Post ATLAS II Implementation - ALS Criteria & Expectations

Action: 

• 16 Sep 2015: 
  • During ICANN 54 in Dublin, the ALAC to speak with Nora Abusitta about the mentoring program and discuss this recommendation 
  • Gunela Astbrink to participate in the ALAC meeting with Nora Abusitta and speak about her experience in the ATLAS II Mentoring Program 

Notes: 

• 16 Sep 2015: 
  • The At-Large Capacity Building Working Group has organized a series of webinars; there will be an upcoming webinar on policy making in GNSO and At-Large working groups. Some of the webinar materials will be incorporated to ICANN Learn courses. At-Large Beginner's Guides also have information about policy making. 
  • B Meeting will have a significant engagement component. Hence, it will be a good opportunity to target end users and help them understand and get involved in the ICANN policy activities. 
  • End-users' participation in policy development is a complicated issue. Certain ALSes have no idea how to participate at all. Some ALSes don't even know what ICANN does. There needs to be some basic requirements and standards for certifying ALSes. ALS Criteria and Expectations Taskforce has discussed this issue, but ultimately RALOs need to work with the ALAC to address this issue. As RALOs have the closest contacts with ALSes, they need to play a big part in ALS engagement, for recruiting new members and finding new talents in the ALSes that have the interest and time to take part in policy development. 
  • The usual suspects have been doing all the policy work, and once they move on, At-Large will loose policy experts in those topics. Hence, mentoring & buddy system would be conducive to train newbies and sustain the knowledge and talents. 
  • There seems to be two types of mentoring program that took place in At-Large: 1) intensive (e.g. Gunela Astbrink has been involved in that; it was specifically designed for ATLAS II, but it is unlikely to continue), 2) general. There also seem to be mentoring programs in other places in ICANN. The purpose and subject of mentoring needs to be clarified (e.g. mentoring for engagement and mentoring for leadership would be very different). Mentoring program also needs to be an ongoing effort. 
  • Within the At-Large ALS Criteria and Expectations Taskforce, DT-A has been working on on-boarding programs to help newly joined ALSes and individual members participate in policy development activities using appropriate tools. Part of the DT-A work is to figure out ways to engage those members early on and formalize the mentoring efforts. 
  • An ICANN wide mentoring program would be a better way to go, and there is progress on that. Nora Abusitta would be able to speak about it. The need for ongoing mentoring efforts is really necessary, otherwise we will loose new blood. It is also necessary to have recognition of the mentors, as it requires tremendous time commitments. If a mentoring program is to take place, it needs to be followed through. Mentees also need to be supported somehow to continue engaging with ICANN (even after the completion of the mentoring program). 
• 05 Oct 2015: 
  • These efforts will help address the recommendation: Website redesign, including taxonomy of policy advice statements, organization, linking to resources related to policy topics, integration with public comment; capacity building webinars on policy development process and various At-Large and ICANN working groups; the tools to improve the policy management process system 
• 05 May 2016: 
  • The efforts mentioned in the bullet under '05 Oct 2015' made this recommendation completed: launch of the new At-Large Website with policy-specific sections, completion of At-Large Capacity Building webinars and RALO-GSE jointly Capacity Building Webinars, and the launch of the document production pilot project. 
    
    

Actions: 

05 Oct 2015:

• Capacity Building WG and Technology Taskforce to work with ICANN IT to make the webinar recordings easy to replay and share 

Notes: 

30 Sep 2015: 

• There are a number of existing capacity building webinars, both At-Large wide and RALO specific 
• Outreach & Engagement SC has been looking into such activities and efforts for engagement; Ideas for Engagement Strategies wiki page has been set up; the SC will discuss this issue in ICANN 54 
• Capacity building should be more than online webinars. We should access RALOs and human capital for doing policy work and outreach. We should have some tools to engage membership and help them get involved. Staff should help hold more sessions to get more information about the inactive ALSes and learn about their interests. We need to adopt a gradual and systematic approach to engage the new and inactive ALSes. 
• Judith Hellerstein and Glenn McKnight have identified a large group of ALSes who haven't attended any NARALO calls. They will reach out to them and conduct easy-flowing sessions to find out why they are inactive and give them an opportunity to ask questions. 
• ALSes are often overwhelmed by emails and don't understand how to navigate the information and ways to get involved. To help ALSes understand ways to navigate through the overwhelming amount of information in At-Large can be one of the capacity building topics. 

05 Oct 2015:

• It has been recognized that mentorship of new ALS representatives and the development of short tutorials (e.g. How to use Adobe Connect) can help dress he on-boarding challenges
• Capacity building webinars can be leveraged to develop those tutorial/mentoring initiatives and educate newcomers and inactive At-Large members 
• Pre-training of ALSes is important, including how to use Adobe Connect, etc., and they need to know that participate in teleconferences and webinars via AC is part of the ALS participation expectation 

18 Oct 2015 ( update from the GSE, slides) 

• Note on Slide: The work of the Stakeholder Journey sub team within the CEP team can help address this recommendation.
• Chris Mondini on the Stakeholder Journey program: 
  • It looks at the challenge of getting more volunteers, but also more active volunteers 
  • At a very high-level, GSE has looked at some data, to look at where people come from, where they may get stuck, what some of their challenges are. They looked at the structures across ICANN, because each structure approaches this question slightly differently, and each structure and constituency has slightly different needs. They have made some high-level observations about how we might attract people, by looking first at what their question areas are, what their issue areas are. 
  • They have looked at some tools that they can provide to help community volunteers be partners in doing that outreach. GSE will solicit feedback from the community, especially the volunteers who have a passion for bringing on the next generation to having a succession plan, so that the sustainability of ICANN in this community is assured. 
• Sally Costerton on the work of Community Engagement:
  • There has been coordination team inside the ICANN, co-chaired by Sally Costerton and David Olive, composed of senior staff that face the ICANN community. The team includes the Policy Team, the Engagement Team, the Communications Team, which is led by Duncan Burns, the Digital Engagement Team, led by Chris Gift, and the Meetings Team, led by Nick Tomasso. There are two frequent guests, which is DPRD, led by Nora Abusitta, and she has the Fellows Program under her remit in DPRD, which is a very important element of the Stakeholder Journey Program. Another guest is Cyrus Namazi, who leads engagement for the GDD Team. The goal is to try to make sure we have a much more holistic view about how ICANN, as a staffing organization, can maximize the resources at our disposal. 
  • This team is to tackle some of these difficult challenges that the community faces as it matures and grows, such as the great deal of exhaustion in the volunteer community. You see a lot of the same faces popping up in different Working Groups, and while that’s great in some ways, but it’s also not sustainable. 
  • It is also about providing people with tools, it’s translations – it’s access questions, generally, whether that be money to get on a plane, or stay in a hotel, whether it’s language tools that allow you to participate in an even way, whether it’s improving the search on the website so that it’s a more friendly environment. 
  • how do we take a holistic look, as staff, at all of the money that ICANN spends on volunteer support, community participation? Whichever word you want to use. Because we tend to view it in quite narrow pockets. There are particulate processes to apply for travel funding or special support work and so forth. 
  • but we will be able to do so in due course – it’s getting a real sense of, “How much in total, out of the overall ICANN Budget, do we have at our disposal? And how can we make sure that we match that, as effectively as possible, to this goal?”
  •  we’re trying to take what you’re talking about, as a more strategic view of it, to say, “Are there other ways we could do things differently that would make it easier for unpaid participants in the community to have a more equal participation?” 
• Siranush Vardanyan: GSE team should be connected to the Outreach calendars used in RALOs to see At-Large activities and explore collaboration opportunities.
• Rafid Fatani: How do we maintain the old, but also bring in the new and keep them in? One of that is actually maintaining and allowing them to grow within various leadership positions. I, in the ALAC, think personally that we have a problem with this. 
• Sebastien Bachollet: I think it’s good to have new people come in, but they need to be received, they need to be accompanied, they need to be sustained, supported, received in good conditions. Because if that’s not the case, they are going to leave and go somewhere else.
  
• Sally Costerton: GSE will have regular calls with the ALAC Outreach & Engagement Sub-Committee.  I’d be very happy to make myself and some of my team available, once, or regularly, to join that call. This may give us more time to get into more detail about some of the tactical things we need to do. 

23 May 2016:

• There have been efforts to make conference recordings more accessible, such as MP4 conversion of meeting recordings to be uploaded to YouTube 
• There has been significant progress in this recommendation, such as the revamp of At-Large website, implementation of captioning services, additional interpretation, LACRALO mailing lists, etc.