| No. | Recommendation | Recipient | Thematic Group Source | Assignees | Status |
| 33 | The ALAC should arrange more At-Large Capacity Building Webinars. | ALAC | TG5 |
| COMPLETED |
Implementation Details
Since the conclusion of the 2nd At-Large Summit in 2014, the development of webinars has become a keen focus of At-Large’s outreach and engagement activities. The number, frequency, and types of webinars in At-Large have increased significantly.
The At-Large Capacity Building Working Group, in coordination with the ALAC, has exerted great efforts in planning, organizing, and evaluating Capacity Building Webinars targeting the entire At-Large Community. In 2015, 12 webinars were held; by September 2016, 7 webinars were held. In addition, 9 At-Large briefing sessions specifically about the IANA Stewardship Transition and Enhancing ICANN Accountability were held since April 2015. These briefings helped the broader At-Large Community understand the ALAC positions in developing the proposal and encouraged them to provide end user input in the process. As part of the implementation of ICANN’s regional engagement strategy, RALOs closely collaborated with ICANN Staff departments and held webinars with a regional focus. Since April 2015, APRALO and ICANN APAC Hub jointly held 8 webinars, and LACRALO and Global Stakeholder Engagement department in the LAC region jointly held 5 webinars. Lastly, a series of welcome and onboarding webinars targeting new ALS and new ALAC members was launched.
To attract and retain participation, At-Large Community has made great efforts in improving the quality of webinars. Through consultation with ALSes and individual members, topics were carefully planned to cater to their interests and needs. Speakers were selected among the subject matter experts in the ICANN community and Staff departments. To make the webinars more interactive, pop-quiz prepared by speakers was incorporated using the live poll function of the Adobe Connect. Live captioning was also provided to make the webinars more accessible. Post webinar, At-Large worked with the Development and Public Responsibility Department to create ICANN Learn online courses by expanding on the content of the webinars, furthering audience’s education experience.
After each webinar, a survey to evaluate the speakers, content, technology used, and audience’s overall satisfaction was distributed. The analysis of the 2015 webinars were presented during the At-Large Capacity Building Working Group meeting in ICANN55. Over 95% of respondents reported that they were either extremely satisfied or satisfied with the At-Large webinars.
These capacity building efforts have resulted in more substantive contributions from end users to mailing list discussions, teleconferences, and advice development work in At-Large. These efforts have also generated more interests from users outside ICANN to get involved in At-Large.
Next Step
The At-Large Capacity Building Working Group will work with ICANN Staff to overhaul the repository page of the At-Large webinars on the wiki and create an equivalent page on the At-Large website. Given the continuously increasing number of webinars, it is important to categorize them based on proper taxonomy, make them easily findable and searchable, and highlight a few as starter for newcomers. Furthermore, At-Large will also explore tools to promote the webinars via social media by converting their recordings to YouTube videos and breaking the recordings into digestible parts. With improved organization and publicity of the webinar repository, more end users will be able to benefit from these learning resources produced by At-Large.
Actions:
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- During ICANN 54, Technology Taskforce to meet with ICANN IT (Josh Baulch) and discuss AC recording conversion into videos
- Nathalie Peregrine/ Ariel Liang to confirm that whether the wiki page of the repository of webinars is included in the ALS welcome email
- During ICANN 54, ALAC to discuss with Nora Abusitta with regard to the internship program
- During ICANN 54, Technology Taskforce to meet with ICANN IT (Josh Baulch) and discuss AC recording conversion into videos
Notes:
- Need to define 'Capacity Building' and possibly change the term
- :
- There has been a fully developed At-Large webinar program in 2015, but the participation level has been quite low
- The webinars on important cross community issues usually attract participation.
- APRALO-APAC Hub webinars address the needs in the region and the topics have been identified collaboratively between staff and community members. This is appreciated by the community.
- Webinars should continue and ALSes need to be encouraged to participate
- One of the challenges is the ability to use the webinar materials after they take place and share them on social media. AC recordings are difficult to be converted into videos that can be shared on YouTube.
- It would be good to track the stats (e.g. number of downloads) with regard to the past webinars. Far more people may be watching the webinars after they have taken place. Those stats can serve as the baseline numbers to measure future participation. Participation in the capacity building program can be a good metrics/criteria to measure engagement. We need to push the capacity building information/materials to the community members and encourage them to take advantage of them.
- At-Large Structures should know about the wiki page of the repository of the webinars.
- The repertoire of the webinars is large, but it may be intimidating for a newcomer to navigate through. At-Large Community members/Staff need to provide more guidance to make webinars more accessible, highlight the key webinars, and provide frameworks on how to use the resources. Reorganization of that wiki page is needed. The listing of the webinars needs to be more intuitive and should not be merely based on publish dates. A short blurb about each webinar or some blog posts about learning opportunities may be a good way to entice ALSes to click through, as learning process itself takes time. Potential ICANN interns can work on this type of project.
- Re publicizing the webinars after they take place - IEEE breaks the recordings down into digestible sections, uses twitter feed and mailing lists. NTEN uses twitter feed and tweet throughout the entire webinar. They also use tools to see how long people have been engaged with the webinar, as well as other tools to retain people's attention.
- Twitter feed will be effective if it is targeting individuals. We don't know much about the individuals (ALS members) within the At-Large community. It is important to first get to know the individuals within the ALSes and understand who we are trying to attract in order to get them engaged.
