[NCUC-DISCUSS] Friday 20 June Pre-event in London with non-ICANN civil society

[William Drake]

Hello

Hi

Just a quick note to follow up on the message I rushed off to the list the other day as a “save the date.”  The below text was obviously written as an outreach mechanism to non-ICANN civil society organizations and individuals, the idea being to encourage people to come over for a bit of dialogue and info sharing and, should they get intrigued, to facilitate their meeting attendance and subsequent engagement in ICANN.  We thought we had to do Friday if we wanted to entice people who were not otherwise planning on attending to come over for a peek and an end-of-workweek drink.  This isn’t entirely convenient for those of us who are flying in that day, but hopefully enough members will be able to attend to make it work.  In addition, Jean-Jacques has secured a room for us late Saturday afternoon, so that members who can’t do Friday or who simply would like to continue the conversation about advancing CS engagement can gather to chat then as well.  More details on this when the overall meeting schedule starts to get clear.

For the Friday meeting, we would like to have some members play conversation facilitating roles on the individual program topics listed below, and will be in touch with them on that once the shape of our participation gets clearer.  If you can make it to the meeting please do RSVP to  jean-jacques.sahel at icann.org so we know who we’ll have from inside ICANN.

In addition, if anyone has contacts with civil society organizations and individuals who are not involved in ICANN but might be interested in sniffing around and seeing what this is about, e.g. folks involved in Internet-related human rights, privacy protection, freedom of expression, access to knowledge, development, etc. issues, please do shoot Jean-Jacques and I a note and we’ll conspire on getting invitations sent.  One tends to think that people based in the UK are the most likely to make the effort, but it might be that there are others in Europe or beyond who were thinking of maybe checking out the ICANN meeting and this would provide sufficient additional incentive, you never know...The room holds about fifty, and ideally we’d like to have at least a couple dozen non-ICANN CS people with us.

Thanks much

Bill


On May 26, 2014, at 4:14 PM, William Drake <wjdrake at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hello,
> 
> The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) will hold its 50th public meeting at the Hilton London Metropole Hotel, 225 Edgware Road, on 22 - 26 June 2014.  We are writing to invite you to participate in a pre-event to be held at the meeting site on Friday 20 June from 16:30-19:00. 
> 
> The workshop, Civil Society in ICANN and Internet Governance, will provide an opportunity for open and vigorous dialogue between public interest advocates who are active both within and outside the ICANN community.  From within ICANN will be members of the Noncommercial Users Constituency www.ncuc.org , which for over a decade has been the voice of civil society in ICANN’s policy processes on generic top level domain names and related matters (see attached flyer).  From outside the ICANN community we hope to have participants from advocacy and research organizations based in the UK and beyond who are involved in human rights, privacy protection, freedom of expression, access to knowledge, development, and related issues.
> 
> The agenda would be to discuss items such as:
> 
> ·       The role of ICANN in the rapidly changing Internet governance ecosystem;
> ·       ICANN’s current drive to become a more globalized organization;
> ·       The importance of ICANN’s policies for public interest advocates working on diverse Internet issues;
> ·       How civil society works within ICANN’s structures, and how interested actors can get involved;
> ·       Brief overview of the ICANN meeting week, highlights of key debates.
> 
> The workshop will from 16:30-18:15, and be followed by a networking reception from 18:15-19:00.  A more detailed agenda will be shared closer to the date.  If you would like to join us, please confirm your attendance via email to Mr. Jean-Jacques Sahel < jean-jacques.sahel at icann.org>.
> 
> Finally, also please note that participation in the ICANN meeting itself is free of charge and open to the public, and that newcomers are heartily welcomed to attend.  The 50th meeting will be a particularly important one, with governments organizing a High Level policy event on Monday 23rd, civil society and other groups holding Constituency Day meetings on Tuesday 24th, and a wide range of workshops and plenary discussions on ICANN globalization and other pressing issues occurring on Wednesday 25th and Thursday 26th.  The evolving agenda and registration are available at http://meetings.icann.org/icann50.
> 
> Thank you for considering this invitation, we look forward to hearing from you.
> 
>                                                                                    Best
> 
> 
> William J. Drake
> University of Zurich & Chair,
> the Noncommercial Users Constituency
> 
> Jean-Jacques Sahel
> Vice President of Stakeholder Engagement for Europe, ICANN
> 
> 
> 
> 
> ***********************************************
> 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 (direct), wjdrake at gmail.com (lists),
>  www.williamdrake.org
> ***********************************************
>