[NCUC-DISCUSS] Support for Raoul Plommer (Europe) and Renata Aquino Ribeiro (Latin America & Caribbean)

[Kathy Kleiman]

All,
I would like to express support for people who joined the NCUC with the 
energy and spirit I remember from the early days: Raoul Plommer (Europe) 
and Renata Aquino Ribeiro (Latin America & Caribbean). Both of them have 
brought a new wave of energy that I remember from the early days - 
jumping up to the microphone at the Public Forum, attending an array of 
sessions, mentoring Fellows and steering people to NCUC and increased 
involvement in ICANN.

I thank both of them for jumping into the NCUC -- and welcome their 
energies to ICANN and (hopefully) NCUC leadership.

Best, Kathy


On 11/18/2016 2:10 PM, Raoul Plommer wrote:
> 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
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Ncuc-discuss mailing list
> Ncuc-discuss at lists.ncuc.org
> http://lists.ncuc.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/ncuc-discuss

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.ncuc.org/pipermail/ncuc-discuss/attachments/20161120/1aa05a3b/attachment-0002.html>