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

[tlhackque]

I've watched this list for some time.  It seems that railing against the ICANN 
staff is a favorite pastime.

Call me naive, but I'm willing to believe that the staff isn't evil.

Seems to me that there are two reasonable approaches to having more influence:

1) Identify the key staff members, form a positive relationship and educate them 
on our issues and perspective.  Start by setting up regular meetings; eventually 
they'll call us.

2) Encourage ICANN leadership to recruit staff from our community - 
identify good prospects, see if we can have a representative in the 
hiring/interview loop - so we have people inside at at the table.

Join them; don't beat (on) them... 
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This communication may not represent my employer's views,
if any, on the matters discussed. 
 
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
　
　
IP JUSTICE
Robin Gross, Executive Director
1192 Haight Street, San Francisco, CA 94117 USA
p: +1-415-553-6261 f: +1-415-462-6451
w: http://www.ipjustice.orge: robin at ipjustice.org