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ICANN Meetings for the Next Decade Consultation
21 May 2010
Introduction
ICANN's International meetings have always been very important - and everything about them has been a subject of debate since the very first one was convened. In fact, there are as many opinions about aspects of the meetings as there are members of the community - but everyone agrees on one thing: they're an essential part of the ICANN process.
Over the course of time, various consultations have been held about how meetings should evolve and change with the times. Most of these have started with a proposal, with the community asked to comment on that proposal. This time around we're reversing the process, starting with collecting the community's views and then building proposals based on those views - we think this is a truly bottom-up-based process.
A three-stage consultation process will run throughout most of calendar year 2010. For information about each stage of the consultation, choose the stage that interests you from the menu to the left.
By providing a better view of the needs and expectations of the community, this consultation will ensure the ICANN Board's Public Participation Committee is in a position to send a recommendation for Board action to the full Board later this year that is truly grounded in the expressed needs of the community.
As ICANN enters its second decade, the time is right to look at the meetings ICANN holds each year from a holistic and truly bottom-up perspective, to ensure that ICANN meetings optimally serve the community in the most cost-effective and stakeholder-focussed ways possible.
Other Information
Who is responsible for this consultation?
At the staff level, this project is a joint initiative of the ICANN Meetings staff and the Senior Director for Participation and Engagement. At the Board level, this project is a part of the work of the Public Participation Committee.
I have questions or a comment. How do I reach someone?
Send an email to participate@icann.org.
Stage One: May through September 2010
Starting in late May and running until 30 July, a new kind of consultation was undertaken by ICANN's Participation and Engagement team, in conjunction with the Public Participation Board committee. Using cutting-edge online surveying technology to get to the heart of the community's thoughts about meetings, we were able to engage the community to provide answers to questions focused around 'macro-level' issues such as:
- What considerations drive decisions to attend or not to attend a meeting?
- If meetings were held adjacent to other meetings that participants regularly attend, would this be desirable or not?
- What considerations should be most important when ICANN evaluates which city and country to hold a meeting in?
The summary and analysis of the Stage One survey was posted at http://forum.icann.org/lists/meetings2010-stage1/msg00002.html
As a next step in this stage, a special workshop was to be held at the Brussels meeting, to discuss the survey and the results from submissions up to that time. The results of that meeting were to become a part of the input into Stage One and the final report of this stage to be produced shortly after the Brussels meeting closed. This workshop was not held, as it was determined that more time and input was required. Instead, the public consultation will take place in Cartagena, during the 39th ICANN International Public meeting, combining the focus points culled from the Big Pulse survey, public comment from that posting and the webinar, along with new questions and input that is received between the survey period and the Cartagena meeting.
Stage Two: September - December 2010
In lieu of the originally proposed 2nd survey in this second stage of the process, ICANN staff invited the community to participate in a webinar held in September 2010, which was meant to engage participants in an interactive exchange regarding the aforementioned survey focus points, as well to start looking at the internal structure and the organisation of ICANN meeting content including what sessions are organised, what the balance is between different types of sessions (workshops, working group meetings, social events and informal interactions. That webinar presentation, in English, French and Spanish, along with an MP3 recording, can be found on the E-Learning web page http://icann.org/en/learning/webinars.htm The contents of that webinar are also out for public comment through November 3 2010.
Stage Three: January – February 2011
At the end of January, the summary of comments received in Stage Two through the webinar, public comment after the webinar transcripts are posted, and from the public consultation in Cartagena will be published, alongside a final report on the Meetings for the Next Decade consultation.
This final report will have two parts:
- Recommendations for implementation based upon the Stage One consultation and comments made during the Stage Two consultation in relation to the same, and;
- Proposals related to the Stage Two questions related to the contents of the meetings.
Part 1 will either be sent to the full Board for decision, or, depending upon the nature and scope of the proposals, and the variation between the Stage Two proposals and the final text that results from the comments received, it may be that the Board directs it should be publicly posted for a further consultation first.
The proposals in Part 2 will definitely be the subject of a further public consultation, the nature and structure of which will be forthcoming when it is clear what format would be likely to be most useful to the community.
Background Information
Previous Consultations on ICANN Meetings
There have been consultations on meetings in the past. From the links below you can reach the information about each of them.
June 2008: Consultation on Proposals to Reform ICANN Meetings
The original staff proposals upon which the consultation was based may be found here [PDF, 387 KB].
Comments received during the Public Comment period may be reviewed here.
November 2006: Meetings White Paper and Consultation
The original White Paper can be found here.
The public comments made about the white paper may be read here.
The White Paper was discussed at the Sao Paulo meeting in 2006; the transcript of that meeting is available here.
Surveying Technology
The surveying technology being used for the survey components of the Meetings 2010 consultation is provided by BigPulse. The type of survey is what they call an 'Opinion Market'. What differentiates an Opinion Market from a traditional survey is the ability of respondents to add new choices to a predefined list, thereby creating a dynamic response set.
BigPulse's Opinion Markets have been used before by ICANN for public consultations: For example, in 2008 a major survey on multilingualism in ICANN was conducted using the tool. More than 400 responses were received, making that consultation one of the most widely-participated in of all public consultations. If you're interested in seeing the results, you can find them by clicking here.
BigPulse is not limited to surveying, it is also a very configurable voting system which incorporates many different voting methods. The At-Large community has used it for all voting for almost three years.