There is a Facebook discussion currently going on,
and to my mind, this comment pretty much summed up one key part
of the problem with how ICANN currently operates.
It was from someone called Kerry Brown:
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I
attended the London ICANN where during the meeting I
actually felt like something was accomplished at the ALAC
summit. Within weeks I was totally disillusioned when I
realized that the board was paying lip service to the
results of the summit and that nothing would change. I
wonder how many board members actually read the
recommendations? I had previously attended a half dozen
ICANN meetings basically as an observer. I was excited to
attend as a participant. Now I am unsubscribed from all
the ICANN mailing lists. I doubt I will ever go to another
meeting.
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It's
not just the Board that is guilty of failing to foster a
real sense of community but clearly in this case it was.
As
most of you know, I spent three years as ICANN's general
manager of public participation and I saw a big part of my
job as building sustainable systems that would bring in more
people, and make it easy and worthwhile for them to
participate.
It
was extremely difficult and I spent more than half my time
dealing with efforts by those inside ICANN to undermine any
effective changes, largely because it meant a reduction in
their personal influence.
One
fact that I continually used back then as a way to try to
shake people into thinking reasonably came from a series of
surveys, interviews, questionnaires and data analyses of
people actually attending ICANN meetings.
I
wanted to know: who are these people? Is this their first
time? And if so how do we get them to stay engaged and come
back?
The
results were very clear: one third of ICANN attendees were
regulars, coming to nearly every meeting; one third were
occasional attendees, often because they were obliged to go
to one ICANN meeting every year or two years, sometimes
because they were intrigued and wanted to see what one was
like.
And
one third - every single meeting - was people who were
attending for the first time. And at the next meeting, one
third were attending for the first time. And the next. And
the next. The percentage never got smaller. So I started
trying to track down these people that arrived and then
disappeared never to be heard from again.
Of
that one third, roughly a half came from the country ICANN
was in. They came because it was relatively local. Of them,
almost none ever returned - either physically and online.
They simply took a look, didn't like what they saw and never
came back.
The
other half of first-time attendees came from all over the
world and went to a lot of trouble to get to the meeting. Of
them, around four-fifths never came back. I tracked people
down and asked them why.
They
were mostly vague but in the whole, it was the sense that
they were not made welcome. That the sessions were long and
boring. That no one gave their opinions any weight. That
everything was controlled by those ICANNites who attended
every meeting. And that no one ever sought to engage them;
they were irrelevant to the people that mattered.
When
I relayed this information (which I did repeatedly) to those
in the position to actually do something about it, not once
did anyone say "oh no, that's terrible, what can we do to
fix it?".
Instead,
the responses varied from: "well, they're clearly not cut
out to join ICANN if they give up so easily", to "but we
have lots of opportunities for them to engage" to "I don't
recognize that at all; I see lots of new people engaging".
In
other words, an absolute refusal to accept it as a problem
that needed to be addressed.
I
think it is extremely rich to complain that ICANN is not
sufficiently broad or representative enough. All of you on
this list are responsible for that lack of engagement. And
if you were serious about actually involving and engaging
more people, it would take but one day to come up with a
long list of things that could be done to improve the
current situation.
Until
that happens; until you get serious about empowering
non-insiders; until real money and real resources are
applied to that effort; then I don't think any of you get
to talk about what real representation means.
Kieren