[NCUC-DISCUSS] Leadership roles in NCUC and NCSG
Tomslin Samme-Nlar
mesumbeslin at gmail.com
Wed May 15 02:05:48 CEST 2024
Hi all,
Pedro, I see your message only made it to the NCUC mailing list, however I
believe it is very relevant to NCSG as well, so I have copied the NCSG list.
You hit the nail on the head, Pedro. You point out 3 things that I want to
draw attention to and add some quick unstructured thoughts, with the hope
that working on them will see a future where NCSG has a large pool of folks
actively participating, not only during elections but all through the years.
1. Closing participation gap between longer-serving and newer members
(lowering the entry barrier) -
In my years here, I have seen various genuine efforts and attempts by both
leadership and longer serving members to help lower that barrier (what you
call "initial engagement curve"). In fact, as we speak, Kathy Kleiman
(bless her) runs an informal mentorship program for anyone, but especially
young ones interested in diving deep into policy work for NCSG in the areas
she has expertise in, while also guiding to the best of her ability those
interested in the areas where she has no expertise in. While many past
formal mentorship/shadowing programs could not be sustained multi-year,
they were certainly successful for the period they ran and to the few
newcomers who participated and chose to follow up with significant personal
effort to grow. It is easy to identify what challenges make such programs
not to be sustained. Time is certainly one major one. In addition, ICANN
now has the policy engagement program for new commercial which if well
taken advantaged of, the barrier is also dropped.
In terms of solutions, if (a) some smart people in here could come up with
a very light-touch way to do the formal mentorship, that might be very
helpful in addressing sustainability. (b) Newcomers who participate in the
ICANN policy engagement program or any mentorship should take ownership of
their own growth in participation within the SG/C. Take risks, ask
questions, fail fast and learn.
2. Accountability -
Like Julf mentioned, we've ideated alot about this in the last year. Simple
performance metrics like attendance, contribution to discussions, topic
leadership, membership updates, chairing, etc should be adopted in some
form of a very light touch individual scorecard shared routinely that
members can use to assess whether nominated candidates are good ones or
whether they should be asked to step down.
3. Reward/Compensation -
Accept it or not, NCSG and her Cs are an under-to-no-funded civil society
community. In my opinion, what this means is that newer members still
developing trust and peer recognition find themselves working hard with no
reward or compensation in sight for months, if not years. This is also a
major cause to our small pool of working volunteers. Unfortunately, this
situation also manifests itself often during appointments and elections
where we see folks trying to take short-cuts into elected or appointed
positions without being active all year round contributing to any policy
work nor even being recognised by their peers in NCSG. They attempt to use
some other means other than proof-of-work to get elected/appointed in order
to enjoy the compensation given by ICANN.
NCSG members have to accept these realities and work with it.
Warmly,
Tomslin
On Wed, 15 May 2024, 06:47 Pedro de Perdigão Lana, <
pedrodeperdigaolana at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> My two cents here.
>
> In the (very few) years that I have been part of this community, it has
> seemed to me that there is a great difficulty in overcoming the initial
> engagement curve. It appears that just a few people are interested in
> engaging in depth if there is no immediate return for their time and
> dedication. Since slots for this kind of "compensation" are limited, and it
> is hard to argue against the idea that one needs to understand the
> ecosystem at least a bit before assuming a leadership role, the result is
> that we do not have a large pool of people outside these circles with that
> high level of dedication to NCSG/NCUC/NPOC's mission that is necessary in
> order to pursue the enormous learning curve needed to be able to act more
> effectively within ICANN (while also following up closely if this
> dedication does not fade after the person has been elected, and, as Julf
> mentioned, implementing mechanisms to hold representatives accountable).
>
> Maybe we can move towards closing this gap with more capacity-building and
> leadership-forming programs, developing a solid plan on how to attract good
> people from NextGen/Fellowships programs, etc. Something to keep talking
> about, in this continuous process of trying to make our Stakeholder Group
> and Constituencies better each year that goes by 🙂
>
> Cordially,
>
> *Pedro de Perdigão Lana*
> Lawyer <https://www.nic.br/>, GEDAI/UFPR <https://www.gedai.com.br/>
> Researcher
> PhD Candidate (UFPR), LLM in Business Law (UCoimbra)
> Board Member @ CC Brasil <https://br.creativecommons.net/>, ISOC BR
> <https://isoc.org.br/> and IODA <https://ioda.org.br/>
> This message is restricted to the sender and recipient(s). If received by
> mistake, please reply informing it.
>
>
> Em ter., 14 de mai. de 2024 às 15:21, Johan Helsingius via Ncuc-discuss <
> ncuc-discuss at lists.ncuc.org> escreveu:
>
>> Thanks Remmy, you bring up a valid issue, but often our problem
>> isn't that there are too many candidates, but rather that there
>> aren't enough qualified volunteers.
>>
>> What we should also look at is monitoring our leadership and
>> representatives better, and holding them accountable. A first
>> step would be publishing attendance records, something we have
>> been discussing a lot, and that I did not want to introduce
>> too close to the elections as that could be seen as trying to
>> influence the elections.
>>
>> Julf
>>
>>
>> On 14/05/2024 20:10, Remmy Nweke wrote:
>> > Thanks Johan for this update perspective.
>> > The charter limits tenure to two, but the point here is how do we
>> > checkmate people coming from retirement to seek the same office again.
>> > Maybe its high time to get a nomination committee before our elections.
>> > This election is given, but for the future exercise and improvement on
>> > our mentorship programme.
>> > ___________________
>> > REMMY NWEKE, /mNUJ, mNGE, mGOCOP/
>> > Lead Consulting Strategist/Group Executive Editor,
>> > *ITREALMS Media* group [/Multiple-award winning medium/]
>> > (ITREALMS <http://www.itrealms.com.ng/>, DigitalSENSE Business
>> Magazine
>> > <http://www.digitalsenseafrica.com.ng/businessnews>; NaijaAgroNet
>> > <http://www.naijaagronet.com.ng/>)
>> > No. 36 Afariogun Street, Oshodi-Lagos
>> > M: 234-8033592762, 8023122558, T: @ITRealms
>> > <http://www.twitter.com/ITRealms>
>> > @DigitalSENSEng
>> > 2023 *Nigeria DigitalSENSE Forum on IG4D*, Thursday June 8
>> > <https://www.itrealms.com.ng/>
>> > 2023 *ITREALMS* e-Waste Dialogue, Thursday December 7
>> > <https://www.itrealms.com.ng/>
>> > @Welcome Center Hotels, Int'l Airport Road, Lagos-Nigeria
>> > <http://welcomecentrehotels.com/>
>> > Former Vice President, African Civil Society on Information Society
>> (ACSIS)
>> > ______________________________________________________________
>> > *Confidentiality Notice:* The information in this document and
>> attachments
>> > are confidential and may also be privileged information. It is intended
>> > only for the use of the named recipient. Remmy Nweke does not accept
>> legal
>> > responsibility for the contents of this e-mail. If you are not the
>> intended
>> > recipient, please notify me immediately, then delete this document and
>> do
>> > not disclose the contents of this document to any other person, nor make
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>> >
>> >
>> > On Tue, May 14, 2024 at 6:52 PM Johan Helsingius via Ncuc-discuss
>> > <ncuc-discuss at lists.ncuc.org <mailto:ncuc-discuss at lists.ncuc.org>>
>> wrote:
>> >
>> > On 14/05/2024 19:44, Remmy Nweke wrote:
>> >
>> > > This observation is well in order but the problem is with the
>> NCSG
>> > > Charter which has no limitation on tenure.
>> >
>> > "The NCSG Chair is elected by the general NCSG membership for a
>> > one-year term and is limited to two consecutive terms."
>> >
>> > "GNSO Council Representatives are subject to terms limits as
>> specified
>> > in Article X, Section 3 of the Bylaws and the GNSO Operating
>> > Procedures
>> > (GOP)."
>> >
>> > From the GOP Article 11 Section 3 (b):
>> > "Except in a "special circumstance," such as, but not limited to,
>> > meeting geographic or other diversity requirements defined in the
>> > Stakeholder Group charters, where no alternative representative
>> is
>> > available to serve, no Council member may be selected to serve
>> more
>> > than two consecutive terms, in such a special circumstance a
>> Council
>> > member may serve one additional term."
>> >
>> > Julf
>> > _______________________________________________
>> > Ncuc-discuss mailing list
>> > Ncuc-discuss at lists.ncuc.org <mailto:Ncuc-discuss at lists.ncuc.org>
>> > https://lists.ncuc.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/ncuc-discuss
>> > <https://lists.ncuc.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/ncuc-discuss>
>> >
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