next Generation WHOIS PDP. This PDP will address issues for an unprecedented model of WHOIS data worldwide, which also exposes privacy risks. We need to take much care of that from the civil society.
d) Continue to work in the Universal Acceptance working group. Since the introduction of new gTLDs, users do not have much knowledge of the IDN domain names due to some technical issues. With the work of the UA working group, we may have much better applications of IDN names worldwide.
The fact that each year we have so many candidates for the EC position demonstrates the growth we’ve had here during my time on the EC.
I am excited about working under Rafik’s leadership. He’s done a great job for the NCSG and I’m sure he’ll do the same for the NCUC –that’s why I nominated him.
There is far more to do where I expect to earn your support and continue to work for you.
If you have any questions please feel free to contact me.
