[NCUC-DISCUSS] Candidate Statement

[Benjamin Akinmoyeje]

Dear NCUC members,
Kindly see my candidate statement below:


Name: Benjamin Akinmoyeje

Declared region of residence: Africa

Gender: Male

Employment: Ph.D. Research Student

Any conflicts of interest: None

Questions:

 Why do you want to serve on the EC?   I want to continue to serve on the
EC because I want to help promote the voice of the non-commercial
constituency and advance the cause of the group. I also want to help
enhance our visibility especially as the current period requires new means
of engagement. I want to help reboot the community presence in ICANN.

I look forward to continuing to help our community to grow in technical
capacity, and to  contribute to the PDPs. I am also working on finding
alternative sources of support for the community to help make our empowered
participation sustainable.

Provide a brief biography of recent experience, associations, and
affiliations relevant to serving on the Executive Committee. Describe the
relevance of your personal and professional experience to serve on the NCUC
Executive Committee, and identify any conflicts of interests you might have.
Currently, a Ph.D. student of Informatics, at the Faculty of Computing and
Informatics, Namibia University of Science and Technology, conducting
academic research in the area of social media excessive use among young
adults and social media platform governance, I am part of HR CCWP, I am an
Article19 Internet of Rights Fellow and currently NCUC chair, I was able to
initiate NCUC members call and it led to some positive engagements. I have
managed to improve NCUC engagements in ICANN postCOVID19, I am working on
revamping our website in collaboration with the ECs. I also engaged the
NCSG e-Team.

The EC performs several functional responsibilities for the Constituency.
What level of time commitment can you bring to your EC role on a weekly and
overall basis? Describe any concerns or limitations on your ability to
attend online meetings of the Executive Committee and ICANN Meetings in
person. The EC performs several functional responsibilities for the
Constituency. What level of time commitment can you bring to your EC role
on a weekly and overall basis? Describe any concerns or limitations on your
ability to attend online meetings of the Executive Committee and ICANN
Meetings in person.

As a research student, I have the privilege of time to participate actively
in the ICANN process for up to 10 hours weekly to attend ICANN online
meetings. A possible area of concern may be the occasional need for quality
internet access at meeting hours while I am at home.

Communication with the membership is critical. How would you keep members
apprised of your EC-related activities? As the chair and having seen
previous ways past chairs have  communicated with the community, I hope to
emulate their communication style of always keeping members in the loop and
also try to improve on it by actively engaging other platforms that
technology has provided.

Such as social media platforms like Whatsapp and Twitter. As a chair, the
monthly EC meetings will continue to  and also devise quarterly calls or
virtual town hall meetings for NCUC members.

We are working on rebuilding our website, it will be ready in a few weeks.

How do you foresee NCUC’s function, scale, or role changing in the future?
What areas of ICANN policy, if any, need more attention and why? Incumbent
candidates should answer in a manner that is both backward and
forward-looking, i.e. taking note of their contributions and work in the
previous year.

The New gTLD Subpro is the trending policy issue as well as the legitimacy
of the Multistakeholderism, both topics require more participation of the
civil society and NCUC is well positioned to keep championing these causes
and I hope to keep driving the engagement and representation of the
community within ICANN and outside ICANN.

In the past NCUC's functions in the future will only expand as the need for
protection of the non-commercial individual users of DNS increases, as we
begin to see ICANN being drawn to issues such as content moderation, and
the EPDP phase 2 , use of AI, free speech (freedom of expression online)
and the challenges of digital rights/ Human Rights.There may be a need for
NCUC to consolidate with other SGs with similar  interests to push a common
agenda. In the phase of multiple regulatory laws, and ICANN needs to
continue to function, we must continue to voice the non-commercial
perspective and the policies that I can develop. More than ever before
individual rights to privacy and data protection have been challenged in
DNS space, the situation calls for NCUC to be alert to ensure ICANN
policies are sensitive to these realities.


Kind regards,

Benjamin Akinmoyeje
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