Public participation site

The idea behind this public participation website is that the Internet community will be able to view, review and interact as far as possible with ICANN meetings.

Since each meeting involves around 100 different sessions, in a large number of different rooms, covering a wide array of different topics and a broad range of interested observers, the site can be difficult to navigate at first.

This guide has been written to help with those unfamiliar with the site to find what they are looking for.

If you look at the top right of the page, you can see what events are happening right now and which events will be starting soon.

On the resources page, there is a day-by-day rundown using the site’s calendar for what is happening, listed by time.

The Hot Topics page (link at the top of the page) covers the main topics that will be discussed at Lisbon. If you click on the name of each topic it will take you to a page for that topic that will include a link through to a calendar of all events in Lisbon that will be discussing that topic.

Also, if you look at the bottom of the post (in fact any post on the site) there are a number of small-font links that characterise that post, whether it be the topic, the room a discussion is in, the name of the ICANN constituency, and so on. If you click any of these links, you will be taken to a page of all pages on the site that have the same link, listed with the most recent first.

Those that have registered for the meeting or the previous meeting in Sao Paulo has been entered into this site's database. In some cases, you may not remember your password; in others, you may never have had one.

This is a one-time bug at the Lisbon meeting and we apologise for any inconvenience. What you need to do is click on "Request new password", enter your email address and click Submit and you will receive a new one-time password to get into the system at which point you can choose your own password.

This password should give you access to future ICANN meeting sites so please choose something memorable.

NB: At the moment, the site is not able to deal with script so Korean, Chinese, Arabic etc usernames are not possible. We will try to fix this in time for the next meeting.

There are a number of ways. The most effective will be to go to the specific webpage for the meeting you are interested in. You can find this page by either doing a search of the site (search box in the left column), or looking at the calendar or clicking on the topic you are interested in.

On that meeting webpage you can click “add comment” at the bottom and type in a comment or a question. We would encourage you to do this as early as possible before the actual meeting so that the meeting moderator has a list of questions before the meeting starts (it can be very difficult to run a meeting and review the website at the same time).

There will also be a chatroom for the physical room that the meeting is based in. There you should be able to interact with others and post suggestions and questions. In some cases, there is also a specific forum set up for the meeting, which will also be highlighted and linked to on that page.

The two main rooms are webcast and audiocast. You can see the links by clicking on the resources page, but there will also be a clearly highlighted link on a particular meeting’s webpage if the audiocast/webcast is available.

Some ICANN constituencies also webcast their own meetings. If this is the case, we will find the webcast link and post it on the meeting webpage.

The website has been set up to be as useful and simple as possible but we recognise that it takes getting used to. If you are uncertain about what to do, the best approach is to slowly click on links and figure out how the site works.

If you have any questions or queries – or questions to which you would wish to see answers to posted on this page, please add a comment to this post below and we will see what we can do to improve the situation.