It is going to be a particularly crazy year in terms of Internet policy and governance, maybe even more than so than 2005, when the World Summit on the Information Society happened.

NPR used the launch of the new gTLD program last week to cover the other big issue – actual governance of the Internet. The slow build up of pressure to again try to bring the Internet under United Nations control is going to let out another big blast of steam this December in Dubai at the WCIT meeting when governments – and only governments – try to rewrite the ITU’s International Telecommunication Regulations (ITRs) to incorporate the Internet. It will be a big fight and I’ll be heading over there to shine as big a spotlight on the weird world of inter-governmental politics as possible.

Anyway, I was interviewed as was Super Rod of ICANN and David Gross – who was the US’ main man in charge during the WSIS negotiations. You can read the piece online, but it was designed for radio, so listening is much better in this case.

Download MP3 of NPR piece on Net governance

It’s a good piece considering the complexity of the subject and the length of time available.

Which reminds me – I *really* need to write a couple of pieces about what is going on with WCIT. It’s vital that something akin to the outcry over SOPA – albeit much more diplomatic – is generated to try to protect the Internet as it exists today, and keep it out of the hands of government representatives who view lack of control as something inherently dangerous.

Quick update: Ha! I see that the bad journalist posing as an academic, Milton Mueller, has taken huge exception to the fact it wasn’t him interviewed for the NPR piece and has written a rambling, bitter post about it. Internet governance is a very silly little world sometimes.

So I think there is a real chance that the Internet extension .xxx will appear on the Internet some time this year.

Of course, you really can never know since overseeing body ICANN is a complex beast, but following the first use of the organization’s Independent Review Process (IRP) and the resulting panel declaration [pdf], I don’t actually see that many obstacles in the path of .xxx: all the arguments have been had and pretty much rejected by a very distinguished set of judges. And of course the current chairman of ICANN was emphatically of the view that dot-xxx should have been approved at the time it was officially rejected back in 2007.

My personal feeling is that dot-xxx is a good idea. It gives a place for pornography to reside online – and allows for pornography-specific rules to be created; it allows for companies and even countries to block access to it if they decide it is against their laws or policies; and it makes it possible that pornography could be pulled out of other top-level domains, so you don’t have it scattered all over the Internet.

As someone who has a little bit of knowledge about the adult industry and the Internet through researching my Sex.com book (although I would not put myself forward as an expert), I would say this is but an inevitable next step for pornography on the Internet. The history of sexually explicit media shows the same pattern over and over again.

Anyway, that’s an aside. I have written a lengthy story for The Register on this issue that includes the views of ICANN’s current CEO, Rod Beckstrom; ICM Registry’s (company behind .xxx) chairman Stuart Lawley; ex-ICANN chairman Vint Cerf; and Internet governance expert Wolfgang Kleinwachter.

You can read the three-part story on El Reg and I have posted it below for those too lazy to click a link.

Plan for top-level pornography domain gets reprieve

ICANN to reconsider .xxx denial

A plan to create a specific area of the Internet for pornography has been given a reprieve by a distinguished panel of judges.

The panelists – who included a former International Court of Justice judge – told Internet overseeing body ICANN in a majority decision [pdf] that it was wrong to reject an application for the top-level domain dot-xxx three years ago.

That decision made by ICANN’s Board in March 2007 was “not consistent with the application of neutral, objective, and fair documented policy,” the panel concluded. It also decided in favor of the company behind the dot-xxx application, ICM Registry, in three of the remaining four issues under dispute and ordered ICANN to pick up fees and expenses totaling $475,000.

As a result of the panel’s declaration, the ICANN Board will now reconsider the dot-xxx application and decision at its meeting in Nairobi next month, opening the way for dot-xxx’s possible inclusion into the Internet’s “root.”

However, the ICANN Board is not obliged to adopt the panel’s findings, and an initial response by its management made it clear that the organization is keeping its options open. CEO Rod Beckstrom, blogging about the decision, pointed out that the panel decision was not unanimous and that there had been significant community opposition to the application.

That post drew immediate criticism from some in the Internet community who felt ICANN was attempting to backtrack from the panel decision, something Beckstrom subsequently refuted. “I was not involved in the history of this issue so I have no vested interest. I was trying to highlight the possible things that can happen now. In too many cases, people act like everything was an easy decision.”

Beckstrom pointed out that it is the Board that will ultimately decide what to do and that his job as CEO is to ensure ICANN’s staff do the best job possible in providing the Board with the objective advice and information it needs.

In that respect, ICANN’s chairman, Peter Dengate Thrush, is now in an interesting position. As chair, he will direct Board discussions over the panel’s report, but prior to his chairmanship he was one of five Board members that voted against the decision to reject dot-xxx, making a strong public statement against the vote and noting the “particularly thin argument” that the Board made in rejecting dot-xxx. It was this same argument that was also rejected by the independent review panel.

ICM Registry chairman Stuart Lawley hailed the declaration as a victory not just for the company but also “the ICANN model of private sector management of the Domain Name System.” And remarkably, considering it lost the dispute, ICANN’s Beckstrom also recognized that the case was successful “from an outside perspective,” telling us that it had put back an issue in front of the ICANN Board that it previously had no intention of revisiting.

The man who headed the Board at the time of the vote, former ICANN chairman Vint Cerf, told us that he was disappointed with the result since he agreed with the dissenting opinion and reasoning of one of the three panelists. Nonetheless, he welcomed the process itself. “I think the fact of the IRP (Independent Review Process) is important to ICANN processes so regardless of the outcome, it strengthens ICANN because it is a process that allows response to complaints.”

What was decided

Two main issues with respect to the dot-xxx application were decided in favour of ICM Registry.

First, the panel decided that the ICANN Board had been wrong to reopen the question of whether there was a suitable “sponsoring community” for dot-xxx after it had already agreed that the company had passed this step and approved a decision to enter into contractual negotiations.

In so doing, the panel rejected the recollections of ICANN’s former chair, vice-chair, and president as “not adequately refuting” the various public statements made about the process for new top-level domains and the dot-xxx application.

And secondly, the panel decided that the final vote to reject the application was “not consistent with the application of neutral, objective and fair documented policy” – i.e. the application was treated differently to other applications such as those for dot-mobi, dot-jobs and dot-travel.

The panel also found “grounds for questioning the neutral and objective performance of the Board” and said that the four reasons the Board gave for rejecting the dot-xxx application were “not fully coherent”.

The current Board members, the majority of which were not on the Board at the time of the vote will need to decide whether it agrees with the panel findings and then what the implications of that are.

ICM’s Lawley is quite clear about what he expects. “I don’t want this to become a huge debate all about ICANN’s bylaws or another cycle of publishing contracts for public review. We have been through five iterations of the contract; it is on the table and we will be expecting ICANN to execute on that contract. It is a question of ‘is ICANN going to do the right thing or not?’”

Why the review is just as important as the decision

Regardless of the decision, the review process itself has been recognized as a crucial step in ongoing efforts to embed an open and multi-stakeholder decision-making body at the heart of the Internet’s domain name system. Under the ICANN model, all those affected by changes in the Internet’s infrastructure – whether governments, business, or individual Internet users – are entitled to an equal say in its evolution. It is especially ironic then that it is the Board’s decision to deny dot-xxx that has been subject to review and rejected.

It was initial approval of the dot-xxx application in 2005 that sparked vigorous opposition from governments, particularly the US government, which had been the focus of a determined campaign by right-wing Christian groups. This proved particularly difficult for ICANN’s management and Board since at the time, governments were debating the organization’s very existence at the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS).

The review panel’s declaration makes specific mention of an apparent “volte face” in ICANN’s approach to dot-xxx as soon as it received a letter from the US government recommending that the top-level domain not be introduced. This was followed by letters from a number of other countries attacking dot-xxx and led to furious diplomacy on the part of ICANN’s then-president and CEO Paul Twomey, who was put in the impossible position of trying to placate governments while at the same time arguing that ICANN needed to remain independent of government influence.

In the view of acknowledged expert on Internet governance, Professor for International Communication Policy and Regulation at the University of Aarhus, Wolfgang Kleinwächter, the dot-xxx decision came down to these high-level politics. “In my eyes the ICANN Board was afraid to risk a confrontation with the GAC (Governmental Advisory Committee) and in particular the US government.”

Kleinwächter points out that the decision was made while ICANN was still beholden to the US government under their Joint Project Agreement (JPA) – an agreement that was replaced with a more autonomous Affirmation of Commitments (AoC) this November. “I would be interested to see how such a process would work under the AoC framework,” Kleinwächter notes.

Ultimately, ICANN survived the WSIS process and set about fixing holes in its constitution, not least of which was a perceived gap in the organization’s accountability and transparency. One of the key elements of that accountability was the Independent Review Process (IRP), created in December 2002 but unused until ICM Registry filed its complaint in 2007.

As such, the successful conclusion of the first IRP complaint represents the first time that an ICANN Board decision has been reviewed by external experts.

The process wasn’t fast, or cheap, with ICM’s Lawley telling us initial estimates were a factor of nine out. It ended up costing the company $3.5 million and took two years to complete. ICANN’s costs, separate from the $475,000 costs, are expected to top $2 million.

The fact that it was the first use of the IRP process also led to the unusual situation that three of the five issues under discussion were about the process itself.

Ultimately, the panel reached several crucial conclusions: that its declaration should not be considered binding on the ICANN Board, but that the review process itself would not be “deferential” to decisions by the ICANN Board.

The result is that the ICANN Board is free to make whatever subsequent decisions it wants but that it can expect panel reports to be blunt and free-thinking in their assessment.

The panel sidestepped the issue of whether ICANN should be subject to international law (instead of just Californian law) but did decide that the organization should not be entitled to use solely the “business judgment rule” – which would have put a far higher burden of proof on the applicant before a decision can be made in their favor. Instead, ICANN was held to a “good faith” standard.

The result of the whole process is a clear demonstration of accountability at the top level of the Internet. It is now the unenviable task of ICANN’s current Board to determine how to respond to strong criticism of a previous decision, especially since the organization is due to open up applications to many more top-level domains in the next year – something that former chairman Cerf thinks will provoke similar issues to the dot-xxx application.

I was at the United Nations in Geneva last week to watch what was happening to the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) as it prepares for its third outing, this December in Hyderabad, India.

Actually I was there for a different reason – an ICANN consultative meeting on the future of the organization the morning before the UN meeting – but it seemed daft to fly all that way and not check out the day of open discussions about the IGF. Plus I have a real soft spot for the IGF and the people that have worked extremely hard to make it a success.

I was a witness to the IGF’s creation, on paper, at the World Summit on the Information Society back in 2005, and then followed it all the way through various preparatory sessions as a reporter.

At the inaugural IGF in Athens, I was asked to be the conference’s “blogger-in-chief” – a position that, ironically enough, my current employer tried to veto. As a semi-official part of the IGF, I also got to see behind the scenes, and was impressed with the hard work, dedication and calm handling of what was an enormous and risky experiment. A lot of people at the time confessed to turning up just to see what would happen – spectators to what could have been the biggest diplomatic car crash for a decade. In the end, despite the odds, it shone through.

Her name was Rio

Inspired by the meeting’s efforts to find Internet-style solutions to some very big problems, I also helped set up one of the new “dynamic coalitions” – for “online collaboration”. The extremely limited resources the IGF team had meant that their Internet options were extremely limited – and this at a time when everyone was talking about Web 2.0.

By the time the second IGF came around, this time in Rio de Janeiro, I had made the unusual choice of taking a job with ICANN which unfortunately put a whole different complexion on things. The Brazilian hosts were making it very plain they intended to make ICANN a central discussion point of their meeting – and not in a positive way. ICANN instinctively went into a defensive crouch, and you can hardly blame it considering the organisation was nearly torn limb-from-limb during the WSIS process.

As a result, I stepped back from helping out the IGF organizers – something I still wish I could have avoided. Although since I helped ICANN to become more open and forthcoming in Rio, I am content with the belief that I helped ensure that the IGF didn’t come to represent a place of combat rather than a location for collaboration and open discussion.

The Rio meeting also saw the collapse of the dynamic coalition I had worked hard at. Partly it was due to the fact that my new job left me with no free time, but more so it was thanks to several people trying to use the credibility that had been built up behind it as a political platform for their personal agendas.

I explain all this because from a personal perspective my natural bias would likely be to see the IGF as going down the tubes. It has only a five-year mandate from the UN Secretary-General and the Rio meeting saw a lot of people pondering whether they would bother to attend the next.

It’s not as if there aren’t already 1,000 different conferences about the Internet. Governments appeared to be stepping back from the process; the fight-fans who had hoped to get ringside tickets to a global Net bout felt cheated; what were the dynamic coalitions actually achieving anyway; and, what exactly was the point of going to India? What would you miss if you didn’t go?

Muffled movement

I’ve not followed the progress of IGF 3, so I have to say it was a delight to see that, far from it falling apart, the whole Internet Governance Forum seems to be coming together.

Don’t get me wrong, if any normal person off the street walked into Room XIX in the Palais des Nations last Tuesday, they would have been overcome with the sense of self-interested individuals having an incredibly long and incredibly boring discussion about something that should somehow be exciting and riveting but very clearly wasn’t.

The IGF process remains the domain of insiders, geeks, paid advocates and people with too much time on their hands. A significant number of the Meeting Advisory Group (MAG) that makes most of the decisions surrounding the IGF don’t even bother turning up to the open consultations. I was tempted to do a headcount but for some reason my natural trouble-making inclinations failed me.

So if it was the same old rigmarole, the same people talking to the same people saying the same things in a heavily padded room through little plastic ear cups, where does my optimism come from?

Almost entirely I think from the IGF Secretariat. The UN staff has been given some stark assessments from headquarters in New York. It is fortunate that the IGF hardly costs the UN anything, relying instead on voluntary contributions, but it is still a big show put on by the United Nations so it has to show its value, and show it soon.

A review of the forum has been ordered and despite efforts to socialize the idea among the great and good gathered in Geneva, it is going to start at the Hyderabad meeting whether people like it or not.

The IGF has to show progress, it has to start carving out its own role, demonstrating its value, and produce something of real originality. Otherwise it’s a goner in 2010. And the IGF Secretariat has started work on that, very carefully and cleverly and with all the diplomatic nous that its main figure, Markus Kummer, is renowned for.

The most significant example of this is in the colour-coding of workshops that will take place in Hyderabad. The emphasis of the IGF has always been on multistakeholderism, which means, basically, getting governments, business, the technical community and civil society talking together.

The workshops are supposed to be multistakeholder i.e. have someone from each group, but this has been frequently ignored, or given lip-service to, or somehow not quite managed in the past. This year, the workshops were listed online and given a colour code – green for fully multistakeholder; amber for not fully multistakeholder; and red for more work needs to be done.

The pressure is then placed on the organizers to get to a green status. And this process has also had the effect of getting people to work together to merge different workshops in order to get the full quotient of people. It has forced people to work together to a common goal. And it has worked in large part. I counted 88 workshops for a possible 98 spots with 1 red, 15 amber and the rest green.

Officialdom

There will be three main issues at the 2008 IGF, and they are:

• Reaching the next billion
• Promoting cyber-security and trust, and
• Managing critical Internet resources

For these three, there are two “official” workshops each, and the same gentle pressure has been applied as with the other workshops – albeit with less success – to get those jostling for position to work together.

This is a step forward from last year where the workshops often proved more valuable than the main sessions. By getting egos to clash over workshops, it may be that the main sessions aren’t dragged down through bureaucratic compromise.

There will still be the need for people – especially government ministers – to have set pieces, but there have been requests this time for moderators to be expert in the field, rather than simply expert moderators. And that shows that there is a hope for more in-depth discussion of the issues this time around. A depth that you get from policymakers, not politicians.

Dead dynamics

The IGF seems to be finding its feet and becoming more structured. Panels in the morning will “distill lessons” that will then “focus the debate” in the afternoon. It won’t work like that in reality of course, but the stated intent is there and everyone agrees with it, which is a clear step forward.

The IGF website is also far more organized. It still looks horrendous, and it is difficult to find material, but the amount and quality of information has taken a big step forward – particularly the inclusion of carefully edited MAG list emails. Only a handful of people will ever read them, but it is the act of having them that is important.

There was also an effort by Nitin Desai – the UN-SG’s special representative – to press the dynamic coalitions into coming up with the goods. Those coalitions that haven’t produce reports on their activities have been threatened with being “archived”. The IGF Secretariat was very careful not to come across as making demands but it is clear that a clean-up is underway (to arrive at a “reasonably tidy house”, according to Desai) – and rightly so. That the coalition I formed (and resigned from just after the Rio meeting) is more than likely to be swept up with the broom can only be a good thing.

It is also worth noting that one or two governments and businesses are also taking a bit of a punt of the IGF and have contributed significant sums of money this time around, lifting at least some of the pressure off. The Canadian government in particular is said to have donated a couple of hundred thousands dollars just to allow for increased participation in the Hyderabad meeting.

The prep meeting

So, what actually happened at the all-day Geneva meeting?

Well, from my perspective, there were five things of note:

1. The usual prepared statements were fewer in number – thank god
2. The governments seemed to be taking less of a public role – not a good thing and also the explanation for why there were fewer prepared statements
3. The Brazilians have decided to use the emotive issue of child pornography to political ends. What political ends people will find out in December, but the cynical powerplay is disheartening
4. The IGF Secretariat were larger, more prepared and more confident
5. Some people – notably civil society – still don’t get it

On the Brazilian thing: the Brazilians, who I very much like on a personal basis, flew over a Senator who has been heading a drive against child pornography at home. He then provided a very loud, almost-ranting political speech about the subject, claiming that Brazil was three years ahead of the rest of the world.

I have a very significant distrust of anyone using child pornography on the Internet as an argument for doing anything with the Internet. As a UK citizen, I have seen my Parliament’s main committee on the Internet completely overrun by zealots for all sorts of controls using the emotive shield of child porn to deflect perfectly reasonable questioning. I have seen efforts to introduce ridiculous laws written through the distorting lens of child porn. And I have seen upfront and in person the lives of innocent people ruined because political pressure opened the door to flawed police investigations.

Every time someone raises the issue of child pornography online, they come armed with a rhetorical question: why aren’t we doing more about this? And then proceed to outline a series of measures that would see them laughed out the room if they were discussing any other subject.

As such, when I hear a Senator boasting about how his country is so much more advanced on fighting child porn than anyone else – which, incidentally, is exactly what the UK claimed last year – I become immediately concerned. My prediction is that shortly after the Brazilians outline the fantastic work they have done removing this repulsive (and extremely niche) activity, they will then outline how everyone else can do the same. And that it will just so happen that those methods fit perfectly with their political goals.

Debate and dialogue

But onto the fact that some people just don’t get it. The most notable case is an academic who I’ve known for a number of years and who I know from experience never tires from railing against imagined malignant influence.

There was a semantic argument at one point in which someone asked for the main sessions to be called “debate and dialogue” rather than just “debate”. The idea being that people don’t necessarily want to just argue with one another, that there should also be some sharing of ideas and experiences.

It was a fairly harmless proposition, subsequently agreed to by others, but in the eyes of some the suggestion represented something far more grave and sinister. And so a false debate started on the issue of debate. The proposition was that the word “dialogue” be added to the title, but it was misrepresented as having been put forward as a sole replacement – and then furiously denounced as such.

The issue of debate thus became that day’s controversy, and speakers, bored from having flown halfway across the world to sit in a huge beige hall, found something to fight over. It was a complete waste of everyone’s time but it does demonstrate that some people still haven’t got it.

Got what? That the IGF’s unique selling point, it’s original nature, its very value and essence comes in getting people from different backgrounds and cultures to overcome their suspicions and differences and find a solution that they can all agree on in furtherance of an Internet that everyone benefits from and which no one can control. And a big part of that process is people letting go of the chips on their shoulders.

Civil society, for example, wants public policy debates where advocates thrash it out, firing facts and figures at their opponents, uncovering misdeeds and through this approach define the best way forward.

What it fails to realise is that the people that actually make those decisions in the real world – governments mostly, but also industry actors in democratic states – don’t use that approach for the simple reason that it doesn’t work. All you end up with is bold but unworkable statements from parties that are now in a confrontational relationship. It’s the opposite of arriving at policy decisions. Fine in a courtroom; pointless in a drafting office.

The people’s representative

It’s not just civil society that still has problems adjusting. Governments have terrible trouble grasping the idea of being an equal stakeholder rather than the decider. They failed miserably when the MAG was being readjusted to provide non-government actors with more power and insisted on retaining their majority position. Likewise, government representatives still can’t bring themselves to participate in the debate, preferring instead to read prepared statements or react only to statements for which they know the official line.

Government representatives also rarely mix with the others in the room. Many shun public meetings altogether. And they provide only a minimum of interactivity with the IGF’s flagship products: workshops and dynamic coalitions. Their placid behaviour in public is, sadly, matched by petulant and unreasonable behaviour behind closed doors.

But it is all very much better than it was. Three years ago, no one trusted anyone else. As the IGF processes have continued and no one has “lost” anything, so the focus has gradually drawn into the issues and solutions to the issues.

There is still paranoia and its flipside, plotting, but what the Geneva meeting demonstrated through its glorious tedium was that the multistakeholderites are just as content planning a meeting together as they fighting with one another.

The longer the IGF continues in the same vein – finding a way to avoid pressing one another’s buttons – the more this understanding will be allowed to foster. And then we will really have a forum worth visiting. It won’t be sexy, it won’t be good TV and it won’t be particularly interesting but it will get some serious work done on an enormously complex subject – namely, figuring out how to deal with this Internet thingy.

If anyone ever wondered whether the Internet was vital, or if the new Internet Governance Forum suffered from a lack of interest, worry no more.

Next week, a series of events will be held in Geneva covering the follow-up to the World Summit on the Information Society and most importantly a preparatory meeting for the next IGF in Rio in November — and there is NOT A SINGLE hotel room available in the entire city. I tried four different online booking sites and nothing. So I found hotels where you can’t book online and called them. Nothing. And I have just got off the phone to the official hotel reservation service in Geneva, part of the tourist information office, and they tell me that Geneva is officially completely booked for 22-25 May.

Where the hell am I going to sleep?

Update: I’ve had to book a villa three miles out of town and actually in a different country (France). At one point I was seriously looking at Lausanne – a 40-minute train journey away. I will call around on Monday and see if there any late cancellations, but it looks like I have a long trip each morning and evening. Lesson learnt: book hotels in Geneva early.

I have just announced the creation of the “dynamic coalition” for online collaboration in the IGF meeting in Geneva. Effectively this is a group of people who plan to test and run online tools to help governments, businesses, civil society, NGOs and so on, have discussions and arrive at solutions, conclusions, recommendations, whatever. It is open to anyone who wants to constructively contribute. Found out more at http://igf2006.info/wiki/IGF-OCDC. This is what I said:

It is my pleasure to announce the creation of a new dynamic coalition.

The Dynamic Coalition for Online Collaboration has been set up to aid the existing dynamic coalitions and hopes to provide these and future groupings stemming from the IGF with online collaboration tools in order to help them carry out their tasks in the most efficient and effective way possible.

While the IGF process produced a remarkable degree of collaboration, one of the biggest challenges for these self-formed groups will be in holding consultations and discussions with one another since their members are both geographically and politically diverse.

The Internet’s ability to share, discuss, alter and enhance information is unparalleled in human history but this information remains largely one-way. It is to collaborative work, where people work together to accumulate knowledge and thrash out answers to problems, that this global network is turning. And the dynamic coalitions represent the forefront of this movement in global policy terms.

The Dynamic Coalition for Online Collaboration recognises that a good deal of effort and energy is likely to be expended by these groups in an effort to find the optimal way of collaborating online and so intends to devise best practice guidelines alongside and in conjunction with these groups in order to aid the process to its fullest ability.

The coalition will evaluate the available collaboration tools and provide two-way support and advice on what technical solutions and approaches are best suited for multi-stakeholder discussions. We hope that this approach will also result in improvements in accessibility and hence participation from developing countries.

We will be open and transparent, open to all who wish to contribute and focussed on providing practical solutions. Anyone that wishes to know more, or wants to get involved, please visit the collaboration site we set up and run for the Athens meeting at “igf2006.info”, and click on ‘dynamic coalitions’.

Information on another of the coalitions as outlined in Geneva – the Freedom of Expression dynamic coalition – can be seen here on Christian Moeller’s blog.

The Greek delegate has just spoken at the stocktaking meeting of the Internet Governance Forum in Geneva.

He gave some stats from the first Athens meeting in November 2006 that might be worth preserving:

• 1350 participants (including 152 media, and coming from 97 countries)
• 8 translation booths and 20 translators
• 50 buses
• 7 metal detectors
• 4 X-ray machines

By the way, there is an IRC chatroom on chat.freenode.net in the room #igf going on as we speak.

I am in Geneva for a stock-take of the first Internet Governance Forum in Athens last November.

It should be an interesting meeting. The one thing that no one is any doubt about is that the IGF will be bigger and more important in 2007. Born out of international discussion (some might say argument) at the United Nations over problems thrown up by the Internet – especially the best way to agree to fix problems – the IGF caught most people by surprise when it became a tremendous success, despite all the opportunities for it to be otherwise.

This year the meeting should get the resources it was starved of last year but at the same time the 2007 meeting in Rio de Janeiro could prove explosive mostly because of continued disagreement about how the Internet is currently run and who gets to make the decisions.

That argument is still ruminating so this 13 February meeting should be an opportunity for people to review and enjoy IGF 2006, discuss what worked and what didn’t, and agree on how to make this year’s meeting better. To this end. the organisers asked people to send in comments to help form discussion and have posted them on its website.

I have been through them all and have put together this quick summary of what everyone agrees on; what most people agree on; and where there will be argument. Where there’s argument, I have given what I hope is a balanced and objective review of what the argument is about and why it’s happening, plus predicted what is likely to happen.

There about 20 responses in all, covering governments, business, academia and non-governmental organisations, which is surprisingly few considering the IGF’s profile and the clear interest there will be in the meeting this year. Here’s the breakdown:

Everyone agrees there should be:

• Faster, cheaper food
• Better wireless access
• Fewer panellists
• More notice of events
• Events finalised earlier and speakers approached earlier
• More online collaboration

Everyone also agrees that:

• The dynamic coalitions were a good thing
• The host country should sort out visa issues early

Most people agree there should be:

• More interaction in workshops
• Shorter main events
• An expansion of the “plaza”
• Less overlap of main sessions and workshops

But there will be disagreement on:

• The members and structure of the Advisory Group
• Whether recommendations or conclusions should be made by the IGF
• Whether the discussion should focus more on “access” and include “internet governance” – which means ICANN.
• Future funding of the IGF

Before getting into the arguments though, I also came across three potentially interesting ideas in the papers:

1. The IGF act a body that helps foster and promote inter-operable technology
2. The IGF adopt the traditional RFC Internet approach to produce texts of broad agreement
4. The IGF incorporates three-minute presentations of ideas and announcements

Now, the problem areas:

Advisory Group make-up:
The Advisory Group is very large (40+ members) and it has a slight bias toward governments. Inevitably, governments are fine with this, whereas those who end up with fewer people at the table – most notably civil society – want it to change. There are two arguments likely to be put forward:

1. The Advisory Group did a sterling job and tearing it up and trying to decide a new group will eat up months of valuable time that should be spent organising the Rio conference.
2. The huge size of the group resulted in most of the agreed problems with the Athens conference: namely that people couldn’t agree on panellists or topics so we ended up with far too many panellists and far too many topics. The government influence also led to the three-hour plenary sessions that people broadly agree are too long.

Likely outcome: The advisory group stays as it is with perhaps a few changes, but is pressured into developing better ways of being decisive.

Should the IGF make recommendations or conclusions?

A real sticking point. Under the Tunis Agenda, the IGF is allowed to make “recommendations”. However, the IGF Secretariat recognised early on that it would be far better that the Athens meeting did not do so or it would quickly have descended into argument and fallen apart before it even started. Instead the emphasis was on constructive discussion and information-sharing. And it was all the better for it, sparking the creation of “dynamic coalitions” that stretched right across the globe and stakeholders.

However there is a strong argument that if the IGF does not make recommendations then it will quickly become an irrelevance. The people turning up to the IGF are busy people and they won’t spend a week in one place just to have a chat over problems.

Of course, the reality of the situation is that it comes down in the middle. The IGF couldn’t afford to make recommendations last year and it almost certainly can’t make them this year because it will result in massive arguments, which will see the IGF fracture and its recommendations be ignored either way. The IGF needs to have another year building on the success of 2006 and then, when its processes and philosophy is rooted and agreed upon, *then* it will be safe to make recommendations.

Likely outcome: Same approach as last year is taken, with emphasis placed on the dynamic coalitions.

Discussion of “access” and ICANN
The elephants in the room. The two most difficult topics concerning the Internet behind which pressure is building.

One thing that everyone will say publicly is that “access” has to be discussed more. Access in this sense is usually taken to mean “getting people in developing countries online”. And everyone broadly agrees that this has to happen – without it, the poorest nations will lose out further. But politically, it is a can of worms. There are a lot of unpleasant truths to be faced once you get beyond the grand words.

For example, access comes with a cost. It will be very, very expensive to provide, say, Africans with fast Internet access because it not so much upgrading infrastructure as creating the infrastructure. There is also little profit incentive since the end customers have such low income, and it is companies that work by profit incentive that have the most resources and expertise in Internet matters.

The limited infrastructure usually comes courtesy of a monopoly telco with a business model of getting a lot of money from tens of thousands of individuals (including companies) rather than smaller amounts from millions of people. In Western minds, this is usually explained with reference to corruption; and in developing countries’ minds with Western companies’ control of the data pipes. Both are true to greater or lesser degrees but what is clear is that the very people in the best position to change the situation have the least to gain by putting through any changes. Unless, that is, the political and business landscape changes around them.

This is why the more debate and the more global pressure brought to bear, the more likely the situation is to change. But before that debate can even take place, there is a need for people to understand the situation so that perceived racial and cultural biases don’t cloud the issue. How do you do that? By having discussions and putting access on the agenda, but not make it the centrepiece.

A new conceptual model

That said, I was intrigued by an idea I heard last week from someone who knows a thing or two about this problem. He suggested that rather than the IGF’s agenda comprise four different topics wedged into a square, like it was last year, that it be given a different conceptual pattern: that of a circle in the middle with the other issues circling around outside it. Access forms the circular core. I rather like the image and the idea.

One of the things of real practical use in Athens was the workshops where advice and help was given almost informally about regulation regimes, infrastructure and capacity building and – vitally – engineering courses so countries can develop their own talent. A hundred local engineers are always going to have a bigger impact than 100 imported short-term-contract engineers.

It may also help to expand the view of access beyond just poor countries without Net access. Access is vital in every country: from more Wi-Fi hotspots in Europe; to cheaper computers in India; to making the business case for government-backed broadband roll-out. China is leaping ahead, as is South Korea. In Mexico recently, I noticed that there was plenty of bandwidth in the cities but people were still using Internet cafes. The same was true when I was in Colombia. And I remember when in Tunisia, the pride with which I was shown the new computer room in the hotel I was staying at.

The prices of Internet cafes have come down with demand, but it is absolutely vital that the jump is made to where people have their own computer, like I am using my laptop right now. When you have access in your pocket (as I have done for at least two years on my phone and PDA), the Net’s possibilities explode.

I should also mention the $100 laptop punted by Nicholas Negroponte which I have always been, and remain, deeply sceptical of. But I hear that the demand created by his high media profile has created an expectant market and now Intel is looking at a $200 laptop to cover people’s needs. That’s the power of discussion.

And that is really the extent of my knowledge and understanding of access issues – all pretty shallow stuff based on little more than anecdotes. Which is all the more reason why access should be discussed more widely – so we can get some facts and figures and everyone knows what we are really up against.

ICANN

The other topic of controversy is, of course, ICANN. At the last IGF there was some quite explicit efforts to prevent widespread discussion of ICANN (under the cloak of “governance of the Internet”). There was nonetheless some public conversation about in the opening session, and a workshop effectively dedicated to it, but it didn’t blow up and sweep away the other topics much to everyone’s relief. A lesson from WSIS.

But as numerous people have pointed out, this doesn’t mean it is off the agenda. And since the next IGF will be held in Rio, it is sure to come up in sort form as the Brazilians are one of the most sharply critical parties when it comes to ICANN – or, more precisely, the US government’s continued oversight of ICANN.

I would predict though that there is still a majority of people though that want to make sure not so much that ICANN *isn’t* discussed but that all the other vital elements *are* discussed. There will always be a venue for Net governance arguments, but the IGF is – and should be – much more than that.

I should state by the way that I am now actually an ICANN employee (general manger of public participation) so my comments may be viewed as biased. In my favour, I have publicly held the same view for a long time while acting as a journalist.

Likely outcome: Some element of ICANN’s role, discussed under some pseudonym, will be on the Rio agenda; the access discussions will progress slightly but still take up far less space than they should.

Future funding

This post is going on a long time – apologies – last point of controversy: funding.

The IGF suffered tremendously last time from having only a tiny pot of funds. That the IGF wasn’t a complete shambles is mostly thanks to the remarkable skills of Markus Kummer and Chengetai Masango who made up the IGF Secretariat (although it would be extremely unfair not to also mention the voluntary and very hard-working Advisory Group; the hosts, Greece; the UN staff and organisers; and the people that did put money in of whom I am certain about only two – Nominet and ICANN).

This time around, the situation should be much better. For one, the IGF was a big success – something that Kummer said in the press conference on the last day of Athens would be a huge boon as he could now showcase what the conference was to potential donors. Plus the business crowd were more impressed than they expected to be, so there should with luck be more businesses putting in money and also making more of the plaza idea. And then maybe governments will be persuaded to invest a little more seeing as the IGF appears to have carved out its spot.

Nevertheless, there will still be argument about where the funds come from or should come from. And then, no doubt, complaints about perceived bias in favour of donors, or exclusion of others on the grounds of financial ability. And then there’s the issue of travel grants to people in poorer nations – another hot potato. And so on, and so forth – whenever it comes to money, there is usually argument both behind and in front.

All that aside

I have perhaps concentrated too much on the negative here but I felt it might be useful to point out the situation surrounding the points where people are likely to disagree.

Personally, I am looking forward to seeing all the people I met in Athens, and have met at previous Geneva meetings, because when you step away from the small arguments every one of them – and they are a very, very diverse group – is in the room in order to make the Net work better and to get the most out of it. And it’s always exciting to be in amongst that sort of gathering.

I should also say that the collaboration site I set up with Jeremy Malcolm for the IGF meeting in November may serve as a useful resource for people wanting to know about what is going on in the meeting tomorrow. Check out the http://igf2006.info/wiki/RemoteParticipation webpage for more information.

The IGF official site is at http://www.intgovforum.org. And – ah ha ha ha – I have just noticed that the IGF Secretariat has put together its own synthesis document of all the contributions it received, so this entire post may have been a waste of time. If you want the official, and no doubt more objective view of people’s positions, you can download it here [rtf].

Starting 5 February, I will be the “general manager, public participation” for ICANN – an organisation I have closely followed and frequently criticised almost since its inception in 1999. I’m excited about it, and the possibilities the position holds.

Here then is a blog post about why I took the job and what I hope to achieve.

The position is actually explicitly mentioned in ICANN’s bylaws. It says:

“There shall be a staff position designated as Manager of Public Participation, or such other title as shall be determined by the President, that shall be responsible, under the direction of the President, for coordinating the various aspects of public participation in ICANN, including the Website and various other means of communicating with and receiving input from the general community of Internet users.”

When I was first asked if I might be interested in the job – less a month ago – I was very far from convinced. For one, I love being a journalist – finding out information, interviewing people, writing up the results and then publishing them as widely as possible. I particularly love it when the mere provision of information results in real changes.

I also feared that taking a job with ICANN would be a cop-out. I have seen countless colleagues take the corporate buck and lose all sense of perspective. Within months they arrive in snappy clothes and tell you that you need to see things from a different viewpoint and that it’s more complex than you realise. Perfectly true in many situations, except sooner or later you find them bending the truth as far as it can go in order to cover up some minor misdeed. If I took a job with ICANN, I asked myself, how long before I am doing the same while deluding myself that I am slowly changing the culture from within?

Fortunately the answer is that ICANN’s culture has already changed and the main job of manager of public participation will be to simply reflect that fact.

Bacon with wings

ICANN old-hands will scoff at that assertion, and most of the remainder will be distinctly sceptical, but that’s the truth of it and I would not have taken the job if I didn’t believe it to be case. The reality is that ICANN has survived intact from the WSIS process; it has largely made peace with VeriSign; it has found a way to relate to country-code managers; and even the complex and double-edged relationship it has with the US government is stabilising. ICANN as an organisation is finally finding it feet and it has plenty to prove.

The legal and financial breathing space it has enjoyed recently has seen the organisation expand and grab some of the best people from the various organisations swirling around the Internet. The results have been dramatic. IANA has become what it always should have been. The waters of both the gTLDs and IDNs are becoming calmer – something that seemed impossible at one point. Nominet and Denic have signed up with ICANN. The organisation even has the self-confidence to start turning a critical eye to its own constituencies and committees. ICANN is listening and changing.

I have seen these changes happening slowly over the course of the past three years but it hit home personally when I was asked to do a participation website for ICANN’s recent Sao Paulo meeting. I wasn’t sure about doing it but decided to put my money where my mouth was, and quickly found that it was ICANN staff more than any other group that took to the idea of more direct and immediate interaction.

But why take the job? Because I had already grown used to the idea of working toward sorting out ICANN’s issues when I had applied, with a level of seriousness that surprised me, to become a member of the ICANN Board. I realised that journalism, while it served to highlight a few issues and to keep the wider community informed, was oddly ineffective when it came to encouraging real change.

So I re-read the statement on my Board application late at night about a week after I had been asked to consider the job of general manager of public participation, and in the morning I woke up convinced that being offered the position was, if not exactly destiny, then whatever comes close to it for a realist.

History of the role

There is some history to general manager of public participation, which I will very briefly outline. It was first proposed by ex-ICANN president Stuart Lynn back in 2002 when he published a paper for reforming ICANN.

Lynn’s vision for the “Manager of Public Participation” came in three parts:

a) Responsible for managing the public comment and participation process for ICANN on all substantive matters. Will solicit, receive and report to the Board on all public input on matters put out for public comment.
b) Responsible for managing all ICANN public forums, public e-mail list, etc. Provided necessary electronic access to publicize findings and recommendations, all of which will be available to the public.
c) Provided with support staff and other resources necessary to carry out responsibilities effectively

ICANN was doing a poor job of sorting out comments made by people watching the various processes but who weren’t an everyday part of them. It was far too easy for people to ignore the public comment forums. The mailing lists were, and continue to be, dominated by a few individuals who often rehash the same arguments and are aggressive to newcomers. It is a very time-consuming and unrewarding task to scour the public comment boards – as I have found countless times as a journalist covering ICANN.

In the end, you tend to rely on people forwarding you a link – to message 243 – and even then you have to go up and down the thread before you can make out what exactly is being referred to.

Another common attribute of ICANN mailing lists is immediate criticism of what can appear to be any suggested change. ICANN staff have complained for years that anything they suggest is immediately seized upon and torn to pieces. The reality is slightly different of course. There is undeniably a certain relishing of finding holes in new suggestions, but often the problem stems from the fact that there is not enough inter-communication between groups, so each group forms it own philosophy on different aspects of the Net. So when something appears at the start of a new consideration process, it is often the philosophical thread running through the document, rather than the actual content, that seems so out of place.

Islands of thought

This situation was creating islands of thought and counter-productive argument. The role of general manager for public participation, as Lynn saw it, would therefore help make sure that coherent arguments – often hidden among the bile – were pulled out and given the necessary attention.

Inevitably, Lynn’s restructure plan was attacked from the word go. But, largely, he was right. It is just a shame that this public participation manager role has taken so long to be filled, because there has always been – and remains – a constant need in ICANN processes to flag up the best ideas, wherever they come from, and to air the views of the many different Internet constituencies so that others can gain a better understanding of their perspective.

Kieran Baker took on the role briefly in 2004 but was caught up in press relations and never had the time to get involved in the participation side of things. Now, however, with Paul Levins dealing with the high-level stuff; with a new COO, Doug Brent, helping co-ordinate ICANN functions; with a number of regional liaisons doing alot of the outreach; and with a separate media advisor job which should be filled soon to deal with the press side of things; the role of general manager for public participation can do exactly what it was intended to.

And that is?

Broadly I see the job as doing three things:

1. Getting more people involved in ICANN and its processes – and that means businesses, it means NGOs, it means academics and it means the (wo)man-in-the-street who has some technical knowledge or who wants to learn more about the Internet.
2. Make that involvement count. This is the really tough part. Trying to make sure that this vast array of people all find interacting with ICANN worthwhile. ICANN is a complex beast and many of the processes are involved. But nothing is *that* complex. I often argue with people – usually elitist types – over what people are capable of comprehending. My argument is: get any TV watcher to explain to you the different interactions involved in their favourite soap opera. It is always vastly more complex than any real-world interaction. You just have to get people interested in something and provide them with good information and they will grasp pretty much anything. And then the second part – you have to make sure what they say is listened to and, where needed, acted upon.
3. Putting an end to this “us versus them” mentality that still lingers. How do you do that? By allowing people to talk to one another. People remain wary of ICANN staff; and ICANN staff remain wary of hidden agendas. All that will be blown out the window if people are given a space where they can interact in a relaxed way and can start talking to one another as human beings, rather than representatives.

Enough tree-hugging philosophy – what are you actually going to do?

I have alot of ideas which I am going to sound people out about – both in ICANN and outside, with those who follow ICANN and those that don’t. As such, ideas I have now are likely to expand, or shrink, pop-up or disappear. But at the moment this is my gut feeling:

• Provide clear, simple explanations of the processes going through ICANN
• Take some of the unnecessary pressure off ICANN staff by providing tools that help people reach broad consensus about a particular topic among themselves. ICANN staff can then act as facilitators rather than scapegoats.
• I intend to maintain a blog, or other similar mechanism, that will basically let everyone know what I’m doing in the job. It’s amazing how willing people are to help when they can see you are trying hard to achieve something.
• Make the ICANN website a useful resource. And try to make absolutely sure that emails from people don’t fall through the cracks
• Allow people to invest more, interact more and share the burden of filtering information.
• More “soft” discussion.
• Real, efficient, effective and valuable interaction in multiple languages. It is absolutely vital that people are able to interact with ICANN in languages other than English. My approach is: there is no option but to have a multi-lingual ICANN so let’s start now and figure out a way over each obstacle as we come to it.

The bigger picture

ICANN represents what I believe is the beginning of a new model of global interaction and decision-making where numerous stakeholders: governments, business, non-governmental organisations, academics and, well, anyone with a solid interest in a particular issue, work together to arrive at what they think is the best way forward.

I think possibly the greatest gift the Internet will end up giving us will be this ability for disparate people to work together toward a common goal, with the end result that decisions about very important matters will be faster and more effective. ICANN is effectively the guinea pig in a gradual global movement toward more inclusive policies across all sectors and across the world. And that movement is there for the simple reason that the end results are better.

The United Nations is definitely moving in this direction. And only a few weeks ago I spent a day with various academics and UK Cabinet Office representatives at the Oxford Internet Institute where it was quite clear that people there were thinking along the same lines. But as yet no one is quite sure how to do it.

Part of my role will be about finding ways to get widely different groups working together: with one another and with ICANN. And I am determined to tell everyone what I learn on the way. With any luck I will be able to spread more of the peculiar sense of possibility that the Internet consistently instills in people.

I’ve spent quite a bit of time recently building and running online participation websites – or, in English, trying to get people on the Internet learning about and interacting with physical meetings.

Both have been for Internet organisations, which should theoretically make things easier. The first was the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) in Athens in early November, and the second ICANN’s Sao Paulo meeting now in early December.

I figured while some things were fresh in my mind, I’d do a blog post about what I’ve learnt. And the title “the possibilities and the realities” took about two milliseconds to pop into my mind.

The site

It is comparatively easy to set up a participation website once you have a basic framework in mind. But it only occurred to me today that I had built this framework in my head through years of working for online publications and following the media side of the Internet, and that much of it was the sort of information that is only obvious once you know it.

Here then is an off-the-top-of-my-head meander about what goes on and what works.

Keep it simple

It is very, very easy to flood a webpage with information for the simple reason that people will all want access to different bits of information, especially at a meeting.

The websites that have to cram as much fast-moving information into one page as possible are news websites. And if you watch over time, you’ll find that more and more links and sections are added to a website over time. Then someone realises it is impossible to navigate, so a designer comes along and stick in some lines and pictures to divide it up a bit. And that staves off the clutter for a bit, but then the page starts getting full again and some sections become less relevant, which starts causing tension.

Sooner or later someone decides there has to be a redesign and the redesign gets back to the lovely position where you were at the beginning – a clean design with minimal clutter. But then the extra sections begin again… And so on, and so on.

Different strokes

With a meeting website, that process happens much faster. Because it is very hard to tell in what direction the meeting will go or what people will be interested in, you have to allow equal room for each element. The funny thing is that people get attached to different elements. So someone could be drawn to the fact that they have their own publishing space (a blog, say), or they find they love commenting on other’s pages, or they find that fast, interactive communication is what does it for them (chatrooms). Each person then finds this element far more important as a result and will push for it to be given greater prominence on the site.

What is odd is that people tend to take to one approach, and at the same time, they tend not to like the other approaches. So it’s not as if you can just offer blogs, or chatrooms, or comments because whichever one you cut out, you are also cutting out that segment of people that are drawn to that approach i.e. if you kill chatrooms, people won’t suddenly start writing blog posts; they just won’t bother at all.

What is strange, I have found, is that people are comfortable with forums – the relatively formal and relatively slow approach to interaction – but ditch them immediately when something more immediate is offered. Rather than forums acting as a combiner of self-publishing, commenting and chatting, they tend to act as the ruiner of each. It pays to offer a choice.

At the same time, most people are comfortable with *not* interacting. In the same way that most people don’t talk up in a meeting, most people are content with watching others interact online. How do you get people that may wish to interact but don’t feel comfortable enough entering into it straight away? Provide anonymous interaction.

Anne Onymous

Now this is a difficult area because if you allow anonymous interaction on the Net these days, within a day you will be flooded with automated spambots and the like. Not only that but there is a perverse type of human personality (and they *love* the Internet) that draws great pleasure from taking over conversations between people. As such, you have to strike a balance.

Some kind of verification process is needed. And the solution is to allow anyone at all to see what is on the site, but only those that are willing to provide at least some detail to be allowed to add to that information. And the most important element of this is to make that verification process as simple and non-threatening as possible.

One thing I’ve learnt from working on numerous online news sites over the years is that you have to leave the doors open for everyone. Once people have got used to you, and “trust” you – i.e. they have invested time and effort in getting to grips with the site and reading what is there – if you then ask them for information about themselves, they will usually hand it over without a fuss.

Getting the info

The absolutely vital job you have to do before telling people about a website is to “populate” it with content. If someone arrives at a website and nothing much is there, it doesn’t matter if the very next day there is 2,000 pages of content, that person won’t bother to return until they are encouraged to by some external force.

People should find something useful in a site straight away. They need to think: this might be handy later. And that usually means acting as a source of information for something that they know they will forgot in a day’s time – like the exact time of a meeting, or the room, or the name of the person that did that thing.

But the complete flipside to this comes in keeping that information up-to-date. Meetings in particular move extremely fast – speakers change, rooms change, agendas change, times change. Anyone who has ever run a conference soon builds a system that deals with sudden changes as just a part of the process – something that will happen.

From the perspective of running a participation website, if you don’t find some way of tapping into that process, you are out-of-date and increasingly hopeless as each hour goes by. One of the odd things about the IGF and ICANN sites I have run is that they have been in parallel with established sites that are plugged into this process. Because of the experimental nature of participation websites in serious organisations, both sites have been loosely affiliated with, as opposed to a firm part of, the process. I believe this is likely to change next time because of the unnecessary repetition and chasing of information.

Call of the wild

The really strange thing is that this process of chasing and replicating information can build up completely non-sensical barriers between people – even when you are sat there and you know it is daft. It is hard-wired into the human brain for some reason and no doubt would have some tremendously useful function if there was a nuclear winter, but the solution to this odd rising sense of aggression is, very simply, to talk to people and prove you are not up to no good.

A good solution is to provide people with their own ability to add information. That way, there is nothing to rub up against. But there is no doubt that if there are two sources of information for the same thing, it requires a concerted and conscious effort for those sources not to end up in competition with one another.

Old habits die hard

Something that has been intriguing to me on one level is how people may not like the system they have, but they would rather stick with it than change. It’s perfectly logical and a part of human nature, but it is still amusing.

The advantages of a something new have to be pointed out. I’m sure a marketing executive could talk for days about this very topic but since I have long considered the modern obsession with marketing the sure sign that we are all doomed, I have never had to consider this element much. It may be worth getting a Net-savvy marketing person to advise on participation websites. Much as it pains me to admit it, they would probably have some useful insights.

Anyway, as a result, the most popular elements of both sites that I have built and run have been those where this is no alternative elsewhere. I am certain that if these sites continue, they will start to bring in more people as they realise they can get everything in one spot, rather than have to jump between different sites, or bits of software. But starting out, people are suspicious.

Get on with it

I’m waffling on, so I will tighten up and get to some points.

• Government people: I can’t for the life of me understand how to involve government people on the Net. Anyone with any insight please email me. Surely these people have email accounts and buy books on Amazon? An extraordinary low number of government officials will have anything to do with the Internet – even when they are sat in a room discussing the future of the Internet. I find it extraordinary and I am going to discuss it with the people in government that I know. I wish I was in Sao Paulo for just this reason. If there is a government official that knows me that fancies a free, confidential lunch in London in the next few months, just get in contact.
• Lessons:
  There are lessons to be learnt. Among them are:
  • Get the site up early – as early as possible and advertise it as widely as possible, let people get used to it
  • Give people free reign. But within boundaries. It is very easy to screw up websites if people are allowed to put in code, or add pages to a website – and in 99 percent of cases because they are trying to do something useful but haven’t had the 100 hours of learning you have.
  • Be open and friendly. Saying ‘no’ at any point pisses people off – especially if they are taking a risk and trying something they haven’t done before.
  • Get someone in authority on board. At the IGF, I was I think tolerated because Markus Kummer and Chengetai Masango knew that I had only good intentions at heart. But with ICANN, Paul Levins approached me and we have built up a level of trust that has seen him help smooth over some tensions his end while at the same time making lots of new possibilities open up
• Possibilities
  And it is those possibilities that are the most marvellous thing about the Net. I think one posting did it for me today and made the whole thing worthwhile.

It was this post from Maria Farrell – an ICANN staffer who I’m sure I’ve met but only very, very briefly. It was about Whois – which has to be the most thrashed-over and done-to-death topic that exists in ICANN at the moment.

Maria managed to get across in just 462 words a heady blend of professionalism, insight and helpfulness that represents exactly what ICANN is capable of. It is this ability that ICANN staffers see every day and so are so bemused when they see outsiders condemning them for being closed and secretive. But the fact is that if you don’t work in LA on the third floor in Marina del Rey, you don’t know.

And this is the big thing – even if you ran into, for example, Maria, at an ICANN meeting, she will have 100 jobs to do, you will have 100 jobs to do and human interaction being what it is, you would most likely fail to impress on one another how either of you function. This is why social events exist. But the enormous possibility of the Net and of participation websites is that they can do the online equivalent of build respect while also breaking the ice.

I should note by the way that there are several other interesting blog posts that offer the same sort of thing: Kim Davies being reasonable about a subject that you can easily see people getting upset about; Jacob Malthouse offering a more academic, practical and far-reaching take on expanding online interaction; Paul Levins being open and honest about what he’s trying to do.

In the spate of just a few hundred words, a human face is given to highly contested issues. Of course, that doesn’t mean you’re going to agree with them but it certainly opens the door for more civil interaction and, as anyone who has had to get things done through a treacle of viewpoints, you can achieve it either by having respect for one another and arriving at gentle compromises, or you can do it by tying everyone up and then sneaking through your own solutions.

ICANN has always been an organisation that favoured the latter – and that is behind a huge amount of the mistrust and aggression directed at ICANN. But it looks as if it may finally be growing up and finding how to pull off the former. We shall see. Fingers crossed.

[I just posted this on the ICANN Participation website - and realised maybe I should have only posted it here on my own blog. So here is some daft repetition.]

The Nominating Committee of ICANN decides who will take the most important posts in the organisation.

It is also the most secretive organisation I believe I have ever come across. I know more about MI5, the KGB and Mossad than I do about the NomCom. Which is very odd as I personally know a number of people actually on the NomCom.

At 8.30am tomorrow morning, chair of the NomCom, George Sadowky will give a presentation about this year’s process, you can see it now here (Powerpoint). I have alot of respect for Mr Sadowsky but reading the presentation you would think that the whole process was smooth and open and understood.

The reality was (and I know because I applied) that no one at all had even the slightest idea what was going on. You sent a submission, you received an email saying it had been received. And then four months later you recieve an email telling you who had been chosen (and it wasn’t you).

The NomCom went out of its way not to supply even the most basic information about its processes. It even keep the date and location of its meetings secret. And if I asked any of the members of the NomCom that I know personally, they refused to give even the most basic information. They had been told not to talk about any element whatsoever.

Reality check

What did happen if you were deemed by the invisible process to be vaguely suitable was that you received an aggressive phonecall – the structure of which was never explained. Here is what Wendy Grossman felt about the experience. She received an email asking her for a phone number where she would be available all weekend.

“When the email said they wanted to talk to me for ‘clarification’ I assumed they meant they wanted to ask me questions about what I’d written in my statement of interest. So I reread it. I also spent an hour or two before the phone call reading news and other items on the ICANN site.

“None of that helped, because what Sadowsky, who conducted the 20-minute call with utter silence behind him, asked me were things like, ‘What, in your view, is ICANN’s mission?’ And ‘What are the three areas of ICANN you most want to be active in?’ The first question made me think I was taking a test; the second seemed more like a job interview, or perhaps a theatrical casting call. You know, the kind where the director and his minions are all sitting, invisible, out in the theater where you can’t see them because the stage lights are blinding you.”

By every measure – except secrecy – the NomCom process is a disaster. Out-of-date, ineffective, unaccountable, unhelpful, it is an abomination.

The Canadian government doesn’t like it – and said as much in a public meeting in Washington. The ccNSO doesn’t like it – its chair Chris Disspain saying so no less than five times yesterday in the ccNSO meeting when discussing transparency and opennes with ICANN’s Paul Levins. In fact, I have yet to have a conversation with *anyone* who thinks the NomCom functions well.

Review

But I have held off laying into the NomCom recently because I have been told in a number of private conversations that everyone has already agreed that it will be extensively reviewed, and many of the people most closely involved in it were hoping the review would be announced at the same time as the candidates that will take their positions at the end of this week.

George Sadowsky makes a point in his presentation – highlighted in bold with an explanation mark – that NomCom review is needed. I know that Wolfgang Kleinwaechter has some intelligent thoughts about the next iteration of NomCom and in fact the make-up of ICANN. I know that ICANN staff aren’t happy with it but don’t want to say anything because to do so could be mistaken as trying to meddle with an independent appointment body.

So everyone is agreed — it has to change.

Then why on EARTH have the people for next year’s Nominating Committee already been decided? Michael Froomkin has blogged that he was informed yesterday that he has been chosen a second time for the NomCom [Michael Froomkin has taken issue with this (see below) and says he was informed a few weeks ago. My point is not when he was chosen but that he was chosen before the NomCom officially closed this week].

Who the hell is choosing who gets to be on the NomCom? And when and how did they decide who would be on 2007’s NomCom? Why have members been chosen before the NomCom even gives its report? This is a fix and people should refuse to accept it tomorrow morning.

If ICANN is serious about openness and transparency, how about it starts with the very process that decides how the organisation is run?