[NCUC-DISCUSS] Candidate statement - Raoul Plommer

[Raoul Plommer]

Raoul Plommer, Europe, male and free as in unemployed;
I have no conflicts of interest in working with the NCUC..

Hi, my name is Raoul and I'm too honest for my own good.

I've been a member of NCUC for approximately one year now and I have to say
that I'm very pleased to have joined.

First and foremost, It has given me an opportunity to expand my network of
people, who fight globally for the same issues as I have done, as a member
of the Pirate party, Electronic Frontier Finland and lately Open Knowledge
International.

I woke up politically in 2008, because of internet censorship in Finland. I
realised that our government is willingly giving away our hard earned
rights and nobody was fighting it visibly. I decided to become a part of
resistance that is focused on hanging on to our rights, on-and-offline.

No parliamentary party was arguing against censorship and the Finnish
Pirate Party was found a few months after they started using the blocklist
in February. Naturally, we copied most of our platform from the Swedish
Pirate Party, and were formed to reform laws regarding copyright and
patents, to strengthen the individual's right to privacy and freedom of
speech and the transparency of governance.

Sound familiar? Vote for a pirate!

We are a political movement to disperse power through free information and
open governance,  and we believe that people with an access to free
communication, culture and knowledge grow and create a more enjoyable and
humane society for everyone to live in. I'd say we are anarchists that
believe in change through parliamentarism, so not quite the usual suspects.

I am telling you this, because this is pretty much all I do these days.
Being a pirate and fighting for human rights makes me happier than anything
I've ever done in my life. That is why I am in the NCUC. Why else would one
be here?

I would be highly motivated to excel at my work, was I chosen to become a
member of this Executive Committee. Alas, my academic achievements are
probably the least impressive of all the people in ICANN, but I'm not going
to let that stop me, or even be belittled for it. I have been working to
defend these rights and study them at my own discretion and I have drive
that academia can't give you. It's made of conviction and fire. I am
willing to work tens of hours per month for this position and I will use
some of them, to empower all of us.

In the years I've been actually paid for what I do, I've been an
accountant, financial analyst, executive secretary or in some other
administrative role, so I've been proven to cope with mundane things, too.
Lately, I've started designing websites, sold a few and hopefully will
eventually be able to get and income from that, based anywhere in the
world, with a flexible schedule, to have more freedom for the things I
love. But that stage is still some years away.

I feel that I have a different perspective to most other people in the NCUC
and I think I could provide some useful insights on making our work more
easily approachable as well as making outside people in our networks more
aware of what ICANN does and how it affects the whole internet. I excel in
putting things in layman's terms, but ICANN is a tough nut to crack. I will
need our community's help in doing it.

To my positive surprise, ICANN published an initiative
<https://www.icann.org/news/blog/icann-kicks-off-open-data-initiative-pilot>
for Open Data while we were in Hyderabad and that will get OKI more
interested in joining our work
<http://blog.okfn.org/2016/08/19/opinion-piece-why-open-knowledge-international-should-join-icann/>.
There are a lot of people and chapters around the world working to advance
Open Knowledge and I think their expertise in opening data, would be
invaluable to the NCSG. They would also be able to join ICANN meetings
relatively easy, for the global nature of their network
<https://okfn.org/network/>. I will follow this up persistently in any case.

I'm planning to introduce some new tools for our members' use, that will
make it easier for our whole community to know what's going on and what
work needs to get done. Such tools could include Slack, Trello and Hackpad
and I would also like to apply the NCUC to become a member of TechSoup,
that gives licenses to non-commercial entities for free. This would improve
our members' capability to work elsewhere, too.

In my eyes, the NCUC does not have even close to it's fair share of the
hierarchical power structure within ICANN. A great example of this is our
single seat at the Nominating Committee, which wheels a great deal of power
in selecting the leaders of the ICANN community, such as seats on the Board
and the GNSO. I am set to do something about this deplorable situation and
I have already been discussing this with some members of the board as well
as other stakeholder groups' leaders even though they must be wondering
"who the hell is this guy?" So far, I feel really quite optimistic after
the reactions I've had. I'd say more than half of the people weren't even
aware of our tiny share (1/7) and I will keep pushing another seat for the
NCSG until it's ours.

I have the two most accessible passports in the world, the British and the
Finnish, and they each give you access to 176 countries without a visa and
I love travelling. I am broke as a joke but not in debt and I will earn my
future travel funding through hard work. This much I can promise. You just
need to give me this final nudge as validation.

-Raoul
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