[EURO-Discuss] Feedback from Swiss New gTLD Event, 28 Nov. in Bern

[William Drake]

Hi Avri

On Dec 2, 2011, at 10:27 PM, Avri Doria wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> What concerns me is that the outreach is not reaching Civil Society.  Not just in Europe, but anywhere.  
> 
> These seems to be a fault with the way the entire outreach program was driven.  In fact other than a few events like this, and Rod speaking to few elect audiences, what outreach has there been?  And what provisions were made by ICANN for outreach to Global Civil Society in its many localities.

I have not seen any new gTLD outreach geared to civil society either.  The targeting is not mysterious to you or anyone else here, but it is disappointing and raises questions about the level of commitment behind the multistakeholder rhetoric.
> 
> Is the ICANN new gTLD outreach plan available.  Do we even know if they did all that was planned?

There was a call for suggestions on awareness raising generally http://www.icann.org/en/announcements/announcement-17aug11-en.htm but I have not seen any discussion of follow up in the Council or elsewhere, particularly with respect to civil society.  Not much of relevance on http://newgtlds.icann.org.  Maybe someone else knows more…

As you know, there are also discussions about outreach to expand participation in the GNSO and in ICANN more generally, but it's a bit hard to gauge where we are with these either.  With regard to the former, the motion to adopt the Outreach Task Force charter was deferred again in the last Council meeting at the request of the CSG, but despite requests we have yet to hear from them what sort of amendments to the motion and/or charter they might want. Apparently this relates to their desire for funding set asides for constituencies/SGs, although there's nothing in the motion/charter that would preclude that anyway. There's a call Monday---maybe some manageable proposals will be shared that will allow the motion to be considered again in the next Council call, maybe not.  With regard to the latter, there is apparently a staff working group to begin building an overall framework for how to define and address the full range of ICANN Outreach activities and an initial draft outreach framework was shared with the Public Participation Committee in Dakar, with a call to be led by Kurt planned in the next weeks.  I've asked staff for information about said framework but no reply, which makes it a little difficult to think about any of that and how it might relate to the GNSO effort, should we ever manage to pass a motion.

Presumably all will be revealed by someone at some point.

It would be nice if At Large and NCSG could seek to promote transparent and participatory processes on these issues, preferably on a coordinated basis.  Whether we could muster the energy for that alongside everything else on our plates is unclear, particularly as it's December, but it'd be nice to try…. 

Bill


> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> On 1 Dec 2011, at 18:15, Wolf Ludwig wrote:
> 
>> Dear all, 
>> 
>> this is just a short feedback on the New gTLD Event last Monday in Bern/Switzerland (as announced before): 
>> http://www.new-gtld.ch/agenda.php
>> 
>> This Swiss event organized by OFCOM, the registry SWITCH, the Swiss business association EconomieSuisse and EURALO can be considered as a plain success with more than 150 participants from all parts of the country. The only weak point was the evident under-representation of civil society and net-focused groups. The program offered an intro/overview on ICANN, TLD and gTLD basics with subsequent sessions about chances and risks of this new gTLD generation approved by ICANN in June 2011 in Singapore, as well as its launch and application process early next year.
>> 
>> The presentations and video recordings from the event are available at the website now. This new gTLD info day was an extraordinary national outreach opportunity for EURALO to make us known among the different stakeholder groups (federal offices, reps. from cities and cantons, specialised business segments, law firms etc.). Events like this offer some potential to represent EURALO on national levels and comparable opportunities like national IGFs etc. (as it was the case twice already at the Ukrainian IGFs, EuroDIG etc.).
>> 
>> As a key conclusion from the recent Swiss event can be drawn: Several private and business projects seem to be well prepared for the first application round early next year (January – April 2012). But as it was mentioned by Sandra at our last monthly call (referring to the German event early November in Berlin), most of the public entities are not aware about these new gTLD options and cannot submit projects in time for the first – and narrow – application round, besides the few and well-known city/community projects like .Berlin, .Paris, .London etc. In the public sector there is still a lot of awareness raising and consultation needed to convince the decision makers about these new opportunities.
>> 
>> Thanks for your attention and
>> kind regards,
>> Wolf
>> 
>> 
>> P. S. @Heidi/At-Large Staff: Can you please forward this feedback to interested parties at ICANN – Thanks!
>> 
>> EuroDIG Secretariat
>> http://www.eurodig.org/
>> mobile +41 79 204 83 87
>> Skype: Wolf-Ludwig
>> 
>> EURALO - ICANN's Regional At-Large Organisation
>> http://euralo.org
>> 
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>> 
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