NCUC Organizational News 13.01.13

Fri Jan 18 06:47:52 CET 2013

Hallo again,
I am Grace Mutung'u.  I joined NCUC a while back while a member of ICT
Consumers Association of Kenya,  which I 've since left.
I am a lawyer by profession and I live and work in Kajiado and Kiambu
counties in Kenya. I am a member of ISOC, ISOC Ke and a Diplo alumnus.
I am currently working with the Kenya Human Rights Commission on a
project on devolution.
I have been following the discussions on the list and learning a lot.
I am quite an  active contributor to my local lists so my resolution
this year is to be more active on this list:-)
I look forward to keeping this resolution and being of service to the list.

2013/1/15, Anthony Nweke <anthony.nweke at gmail.com>:
> Greetings,
>
>
>>> My name is Anthony Nweke. I'd like to volunteer for service on the
>>> Finance Committee. I am from Nigeria but currently reside temporarily in
>>> Aberdeen in the United Kingdom. I recently completed an MBA at the
>>> University of Aberdeen so hope the skills I've learnt will enable me to
>>> help the Committee. I also have a bachelors degree in Communications
>>> Engineering. And prior to coming to the UK I spent over 5 years working
>>> for the greatest indigenous e-Payments and Information Technology firm in
>>> Nigeria (Interswitch Limited) in various fields including Business
>>> Development, International Field Support, Infrastructure/Technology
>>> Management, Training and Consulting.
>>>
>>> I have just been admitted into the NCUC, so I am excited and really
>>> looking forward to spending some valuable time volunteering for ICANN.
>>>
>>> Best Regards,
>>>
>>> Anthony
>
>
> On 13 Jan 2013, at 16:27, William Drake <william.drake at UZH.CH> wrote:
>
>> Hello,
>>
>> One of the things I'd like to happen going forward is regular monthly
>> reporting back to NCUC members by the EC on any noteworthy organizational
>> and policy matters.  We don't have a mechanism in place yet to coordinate
>> a collective effort on this, so I'll get it started with a few notes on
>> recent developments.
>>
>>
>> 1. New Executive Committee
>>
>> On 3 December the 2012 election results were announced. Our new EC
>> includes
>>
>> Chair:  Bill Drake  <william.drake at uzh.ch>
>> Africa:  Wilson Abigaba  <wilson at isoc.ug>
>> Asia/Australia/Pacific: Norbert Klein <nhklein at gmx.net>
>> Europe: Tapani Tarvainen  <ncuc at tapani.tarvainen.info>
>> Latin America/Caribbean: Carlos A. Afonso <ca at cafonso.ca>
>> North America: Edward Morris <edward.morris at alumni.usc.edu>
>>
>> Since the 13th (post-WCIT) the EC has begun to get organized and by the
>> end of January we should have more to report on various items.  In the
>> meanwhile, members who want to know what's being discussed, provide input,
>> offer to help with tasks and so on can always visit the EC list archive
>> http://mailman.ctyme.com/pipermail/ec-ncuc/ and be in touch here or via
>> the addresses above, as appropriate.
>>
>>
>> 2.  Appointments to NCSG Committees
>>
>> Due to the delayed election timing the new EC came in already behind
>> schedule on some housekeeping items.  One of the first things we needed to
>> get done was to fill these slots so NCSG internal and GNSO work could
>> proceed without hiccups.  Accordingly, the EC has made the following
>> appointments until the 2013 annual meeting:
>>
>> a.  NCSG EC https://community.icann.org/display/gnsononcomstake/NCSG-EC
>> Rafik Dammak
>> Milton Mueller [both continuing]
>> b.  NCSG PC  https://community.icann.org/display/gnsononcomstake/NCSG-PC
>> Mary Wong
>> Avri Doria [replacing Brenden and Konstantinos]
>> c.  NCSG FC  https://community.icann.org/display/gnsononcomstake/NCSG-FC
>>
>> Milton Mueller [continuing]
>>
>>
>> 3.  Functional Work Teams
>>
>> In my candidate statement
>> https://listserv.syr.edu/scripts/wa.exe?A2=ind1211&L=NCSG-DISCUSS&F=&S=&P=38527
>> I argued that it'd make sense to have
>>> A more active EC team in which each member has defined responsibilities
>>> entailing at least one or two hours of individual work per week beyond
>>> reading email.  I’d love it if EC members would each take the lead on
>>> coordinating specific functional tasks and assemble work teams of
>>> interested members to deal with items like:
>>> o   In-reach and engagement of existing members, updating of the
>>> membership list
>>> o   outreach to potential new members (it’d also be nice if each regional
>>> representative could bring on a few folks from their regions per year)
>>> o   e-platform improvement and updating
>>> o   external communications/publicity
>>> o   finance (dealing with the ICANN budget process, external fundraising
>>> for initiatives, etc.)
>>>
>>> Or something like this…to be discussed… This is the kind of functional
>>> division of labor I’ve seen work better in other civil society
>>> organizations and coalitions, including ones I’ve led, and some evolution
>>> in that direction could be helpful.  What plainly has not worked well is
>>> for everything to just default to one maxed out volunteer.
>>
>>
>> Nobody has argued against this sort of approach and some folks on and off
>> the EC have expressed interest in helping with particular tasks.  So now
>> we'd like to begin to constitute teams/groups/whatever we want to call
>> them on the five tasks above, plus one other I forgot to mention, the very
>> overdue and urgent task of revising our Charter (ideally by the summer for
>> a vote prior to the next EC vote).  Conversations have been underway in
>> the EC and beyond to get some folks on board each to start, and so far
>> there have been expressions of interest/willingness to be involved from
>> the following folks (apologies to anyone I've forgotten, or conversely
>> who's surprised to be listed based on prior conversations). Oh, and I
>> should add that while from a coordination and info flow standpoint it'd
>> usually be easiest if EC members were the coordinators, this doesn't rule
>> out the possibility of experienced, plug n play non-EC people serving is
>> these capacities, as is reflected below.
>>
>>
>>  In-reach/member engagement
>> TBD  [Coordinator]
>> Edward Morris
>> Rafik Dammak
>> Bill Drake
>>
>> Outreach/new member recruitment
>> Edward Morris  [Coordinator]
>> Bill Drake
>>
>> E-platforms
>> Wilson Abigaba   [Coordinator]
>> Edward Morris
>> Tapani Tarvainen
>> David Cake
>> Brenden Kuerbis
>> Bill Drake
>>
>> Communications/PR
>>
>> Mary Wong  [Coordinator]
>> Bill Drake
>>
>>
>> Finance
>> Milton Mueller  [Coordinator]
>> Brenden Kuerbis
>> Maria Farrell
>> Bill Drake
>>
>> Charter Revision
>>
>> Bill Drake  [Coordinator]
>> Edward Morris
>>
>> Obviously, we need more EC and regular members to populate these groups,
>> share the workload, and get things moving.  Pretty much any amount of time
>> and energy beyond zero will make a difference and be much appreciated, so
>> please consider getting involved.  Reply on list or privately, as you
>> like.
>>
>>
>> 4.  Web Spaces/E-Platforms
>>
>> Once we have teams associated with each of these functions, we should put
>> them on the web and set up communication channels for them to work.  This
>> goes to some of the larger e-platform questions we've been contemplating
>> in the EC.  Clearly, NCUC's public ning site needs some serious
>> rethinking/refreshing and we may even want to consider moving to another
>> platform down the line.  But in the meanwhile, I'd argue it would make
>> sense to refresh the list of groups there http://ncuc.org/groups by a)
>> creating spaces for the new teams and list the people associated with
>> them; b) deciding whether the teams should work there or on listservs etc;
>> and c) if possible, for institutional memory purposes, create a space on
>> the site called Previous Groups and dump all the old ones there, rather
>> than simply deleting them.
>>
>> Again, nothing we do now to get started locks us into a final decision
>> about the website.  If all the web wizards decide a Ning is not the best
>> for us and want to migrate to some other platform, we can deal with that
>> then.  But for now let's get some web presence going so people know we're
>> alive and they can join and participate.
>>
>> Just to repeat again in case any members are unaware, NCUC's web presence
>> is rather spread around and in need of more consistency and maintenance,
>> e.g.
>>
>> 1.  NCUC.org  [the public face…unfortunately most content quite dated,
>> especially member pages etc]
>>
>> 2.  NCUC @ GNSO's public pages
>> http://gnso.icann.org/en/about/stakeholders-constituencies/ncsg/ncuc [in
>> process of revision]
>>
>> 3.  NCUC @ Confluence
>> https://community.icann.org/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=8945848
>> [Confluence is the ICANN provided workspace]
>>
>> A meta-question to consider is whether we want to continue to maintain
>> both NCUC.org and Confluence with some bits of parallel content, redefine
>> the division of labor between them etc…
>>
>>
>> I think that's enough for one message…
>>
>> Best,
>>
>> Bill
>>
>>
>> ***************************************************
>> William J. Drake
>> International Fellow & Lecturer
>>   Media Change & Innovation Division, IPMZ
>>   University of Zurich, Switzerland
>>   www.williamdrake.org
>> Chair, Noncommercial Users Constituency,
>>   ICANN, www.ncuc.org
>> william.drake at uzh.ch
>> ****************************************************
>>
>

-- 
Grace L.N. Mutung'u (Bomu)
Kenya
Skype: gracebomu
Twitter: @Bomu
Website: http://www.diplointernetgovernance.org/profile/GraceMutungu