Trip Proposal Section

12-May-2014

This Summit has the potential of attracting over 500 attendees, compromising of ICT Vendors, Distributors, Entrepreneurs, Professionals, Students, Education Providers, Policy makers, Ministries, NGO's, Users and Media.
Lots of different stakeholders that could become more involved in ICANN policy.

Goals:

• Outreach with literature about ICANN and LACRALO to raise awareness of ICANN and other stakeholder roles in ICANN.
• Raising awareness about ICANN At-Large and networking with delegates (including following up with delegates after the meeting) to identify possible candidates for ICANN At-Large.

Albert Daniel, ICANN Stakeholder Engagement from the Caribbean will be attending this event.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS (Required):

Trip Assessment Section

EVENT

ICANN was officially invited to the Suriname ICT Summit and was represented by Albert Daniel, Manager for Stakeholder Relations in the Caribbean. LACRALO devised an engagement framework with the official ICANN representative that covered messaging about ICANN’s role in the Internet Governance ecosystem, identify Suriname as a stakeholder, the At-Large’s role in ICANN and emphasize reasons for Suriname stakeholders to engage.

Carlton Samuels was drafted as the LACRALO representative to accompany Albert Daniel. Both representatives coordinated and developed an appropriate narrative for meeting the communications objective for the Summit. At-Large specific brochures – in Spanish and English - were requested from At-Large staff, collected and taken to Paramaribo. The organizers say there were some three hundred (300) attendees for both days.

ENGAGEMENT

The program was developed with separate presentations for Albert Daniel and Carlton Samuels. Albert Daniel presented the basic information on ICANN and its role on Day 1. Carlton Samuels assisted in the Q&A section of that presentation by working the roving microphone, distributing brochures and answering questions from the floor. Carlton Samuels presented on Day 2. He began the conversation by outlining for the audience the status of Suriname’s engagement in ICANN.

He then spoke specifically to ccTLD and end user channels as the best to begin the engagement. He was ably assisted by Shernon Osepa, the Regional ISOC Manager and formerly ICANN staff. The presentations were fairly well attended on both days; approximately 40 attendees. At-Large brochures were distributed. The At-Large orientated presentation is attached.

The-End-User-in-ICANN-At-Large-Policy-Process-CAS.pdf

REFLECTIONS

Very few attendees had ever heard of ICANN. And the few who acknowledged had only a notional sense of its role. As a result a very lively discussion came up on both days of presentation. We had a significant number of attendees coming to the presentations on both days so there was some continuity.

The single most persistent query was how to get involved in the domain name market. A lot of time was spent laying out the ICANN/Registry and ICANN/Registry/Registrar relationships.

A few attendees were aware of the last gTLD round, especially the cost for participating. They were not aware of the ICANN-sponsored Applicant Support Initiative. We used that to emphasize the role of the At-Large in ICANN and showed how that initiative developed and its intended beneficiaries.

A few wanted to know how the time spent in policy development would be compensated. We re-emphasized voluntarism as the model for user engagement in ICANN but outlined the several ways ICANN enabled the work of volunteers, including providing collaboration platforms to communicate and participate.

We encouraged attendees to apply for fellowships. We fielded a few keen questions about the ALAC and how it interposed itself between them and ICANN. One attendee actually made the connection between Internet end users and their ultimate centrality to ICANN funding but lamented the fact that the ALAC could not compel the Board to act on what it sees as important.

In the end, a few attendees committed to developing a closer association with ICANN. We recommended the communications channels and invited them to survey ALAC and LACRALO teleconferences.

See https://www.flickr.com/photos/ictsuriname/with/14767997251/ which shows the pictures from Day 1 of the ICT event. The sequence with the ICANN related ones for Day 1 begins at 6227 decreasing with Albert.