[NCUC-EC] NCUC EC Internal appointments/roles [bylaws]

[William Drake]

Hey Carlos

Great to hear from you.

On Jan 12, 2014, at 9:24 PM, Carlos Affonso Pereira de Souza <caffsouza at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi everyone: this is just a very quick email to get the ball rolling on filling the slots suggested by Bill.
> 
> a) I could happily join the work of the NCUC and PIR interface. I've been around for a while now and have participated in debates about their support to NCUC a number of times. The PIR visit during Constituency Day is a classic on its own. So count me in to help in this front. I don't need to be the REP, but would be happy to give out some ideas and advance partnership. I've been coordinating externally funded research institutions and NGOs for ten years now so I think I can help a little here.

Ok, great, let’s put you down for that then.  Probably it will continue to be a nominal thing.  But at least you could ask them to spell our name right on the website!
> 
> b) For the working teams, I can help in Communications and Events. Being doing a lot on those two in the past, but never for the NCUC, so I would love to be part of both teams, if possible. In terms of membership (inreach and outreach), I agree that some work on both fronts is expected from all of us.      

We don’t have a comms team, it never got going.  We could try again, but maybe better to just keep that in the EC along with finance.  You could certainly take a leading role here on some things we decide to say.  Stefania’s offered to help with wordsmithing etc too.

Events, sure, join the team list.  Bear in mind this meeting needs to be really cross-community so it won’t just be an internal NCUC job.

But that’ relatively small commitment stuff.  Let me try a bigger ask:
> 
> c) Not sure if I would be the best person to lead it, but I would like to take part in the Bylaws Revision team. I still have some lingering memories of the pre-SG era that might be useful.

Well….would you be willing to think again on that first phrase?  I’d see you as a great coordinator to make this happen, and I’ve come to believe it really needs to, in the April-June window, end summer latest so the Board could review and approve and we could add it to the December 2014 election.

After all, you’re a veteran member so you know the back stories to all the politics around this including prior revision  discussions, the NCGS charter process, etc.  So you know what’s realistic, what needs to be avoided, who we can actually count on to help with what, etc.  And you’re a lawyer, a main link to one of our key financial and other supporters, a non-gringo…seems to me you’re optimized for the job!  You’d be a hero to a grateful ‘nation.’

The bylaws are not long and complex, they just need updating and recalibration to who we really are now. And there’ve been several aborted efforts to start their revision; I’ve circulated these, or pointers, to the EC list last year, wouldn’t be hard to look them over, take stock, and really, this could get done in a few days if a few people put their minds to it.  I’d certainly help, and am sure other EC members, veterans and more could be dragged in if someone would just take the lead and start, set a schedule, map the tasks, and get it going.

Please Please Please Please Please Please Please Please Please Please Please Please Please Please Please Please Please Please Please Please Please ?

Bill

> So let's see who else would like to join which team/position and we can decide what would be the best division of labor for us. Looking forward to that!
> 
> Best,
> Carlos
> 
> 
> 2014/1/12 William Drake <wjdrake at gmail.com>
> Hi Stefania
> 
> Thanks very much for your reply.  Your readiness to help out is really appreciated.  It would be great if you could serve as e-team coordinator, as this is our single biggest need and it’s imperative that these functions performed.   When new members join, they must be added to the lists, data base, and website.  When we organize a meeting, we must be able to post information about it.  When visitors come to the website they shouldn’t be greeted by creaky old information on the top, they should have to click a bit to get to it.  And so on…And being the coordinator does’t mean you have to all the work, but rather that you encourage people to engage in collective action, are the medic of last resort when it fails, and can take the initiative to tidy things up and fill gaps etc. whenever you’ve got a bit of time and are in the mood.  If you look at the archives there’s some clear recent priorities http://lists.ncuc.org/pipermail/e-team like:
> 
> *We need a division of labor among the few folks that do stuff, e.g. who’s the last resort responsible for list sysadmin, website, etc. And for them to keep each other abreast as needed.
> *Tapani sent a bunch of long emails explaining the different e-platform items he was managing and what’s been left with whom in what state, on what machines which bits are located, who needs to be paid when, etc.  These ought to be compiled into a doc that’s available for reference by future ECs and ET’s (not the movie kind).  
> *The website is just seriously in need of a refresh.…our digital persona needs tending, or it looks like nobody gives a damn and we’re not doing anything.
> 
> BTW while Tapani doesn’t want to be responsible for stuff anymore he has always been very quick to respond to requests for info and assistance when needed.
> 
> If you’ve got additional bandwidth available beyond this, we can certainly use your help with any other items below…but the platforms are really our foundational priority, ok?
> 
> More generally: it is now going on a month since this EC was elected, so it would be really good if we could start to function.  As a first step, it’d be helpful if we could hear from others on the below and other issues I’ve raised http://lists.ncuc.org/pipermail/ncuc-ec/.  I’ve been getting private replies from some folks on various points but there’s been no collective conversation (a somewhat uncomfortable contrast with other e-spaces I’m in all day where the mail is voluminous), I don’t have a couple people’s Skype addresses so we can chat, etc etc.  It doesn’t make sense for me to keep sending messages with new info etc. before the previous items have generated some response and resolution, as needed.  Let’s please try, e.g., to finish task A and exchange views on concern B before I have to send info on new items C and D, or else it’ll all turn into a bundle of loose unresolved threads.
> 
> BTW recent communications with staff lead me to believe we will, with the assistance of a couple of your home institutions, be able to have the whole EC together in Singapore.  I don’t know if this has ever happened before, but it’s a real opportunity and we should leverage it.  In any event, please do reserve the dates on your calendars.
> 
> I’d like to schedule a first EC meeting in the week of 27 January.  Hopefully by then we’ll have some clarity on who’s prepared to fill the open (external, non-EC) positions mentioned previously, so we can approve as a set, and also take a few other decisions and prepare for Singapore.  I’ll post a Doodle later, but if there’s anyone who simply cannot be available that week it’d be helpful to know now.
> 
> Thanks
> 
> Bill
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> On Jan 10, 2014, at 7:05 PM, Milan, Stefania <Stefania.Milan at EUI.eu> wrote:
> 
>> Dear Bill
>> thanks for the long explanatory mail. I even had to take notes while going through it, as dense as it is, but things are much more clear now. So now there is no excuse not to volunteer for any of the positions.
>> In order to facilitate other people's choices, I will now share what my preferences are - with the disclaimer that I am flexible and can easily re-porpuse my role to fill holes. 
>> 
>> I have familiarity with web design and content management. The new website runs on Joomla... and has the same (free) theme that I have chosen for the website of my research lab (good choice!). I can certainly help with the e-platforms.
>> I am also interested in the Membership Affairs, as I intend to engage in aggressive outreach, so MA would be my second preference. 
>> I would be happy to serve as rep to the .org advisory council at PRI. In the past I did some fundraising for the NGO sector, and like the idea of seeing how PRI works. 
>> Finally, I could (but by no means have to) serve as Secretary. I am a fast writer, good organizer, and used to work as a journalist, so I might be able to contribute there as well. 
>> 
>> This is about me - waiting to hear from the others to see how we can best distribute ourselves. 
>> Stefania
>> 
>> ----------------------
>> Stefania Milan, PhD
>> Data J Lab || Tilburg University, the Netherlands || http://datajlab.nl ||
>> The Citizen Lab || Munk School of Global Affairs, University of Toronto || http://citizenlab.org ||
>> European University Institute || www.protestsurvey.eu/ ||
>> Center for Media and Communication Studies, Central European University || www.cmcs.ceu.hu ||
>> International Association for Media and Communication Research - International Council member and Co-Chair, Communication Policy Task Force || www.iamcr.org ||
>> mobile: [31] 62 7875 425 (NL) || [1] 647 - 973 - 6533 (CA) || [+39] 333 - 2309945 (I) 
>> http://stefaniamilan.net/
>> 
>> Da: ncuc-ec-bounces at lists.ncuc.org <ncuc-ec-bounces at lists.ncuc.org> per conto di William Drake <wjdrake at gmail.com>
>> Inviato: martedì 7 gennaio 2014 15.51
>> A: NCUC EC
>> Oggetto: [NCUC-EC] NCUC EC Internal appointments/roles
>>  
>> Hi
>> 
>> Hope everyone had a good holiday season.  Time to get moving now.  I’m trying to get caught up on a bunch of ICANN stuff, including clarifying if the funds for the EC retreat can be repurposed to cover more peoples’ travel, dealing with the conference, appointments, etc. and will be peppering you with more info in the weeks ahead.  Some replies to my prior messages would be a good start, where relevant….e.g. I never got the Skype details on some of you, so have been unable to set up an EC channel or tie you into the ongoing discussions among some of our more active members.  If people could provide, that’d be a good start.
>> 
>> When we have enough responses to my call for nominations to the various open slots, I’ll organize a first official online meeting (will Doodle, of course) so that we can do the formal appointments and take other pressing decisions.  Stay tuned.
>> 
>> In the meanwhile, we need to begin figuring out how we will organize ourselves internally, who’s willing to cover which functions, have a division of labor.  Here’s where we could really use some folks to step up and volunteer to take ownership of some pieces, with support of course—not suggesting anyone has to be overburdened with solo responsibilities.
>> 
>> Some particular options:
>> 
>> On Dec 21, 2013, at 3:57 PM, William Drake <william.drake at uzh.ch> wrote:
>>> 
>>> 1 NCUC Rep. to the Public Interest Registry
>>>  http://pir.org/about-us/get-to-know-us/advisory-council/
>>> 
>>> PIR manages .org etc. and is a long time financial and political supporter of NCUC.  We appoint a rep to its .org Advisory Council; Robin is currently in this position as well.    I understand this has not involved a lot of coordination of late, and indeed PIR’s website still calls us by our old name, the Non-Commercial Domain Name Holders Constituency (NCDNHC), but as with some other slots/functions we might want to reboot a bit.  Our bylaws specify that the EC is to appoint the rep by majority vote, with at least four members voting.
>> 
>> The only offer I’ve had here is from a GNSO Councilor who’s already in addition playing an important role in the e-platform team, handing email administration and stuff.  I would think it better not to burden him with this as well, and that serving as an interface with one of our historically primary financial supporters might be a low impact but useful activity for an EC member.  Such a person could also help when it comes time to hit them up for funding, which I’m thinking might be best done after the Singapore conf. this time, depending on what I hear from Fadi.
>> 
>> 
>>> Finally and parenthetically, the EC will also need to make some internal appointments. For ex, our bylaws say we are to have a Secretary Treasurer who must be approved by a majority vote of the EC with at least three members voting.  Milton’s always been the Treasurer because he has NCUC’s bank account, but he’s not been doing the ‘Secretary’ piece and it could be helpful to separate and fill it.  We also need coordinators for the four EC/member functional Teams http://www.ncuc.org/participate/working-teams and the Bylaws Revision Committee http://www.ncuc.org/bylaws-revision-committee/
>> 
>> 
>> I think splitting off the Secretary function from the Treasurer function is the only way it’s going to be performed.  We need someone who writes happily who can generate concise minutes (basically a page) of EC  and Constituency Day meetings and send these to members, help with any other outward oriented doc writing like press releases, missing web pages, etc.  So maybe sort of a secretary +, or communications coordinator position.  BTW we have budget allocated by ICANN to do print publications, like Issue Briefs that could be released at physical meeting.  
>> 
>> Teams   http://www.ncuc.org/participate/working-teams/
>> 
>> You may know that one of the innovations I tried to establish last year was working teams linking the EC with regular members that would focus on functional issues we really need performed.  A way to get people engaged in collective ownership, etc.   The idea was that each could normally be lead coordinated by an EC member, so that the work of the teams fed into the EC when decisions at a ‘official’ level are needed, and conversely the views of the EC on relevant points were conveyed back to the team members.
>> 
>> At the outset of last year, we tried to set up six teams: inreach, outreach, communications, finance, e-platforms, and events.  Some just fell flat on their faces: the member who offered to coordinate inreach and outreach didn’t.  So then we combined them into a single Membership Affairs team that would presumably handle both, and alas the same thing happened, we ended up with no EC member to facilitate conversation and it drifted.  Communication never took off, even though we really needed external comms to be upgraded, because the person who I’d hoped would lead that one lost the election by one vote and nobody else wanted to pick it up.  Finance being kind of dull (but crucial), it was hard to get anyone pumped on this, so I ended up asking a non-EC member to serve as the coordinator, got agreement but then illness happened and this too wandered with no leadership and sort of dwindled out.  I ended up doing all the money stuff like applying for budget support solo.  The two teams that did work were Events (everyone like to plan meetings, especially the academics), and the E-platform team, primarily because Tapani stepped up to do an enormous amount of work.  Wilson and Sarah also helped by redesigning the web page, Brenden helped from time to time, etc.  Now Tapani’s retired, and we have three people—Brenden Kuerbis, Joly McPhee, and David Cake—trying to ad hoc keep our e-stuff running but there’s no coordinator to keep track of what needs doing and so on.  So for example we just did manage to add some new members to the listserv, but not apparently to the data base and website yet.  
>> 
>> So in short, right now we have four listservs and groups of people, one reasonably active but leaderless, the others pretty much just sitting there waiting for someone to juice them up.  
>> 
>> E-platforms.  I don’t know if any of you have technical skills do system administration or web site management yourselves, or would be willing at least to simply coordinate the efforts of the folks who do that so their time can be well managed and focused.  But absent staff support to handle such things, (which we need to apply for, and probably could get) in the near-term we have to make sure our tech is working and people who join NCUC get fully plugged in and listed.  This is our most important team, and it desperately needs a coordinator.
>> 
>> Membership Affairs. I still think could serve a really useful function by doing some targeted outreach (BTW, all regional EC reps are supposed to do outreach to potential new members in their regions….) and more importantly by engaging existing members, bringing opportunities to their attention, getting them plugged into GNSO working groups, generally facilitating anything they’re willing to put time into.  You may have noted some recent discussion on the list about the idea of rebooting Interest Groups in which a few members said they’d happily join an IG focused on development aspects.  Well, we don’t have a ning site anymore where people can just build social nets around topics (sort of a big loss in our web transition), but if we had someone willing to work with members and provide a platform, we could still do stuff like set up listservs for folks who want to discuss and hopefully work on special topics and get these listed on the website.  This is a wide open opportunity for someone proactive to make of it what they will; I’m betting more than half the nine people still subscribed to the MA listserv would be happy to re-engage if someone were to lead.  I know I would.
>> 
>> Finance.  I’m inclined to just retire this and say that any money related stuff gets discussed in the EC.  Probably not needed.
>> 
>> Events.  I’ll coordinate this for now, since I secured the funds for the conference in Singapore and will need to interact with staff and the community extensively anyway on the agenda and logistics.  But interested people are welcome to join.
>> 
>> Any of these lists can be joined by following the links from the URL above, and you can also look through the archives to see what was and wasn’t done last year.
>> 
>> Bylaws Revision.  Here’s another big important thing that’s just laying there without a leader.  The person who was most adamant that we do this and offered to lead a group effort is no longer on the EC or wants to do it.  It was set up as a ‘committee’ for some fluky reason at http://www.ncuc.org/bylaws-revision-committee/ but should probably be folded into the Teams page.  Anyway, the lack of movement may have dampened the interest of the folks who signed up, most of whom were newbies, so this group may need to be reconstituted a bit.  It certainly would need engagement from veteran members who have institutional memory and were involved in writing the current bylaws (which date back to pre-Stakeholder Group days and are almost entirely unrelated to how we actually operate) or prior efforts to revise them.  While some folks have felt like what’s the difference, life goes on even if the bylaws don’t map with how we operate, I think that as long as we do have constituencies it’d be much better to have bylaws that fit who we are and how we operate.  Good for transparency, accountability, and in dealing correctly with any problems that may arise.  It would be really good to get them revised in the second quarter, after the busy Singapore meeting, so that they could go to the board and staff, get cleared, and be put up for a vote in next December’s election.  This might seems like a really daunting task, but it need not be if there’s an active group; the extant text is not that long and complicated.  I would encourage folks to consider stepping up to coordinate.  I would help, others will too.  Would be really good to have someone with legal expertise, I suppose…
>> 
>> Ok, that’s more than enough for you to chew on in one message.  Bottom line, there’s a lot to do, but none of it is unmanageable, and should involve more than a couple hours per week of work.  Most of the time consuming, heavy lifting stuff defaults into the chair’s lap, but if I could get some help with some these bits it’d be really really great.
>> 
>> Thanks,
>> 
>> Bill
>> 
>> 
>> 
> 
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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 (direct), wjdrake at gmail.com (lists),
  www.williamdrake.org
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