Comments -- Individual user participation in ICANN and GNSO

["Mike O'Connor" <mike@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi all,

I'm a member of the business wing of the Business Constituency.  I 
have puzzled about the question you've posed for several weeks and 
have concluded that better minds than mine will develop the 
answer.  But I would like to offer several humble suggestions that 
might make that structure more robust as it is implemented.
** Provide a clear "value proposition" for prospective participants **

I think it would be helpful if we made it clear what individual users 
would get in return for their participation.  After all, it's quite 
expensive (both in time and money) to participate in ICANN.  It's my 
bet that most individual users look at that $5-20k/year commitment 
and, in the absence of a compelling answer to the question "what's in 
it for me?", conclude that their resources could be better directed 
elsewhere.
** Provide clear paths to meaningful participation **

ICANN is a bewildering group to join and not very welcoming for the 
newcomer.  A new person who's attending their first ICANN meeting is 
likely to be very lonely and probably won't find it easy to link up 
with a cohort group of new-entrants (or experienced ICANN mentors) 
who are able or willing to provide encouragement.  As a person 
attends subsequent meetings, they're likely to discover that we are a 
very clubby group and that it's hard to break into the inner 
circle.  Perhaps one path to easing individual users into that club 
is through the new working-group process (or some adjunct/advisory 
arm of it).   Even simple things (like color-coded badges for 
newcomers and people-willing-to-befriend-and-advise-them?) would go a 
long way, methinks.
** Support success **

We're an angry, political, confrontational group too.  It's part of 
our history, and a habit that we've never broken.   Most of the 
people sitting around the GNSO and ICANN tables have been rassling 
with each other since The Very Beginning.  That makes us quite 
off-putting to normal human beings who are much more likely to stick 
around if they find fun, learning and fellowship rather than anger, 
intrigue, and punishment.  One approach may be to start consciously 
offering positive rewards for helpful contributions, rather than our 
current well-developed system of punishments for mistakes. Again, the 
new working-group process may provide opportunities for improvement.
In sum, I think that only part of the answer lies in the structure of 
participation and I offer my best wishes for success in that 
inquiry.   An equal component of our eventual success is likely to 
lie in the positive and rewarding support we provide to participants 
in that structure.
Mike O'Connor


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