[At-Large] ICANN Board Nomination

[Evan Leibovitch]

On 30 August 2010 09:29, Olivier MJ Crepin-Leblond <ocl at gih.com> wrote:


> I despair to hear everybody saying "ICANN needs this, ICANN needs that" and
> finding out that so few people out there are doing real outreach - because
> outreach is the key to more people being interested in ICANN, and outreach,
> in my opinion, should not be  function solely done by the RALO heads,
> secretaries & committee members of ALAC. Outreach is something which
> everybody in At Large should be doing.
>

At the risk of being a partial source of your despair, I agree with you
while saying that there's even more to it than that:

- Outreach is ultimately a shared responsibility that requires ICANN's
active support. There is a limit to what volunteers can do to help translate
what goes on at ICANN into not only other languages, but also clear language
that does not require the reader to be an Internet expert. Some good
progress has been made but IMO this is more an issue of culture than
resources

- At ALAC meetings and within NARALO I have often spoken about "inreach" as
much as outreach. Retaining the interest (let alone ethusiasm) of those who
have made the decision to get involved can be as challenging as attracting
newcomers. When our recommendations are carefully crafted and achieve a
global consensus yet are still ignored by ICANN staff and other
stakeholders, it is demoralizing; when this happens, some within At-Large
wonder why they bother, while cynics claim that the whole At-Large
infrastructure is nothing more than an expensive (but necessary to ICANN's
image) charade. At-Large is still a fairly new construct but it needs
mainstream respect from the rest of ICANN. The complete ignorance of our
views on the DAG, the resistance to implement all recommendations of the
Board's own ALAC Review and the marginalization of our input to important
committees, indicate that this respect is still elusive. Thankfully,
tangible-yet-glacial progress is apparent -- such progress, I would suggest,
is the main attraction to those of us optimists who continue to stay
involved.

The desire to stay involved in ICANN and persevere through what At-Large has
endured is, IMO an admirable quality and one that would serve an
At-Large-selected Director well.

- Evan