[NCUC-EC] Teams & EC Churn

[William Drake]

Hi Ed

On Jun 9, 2013, at 2:41 PM, Edward Morris <edward.morris at alumni.usc.edu> wrote:

> Hi Bill,
> 
> I have no interest in getting involved in a pissing contest with each other, and I know you don't either. I hope you can accept the fact that Carlos and I came away from out little Beijing meeting with a certain understanding, things changed as opportunities arose that you reacted to in an effort to push things forward...you certainly did tell us what was happening. it may just be a question of leadership style. You once asked me where I came up with these people, when you mentioned the need for a brochure and I had two pending members who might be able to help us out.That wasn't an accident.  I set Buenos Aires as a goal, asked what I wanted to accomplish, targeted people I knew who could help me achieve my goals and  recruited them. I tend to set goals, create a strategy, implement the strategy. You're more of a fly by the seats of the pants type of guy.

I don't see much relation between that characterization and what I have done as chair; e.g. I laid out an agenda in the election season, ran on it, and then tried to get people help to implement it.   But no matter.

> You certainly have long range vision, the committee idea was nothing less, but you're pretty flexible and adaptable in ways I'm not. Both ways of doing things are not absolute, have various pluses and minuses, but create a certain tension when in concurrent operation.We see that here. What you may see as an opportunity, I may view as a diversion. Neither viewpoint is right or wrong, merely different perspectives of the same set of circumstances.
> 
> You have led with great energy, great passion, great integrity. No one should doubt that William Drake has done everything he could to make the NCUC a viable, energetic, exciting place to be. I greatly admire what you have tried to do and am very sad at the energy you've had to expend facing opposition that has no real reason for being. 
> 
> I can't pretend any more that I'm heading a Membership Affairs committee. There is no such committee.

The listserv for the Membership Team was launched 31 May and you are already declaring it dead? I'm on that team, told you I would support any efforts you made to lead it forward, and suggested a concrete and small, doable project to start with, one which up until yesterday you were saying you'd be happy to lead and guaranteed would get done.  But whatever.

> We tried InReach and Outreach, had some initial minimal interest, people made committments to do things, but not one person did what they promised me they would do.

Something I too am familiar with.  I guess one has to lead by example, put work in to push stuff along, and hope some folks will later choose to grab on and help lift. 

> We are all volunteers, we take what we can get, we move on. I tried to reboot things by combining the committees, I asked people what they would like to do and received one response. Sensing a failure of leadership I offered to step down as facilitator but no one seems to want to replace me. 
> 
> All of this reminds me of being a remote moderator at EuroDig last year. There was no one to moderate. "Ed, any questions from our remote participants?". "No, Wolf, no questions yet." No questions? There was no one remotely participating! We can pretend we have committees but we really don't, at least ones that function. Our vaunted EP committee is actually two guys doing their best with input from some really helpful members of the community. 
> 
> Please do not take this as a criticism.The committees were a fantastic idea, They should have worked. They didn't, but not from any lack of effort on your part. Now what?

Well…Wilson and Tapani are taking the website forward and there's been some bits of broader participation in the e-team, so I wouldn't write it off entirely.  And there was a very vibrant program team process leading to Beijing and the workshop.  There were initial glimmers of engagement in the Finance Team, but the lack of a coordinator soon drove it to ground.  For teams to work, they have to have coordinators who take ownership, work out a game plan, and pester colleagues as much as I pester the EC to either participate, grunt in assent, or at least accept the 'if nobody disagrees in xyz time frame we declare consensus' model of moving forward.  Even if team members are mostly silent, it opens up the work of the EC to at least passive transparency and participation, which isn't a bad thing, and if something starts to feel like it's moving, maybe some folks decide to jump in later.   So while the original notion of half dozen standing teams may have been more ambitious than what people were prepared to commit to, I'm not giving up entirely on the notion that we should have mechanisms to pull together folks willing to work on stuff.  May just need to be looser and more ad hoc most of the time.  What certainly does appear to be a non-starter is my original hope of replacing region-based EC slots with no particular responsibilities with function-based slots.  I guess we stay regional and see who's willing to do what depending on the mix of each team.

> One approach would be to try to create a more sustainable structure for the Constituency...Budgeting, travel, special projects...the things I want to get on the agenda for Durban. I'll try to get a list for you midweek. Do with it what you will.  I do have another idea, Bill, one that I hope you'll think seriously about...one that gives your plan and vision another chance:
> 
> Reboot the EC. If Norbert decides to step down, I would like to offer to do the same.

I don't see any reason to tie a solution to your situation to whatever Norbert decides.  

> This is a multiyear project, and I currently have no intention of returning for year two. I'll find other places I can contribute, I'm starting on a DT tomorrow for example, and you deserve people around you that you can count on being with you for the duration. If Norbert and I both step down you can reboot the entire project, take an 18 month view, and by replacing 2/5 of the EC,  bring in new blood, get people around you more in tune with your management style, get some excitement going and hopefully achieve everything you've set out to do. I want this to work. We need this to work. That it hasn't already doesn't mean with new impetus it can't. A reboot with new people in leadership roles...please consider. It just could be the thing that could work.

I appreciate your goodwill and offer, and I think it makes sense and we should act on it immediately rather than screw around drawing things out.  This way you'll be freed up entirely to work on your DT, hang with your SO, and all the other stuff you mentioned on the Membership Team list.  Plus, since you told me you didn't actually want to come to Durban and would get in and out as quickly as possible, and that you're not happy with the outreach event etc, I'd suggest we just make a clean break.

In light of your message, I shot Roy Balleste a note saying you were interested in stepping down and asked whether he's accept an interim replacement appointment as the NA rep on the EC.  I also asked if he'd be willing and able to come to Durban if we could get Constituency Travel to reallocate the resources.  His answer to both was a very enthusiastic yes!!  Which is great.  Having Roy sunny outlook, technical skills (he's going to do the policy data base for the new website) and demonstrated willingness to actually get stuff done on board would be hugely beneficial.  And meanwhile, you could reposition to a space where you're more comfortable in all senses.  Seems a win/win, no?

As you pointed out in a prior private message, the bylaws specify that 

When EC members or Council Representatives are deemed to resign due to nonparticipation as per sections C and D above, the Chair may appoint a temporary replacement provided that NCSG regional geographic diversity requirements are maintained. If the remaining term of the resigning EC representative(s) is greater than six (6) months, a new election shall be organized. 

Which is not quite the case, I guess when we last worked on these nobody was thinking about cases of resignation for reasons other than non participation, but whatever, the rest still holds.  So we could add Roy effective 16 June until 16 December, at which point the next election result kicks in.

If this is ok with you, I will send a note to the member list saying you've decided to refocus your efforts on NCUC policy work and are stepping down, with thanks for your service and looking forward to working with you in your new capacity etc. etc.  And write to Constituency Travel and say please please reallocate the Durban ticket.  Sound good?
> 
> Respectfully,

Ditto,

Bill
> 
> Ed
> 
> 
> 
> On Sun, Jun 9, 2013 at 10:09 AM, William Drake <william.drake at uzh.ch> wrote:
> Hi
> 
> I was just looking for something in Sent Mail and stumbled across this, thought I would share it with the EC list in light of the view expressed here last week that there'd not been enough consultation about the decision to not do a policy conference in Durban but instead partner with APC and do a smaller outreach thing.  A train of messages followed this one on different lists and bilaterally over the next two months.
> 
> 
> Begin forwarded message:
> 
>> From: William Drake <william.drake at uzh.ch>
>> Subject: [NCUC Finance] Budget Requests for Policy Conferences
>> Date: March 22, 2013 5:42:54 PM GMT+01:00
>> To: Finance Team NCUC <finance at lists.ncuc.org>
>> 
>> Update: we will not file a FTR for Durban
>> 
>> Begin forwarded message:
>> 
>>> From: William Drake <william.drake at uzh.ch>
>>> Subject: [NCUC Beijing conference] Budget Requests for Policy Conferences [URGENT]
>>> Date: March 22, 2013 12:56:48 PM GMT+01:00
>>> To: EC NCUC <ncuc-ec at lists.ncuc.org>, Program Team NCUC <beijing2013 at lists.ncuc.org>
>>> 
>>> Hi
>>> 
>>> While I hate conversations that spill across two listservs with only partially overlapping memberships, Fast Track Budget Requests are due today, and I would like input from the Program Team as well as the Exec. Comm.  Decisions have to be made and potentially implemented and this will take time, so  I would really appreciate any and all helpful inputs from anyone here. 
>>> 
>>> After the Toronto policy conference went well, some folks here got all enthused and started saying hey let's organize a conference at every ICANN meeting, NCUC's full of academics who organize meetings all the time and this will be our special market niche, ICANN staff loved the conference and wants us to do more, etc.  First stop was to be Beijing.  Mary and I expressed strong reservations about how easy it'd be to do this there, whether ICANN really would want to 'risk' its charm campaign for Chinese engagement by having the 'trouble makers' from NCUC organizing something where unpredictable types could make comments about FoE and such, etc.  But everyone else was psyched, so we shut up and rolled with it.  And so it turned out that ICANN in fact didn't want us to do this and would only give us two hours, the programming of which seems not to be progressing too rapidly.
>>> 
>>> But, I understood, staff were ok with us doing something in Durban, lights were green.  However, since I'm working on FT requests I thought hmm better be sure lights really are green and we don't need to do anything, so..
>>> 
>>> On Mar 22, 2013, at 8:07 AM, William Drake <william.drake at uzh.ch> wrote:
>>> 
>>>> On another note, I sent a message to Xavier yesterday just to check and be sure that ICANN support for a policy conf. In Durban is locked in (I'd understood the traffic to mean that when they shot us down in Beijing it was sweetened with 'but Durban is ok').  Uh, no.  He says no commitment of support was made and of course we have to submit a Fast Track request.  Glad I asked...Ay yi yi...
>>> 
>>> I'm now wondering about the wisdom of rushing out a request for a meeting in Durban.  I would like to suggest a different path, which is to hold off and try to do one serious policy conference per year at the Annual Meeting.  Buenos Aires is in November, so we'd be asking for support via the regular budget cycle (requests are due 19 April).  Some reasons:
>>> I don't believe the staff really thinks NCUC has some special market niche with conferences and panels, as lots of (preferred) parts of the 'community' are doing this now and will be in the future.  To me, it actually seems like they're in a rather different place, as evidenced by this terse reply from Xavier, "I am not aware that any approval for funding has been given by anyone for Durban or Buenos Aires. The requests for such have not yet reached us and I don't know any other channel that could have appropriately been used to obtain such approval."  So right after there's been some testy back and forth about what they did or didn't commit to do for us in Beijing, it's not obvious that it'd be good timing to immediately turn around and ask for money for the same thing in Durban.  We might not get the desired response if we're viewed as just pushing pushing all the time on this.  And if we start making multiple regular budget requests for conferences, I suspect things could get more difficult.  To me, it'd make more sense to make one patently 'reasonable' request per year, which is to do a conference as part of the annual meeting.
>>> I worry that we might overplay our hand with Fast Track Requests if we ask for Durban money and lose out elsewhere.  Robin already has Fast Track Requests she's planning on submitting today for NCSG EC travel to meetings, NCSG brochures and communiques per meeting, and NCSG travel to the IGF.  In parallel, I'm submitting for NCUC brochures and travel to the IGF.  Plus we are submitting SG and UC replies to the GNSO Tool Kit Services survey asking for new money for webcasts, wiki support, record keeping and member data base…So we're hitting them with a lot of requests, and while the amounts aren't large perceptions may be, plus they'll be getting many other requests from across the community at the same time to divide up a fixed Fast Track pie.  I would be pissed if we got turned down on expenses that might really raise our profile among new audiences and get new members, like the IGF workshops I mentioned and the brochure, because we also asked for $ for Durban.
>>> I am somewhat skeptical that we actually have the capacity to be constantly organized policy conferences.  SF and Toronto took a good deal of time, Beijing planning is just inching forward with just two weeks to go, and there are other drains on our respective ICANN bandwidth allocations, such as the constituency building effort.  Once a year I think we can do and do well, the other meetings we can ask for a workshop in the main program like we have now. Seems like enough to me.
>>> In the particular case of Durban, if we're really pumped to do something outreach oriented, we probably can do it without an all day conference with ICANN support.  If we work with the APC folks we could try to organize a meeting with African civil society off site, it'd not be hard as they have a big presence there.  Maybe something in the afternoon with a work component and then an evening social component...
>>> And even if you all disagree with me and really want to ask for Durban money, here's the thing: I just found out we'd have to request it today, and I have absolutely no idea what I'd be asking for, which conference logistic components funded at what levels etc.  I've had zero interaction with staff on these matters previous, and being eight hours ahead of California am not going to be able to get trained up by Robin (who's probably in bed at the moment) before going out for the evening in a few hours (other commitments, life).  I can get out the FT Requests I'd planned on, but realistically cannot pump out a credible Durban request today.  So the only way it could be done is if Robin submitted it on behalf of NCUC.  Personally, I'm not persuaded that'd be a good idea, and would rather hold for Buenos Aires and a regular budget request in April.
>>> Thoughts, please?  
>>> 
>>> Thanks,
>>> 
>>> Bill
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Beijing2013 mailing list
>>> Beijing2013 at lists.ncuc.org
>>> http://lists.ncuc.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/beijing2013
>> 
>> _______________________________________________
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> 
> **********************************************************
> William J. Drake
> International Fellow & Lecturer
>   Media Change & Innovation Division, IPMZ
>   University of Zurich, Switzerland
> Chair, Noncommercial Users Constituency, 
>   ICANN, www.ncuc.org
> william.drake at uzh.ch  
> www.williamdrake.org
> ***********************************************************
> 
> 
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> 

**********************************************************
William J. Drake
International Fellow & Lecturer
  Media Change & Innovation Division, IPMZ
  University of Zurich, Switzerland
Chair, Noncommercial Users Constituency, 
  ICANN, www.ncuc.org
william.drake at uzh.ch  
www.williamdrake.org
***********************************************************

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