Hi Evan I agree with your point re: a common agenda of specific policy issues being key to past successful dialogues. And we could indeed try to focus that way again if one wants. But actually I was responding to Wolfgang’s broader point about how user-oriented groups are institutionally siloed and whether some sort of pan-ICANN coordination could be feasible. Of course, that At Large is not only noncommercial users and is declaredly not a civil society network per se presents some complications there, but it still could be an element, if not the singular focus, of an agenda for a joint session. Best Bill On Apr 4, 2014, at 9:52 AM, Evan Leibovitch <evan@telly.org> wrote:

On 4 April 2014 02:40, William Drake <wjdrake@gmail.com> wrote:

...

We’ve had liaisons, joint meetings, and periodic informal discussions about 'the broader CS community' for some time, but the latter bit has not really progressed much.

In my personal experience, things go well when there is a specific common agenda. Consider that the CCWG on Internet Governance -- an initiative sprung out of the ALAC/NCSG meeting in Buenos Aires and co-chaired by Olivier and Rafik -- collected enough steam community-wide to be cited as a reason for the dissolution of the Board Special Committees.

I'd certainly call that a win. So we know it's doable.

I find other areas of collaboration possible as ALAC starts exploring privacy issues more (the Singapore workshop we held on TOR was surprisingly well attended and may likely be repeated). OTOH, I might hope that NCSG -- at least some bits of it -- might find common ground with, for instance, the intense At-Large dissatisfaction with the utility and enforceability of Public Interest Commitments as they exist now in the new gTLD program.

Wouldn’t this be a worthy topic for some drill down discussion in the

...

context of https://community.icann.org/display/atlarge/ATLAS+II+Draft+Agenda ? It would be of particular interest to those of us with feet on both sides of the lines, but I’d think it’d also be of wider interest as well.

Wolf is involved with identifying Subject Matter Experts for the various thematic sessions being done as part of the ATLAS program. Have a talk with him; there's room for this.

- Evan _______________________________________________ At-Large mailing list At-Large@atlarge-lists.icann.org https://atlarge-lists.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/at-large

At-Large Official Site: http://atlarge.icann.org

*********************************************** William J. Drake International Fellow & Lecturer Media Change & Innovation Division, IPMZ University of Zurich, Switzerland Chair, Noncommercial Users Constituency, ICANN, www.ncuc.org william.drake@uzh.ch (direct), wjdrake@gmail.com (lists), www.williamdrake.org ***********************************************