Re: [atlarge-discuss] Re: Judyth's comments on scale and legitimacy

[eric@hi-tek.com]

Richard you have good points here so let me jump right into the practical.

Marketing, branding, advertising and sales and then customer service.
e-business especially is a complicated mix and match of the above.

Outreach to a point of scale of legitimacy is a tricky wicket.  I suggest our
legitimacy will come from our doing things right and then we can outreach and
attract high and low users.  A small product can reach huge sales if it is a
good product and proves it's effectiveness and utility.  If we become a good and
honest voting body people will want to be included.  Corporations will want to
influence us and money will find it's way to us.
Good bad or indifferent that is why I applaud our web master and current panel,
sometimes just the contribution of keeping "the doing of the thing" alive is
worth a soul.

Please all people here be patient and continue the effort, if you build it they
will come and if you build it right I will drag them in!  Perhaps as my old
German granddad used to say "if you be good to each other, others will be good
to you".  I feel very good about this endeavour and good about our comments and
leaning on each other.  We are almost ready but we must get through our alpha
and beta before we market.

Sincerely,
Eric

Richard Henderson wrote:

> I agree with a lot of this, Judyth
> (comments below)
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: <espresso@e-scape.net>
>
> >we hundred-or-so on this list can hardly constitute ourselves the At Large
> electorate or claim to legitimately represent them.
>
> This is exactly my argument for making Outreach a first priority. Not all
> people are interested in the fine detail of ICANN politics (in fact, hardly
> anyone is) - but people ARE interested in the Internet, see it as "theirs"
> and as a world resource of which they are stakeholders. So I take the view
> that we should construct a broad-based movement, selling the idea that "It's
> YOUR Internet" which tries to convey the idea of people in every community
> and every region and every country joining up for a kind of "people's
> movement" of the Internet. A movement which sets itself apart from big
> business. A movement that embraces the really high ideals for a better
> world. And - within that broad based movement which could attract FAR more
> members - you can include the issue of "Who runs the Internet?" This way, we
> first attract hundreds of thousands of members (to make ourselves far more
> representative) and then we use that added authority to demand
> representation for users at the heart of ICANN (unless, as you say, ICANN is
> cut back to a powerless narrow technical mandate). I have pledged to work
> for a minimum membership of 100,000 in the next year. I would prefer it if
> we aimed for a million.
>
> We should aim to affiliate with other already-established organisations:
> teacher unions, universities, student unions, religious groups, local sports
> clubs... almost antwhere where there is an already-established group of
> people... and we should "sell" the idea of defending the Internet and
> creating this great democratic online force for good. Equally, we should
> attract individuals too. We should organise locally and regionally, and we
> should work together to create marketing messages which LOTS of people can
> buy into. We should use local and personal contacts. We should even engender
> friendly rivalry between one country and another to see who can attract %
> growth in numbers. We should prioritise the growth and creation of this
> really significant user-base.
>
> >I would also like to see the replacement of the "at-large" terminology
> since it has evidently been co-opted for other purposes. >Perhaps what is
> really needed is a concerted effort to invite Internet users to form their
> own local chapters which could elect >representatives to an "Internet House
> of Commons"
>
> I agree that the term "At Large" has little or no meaning to the general
> public and should be replaced by a name/concept that millions of ordinary
> people can understand. There is, though, a case for retaining the "At Large"
> term as a subsidiary name so that we can continue to be seen within ICANN
> participants as an At Large organisation : indeed, if this planned growth
> took place, as THE primary At Large organisation in the public and media
> perception.
>
> As to the concept of an Internet House of Commons, although we are talking
> British terminology, I think its fairly well understood throughout much of
> the world. I've reserved www.internetparliament.com and
> www.theinternetparliament.com and www.theinternetparliament.org for an
> initiative along these lines, but are - if you like - my fallback if
> IcannAtLarge.com gets captured or doesn't embrace the scale of movement I
> believe in. Put simply, the case for democratic representation of ordinary
> users over the administration of the Internet is very strong indeed. The
> Internet belongs now to the world - to hundreds of millions of users (and
> non-users too). It is their Internet and they have the primary right to
> determine how and by whom it is run, developed, and administered. Put
> simply, we need massive membership, so ICANN can no longer marginalise us,
> and so the media and governments recognise us and really take interest.
>
> We need to go round the back of ICANN's defences. Rather than compromise our
> principles to participate in an ALAC which is ICANN's mechanism for
> reversing and cancelling out democratic user representation, we should
> simply follow our own agenda, regardless of ICANN, and become so large and
> significantly representative that they are politically pressured to take us
> into account. We have to make ICANN fear our authority. It is largescale
> membership that they will really fear, if it is combined with intelligent
> interfaces with the media and US Govt and EU etc.
>
> I accept that others in this organisation want a slimmed down ICANN and a
> slim small membership of cognoscenti who understand the ins and out of ICANN
> and the DNS.
>
> However, I don't personally see that strategy ever working with ICANN. They
> will just create layer upon layer of reasonable discourse and "consultation"
> to protect their powerbase and keep real elected user participation at arms
> length.
>
> Conversely, I think we stand at a time and an opportunity which is RIGHT for
> the development of a worldwide movement (providing we have enough
> commonsense to understand that very few people are interested in ICANN
> itself, but millions feel they deserve a stake in an Internet that has truly
> come to belong to everyone).
>
> Thanks for your comments, Judyth.
>
> Richard Henderson
>
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