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Hey, you! Listen to the ICANN board webcast more private sessions

Kevin Murphy, April 26, 2017, 08:10:11 (UTC), Domain Policy

ICANN’s board of directors is to live stream two sessions during an upcoming retreat, and if you’re at all interested in ICANN you really ought to tune in.
The webcasts are part of an ongoing pilot program designed to increase transparency at the very top of ICANN’s policy-making reverse-hierarchy.
The public, listen-only sessions seem to have been cherry-picked from the broader program of a retreat in Geneva over the May 6-7 weekend, and are:

Marketplace Dynamics Session I: Registries and Registrars
Saturday, 6 May, 11:15 – 12:00 UTC
Internet Governance Engagement Strategy with a Focus on the Internet Governance Forums (IGFs): Proposal to the Board
Sunday, 7 May, 09:00 – 10:00 UTC

Neither session sounds earth-shatteringly exciting, but both will be worth a listen in my view.
If nobody listens, ICANN could fairly say that streaming board meetings is a waste of money and stop doing it rather than expanding the program in future. That reduction of transparency would be in nobody’s interests.
The most recent live sessions occurred during ICANN 58 in Copenhagen last month, but until I ranted on Twitter nobody apart from me was listening.
That’s despite the fact that increased board transparency has been something the community has been crying out for for years.
So if you agree with transparency but find the chosen topics boring, perhaps just open the Adobe Connect room, hit mute, and go for brunch or play with your kids or something.
The Adobe links can be found here.
Disclosure: now that I’ve written this post, I think it’s almost inevitable that I will accidentally miss one or both of these sessions. You’re welcome to mock me should that happen (though you’ll only know whether I was there if you tune in yourself).

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Comments (4)

  1. Jean Guillon says:
    April 26, 2017 at 8:38 am

    Same problem with lack of participants for new gTLD Subsequent Procedures Policy Development Process. We are 3 (worldwide) to have commented with very few to actually suggest modifications.
    In round 2 of the ICANN new gTLD program, ICANN will answer future new gTLD haters: “but: why didn’t you participate?”

    Reply
  2. Jim Prendergast says:
    April 26, 2017 at 1:38 pm

    Continuing these is a good thing. It’s incremental but they are improving. More lead time and more publicity might help with turnout.
    Timing both in terms of hour of day and on a weekend will hurt realtime participation but hopefully these will be recorded so more people can listen after the fact. Really no reason why they shouldn’t be.
    On the surface, the topics may not seem “earth-shatteringly exciting” but on topic 1) it’s critical the board understand how the industry works as their decisions have real world impacts on operations. On topic 2, ICANN spends a considerable amount of resources on IGFs – cash, travel and bodies – so seeing what strategy, if any, the board and staff has on this is important too.

    Reply
  3. Bart Mortelmans says:
    April 28, 2017 at 12:58 pm

    Why oh why Adoby Connect? Aren’t there enough other options for something like this, that don’t require me to download and install extra software? Probably even open source…
    Once I see “install extra software”, the meeting will have to be extremely interesting before I continue.
    And yes, I notice you can also call in.

    Reply
    • Rubens Kuhl says:
      April 29, 2017 at 1:10 am

      One middle ground is installing the mobile app, where the OS has much more control on what the app does.

      Reply

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