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

[Carlos A. Afonso]

Thanks for this, Bill. Good group indeed (myself notwithstanding :-)).

We will have a sort of formidable challenge in the Bs.As ICANN meeting.
I thought until now that what should be one of our main concerns as NCUC
with 96 countries' people participating is the international legitimacy
aspect of IANA functions' oversight, which in my view (and Norbert
Klein's as far as I know) is being left aside by the CWG. I thought this
was a problem related to the names function only, as the IETF-ICANN
relationship seems well established regarding protocols (and I have not
heard any rumors regarding any significant change here in any scenario),
and the January proposal by CRISP was a no-brainer according to Steve
Crocker himself.

I am now recovering from reading Milton's review of the current status,
and what I see is far worse. ICANN seems to have reversed its view on
the original CRISP proposal and basically crushed it. It is essential to
read the slide presentation quoted by Milton:

https://www.arin.net/participate/meetings/reports/ARIN_35/PDF/monday/crisp_panel.pdf

I understand from Bill's opening message in this list that the basic
function (I am starting to hate the word) of the outreach meeting is to
do NCUC outreach. OK, fine, but could we have time to raise crucial
issues we will be confronted with immediately afterwards in the ICANN
meeting?

My recommendation for NCUCers not dealing with these issues on a daily
basis is:

- read the CWG proposal (big challenge, if you can complicate a
presentation, why simplify it?);

- read the January proposal by CRISP/NRO (far simpler);

- take a careful look at the slide presentation by the RIRs' team in the
April 14th meeting with ARIN (catch it from Milton's article or the
above link);

- read the excellent review published yesterday by Milton, here:
http://www.internetgovernance.org/2015/04/28/icann-wants-an-iana-functions-monopoly-and-its-willing-to-wreck-the-transition-process-to-get-it/

What is NCUC's position (which is a multi-country non-commercial civil
society organization) regarding all this? This is a challenge for our
meeting, I guess, besides just trying to bring more folks to the tribe
and so on.

frt rgds

--c.a.

On 04/29/2015 09:27 AM, William Drake wrote:
> 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/ 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/ 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
>> <mailto: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 and
> in January in Washington
> DC 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.
>  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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