[NCUC-DISCUSS] Membership engagement thread
Stephanie Perrin
stephanie.perrin at mail.utoronto.ca
Sun Nov 16 15:25:21 CET 2014
I would just like to add a big thanks to Bill for writing this email,
and to all for their enthusiasm. I will admit that I am already
struggling to meet my commitments on the GNSO, the two working groups I
am on , and the privacy and human rights commitments I have made, so
adding another list is a wee bit suicidal. But I too agree that it is
critical that folks collaborate as much as possible and get help
figuring out how to make a contribution
Thanks again Bill, working my way through the archives and other
information gradually.
Cheers Stephanie
On 14-11-16 4:47 AM, William Drake wrote:
> Hi
>
> [snipping]
>
>> On Nov 14, 2014, at 10:53 PM, Walid AL-SAQAF <wsaqaf at GMAIL.COM
>> <mailto:wsaqaf at GMAIL.COM>> wrote:
>>
>> Thanks for the frank email, which I found really well-thought and
>> sums up some of what I had personally gone through when I first
>> joined about couple of years ago. It also reflects on your sincere
>> desire to address issues that often go unnoticed yet are fundamental
>> to the long-term effectiveness of our constituency.
>>
> From my standpoint, it's not so much that they've gone unnoticed---I
> at least have sent multiple messages about this to the various lists
> over the past few years and, as I have noted, tried to get EC and
> regular members to work together in teams to address them. Rather,
> the problem has been that enthusiasm for doing something is bursty,
> and gets expressed but not sustained; people offer to lead or
> participate in collaborative efforts and then...sort of drift off.
> Understandable, people get busy, and actually volunteering time can
> slip down one's priorities list when other things in life become
> pressing. But to get forward movement, we need at least a couple core
> people who are willing to do things like coordinate a team (a couple
> hours a week at most) and a larger set that's interested enough to
> participate in e-discussions and pitch in as able. Mancur Olsen's
> 1965 book on the logic of collective action provides a plausible way
> of understanding this.
>>
>> While I think the situation needs to be analyzed more thoroughly, I
>> suggest that you host a virtual Skype chat with some relatively new
>> NCUC members who are eager to participate but have not yet been able
>> to crack the ICANN code.
>>
> We already have a monthly NCSG policy meeting on Adobe Connect that
> provides an easy way for people to begin cracking the code on how the
> policy process works, and I was happy to see 20 people on the call the
> other day. I'd strongly suggest making time for these. We could in
> addition do Adobe meetings at the constituency level on the
> in-reach/engagement challenges if people want. I don't know ex ante
> if these would need to be as frequent, but if the desire emerges and
> is sustained that could happen.
>>
>> What I suggest is to write and keep updated a wiki about NCUC with
>> all the necessary information formulated in a simple and easy to
>> understand way. It should also include updated sections on specific
>> working groups including who is working and what and timelines, etc.
>> and links to discussions that are going on and even videos and other
>> stuff when possible.
>>
> This is a nice idea, but we need people who are willing to actually do
> it, rather than say "someone" should do it. We are a platform/network
> for volunteers, not an organization with a bunch of paid staff, so
> people have to step forward and collaborate to make it happen.
>>
>> Secondly, I suggest developing an electronic form (Google form
>> perhaps) to be filled by every new NCUC member and those who are
>> still trying to have a role. The survey should be simple yet
>> comperhensive enough to know:
>>
>> 1) How well does the member know about NCUC and ICANN
>> 2) What motivated him/her to join NCUC
>> 3) Which areas or working groups already active within NCSG (to be
>> listed and linked to their corresponding sections in the wiki) are
>> most appealing to him/her
>> 4) What particular new ideas or initiatives could the new member
>> bring to NCUC
>> 5) How much time (in hours per week/month) could he put in voluntary
>> work to support NCUC within the areas answered in (3) above
>> 6) Whether he/she would need mentorship or could suffice with the
>> introductory meeting and documentation
>> 7) Any other thoughts about engagement in NCUC
>>
> Ditto
>>
>> I welcome your comments about the above and I sincerely hope that
>> this could be a turning point to the better for NCUC's engagement
>> efforts.
>>
> Well, my first comment would be to suggest that you sign up for the
> Membership Affairs Team, as I see this morning that Stephanie Perrin
> has done. If you were willing to deploy some the ideas and enthusiasm
> shown here to coordinating it, that would be even better :-) [be
> careful what you wish for] I think it's helpful (although not
> strictly necessary) if EC members serve as coordinators to ensure
> three-way info flow (EC, teams, general membership), and unless
> another AP candidate appears today, you should be on the 2015 EC :-)
>
>> On Nov 15, 2014, at 2:16 PM, Benjamin Akinmoyeje <benakin at gmail.com
>> <mailto:benakin at gmail.com>> wrote:
>>
>> So here is my suggestion - can the active participants start
>> identifying interested newbies and start given out simple tasks with
>> deliverable dates and allow individuals to start earning reputation
>> for their level of willing engagement.
>
> I don't know how easy this model would be to act on, as the most
> active participants are really busy with working groups and other
> responsibilities, and also may not have any idea how to identify
> interested newbies. I would again suggest that the latter be
> proactive themselves by joining the Membership Affairs team and
> discussing possibilities with people who have chosen to opt into the
> work there. I'm a member.
>>
>> Now on a personal note, thank you Bill, I will join those lists and
>> start trying to read up and understand some of these issues - I
>> always like to be constructive in my contributions. I hope by the
>> time I understand the issues , the present issues wont have advanced.
>
> Your contributions have been very constructive indeed, thank you.
>
> Best
>
> Bill
>
>> Sincerely,
>>
>> Walid
>>
>> On Nov 14, 2014 4:21 PM, "William Drake" <wjdrake at gmail.com
>> <mailto:wjdrake at gmail.com>> wrote:
>>
>> Hi
>>
>> /Another long message alert/
>>
>> As I work my way through a backlog of communications I'd now like
>> to respond to the thread begun by Benjamin under the NCUC
>> ELECTIONS 2014: NOMINATIONS OPEN 3 - 16 November heading.
>>
>> The entire ICANN community has long struggled to entice "new
>> blood" into active *working* participation in its activities (as
>> opposed to just showing up at meetings when funded etc). As a
>> first step, we have often focused on outreach to potential new
>> participants, especially in developing countries. When I was on
>> the GNSO Council 2009-2112, Rafik, myself and a few others pushed
>> a lot on this with business counterparts and the board, and often
>> got fairly blank stares in return. A number of people worked on
>> developing a cross-community Outreach Committee to coordinate
>> efforts, but the Commercial Stakeholder Group killed that. Then
>> when Fadi came in he hired all kinds of Stakeholder Engagement
>> staff including regional VPs, and they sort of took over a lot of
>> the outreach work on a fairly top-down basis (they even have
>> regional strategic plans,
>> https://community.icann.org/display/gsergnlstrtgcplns/Regional+Strategic+Plans-Final).
>> But some useful things have begun to happen, such as targeted
>> "what to expect" webinars before meetings (NC did one), targeted
>> in situ gatherings during the meetings (NCUC's co-organized two
>> with local civil society, open to all in the SG), etc. These are
>> in addition to the well known Fellows Program that will pay for
>> developing country folks to come to up to three ICANN meetings.
>> https://www.icann.org/resources/pages/fellowships-2012-02-25-en
>> While that program has tended to focus on steering people toward
>> the At Large community, the three NC chairs do speak to them at
>> each meeting and a number of people have joined afterwards. In
>> sum, I think outreach is working much less well than it should
>> be, but at least it's a known problem that's getting resources
>> now and there are processes in place to build out. And as our
>> membership creeps toward the 400 mark, we can't really complain
>> that NCUC is not growing.
>>
>> The flip-side of the coin, "in-reach," arguably has received less
>> focused attention. Often ICANN succeeds in getting people to join
>> some community grouping like a GNSO constituency where they may
>> take part in mail list discussions and elections and even attend
>> a meeting or two when funded, but they don't easily find their
>> way through the massive amounts of information and procedural
>> complexities of the ICANNsphere and latch onto something that
>> entices them into a deeper, working engagement. It is especially
>> tough for newbies, who can face a steep learning curve (and
>> that's all of us---I worked on Internet governance stuff for a
>> decade in UN and other environments but when I got on the GNSO
>> Council it took me a half a year to figure out what was really
>> going on, which is hardly unusual). There are all kinds of
>> problems here: an information architecture that makes finding
>> things that'd be of particular interest unnecessarily difficult;
>> linguistic and organizational cultural challenges;
>> information/experience asymmetries; complex working methods; the
>> constant sense that you've walked into a conversation that's been
>> going on for five years and there's all kinds of embedded history
>> in the interactions that you can't immediately understand;
>> sometimes weak incentives and difficulties in connecting ICANN
>> issues with ones' own priorities; etc.
>>
>> When I first stood for election to chair two years I suggested
>> that NCUC create 'teams' bringing together EC members and regular
>> members to work on constituency-level organizational challenges.
>> http://lists.ncuc.org/pipermail/ncuc-discuss/2012-November/010875.html
>> Among these I suggested an outreach team and an in-reach team.
>> For various reasons, they never really attracted the sustained
>> coordination and engagement needed to take off, and were then
>> folded together into a 'Membership Affairs Team,' which suffered
>> more or less the same fate. But this team still exists, at least
>> on paper. There's even a dormant mail list
>> http://lists.ncuc.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/membership-affairs with
>> nine people subscribed to it.
>>
>> If people would like to take another shot at developing and
>> sustaining a conversation about ways to improve/facilitate member
>> engagement in NCUC/NCSG, a simple approach would be to join that
>> mail list and use it. If we want to talk about mentee
>> relationships or ways to make things more transparent to newbie
>> members or how to get people involved in actual policy
>> discussions including in GNSO working groups or anything else of
>> that kind, this is a ready-made place to do that. Just one
>> thought though: the most helpful sorts of interventions that are
>> likely to go somewhere are ones where someone says "I will work
>> with whomever on xyz". Comments about how an unnamed "someone"
>> should do something tend not to lead anywhere, especially if the
>> most plausible "someone" is already putting in a lot of volunteer
>> time doing other things. The only way to make such things work
>> is to broaden the pool of engagement, so that all the burden
>> doesn't fall on one or two sets of shoulders.
>>
>> On a related note, other things people can do in NCUC/NCSG, as
>> Tapani and Dan point out below, is to to look through what
>> already exists. We have a website that was constructed and is
>> maintained by the volunteer labor of colleagues; lots there to
>> look at, and opportunities to help update and grow it. And we
>> have open archive mail lists at the website NCUC
>> http://lists.ncuc.org/. NCSG does too, although they are a bit
>> more spread around, some being at Syracuse U and some at IP
>> Justice (I suppose it would make sense to have links to all those
>> at some central place, e.g.
>> https://community.icann.org/display/gnsononcomstake/NCSG+Email+Discussion+Archive)
>>
>> And, one can apply for some travel support when our new policy
>> goes into action next month. While ICANN has the best remote
>> participation facilities in the business, it does seem that the
>> members who end up getting more deeply involved are those who've
>> been able to physically attend a meeting or two and get the bug.
>>
>> A last point: there is currently a process underway where the
>> chairs of the SOs, ACs, SGs, and C's talk on the phone monthly to
>> take the collective temperature and brainstorm. I've reported on
>> this before, and the transcripts and recordings are at
>> https://community.icann.org/display/soaceabout/Event+Calendar. We
>> also have started meeting on the Fridays before ICANN meetings to
>> talk, and in LA decided to form some little subgroups to develop
>> agendas on problems we all think confront the whole community
>> with respect to participation etc. These will then be discussed
>> and worked on by the larger group of chairs and staff, details
>> TBD. Anyway, I'm working on "in-reach" with a couple other
>> chairs and the Global Engagement staff, and on our last call
>> proposed that we use a simple 2 x 2 matrix to crowdsource ideas
>> about the problem. The four boxes of the matrix will include on
>> one axis 1) barriers to fuller engagement and 2) possible
>> solutions, and on the other axis 3) general considerations
>> applicable across SOACSGCs, and 4) considerations that are
>> specific to particular SOACSGCs. So we're going to start filling
>> those in with the other chairs to see if we can move toward some
>> shared definition of problem and general/localized solutions.
>>
>> If anyone would like to provide some input from an NCUC
>> perspective that would be great, shoot me a note and I'll include
>> it in our discussion. To be more specific: if you have ideas
>> about particular barriers to engagement in NCUC/SG and possible
>> solutions to these, please do pass them along, either to me, or
>> by joining the Membership Affairs list mentioned above and
>> growing it there.
>>
>> Thanks,
>>
>> Bill
>>
>>> On Nov 8, 2014, at 4:04 PM, Benjamin Akinmoyeje
>>> <benakin at gmail.com <mailto:benakin at gmail.com>> wrote:
>>>
>>> Here is a suggestion I will like to see and I won't know if I am
>>> speaking the mind of the new members who will like to engage
>>> actively but just feel inadequate - is it possible to have a
>>> position on the EC that is more like an understudy position.
>>> This way there is an active political will to bringing on board
>>> new members.
>>
>>
>>> On Nov 8, 2014, at 8:40 PM, Seun Ojedeji <seun.ojedeji at gmail.com
>>> <mailto:seun.ojedeji at gmail.com>> wrote:
>>>
>>> I doubt mentees list (i presume mailing list) will make any much
>>> difference. The experience will happen where the action is;
>>
>>
>>>> On Nov 9, 2014, at 6:05 AM, Tapani Tarvainen
>>>> <ncuc at TAPANI.TARVAINEN.INFO
>>>> <mailto:ncuc at TAPANI.TARVAINEN.INFO>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Go to http://www.ncuc.org <http://www.ncuc.org/> and click
>>>> "Participate" and under it
>>>> "Mailing Lists", or go directly to http://lists.ncuc.org/.
>>>>
>>>> Almost all lists have public archives. The exception is Events,
>>>> which sometimes handles at least semi-confidential stuff.
>>>
>>
>>> On Nov 9, 2014, at 9:35 PM, Dan Krimm <dan at musicunbound.com
>>> <mailto:dan at musicunbound.com>> wrote:
>>>
>>> Great, so even someone like myself who's been around for a while
>>> (though
>>> admittedly with little time to participate substantively for
>>> several years)
>>> didn't know (or, and I don't browse the NCUC web site with any
>>> regularity.)
>>> Good to know these public archives exist! ;-)
>>>
>>> That suggests a hybrid idea:
>>>
>>> (1) We should suggest that any new member who wants to
>>> understand the
>>> workings of the special committees make a habit of looking at these
>>> archives regularly.
>>>
>>> (2) For those new members who want to discuss "orientation" matters
>>> without cluttering up the main list, perhaps there is still room for
>>> something similar to Stephanie's idea.
>>
>>
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