BC Trip Assessment 4

I am Mark Datysgeld, a master in International Relations focused on Internet Governance and the impacts of technology on public and private policymaking, having joined the BC in meeting 58 with the goal of helping strengthen the Latin representation within the Constituency in terms of policymaking output. Since then, I have started working as an independent consultant advising businesses and individuals in their participation in international institutions and events, with my main partners being the growing number of Latin members in the Business Constituency.

Within the BC I have taken two tasks as my priority: A) helping the Constituency handle matters related to research and analysis, such as is the case of the Open Data Initiative (ODI) that has lately been gaining a lot of traction and starts to show great potential and B) understanding where the necessities of SMEs are being underrepresented and finding ways to include their interests in a manner that is mindful of other businesses, striving to build scenarios in which both larger and smaller companies can be benefitted from a policy.

I have also engaged in two more long-lasting projects that were ongoing during meeting 62: A) a project to better map the participation of Latin businesses in ICANN and map out their necessities, carried out with two other members of the Constituency and spanning several months of work and B) bringing the Universal Acceptance program to Brazil, with the interest of creating a more hospitable in the near future for partners within the BRIC bloc to engage with businesses.

The Panamá meeting was essential to attend for the first project mentioned, seeing as a great deal of ground work and one-on-one engagement was conduced there. I dedicated a fair share of time to getting to know better attendants, as well as engaging with the normal Business Constituency activities and generating the summaries in Brazilian Portuguese that I have been producing ever since meeting 59 to better bridge the gap between that community and ICANN.

Those objectives stack with my commitments to the NextGen and Fellowship programs, both to which I serve as coach and supporter, helping guide newcomers and explain the environment to them. This is accomplished by group talks, individual coaching, lending support via messaging, and above all helping people be in the sessions that make the most sense for their particular skillset and profile.

I believe that all of the goals outlined for this trip were achieved, seeing as we managed to engage several businesspeople from the Global South at a personal level, and are managing to better understand their needs and the logic that needs to be employed at the BC for us to be able to make the Constituency a better fit for them without compromising any of the existent structure. Our ongoing efforts are being assemble as part of a bigger project that will be better explored in Barcelona and hopefully delivered by the end of 2018.

I had the task of explaining the project to the Constituency, and I believe I did so with competence. With the support of the other project members who assisted in building the presentation, all of the key points of the methodology and the logic behind the study were positioned in a clear and objective manner. After that, we also managed to carry out personal discussions with other members to get a better feeling of their impressions of the project, and I believe the takeaway was quite positive.

As for my personal goals as a contributor to the ICANN community, I was satisfied that we managed to advance a lot the subject of the ODI, which after the meeting led to the crafting of a very rich commentary targeted at the Public Comment that sought to outline what are the immediate priorities for the project now that its launch is a reality. I also personally coached around 8 newcomers, and managed to help several others find their way around the institution, which is always a pleasure to do.