How to achieve more community involvement in selecting topics at ICANN meetings & speakers?

[Robin Gross]

We need more community involvement in the planning of the discussions / meetings held during the various ICANN weeks.   Besides the usual Board/AC/SO/ Constituency meetings held during ICANN weeks, the ICANN staff unilaterally plan a number of sessions that should require input from the community.   

For example, last week in SF's ICANN meeting there was a 90 minute session on "DNS Abuse" in which ICANN staff unilaterally organized for a series of law enforcement officials to provide a "parade of horribles" in order to justify less consumer privacy protections at ICANN.  

When I asked ICANN staff why there wasn't any privacy experts speaking during the public session, the staff member said they "assumed privacy was not an issue" so did not think to invite any.  Obviously this is a problem.  ICANN staff unilaterally deciding what the discussions topics are, what the important issues are, how to present them, what speakers to invite, and what perspectives get heard.  The way these discussions are framed obviously plays a key role in steering the direction of the policy development process.     

All of us Internet users are paying for ICANN, we really should have more of a say in how it is run and the substance of the discussions planned during ICANN week is a good place to start.   These discussions are a place where the community should frame the discussion and set the topics, while staff merely facilitate the wishes of the community.  It feels too much like the the tail is wagging the dog at ICANN.

How can we the community begin to wrestle some control away from the staff in terms of how topics are selected and how discussions are organized during these meetings?

Thanks,
Robin



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Robin Gross, Executive Director
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