Hi, Indeed, the outreach plan was a failure in so many respects, and people have been complaining about it for a while to no avail, even while there was still a chance to fix it. And we see the results: 17 applications from Africa and 3 applicant support applications. And while I was hopping that 10 - 20 of the applications would be from ASP applicants, I meant of the global total, not of the African total. By any definition, while we have been able to get a thousand flowers to bloom, with the help of the agribusiness applicants, we GAC not manged to do any real outreach to developing regions. #fail Adam Peake <ajp@glocom.ac.jp> wrote:

So Amazon and Google are taking advantage, of course they are. Good luck to them (I guess.)

What we should be angry about is presented elegantly in the following comment (and, for what it's worth, is also an example of why I feel a great shame we are loosing the Friday board meeting.)

Adam

Dakar, ICANN Board meeting

...

...

MIKE SILBER: Thank you, Chair. I intend to vote against this motion and I would like to read my reasons.

Some people might think from previous votes that this is a principle objection to new gTLD program. On the contrary, it's because I believe in the new gTLD program as a logical extension from the creation of ICANN, and more importantly in the bottom-up multistakeholder model that I intend to vote in this way.

There are three primary reasons for my vote. The first, the current communications plan ignores the board resolution of March 2010 in Nairobi and specifically community input. The Nairobi resolution states, and I will just read the relevant part, "ICANN will work with the SOs and ACs to leverage the," or I believe that's a typo and it should be "their networks and design the timeline around the actual launch."

Public comment on the communications plan, both formal and informal as well as GAC guidance, all called for the use and inclusion of the community and the regional inclusiveness of the communications plan. This has not occurred, and instead, a top-down English dominated program has resulted with a single figurehead representing the entirety of the massive amount of community work on the program.

None of the community, and for that matter, the board's input appears to have been taken into account.

The second reason, the current budget request is in my view an attempt to rescue a communications plan which has been badly designed and executed. Despite repeated and ongoing assurances of the readiness of the organization with regards communications, up to Singapore and beyond it, few of the plan's objectives in the current plan appear to have been made.

The current budget of approximately $805,000 has seen the development of a new gTLD microsite and related materials and the attendance primarily of the CEO at events around the world. These have included ICANN-hosted events as well as attendance at various technology events and, with a few notable exceptions, these have taken place in developed countries.

Outreach in Africa is claimed as comprising three events: the IGF Nairobi, this meeting, and attendance at Highway Africa in Grahamstown, South Africa, not Cape Town, an event that ICANN has attended consistently for many years. All three events are budgeted for elsewhere within the ICANN budget.

It accordingly appears that not a single extra cent has been spent on outreach to Africa.

This is in spite of a budget item of $500,000 of than 805,000 for outreach in the five regions, which one would expect would be apportioned equally or at least fairly across the five regions. I have been advised that this may be a budget reference from a version prior to the proposed reversion; however, this does not detract from the fact if there had been no spend on regional outreach in Africa and no plan to do so as currently appears, there would be at least 100,000 U.S. dollars or more available to be spent on consultants.

Furthermore, outreach involving the appearance of one or more North Americans standing on a podium undermines the involvement of this volunteer community on these issues, and a bottom-up process which may have seen more direct engagement if it had been trusted to assist with communications in the same way it had been trusted to actually develop the policy that this grand world tour is now trying to promote.

The third reason, the current neglect of African countries developing in Africa in particular will be perpetuated even with the additional budget. The consultants that the additional budget will pay, Burson Marsteller, as well as the advertising agencies that they will subcontract, most likely the same agency which in turn owns Burson Marsteller, will have -- or have a significant reputation and have been touted as ideal to provide worldwide coverage.

In fact, the list of offices and affiliates on their Web site is impressive, particularly coverage in Africa, until one digs a little deeper and finds out that there are two offices in Africa, one in Cairo covering Egypt and one in Johannesburg covering South Africa as well as the entire African continent.

I am a proud South African but doubt I could do a better job of engaging the media and the community in Morocco, Mozambique or Malawi as a local could.

A broken new gTLD communications plan.

[ Applause ]

...

...

STEVE CROCKER: Thank you very much, Mike.

As you can tell from the audience reaction, as I know you know from our discussions, we have had long debates and taken all of this quite seriously.

END

On Sat, Jun 16, 2012 at 7:14 AM, Avri Doria <avri@acm.org> wrote:

...

Hi,

I really do not understnd the suprise, shock and gnashing of teeth about this.  I certanly have expected and have been talking about it for a long time.

The argument that this is not in the service of the public interest is funny, since people like Bertrand who wanted to only allow names that were in the public interst was shot down most definately as being just another beauty contest.  whoever could build a business case and buy the bigget bucks was the best owner, we were told (except for the community names that most of those who might complain told us were not really possible) .  This was also alwasy one of the reasons for the VI work; what if some company got a name for itself that it wanted to keep private using it for its own purposes;yeah i expect tha these users need to sign the RAA and pay that fee too.

Why are we surprised that someone did what was expected to be one of the options.

I think this is one of the innovations we were led to expect.

What surprised me was the agribusiness approach to the thousand flowers ablooming that some of the purveyors of registry services engaged in. I expected some to buy bunches or even dozens and maybe even a score or two.  But hundreds? That shocked me.  And as I told some friends, I wasn't sure whether i was in awe or dread.  But in the end, i think we got a diversity of approaches, and that strikes me as a good thing overall.

avri

"Michele Neylon :: Blacknight" <michele@blacknight.ie> wrote:

...

I think a couple of the mainstream media outlets picked up on this, but this really worries me and probably others:

http://www.internetnews.me/2012/06/14/big-brands-trying-to-corner-generic-na...

Regards

Michele

Mr Michele Neylon Blacknight Solutions ♞

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