NARALO Trip Assessment 5 DRAFT

Rightscon had originally reached out to me as Chair of the Global Indigenous Ambassador program and suggested that we apply. They stated that they would value having the Global Indigenous Ambassador team onsite.

This Rightscon has a focus on connectivity in vulnerable areas and there will be a good number of target groups both indigenous and others interested in connectivity issues for vulnerable populations. Besides this group, there is a target rich environment of people who attend who advocate for many of the same issues At Large is interested in. This conference is often held in Europe and other regions and has been attended by other RALOs who have done successful outreach.  We, in NARALO, hope to have the same success.   Not only do we hope to increase our Canadian members, but also our US-based non profits as well.  We also connected with many civil society groups who are not as familiar with ICANN as they are with other Internet related groups. I met with many groups who had not heard about ICANN and about At Large and they were very interested.  I directed the numerous African Individuals and NGOs and civil Society Groups to Sarah Kiden, Secretariat of AFRALO who had been funded by Mozilla to attend. 

We went on the first day and although had a small room by the end it was standing room only. Since several members of the Global Indigenous Program could not get funded Glenn McKnight recorded teh session otherwise it would not have been recorded.

Our sessions was very well attended but did not offer remote participation. The participants were very engaged and we had a good conversation both about the program and how ICANN had been supporting our efforts to reach out to this group to get them engaged in ICANN policy issues.  We had myself, the Chair of the Globak Indigenous Ambassador Program, Sarah Kiden, the AFRALO Member of the Evaluation team, Glenn McKnight , NARALO Member and originator of the earlier NARALO proposal. Chyloe Healey, our past Indifenous Ambassador. We were also supossed to be joined by Renata Aquino Ribeiro our past Indigenous Mentor and Member of the Evaluation team for LACRALO.

In the audience we had Adam Peake and Joe Catapano from GSE who answered specific questions about ICANN that our panelists could not answer.  All in all a very dynamic sessions with lots of questions about the program and suggestions of how ICANN can how to reach these populations.

Our goal for this event was to focus on the under represented groups or locations. With the growth in the number of individual members in NARALO this could also be a good recruiting place for NARALO.  We met with so many Canadian and US based non profits from various parts of the under-represented parts of the US at the conference. 

This is a target rich environment for At Large as there are so many groups here that have not heard about At Large or ICANN.  I was able to connect the many African groups asking about ICANN to Sarah Kiden, AFRALO Secretariat as she had funding from Mozilla to attend. 

Many people are interested but do not have an organization or their organization is global and so they do not see a place for them within At Large.  Additionally, this is also a very fertile grounds to recruit people to At Large whose only knowledge of ICANN is NCUC.  Or they had not realized that they could be active in both groups. Some had joined one constituency but then felt it did not work for them and so did not engage but were very interested in engaging with At Large and this could get them engaged.

GSE also had a booth in the village but it was staffed by Next Gen and fellows. We had put literature from NARALO there and other ICANN groups put flyers as wll but the volunteers didn't record any attendees names and contact information of the people they spoke to. We had asked them to do that so we could follow up with these people as we had done at the IGF when At Large had a booth. Adam Peake choose these volunteers and they were Next Gen Fellows who were active in NCUC.  I think there should be a better process for choosing and funding these people.

Not all sessions were recorded which is a shame as there were some excellent ones there.  I also participated in some of the other ICANN related sessions on the multi stakeholder model, on GDPR, and Who is.  Many of the folks there had no knowledge of At Large and worked to educate them and hand out material.

See responses posted in section one