Remote participation improvement team
How do we improve remote participation? Make it a real alternative to physically being present at a meeting? Or, more accurately, how do we make it so that remote participation becomes as near equivalent to physical participation as possible? This is a forum for those ideas. It is open to all, we want to put heads and minds together and see if we can't use Internet technology to push that one bit further into making the world an ever-smaller place.
Comments
Making remote participation work better
I'm participating in the New Delhi meeting from the UK and have two points to make:
1) The clock on the "upcoming events" section of the New Delhi website assumes I'm in India. Currently, for example, it is showing that the Welcome Ceremony starts in 1 Hour. That's because it's 07.45 in the UK, but it's 13.15 in New Delhi and the Welcome Ceremony has come and gone.
2) I simply can't find where to communicate with (eg) Kieran when he is sat in a session. I've tried delhi.icann.org and blog.icann.org and here I am at public.icann.org [and at last *somewhere* to type *something* in]. Maybe I'm just stupid, but where are people typing in the questions that I see Kieran asking on their behalf?
php chat
I've now found the PHP-Chat on the individual pages for each session.
Those clocks again
And where in the world was it 09.56 when I posted that?
A Few Ideas About Virtual Meetings
About two years ago, I posted something to the GNSO Council, or one of its working groups, about how to hold an online meeting. I wish I could find the original post, but since neither my memory nor Google are pointing me in the right direction, let me try to recreate it here.
The idea is to have a deliberative conversation around a subject or set of subjects in a compressed amount of time (like in a real meeting), but serially so that everyone can participate in their own locations and their own time zones. Coordinating the serial conversations relies heavily on staff support.
There's no magic to this particular formulation -- I set it out here just to explain the concept -- and I'm sure it can be improved upon. It looks something like this:
You start with a subject to be discussed. Then...
Day 1 (wherever you are). Participants write an issue paper, comment, short statement -- whatever they want basically -- on the issue at hand. Who are you? How does this issue affect you? How does the issue affect others like you who may be similarly situated? Do you have thoughts about what to do about the issue? What are the costs and benefits of your proposed solution? Who else might be impacted by the issue or the particular solution? Who would bear the cost, if any, of your proposal? This "opening statement" period, of course, could be longer than one day. Estimated participant time commitment: 4 hours.
Day 2. Staff reads and summarizes the opening statements, organizes them, if possible, into groups where positions share common themes. Publishes draft staff summary and thematic paper.
Day 3. Comment on the Staff paper. Did the Staff get your position correct? Estimated participant time commitment: 1 hour.
Day 4. Final version of staff summary and thematic paper is published.
Day 5. Participants, Directors and Staff read the staff summary and thematic paper and read the individual position papers of participants as appropriate. Estimated participant time commitment: 2-4 hours.
Day 6. Participants, Directors and Staff ask questions of participants who submitted comments. Questions are posted for all to read.
Day 7. Participants respond to questions.
Day 8. Participants read responses. Participants write a new issue paper, comment, short statement -- again, whatever they want basically -- but here the goal is to write something that would accommodate the concerns of others. Take account of the statement of others, especially those in other issue groups. If they are wrong, why? If they can be accommodated, how? What is the cost of accommodating the various concerns? Who bears those costs?
Day 9. Another Draft Staff Summary is produced.
Day 10. Did the staff get it right? Review and revise the staff summary.
Day 11. Final Staff paper.
Day 12. Final round of questions from Participants, Directors, and Staff.
Day 13. Final summaries are published. Final staff report surveys the issues and proposal, weighs the concerns, teases out areas of consensus/common ground, makes recommendations for ways forward based on submissions.
* * * * *
So, yes, it takes two weeks (or possibly more), but the number of days, or the timing of the days, doesn't really matter. The goal is to just have a process that everyone will follow over an agreed period of days, in which staff and the Board will participate. (Board participation, at some crucial points in the process, is key, because it elevates the online process to some equal status with the in person meetings.)
Anyway, that's a start, just to sort of describe the idea. It *does* take a commitment of time, but no more so than traveling to some far flung part of the world for eight days.
Thoughts and revisions welcome!
-- Bret
Some thoughts
I don't think this would work. Why? Because it requires too much co-ordination over the wrong time period. One-week meetings work because everyone's mind are tuned to Monday-to-Friday so it gives focus. Beyond that, you start losing people and concentration and people might get annoyed if they made an effort at one point but then missed their spot later on in the process.
As soon as you get beyond a week, the timeline stretches much further - into months. And I'm not sure what you outline would avoid that.
However what is interesting from your plan is what you intrinsically feel is missing from the current process. It strikes me - please do correct me if you think I am misrepresenting your ideas here - that you are looking for:
* A more community-led start to a policy
* More and clearer interaction with ICANN staff in the early stages
*The Board to be pulled in at key, earlier, points
I think these are laudable goals and we should see where they can fit in with the upcoming review of the PDP. I also think we should look at what online collaboration can do - and I am about to embark on a review of alot of online tools to see how ICANN's forums and public comment periods can be improved and made much more interactive.
Since I have never run a PDP process, I just don't have the real-world understanding of what happens and can happen but I will talk to some of the ICANN staff that have and run your post by them, see if something stands out as useful.
Kieren
Fair Points
Good points. I originally drafted that up as a replacement for an in person meeting, not a supplement, so as a supplement, it really does lack the things you noted. Ideally, we'd figure out a way for people to spend concentrated effort, on a "meeting"-like period of time, in their own homes and offices, to accomplish the sharing of views and consensus points that you might get at a real meeting. We should think more about that, as it might be nice to replace one of the three meetings each year with something virtual.
That said, you've teased out the three things that I do think would make virtual participation more worthwhile. If we're going to participate remotely, we need to be able to make comments out of time with the other participants and still have them considered and discussed, and then react to what other say about what we said.
So to the "community led start," I'd say "yes," but we also need to have that start in advance of the meeting. Let's say we're going to have a Dehli workshop on "front-running" that will have a representative from the SSAC and maybe someone from NSI on the panel. Have them post a position paper seven days in advance of the panel discussion. This gives those of us at home the opportunity to contribute to the workshop on our own time, without waking in the middle of the night. After the workshop, post a short set of outline points of the overall themes and suggestions made in real time. Then, we can read these and comment again.
Staff interaction is very important. That starts with you, as the coordinator of it all, but, in my hypothetical, who are the ICANN staffers charged with looking at front-running? It's probably some combination of legal, registrar liaison, and GNSO policy staff. How do we talk directly to them, in an open and public way? (Open and public is very important, as it reduced the fear that we're lobbying or getting unfair access to private information.)
Board interaction is critical. By what I've heard, the Board has an active mailing list, with over 3000 messages exchanged among the Board members each year. We don't see any of this. Obviously, the Board is very engaged in discussions. A handful of Board members engage in various lists, but it would be nice to see them engage in other places.
-- Bret
Online meeting and real input
I think we're starting to pull out some good points here.
I was pondering one of them this week. Domain front-running has become an issue very quickly, and it should be an issue of early discussion at the ICANN Delhi meeting.
But, here's the question: what is the venue for that discussion? And what should be done with that early (probably inaccurate, probably emotive) comment?
At the moment all ICANN has is diatribes at a microphone in a public forum. You then have to wait on someone else later on in the queue to pick up the conversation (because everyone in the queue is in the queue to make a particular point).
I agree wholeheartedly with the staff interaction aspect. And, yes, it is my responsibility to sort this out. There remains a big problem though - one which people don't talk about - and that is the risk of policy being defined by the most persistent.
If you have a wide open process it is also wide open to abuse. I have been at ICANN meetings in my previous role as a reporter where I heard five fervent opinions expressed in a row, all of which were broadly in agreement but all of which would have led to dreadful policy.
Where is the balance between openness, allowing everyone to express their opinion, and making sure that you end up with a workable policy?
Having said all that, I want to stress that I agree - we need more interaction between the community and ICANN staff - and more open interaction. I am hoping that the public comment process will develop into this. And if you look, it is already heading that way.
ICANN puts out requests for information and then reacts to that input with reports which are put out for public comment. Then a summary/analysis of those comments is produced and put out, listing who sent in comments. I see this as a gradual, careful move toward closer interaction. If you look as well, there is now a named ICANN staffer on each public comment period.
I don't know yet about Board interaction. I will be trying to encourage Board members to be more effusive but they remain Board members and it is important they retain an independent viewpoint.
The reality is that at meetings Board members work themselves into an early grave with meeting after meeting - many of them internal Board meetings. I am all for lifting the burden off Board members - Veni will testify to the sheer amount of work they are expected to do - but that would mean ICANN staff picking up some of that work and, in the past at least, this would lead to accusations of undue influence.
Alot of this has to do with maturity - both of the community and the organisation. And by maturity I mean a settling of processes and a build-up of trust.
There's plenty of work still to be done but I think we're on the right track.
In terms of online collaboration, I'm wondering whether we should set up a process where an issue will be *defined* by online interaction. There's no way we can expect online collaboration to usurp an existing ongoing process while it is going on. Instead, the value of online collaboration needs to be discovered first and then fed into a process. That's my thinking anyway. Be interested in your response.
Kieren
Remote Participation
Here are some of the problems that I have seen in the past with remote participation.
In San Juan, Brett joined remotely and could only hear parts of what was going on. If his pickup wasn't near a speaker and people weren't using their mics then it became impossible for him.
In LA, those of us that were participating, tried to improve this matter by being linked to the outside participant (Evan in this case) via Skype. If he had something to say, he let us know and one of us put up our hand. The problem was that the sound guys had to keep plugging him in and out. If he was plugged in all of the time so that he could speak at any time, it made the sound system extremely noisy for the f2f partipants so we had to unplug him. Then, the only way he would be able to chat again was to Skype one of us in the room and we would run over to the sound guys to have him plugged in again. It worked but it was awkward.
I have seen other systems that allow the moderator to see when an outside participant has their hand raised and will then work them in. This seems to be a little bit more of a useable system.
Darlene
Solutions
Sorry to sound like a new-age hippie, but can we focus not on what doesn't work or hasn't worked but on what would be useful to have, and different ways or looking at the problems - which we all know many times over.
So, for example, yes, sound has been an issue - and will most likely always be an issue. The question is: is streaming sound the best way to get real participation? It means people have to be sat at their computers listening intently for the duration of a meeting *while that meeting is going on". This will probably work if it is a small meeting or if someone is a named panellist - but is it the best solution for wider interaction and participation?
Perhaps having a text stream of what the scribes write would be more useful - it would be a far smaller file and so more stable and it would allow people to review text in their own time. Is this a better alternative? Should both it and audio be done at the same time? Do we need to insist on people's input being made in real-time?
Could we not have a virtual meeting and have that discussed in the physical meeting? Should physical meetings always take precedence?
What do people think?
Kieren