Constituencies yet again (aargghhh)

[Avri Doria]

Hi,


So sorry for the distraction.
 
But the subject of constituencies  came up, as I beleive it should.

Given the current realities of ICAN support for constituencies and thus given that it affords multiple NC voices, support,  and nomcom seats (at least in the near future) and other benefits that only accrue to constituencies, I think that maintaining an CSG style minimization of constituencies is a bad idea.  I beleive in multiple constituencies, and our SG charter is created to support multiple constituencies: not quite the light weight interest groups we in NCUC wanted, but in my opinion, close. 

So, when the topic comes up, I argue for multiple constituencies. Academics is not really the kind of constituency I see as I look for constituencies based on interest not identity, remember a person can be in 3 of them.    That is why I put (ICANN Giganet) beside it.  I was thinking that it was possible there would be people whose only interest in ICANN was writing academic analyses of ICANN.  This could have been a useful thing - for ICANN to have its own academic crit/self-crit constituency.  I will avoid listing academic it in my example chains in the future so that we can avoid more deja vu.   I do not plan, however, to stop supporting the idea of new constituencies, and don't plan to stop helping any NC group that wants to create one.

So again sorry it is a distraction, but I think it is as important to the NCSG as getting itself organized and having elections is to the NCUC.  Sorry if it distracts NCUC from its elections etc.

Perhaps NCUC needs its own list so that it can avoid NCSG discussions if it wishes.  And yes, I am a member of NCUC and will subscribe to both lists.

avri

On 25 Oct 2012, at 05:25, William Drake wrote:

> Hi
> 
> On Oct 25, 2012, at 3:02 AM, Andrew A. Adams wrote:
> 
>>> Universities/Academics (the current NCUC leadership could grow that without much pain)
>> 
>> This keeps coming up. I thought it had been put to bed last time (almost all 
>> the academics currently in NCUC indicated it was a bad idea.
> 
> Indeed, it's deja vu all over again.  Not clear why or what it adds rather than subtracts, especially when NCUC member should be focusing on an election, a decision on a charter rebuild, and much more, but here we are anyway.
> 
> To me, the rationale for new constituencies ought to be that they bring to the table new players with distinctive interests that cannot be accommodated within existing constituencies, and which have the necessary level of member commitment to actually weigh in constructively on GNSO policy discussions.  When NPOC started out as essentially an intellectual property-promotion group (sorry, but it was) one could at least say ok, that's different, NCUC takes a more skeptical approach to such claims, so there's new members, engagement, and a distinct mission.  That many of us felt that these objectives would be better placed within the CSG is a secondary issue.  Since then a lot of the IP lobbying has been redirected from trying to build a new constituency to circumventing the GNSO process and going directly to the board and GAC.  In the meanwhile new folks have come in and taken NPOC in a different direction which I gather is intended to speak to the operational concerns of small developing country NGOs.  Since NCUC has long had small developing country NGOs among its membership I've become less clear about the distinctiveness dimension, but am hopeful that at some point NPOC will start to articulate unique GNSO policy positions that demonstrate the utility of having two constitutencies will similar and sometimes overlapping compositions and priorities.
> 
> In the meanwhile we have also had a failed proposal for a consumer constituency that never really articulated any sort of coherent reason for being and why its view could not be accommodated within existing structures.  So when Evan says 
> 
>> I think that was the PoV of the people who were trying to create the (since abandoned) Consumer Group Constituency a few years ago. I was close to (but not a part of) that effort, and found a resistance that, at the time, took me by surprise. So long as diversity of power within the NCSG is seen as a zero-sum game (ie, anything new must come at the expense of influence of the NCUC) such resistance will exist. The wearing down of the CGC attempt into oblivion (my PoV) has not been good sign to anyone else on the outside seeking the diversity that Avri advocates (and with which I personally agree).
> 
> I have to say this is a rather self-serving misconstruction, sorry.  There was NO convincing case made for the new group.  None, zip, nada.  NCUC also addresses consumer issues. And it came at a time when there was a presumption that launching a new constituency would automatically get one hard wired GNSO council seats, so it looked a lot like, indeed, a zero sum effort grab travel slots and other goodies for no particular purpose.  Maybe if the approach and presentation had been different, but from the outset it was a bit adversarial, and hence encountered more skeptical than y'all come reactions.  But it was the CC folks who gave up, nobody in NCUC told them to go away.
> 
> [And parenthetically, this is the sort of thing that Avri and I just disagree about liaisons coming into host grouping and stirring up stuff based in their home org's biases and inadequate information…had I thought this was my role as liaison to ALAC, boy I'd have played those four years rather differently….there'd have been ample opportunities to stick my nose in ALAC's biz and point out the instances of dysfunction, nondemocratic decision making, etc.  But I didn't think it was my role.]
> 
> Now we have this proposal for a cyber cafe constituency.  Since they are mostly commercial in nature, I cannot understand why they want to be in NCSG rather than CSG.  On the other hand, CSG makes it almost impossible to create new constitutencies.  They've worked out a three way division of spoils, including council seats, are even unable to agree a SG chair, and are even unable to get consensus to comply with deals they made in writing with us (the Vice Chair of the NCPH is supposed to rotate between CSG and NCCSG, but apparently they don't want to rotate).  So because another SG is allowed to operate a closed shop, new constituency proposals default to us whether they fit or not.
> 
> Like Milton, I am utterly unable to get my head around the benefits of multiplying constituencies for multiplicity's sake.  Sure we could ask for more seats on noncoms, but so what.  Beyond that, all it does is divide up the energies that should be devoted promoting share public interest values and noncommercial concerns in the GNSO process to construction of mutually exclusive sand boxes with apparently different levels of access to and support from senior staff.  All I've seen over the past four years (and recall that before NPOC, there was CP80 crowd that wanted a "child protection"/censorship constituency) is endless turf squabbles that have absorbed people's scarce bandwidth and made if difficult if not impossible to focus on the effective representation of our interests in GNSO processes.  We can't staff working groups, file public comments, or do any of the other stuff needed to be serious players because we're so caught up with managing our in-house follies.  Occasionally our most hard core stalwarts like Wendy, Mary, Avri, Robin, Kathy, Rafik and Milton manage to break through and just get something done, and often it makes a difference——for ex., whether members know it or not, we have actually managed to more privacy protection and related civil liberties issues up the agenda of late, the board has endorsed our approach.  But we could be doing much much more, without all the staff support bestowed on ALAC, if were to spend less time re-litigating over an over how to divide up the SG so as to give one grouping some perceived advantage of the other.
> 
> If and when we receive strong proposals from new groups whose interests cannot be accommodated within existing structures and who are truly noncommercial and committed to doing serious GNSO work, that will be fine and we can decide what to do.  Until that time, I would hope we could focus on our own knitting.  Both NCUC and NPOC have a ways to go to become more well organized, accountable, and effective bodies.  Why not focus on that?  For NCUCers, the priority should be electing a new Executive Committee whose members will significantly increase their levels of individual and collective commitment to performing the basic tasks we need done to make it a vibrant and growing group.  EC slots cannot be nominal titles for business cards, they have be for people really willing to work on defined, languishing functions like member inreach, outreach, finance, communications, web resources and so on—the nuts and bolts of any effective civil society body.  It's great we've had many people throw their hats into the ring for EC slots, and I hope that all understand that the newly elected EC will have to do a lot more work to get NCUC off the mat and fully, consistently in the game.
> 
> Bill