[atlarge-discuss] Our Growing Membership

["Richard Henderson" <richardhenderson@ntlworld.com>]

Help

I feel really encouraged that we now have members in 73 different countries (see below).

I'm hoping to post a separate page for the members of each country later today or tomorrow at The Internet Challenge, as we gear up to recruit 100,000 members by the next election.

Numbers are not everything, of course : what counts is participation and involvement.

My hope is that representatives in each country will now develop plans and strategies for increasing membership wherever they are.

In addition, recruitment can also take place around issues, and this will be a further focus in due course.

The Internet Challenge is a website demanding democratic representation for ordinary users on the Board of ICANN. I'm using it in the coming months to provide a monitoring site and an additional resource for Icannatlarge.com in its period of growth. I will continue to record ICANN's crass lack of accountability and the New TLDs fiasco in a separate section on the site. But the main focus now is on the solution, which centres on recruitment and the creation of a movement.

73 countries is a wonderful start in these opening months of our independent At Large organisation of Internet Users. But it is only the beginning.

This movement is going to grow and grow. I am hoping to provide a multi-lingual interface on my own website, and template e-mails for recruitment, but most important of all will be all the ideas and initiatives we can all contribute, and the initiatives of local people at local level.

We are developing a process of verifiable internet user elections as an example to others; and what we prove within our own organisation will in turn be implemented inside ICANN in due course : that is our determination.

Our organisation is serious about its demands for elected user representation at the heart of Internet administration. Its "proof of concept" democratic model must be rigorously developed and verification processes are one of our priorities; but we are also going to achieve real numerical significance, to add weight to our case, and real authority.

To the people of the world, I say : Let's get together!
It's YOUR internet

It belongs to hundreds of millions of people

all over the world

who use it, develop it, share on it,

trade, communicate, help, educate

It's YOUR internet

the global community of internet users

has the right to be democratically represented

in its administration and future

Best wishes

Richard Henderson

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

List of 73 countries where our members live:

Andorra Angola Argentina Australia Austria Azerbaijan Belgium Benin Brazil Bulgaria BurkinaFaso Cambodia Cameroon Canada Chile China/HongKong Comoros CostaRica Cyprus Denmark Ecuador Egypt France Germany Ghana Greece India Indonesia Iran Ireland Israel Italy Japan Jordan Kenya Kuwait Luxembourg Madagascar Malaysia Mali Mauritius Mauritania Mexico Moldova Monaco Morocco Netherlands NewZealand Niger Nigeria Norway Peru Philippines Rwanda Senegal Singapore SouthAfrica SouthKorea Spain Sweden Switzerland Syria Taiwan Togo Tunisia Turkey UAE UK Uganda Ukraine Uruguay USA Vietnam

There are still more countries we also need to reach into, but our recruitment program is only beginning in earnest now and already the breadth of membership is really encouraging