[Pt53] Welcome to the Planning List for NCUC's Regional Outreach Session at ICANN 53 in Buenos Aires

[William Drake]

Hello everyone

To facilitate our work, we have set up this mail list and taken the liberty of subscribing everyone who was on the initial Cc thread, i.e. Analia Aspis, Carlos Afonso, Cristiana Gonzalez, Eduardo Bertoni, Enrique Chaparro, João Carlos Rebello Caribé, Marília Maciel, Stefania Milan, Valeria Betancourt, William Drake, Wolfgang Kleinwächter, and Verónica Ferrari.  I hope this is ok with you all, I recognize not everyone mentioned is currently a NCUC member and some might not be sure yet how deeply they want to get engaged here.  Of course, anyone who wants to can simply unsubscribe at any time, no worries.  In any event, I would not think that pulling this together will not require a large amount of traffic.  

Herewith a little boot-up information:

Background

NCUC works to advance civil society objectives in ICANN, especially with respect to gTLD policies in the GNSO.  As per http://www.ncuc.org/about/members/ <http://www.ncuc.org/about/members/> we currently have 417 members from 96 countries, a substantial share of which are from the global South.  However, aside from a fairly active Brazilian contingent, we arguably don’t have enough engagement from the LAC region.  So what we wanted to do here is some outreach and dialogue with progressive civil society folks who are interested in Internet governance. The simple objectives are to share info about what we’re into, and hear about their views and any interests/activities on ICANN-relevant issues (including if these are critical with respect to ICANN).  If we just come away from this with greater mutual awareness that’s fine, if someone decides they might like to get involved at some level, even better; either way, there’ll be no hard sell or dispensing of kool aid.

Planning Team

One of the things we’ve done since I was first elected chair in 2013 is establish ‘working teams' to manage different bits of the constituency’s operations.  These can be standing teams or temporary, depending on the need.  This group will be a temporary Program Team for ICANN 53; the mail list will be taken down after the event.  As soon as we’re able we’ll get it listed at http://www.ncuc.org/participate/working-teams/ <http://www.ncuc.org/participate/working-teams/> with an invitation to other members to click and join the list.  If anyone prefers not to be listed on website for a couple months just send me a note.

Stefi and Analía have both offered to play lead roles in coordinating our efforts and keeping us on track, which is much appreciated.

Meeting Logistics

As I said previously on the Cc,

> On Apr 24, 2015, at 10:18 AM, William Drake <william.drake at uzh.ch> wrote:
> 
> I just spoke with JJ Sahel, the staffer who is supporting this effort. We definitely have a room 16:00-18:00 Saturday June 20 with technical support (computer/screen/remote participation).  The room will be suitable for like 50-60 people.  Do those of you who are locally connected think we need to ask for translation facilities?  That’s an expensive ‘ask’ and I don’t know if his budget could accommodate it, but if we anticipate people showing up whose English isn’t sufficient to be comfortable I can try.
> 
> In addition, there will be a reception 18-19:30 for all CS @ ICANN, which one assumes will get swamped with other people in search of booze as well.  Afterwards people can charge off into the BA night for dinner.


So that’s it, two hour dialogue and then drinks and nibbles to start our Saturday night.  Perhaps we can return to the translation issue when we have a better sense of who might attend and what the needs may be.

Agenda

We’ve done regional outreach sessions at some previous ICANN events, e.g. last summer in London https://london50.icann.org/en/schedule/fri-civil-society-ig <https://london50.icann.org/en/schedule/fri-civil-society-ig> and in January in Washington DC http://www.ncuc.org/washington-dc-ncuc-meets-civil-society-to-discuss-current-issues-in-internet-governance/ <http://www.ncuc.org/washington-dc-ncuc-meets-civil-society-to-discuss-current-issues-in-internet-governance/>.   The model we followed rather successfully in DC was to have 6-8 NCUC members each offer 3 minute summaries of what we’re currently working on in different issue areas---e.g. the IANA transition, accountability mechanisms in the context of globalization, human rights, privacy and WHOIS, access to knowledge and intellectual property, freedom of expression, development, ICANN in the broader Internet governance environment—and then ask the local folks to share their interests/views/reactions, followed by open dialogue. In effect, a Roundtable type thing. If we were to decide to do that again, then the substantive agenda would be easy to assemble and we could concentrate more on identifying and inviting potential participants.  Alternatively, if people feel a different sort of agenda would be better, whether a Panel or just a free flowing discussion with no opening comments or whatever, we can talk that through.

Outreach to Potential Participants

As mentioned when the Cc started, we need help on this from folks with local contacts and knowledge of the LAC civil society landscape.  Stefi put up a Google doc to get us started and others have added names, at https://docs.google.com/document/d/1gRnbG-zlSzke5D2bQO30yXAu2kXxfuLNXIRL1jwj9v0/edit?pli=1 <https://docs.google.com/document/d/1gRnbG-zlSzke5D2bQO30yXAu2kXxfuLNXIRL1jwj9v0/edit?pli=1>.  It’d be great if people could add suggestions there (sorry if you don’t like G-docs…we could shift to some other platform if someone likes).  We can also reach out to Rodrigo de la Parra, the ICANN VP for stakeholder engagement in LAC, for help with names, as he has a data base of contacts.  He historically has only worked with other groupings within ICANN, but there’s no reason for him to not help us as well.

Ok, that’s more than enough for one message!

Thanks again for helping out,

Bill

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