Interest-Group-in-Formation: Development & Capacity Building

Comment

Comment by Amr Elsadr on November 23, 2010 at 3:45pm

Thanks Bill.

Comment by William J. Drake on November 23, 2010 at 3:28pm

No problem Amr. This space was created in light of conversations about development and CB concerns with respect to developing countries in ICANN. It was not intended to be about building the capacity of NCUC members; it's more advocacy than operational. Which is not to say the latter topic's not important, just wasn't our guiding interest. If that's the conversation you want to have, I would indeed think the listserv might be better, as that would relate directly to the broader membership.

This ning was set up by Robin, it's not controlled by ICANN and would not be replaced by anything done for the GNSO.

Cheers,

Bill

Comment by Amr Elsadr on November 23, 2010 at 2:57pm

Forgive me if my rambling has created confusion or started discussions out of the intended scope of this group. My understanding upon joining this group was that its purpose was to come up with a mechanism for building capacities of new-comers to the NCUC (not specific to those coming from developing countries). This was based on the comments posted here in 09. Please correct me if I am mistaken.

If possible, I would appreciate clarification on the difference between a regular working group and an interest-group-in-formation.

@Bill..., would you rather if we use email or any other means of communication? My understanding is that there will be a new wiki style GNSO website launched at the Cartagena meeting, although it is not clear to me whether this will replace the NCUC Ning or not. :)

Comment by William J. Drake on November 23, 2010 at 8:59am

There's actually three topics mixed in this thread: 1) outreach and broadened engagement by NC; 2) outreach and broadened engagement by ICANN; and 3) ICANN's general orientation toward development concerns, and the role of developing countries in the names and numbers regime. I think we're doing ok on 1, Robin made a quite successful push to bring new folks in last year, although of course we can do more. As we don't have funding, a more systematic and sustained effort would of course require more of volunteers' scarce time.

Since Nairobi there seems to be some increasing movement on 2; there's a board group on this that jean-Jacques' been chairing (we'll see who takes over), and this recent initiative, which seemed a bit biz oriented. Still, worth engaging more; I confess I've not had the bandwidth to really focus on it yet. Would be good to discuss in Carta.

I see no movement or real discussion on 3. JAS takes up one piece, but it's a much broader terrain, as the workshop I organized at IGF Vilnius demonstrated. So if we were able to build a little community, whether an interest group or not, that could do sustained thinking and eventually put forward some ideas and advocate, that'd be good...

BTW I HATE typing in this tiny four line box!

BD

Comment by Amr Elsadr on November 22, 2010 at 5:59pm

Absolutely Alex.

Comment by Alex Gakuru on November 22, 2010 at 5:46pm

@Rafik @Bill thanks for your insightful contributions!

@Amr, Hope ICANN is getting clearer? But trust me, I still find many of its corners pretty dark and still need others to shed light for me to know what goes on there. Noted:Your initial post blended well with my '09 take, I think.

thanks all.

Comment by Rafik Dammak on November 22, 2010 at 5:28pm

Hi,
the topic of outreach is not new, in fact NCUC/NCSG succeeded to expand its membership dramatically in two years and still getting interested members to join.
I participated in GNSO working group which made report with several recommendations about outreach and sent few days ago but not all people from NCSG who expressed opinions about agree about proposals. there are some idea there about capacity building, more material about ICANN policy etc, but that need resources and time to be done.
during Brussels meeting and constituency day, we talked about outreach and membership during constituency day, I think that we don't have a problem of expansion of membership but more engagement. the policy topics can be really narrow and specialized and then not easy to have people discussing about and making public comments (honestly it is quite hard to handle all public comments). other point is having more people participating actively in the different working team and working group and NCSG is improving but we need more and more volunteers because the endless number of GNSO working group and real work is done there.
@Bill anyway we can reactivate the Development interest group, even the model is going to be sifted with charter changes. Interest Group structure can help to have more people focused in specific topics that interest them instead trying to catch all topics and issues
Finally, we have to focus on engagement, outreach can always be done all the time but engagement and having more members active can help NCSG to be more loud and visible.

Comment by Amr Elsadr on November 22, 2010 at 5:04pm

Thanks for the update Bill. One of the first things I discovered when joining the NCUC was the issue with the NCSG charter. I figured that was an important piece of information to learn for any new-comer. I do hope the ICANN BOD does move as soon as possible to approve the charter our SG members voted in favor for.

Unfortunately, I won't be able to make it to Cartagena. It's going to be a difficult time for me at work, but I will try to follow everything I can remotely, then hopefully will join you all in SF in 2011. In any case, I am following the emails being sent as diligently as possible, and am still listening and learning as much as I can. I also enjoyed the GNSO policy update meeting last week, and right now I'm waiting for the ICANN policy update webinar, and will try not to miss any of those or conference calls I can attend. This is all helping me get a feel for the dynamics involved in discussions amongst NCUC members, but still, I do think an initiation capacity building program of some sort would really help our constituency. It has done wonders for DiploFoundation. I recall that the ALAC was discussing problems with outreach as well as INREACH with ALSes in Nairobi, and maybe a capacity building program is what we need to help us all engage more effectively.

Comment by William J. Drake on November 22, 2010 at 3:23pm

Amr, greetings from the IGF consultation at the UN, and thanks for the input, glad you're on board. The various discussions within ICANN on outreach and expanded participation by developing country stakeholders are certainly relevant to the broader question of the ICANN and development concerns, which generally have not received enough focused attention. We addressed some of this in Nairobi and also in the Vilnius IGF, and of course there's the JAS working group effort on new gTLD pricing as well. It was with all this in mind that we took the initial steps toward launching a group on development last year, but things have sort of stalled, in part because of uncertainty about the future NCSG charter and whether there'd be interest groups or just constituencies.

Anyway, let's keep the pipe open and when things are clearer perhaps those of us interested in development matters can continue and focus the conversation...will you be in Cartagena?

Bill

Comment by Amr Elsadr on November 21, 2010 at 5:38pm

Hello members..., I joined the NCUC at the end of July 2010 and have been trying to learn more about the different issues our constituency is working on for the past two months or so. Reading all the emails in our list combined with the NCUC Social Text have been a delight, however, for a newbie, it hasn't been easy trying to catch up with all the history involved.

Recently, there has been a topic under discussion regarding ICANN outreach, and now there is a group Robin has created for the NCUC's own outreach event that will hopefully take place at the ICANN meeting in SF. Outreach is great, but there needs to be a starting point for new-commers to the NCUC like myself that will help ease us into the work we are trying to do with ICANN staff and the rest of the community, and maybe even jump-start the 200-some constituency members who don't all seem to be as active as a small handful. I hope this interest-group-in-formation could help with that (btw, what is an "interest-group-in-formation"?). The comments posted here are all great, but they seemed to have stopped at the end of 09. Any plans for the foreseeable future?

Thanks.

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