[NCUC-DISCUSS] Durban Follow Up

Sat Jul 27 19:02:56 CEST 2013

Hi

I was off line for some days and want to add a few belated points to Wolfgang's good observations.

In general, I would agree that Durban was a good meeting for NCUC, and for NCSG.  This despite the absence of a substantial number of our regular faces—I wondered at the outset if we'd have enough folks on the ground the cover all the bases, but in the end we had enough new and enthusiastic participants to make things work.

The African School on IG seemed to have been a hit with the participants, so big congrats to APC on that.  NCUC people played a number of roles and we did a successful outreach workshop that led to @ a half dozen attendees joining us on Constituency Day.  Glen's got some video clips of Wolfgang, Joy and myself up on the web and I presume we will be getting more of this material posted at http://www.ncuc.org/events/past-conferences-and-workshops/.

We held our first formal Exec. Committee meeting and agreed to make this a standard practice at the ICANN meetings, plus 1 (our bylaws call for four per year, but this hasn't been the habit).  Despite some delays associated with getting the remote participation working, we got a start into dealing with some important organizational management and planning issues, which inter alia meant that the time we needed to spend going over these with the wider membership during Constituency Day was reduced. Tapani kindly offered to serve as Secretary for the meeting and took some minutes which I assume will be posted to the website soon.  We'll do a follow up virtual meeting, probably in early September, in hopes of kick starting work on revision of our bylaws.

Constituency Day went well and I was please to count about 40 people in the room of whom about half were African.  I'd spoken earlier to the ICANN Fellows program and a number of folks came along thereafter, so while we we short on "usual suspects" we had vibrant discussions nonetheless.  Wilson and Tapani led a tour of our new website.  Anriette Esterhuysen of APC led a segment on African perspectives on IG, and I would like to propose that we make this kind of regional perspectives segment a standard part of our CD programs going forward.  It may at times be challenging to get local folks willing to lead focused discussions etc, but I think it's worth a try in Buenos Aires and beyond.  We also had a good visit with the ATRT 2 team, and with two vice chairs of the GAC, who were very open to holding broader, further conversations.  If we can get our act together to formulate a solid agenda of questions to press and come ready to really engage, I will explore with the GAC chair the possibility of a full scale NCUC + GAC meeting in BA.  Their schedules fill fast so we will need to do a quick reality check sooner than later on whether we'd be prepared to leverage the opportunity appropriately, or should instead wait to Singapore.

The Workshop on the Closed Generic Top Level Domains Debate was very well attended and lively, and we got a lot of good feedback from participants (including board members) and others who'd heard about it.  Based on our past policy conferences and our workshops in Beijing and Durban, I received a number of suggestions that NCUC should continue to organize debates where weary ICANN attendees can think a little outside their boxes and silos.  In Buenos Aires we'll probably do a workshop, perhaps on human rights aspects.  I am also told that the various budget applications I submitted should be approved soon, meaning inter alia we'll have a day long policy conference in Singapore.  More on this later. 

The transcript and recording of CD are at http://durban47.icann.org/node/39681, and the transcript and recording of the workshop are at http://durban47.icann.org/node/39643.  We will try to get these onto the new website down the line.

And yes, as Wolfgang notes, we had good dialogue and cooperation with NPOC, ALAC, and the Board.  Moreover, as Robin noted on ncsg-discuss, the NCSG meetings all well went well too, and identified action items and initiatives to take forward.  I thought the NCSG-Board meeting was particularly interesting, in that Boardies seemed to be in violent agreement with my argument that civil society is too fragmented and tied down with building silos to be able to contribute as much as it'd like to substantive policy discussions.  So while we probably have to go through the bylaws revision exercise, it's also worth keeping in mind that some wider restructuring in the future is not inconceivable.  Whether we think in terms of a CS 'sector' or something else, the need for greater coordination across ICANN does seem to be on the table now.

Best,

Bill

On Jul 22, 2013, at 12:01 PM, "Kleinwächter, Wolfgang" <wolfgang.kleinwaechter at medienkomm.uni-halle.de> wrote:

> Hi everybody
> 
> back home after a long journey I want to thank all NCUCrs for the great collaboration in Durban. It was one of the most succesful NCUC participation in an ICANN meeting. Here are some of my key observations:
> 
> 1. NCUC had very good meetings with Board members, the two Co-Chairs of the GAC (for the first time) and members of ATRT 2 as well es EWG where we raised key issues, in particular Privacy, Freedom of Expression Competition, Policy vs. Implementation and the gaps in ICANNs practice of the multistakeholder model. We had very clear positions, inter alia to RAA (unified support for Article 29 WP letter), IGO/INGO WG, TMCH 50+  and Safeguards in new gTLD program. Our councillors made very constructive contributions with clear statements both during the two GNSO days and in the GNSO Council meeting. My impression is that the collaborative climate in the council with CSG and the Contracting House has improved. Good diplomacy! However, we still see that we get veryx often "verbal support" in the discussions which then is totally ignored if it comes to concrete decisions. We have flagged this and have it flagged again and again.  
> 
> 2. We had a very good constituency meeting. Brochure, Website, facts and figures made its way into the broader community and we are more visible than ever. Thanks Bill, Tapani and others for the hard day to day work. Probably the brochure is not only good for outreach but also for inreach. I had a discussion with Bruce Tonkin and he had no knowledge that NCUC has so many members. For him NCUC was a small group of some (critical) intellectuals. He was surprised that times have changed. And I am sure that a lot of other board members, ICANN staff and leaders are still have their outdated stereotypes ;-((((
> 
> 3. The relationship with NPOC has substantially improved. In our joint meetings as NCSG we had unified positions. Marie Laure was a excellent proxy in the Council, This harmony came for some outsiders as a surprise and my impression was, that some people would have preferred to see more controversy in infighting within the NCSG, which fortunately did not take place. Unfortunately Alain was not in Durban. He is struggling with his illness and we all wished him well. 
> 
> 4. There was no formal discussion of the I*Plus Alliance project of NPOC members with NCUC but my impression was that the I*organisations themselves are rather sceptical. The idea is not bad, but the project looks very general and could be done probably by the I*organisations themselves better. It needs much more work to do if something should come our of this. In my eyes too late for Bali. And we could have better things on the agenda for BA.
> 
> 5. The meeting with ALAC was quite good. Based on a critical comment from the consultations with the two GAC Vice Chairs ("as governments we are sometimes confused if we try to find out who represents civil society in ICANN") an idea emerged in Durban to think about the establishment of a "Civil Society Sector" within a reformed ICANN structure. Such a "Civil Society Sector" would allow the various CS bodies within ICANN (NCSG/NCUC, ALAC/RALOS, new emerging community based gTLD constituencies and others) to coordinate their positions to  speak with one voice to the Board and the GAC. Such a sector (with a CS Coordination Committee/CSCC) could emerge on the "Road to London" where in June 2014 the second Internet Users Summit (ATLAS II) will take place. ALACs chair Olivier was very open to this project. We should continue the discussion in Bali and BA and be more active in the ATLAS WGs.
> 
> 6. The planned CEO Round Table with CS leaders, orginally scheduled for end of June 2013, was again the subject of consultations with ICANN staff. The new idea is to have it in January 2014, probably in Istanbul. The meeting needs much more detailed preparations. And it should be integrated into the planning fo the "Road to London". It should be also linked to the work of the new five committees Fad has launched. NCUC has a lot of intellectual capacity to work closely with the new "Group of the Five". Another challenge with good opportunties for NCUC. 
> 
> 7. The African School on Internet Governance was seen as a great success in the whole ICANN community and NCUCs role was very recognized. This is an avenue where we can get a lot of more credits when we continue this (probably in Singapore next year for Asia). Similar succesful was the workshop on closed generics. Great!     
> 
> Best wishes
> 
> wolfgang
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**********************************************************
William J. Drake
International Fellow & Lecturer
  Media Change & Innovation Division, IPMZ
  University of Zurich, Switzerland
Chair, Noncommercial Users Constituency, 
  ICANN, www.ncuc.org
william.drake at uzh.ch (w), wjdrake at gmail.com (h),
  www.williamdrake.org
***********************************************************

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