ATLAS II Working Group

ATLAS II Survey Group

ATLAS II Events Group

The Events Working Group started its work just after the final approval of the ATLAS II project and the constitution of the organizing committee.

It started by proposing a rough schedule of the whole activities of the summit that has been refined during several months according to the ALAC standard works and the summit specific activities.

One of the most challenging things the working group faced was the availability of the meeting rooms with the adequate size and shape. The Hilton Metropol wasn’t that large to easily accommodate the normal ICANN meeting and the At-Large Summit. Several interactions with the ICANN meeting team and a lot of effort were deployed to reach the final arrangement.  

The most difficult thing was to find rooms after Sunday because the meeting staff accepted to organize both the ICANN meeting and the At-Large summit in the same Hilton Metropol hotel assuming that no more rooms will be assigned to ATLAS II starting Monday except one large room on Thursday.

I would like to thank Nancy and her team for their understanding and their efforts to conciliate the irreconcilable. It was a tough task, but with the willingness of finding a solution to all problems, we ended with an acceptable and workable arrangement.

I would like here to mention the hard problem of the venue of the “fair of opportunities” that was supposed to be the ALAC room with the U shape tables installed. It was a real problem because what was supposed to be a relax interaction and networking space would be a crowded and locked area with no way to circulate in. The willingness of reaching the aim of the event and avoid the failure pushed us to change some parameters (date) and have a better solution. I find it the most successful achievement of our Working Group.

The other task of the working group was to form the thematic groups according to the 5 themes chosen by the ALS representatives through a survey. But in Singapore, this task was handed over to Evan Leibovitch and Wolf Ludwig.

ATLAS II Sponsors Group

ATLAS II Logistics Group

ATLAS II Public Relations Group

ATLAS II Return on Investment Group

ATLAS II Fayre of Opportunities Working Group

ATLAS II Communications Working Group

ATLAS II Mentoring Program Working Group

Thematic Group 1: The Future of Multi-Stakeholder Models

Thematic Group 2: The Globalization of ICANN

Thematic Group 3: Global Internet: The User Perspective

Feedback on  ATLAS  2  session (TG 3)

What worked well

-Subject Matter  Experts provided  quality value added comments

- Core  team meet during  the  evenings  to work extensively to assess the notes and summarize the core ideas

What worked less well

-Lack of process and well defined duties

-Lack of  repetition of the key tasks,  Rule  of thumb is telling people three times the key tasks to assure results

-Day One  facilitation  was more confrontation style

-Despite  efforts to have  pre-meetings before the Atlas 2 session  the facilitator  would not attend

What did not work at all?

-Expectation that  a summary to be provided to audience immediately after  lunch without any warning

-Lack of full participation

-Room layout  wasn't conducive to equal discussion and a  free flow of ideas 

Were people engaged enough? why? how?

We had  one of the largest  rooms with a large group setup in a  classroom  format

The vast majority of participants  didn't speak up during the session 

How can we improve participation before the event?

-The  facilitators  should  have  engaged silent majority directly to speak up on the topics

-Break up into small groups and encourage summaries from their  discussion

-Small groups organized into linguistic  groups with a bilingual reporter

How can we improve participation during the event?

-Direct questions  to individuals  for their  comment so no one  is  silent

Thematic Group 4: ICANN Transparency and Accountability

What worked well: The topics did generate lots of discussion, including some disagreement, which generated further, constructive dialogue.  I found splitting the group into smaller groups, with each group reporting back meant everyone was actively involved in the discussions and debates.

What worked less well - the actual venue, in that it was one small room without a lot of room for different groups to hold their discussions.  But that is simply what was available, so we made the best of it. (as one does)

What really made life a bit more difficult was that the reporter (Alan) simply had too much on his plate and wasn’t there a lot of the time.  My session experts were also not there. Avri didn’t attend at all - which she had already telegraphed, and Hong wasn’t there for close to half the time.  In future, if people put hands up, they should commit to being there.  Chester was a huge help - he stepped in and was an excellent reporter.

Yes people were engaged - splitting people into smaller groups really helps with engaging people.  Some people did have other meetings to go to, but enough stayed around (or came back when they could) so that there was real involvement - which is my suggestion for participation on the day (that, and making sure those who are supposed to be reporters/moderators etc can attend for most if not all of the discussion).

I’m not sure how to improve participation before hand - up for discussion

As to time pressures - accountability and transparency was a big topic.  We tried to deal with both, but we took time defining the task, agreeing on terminology and then were pressed for time to come up with recommendations.

In future, possibly better defining (or confining) topics may help.

Thematic Group 5: At-Large Community Engagement in ICANN