ICANN São Paulo meeting site

It's all to do with will and impetus. It can be done - and ICANNWiki has started doing this, producing minutes and notes for meeting. But it is alot of effort. In particular, it is alot of effort if there isn't someone who is designated as the person that will do it.

First of all, there has to be the demand. But the demand comes hand-in-hand with the provision of information.

It generally works like this: someone creates some useful summary material; it takes off; people either ask them to do it again (or are disappointed when it doesn't happen again); that person soon gets bogged down with the extra work and tries to get paid for it because it is eating into their time; no money appears; project folds and everyone understands why but is a bit grumpy about it.

ICANN is coming up to "extra work" part. Its success or failure will be on when the issue of funding comes up. If people agree it is worth it, and it gets its own budget, it will stabilise and become increasingly professional. If it doesn't, it will falter and vanish.

Think it is all to do with entrepreneurship (which is essentially a combination of will and impetus),

PhD students are that unique blend of curiosity, flexibility, and energy. That is why the IISD system works so well.

My question is why not replicate that model for ICANN? Who out there has the vision that Kimo Goree had for the environmental community when he created this bulletin?

I think your take on how it generally works could be buttressed by a conversation with Kimo: Hey Kimo, you are proof this works, how can we do it in the ICANN context? or Hey Kimo, why not send your PhD students here? Or, hey ICANN, bring Kimo and his reporters to ICANN Lisbon and lets road test them?

Why is the responsibility for the extra work ICANN's? This is an excellent opportunity for a young entrepreneurial ICANN participant! The Basel convention doesn't do the reporting in house, the whole point of linkages is that it is independent.

Options from a what is easiest point of view:

1. get a big crew of media/comms aware ICANN watchers to request ICANN contract IISD linkages to cover ICANN Lisbon.

2. identify someone willing to write up funding proposals and send them around to various private and public sponsors (check linkages funding list). A non-profit group would have the most experience in proposal writing.

3. hire 1000 monkeys on 1000 typewriters.