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

With regards to TG1, this is how I feel things developed:

1.- What worked well?

I think that the subject of TG1 was itself appealing enough to gather a huge crowd around it and discussion was easily sparked. This was not only an advantage but also a challenge in terms of organizing the discussion and focusing on the subject rather than losing focus as a consequence of having too many people involved and with everyone wanting to comment on the subject. Breaking into smaller groups helped with this challenge and also helped to produce an output that was sufficiently complete in terms of reflecting the wide variety of contributions from the different sub-groups but brief enough to make it concrete and easily understandable to people outside the WG.

2.-What worked less well

I feel we can improve the way participants not only engage but follow the discussion and stay in the room. I felt that, at times, we went from a full room to a mid-empty room.  Another area where we can improve is in coordinating the expected outcome document for each TG. The final exercise of consolidating all output documents was rather difficult in terms of trying to find a single format and approach into a single document. This could’ve been easier if between moderators and rapporteurs of all TGs had had a coordination call or a brief meeting before or even while we were conducting the sessions. This would’ve helped to have a uniform format and an easier final consolidation exercise.

3.- What did not work at all

I don’t feel that there was something that didn’t work at all. However, I have a feeling that what worked least well in case of TG1 was the contribution of the SME and in my case my understanding of the role I was supposed to play. I understood that as a moderator I was responsible for conducting the session, sparking discussion, leading it so it wouldn’t get out of focus and coordinating with the rapporteurs the way we were going to build the document. All of this under the assumption (wrongly made by me) that the SME would provide with materials, speakers and a proposed agenda for the TG discussion. What really happened is that I misunderstood my role and kept waiting for the SME to provide what I thought he had to provide but came to a point in which we could wait no longer and had to take over and do all what I expected the SME to do, myself. I felt like there wasn’t enough engagement by our SME. I would have expected him to have a more active role but maybe that was my mistake and lesson learned.

4.- Were people engaged enough? why? how?

I believe we had a good level of engagement in an overall assessment. We had members that were hugely engaged as well as members that weren’t engaged at all. It was interesting to see how there was a mix of both experimented and not-so-experimented members that were highly engaged because they felt they had something to contribute and had the good will to do so, while there were other members whom, by their vast experience, would’ve been thought to be more engaged but ended not only not being engaged but critical of the work done by the TG. When I say critical I mean they criticize the work not in a constructive but a rather negative way.

5.- How can we improve participation before the event?

With capacity building. I saw a lot of people engaged but having average or poor contributions due to a lack of understanding of the subject at the level needed or expected for the outcome document.

6.- How can we improve participation during the event?

- Regulating temperature of the AC system. I found that this was, believe it or not, one of the main reasons for people leaving the room at some time (or so they said).

- Having people rotate the role their having in the TG. For example having different people as rapporteurs during the discussions will help all group members engage, at a certain point, in the subject because they will have the responsibility of reporting the work of the group. This helps fostering participation among those who are either shy or lazy.

- Asking each ATLAS participant to file a personal report on the activities. This will help having people stay in the rooms and engaging with discussion. My experience as a participant of the Fellowship program is that if you tie the stipend/per diem you give to people to this report, you can improve the participation and outcome in a significant level.

I hope these comments help improve our future work. I would’ve loved to have the comments from my co-moderators, rapporteurs and SME but I didn’t get reply, as of this time, from them to an e-mail I sent them asking for their thoughts.

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