Late Submission from Access Partnership

["Gregory Francis" <greg@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Access Partnership apologizes for this late submission, in which we
share a few observations.

 

The "Recommendations to Develop a Global Outreach Program to Broaden
Participation in the GNSO," is an excellent first step in developing the
outreach strategy that is sought here.  While the document's treatment
is, in places, overly top-level, the essential points of communicating
in languages other than English, leveraging existing meetings to engage
with newcomers, workshops, and development of a toolkit for interested
parties are the staples of any successful public outreach campaign.

 

We share this observation as an addendum: while it is logical to prefer
that outreach is conducted virtually, the OSC should resist excessive
reliance on web-based interactions for training, information sharing, or
building of a community.  For the communities in question, the challenge
becomes to engender greater awareness of Internet protocols (in the
social and organizational sense) through person-to-person interactions.
While it seems on the face of it to be paradoxical, to increase
participation from the more remote parts of the ICANN community there
needs to be an increase in-person, "off-line" discourse.  This is the
essential ingredient necessary for success with the constituencies that
are least engaged at the moment.

 

To that end, taking full advantage of the planned meetings and
congresses for further instruction is the necessary precondition for
being able to sustain them over the long term by remote means.

 

__________________________

Gregory Francis

Managing Director

 

Access Partnership

4th Floor, 20 Broadway Studios

20 Hammersmith Broadway 

London W6 7AF

United Kingdom

Tel:        +44 (0) 208 600 0630

Mobile:  +44 (0) 7798 750 148

www.accesspartnership.com <http://www.accesspartnership.com>