[atlarge-discuss] Re: WG-OUTREACH - 001 - Call for Volunteers

[espresso@e-scape.net]

At 02:58 +0100 2002/08/16, Richard Henderson wrote:
>WG-OUTREACH
>
>We are establishing a Working Group on Outreach and Membership Recruitment.
>This is an Invitation to all interested members of IcannatLarge.com to join
>this group and please come and help!
>
>Participating Panelists are : Richard Henderson : Satyajit Gupta : Jefsey
>Morfin : YJ Park.
>Other members who have already expressed an interest in participating
>include: Bruce Young : Joey Borda : Ron Sherwood : Erick Iriarte Ahon
>(forgive me if I have omitted others, but please add your name!).

Well, since my name seems to appear pretty often in the rest of your "Call for Volunteers", I guess we both see me as belonging within this WG.

>In addition, we seek representatives from every single country in the world
>wherever possible or, failing that, regional representatives. It is fine to
>have more than one representative from a single country, of course.

Sotiris and I have already exchanged messages about "atlarge.ca" which he already owns, and he's already listed on icannatlarge.com as the co-ordinator for Canada. I'll be happy to help out but would hesitate to assume primary responsibility since I've already got too many irons in the fire.

>It would also be helpful, where possible, if you were prepared to list
>profession/job/skills/experience but of course, this is only optional.

Freelance writer, editor and translator for more years than some of you have been on the planet. 
Over 30 years of involvement in non-profit organizations: sometimes just a volunteer, sometimes an employee, and sometimes a member of the board or executive council or working committee.
Entirely too many years of administrative paperwork to want to do it now.
Fluent in English and French, with some reading knowledge of German and Spanish (slow and not good enough for decent translations of any complexity). 
Five years full-time plus freelance experience in advertising and public relations. 
Undergraduate degree in English; sundry graduate courses in administration, education, psychology. Good networking skills; good contacts around the world (especially people interested in globalization and international development, translators, editors, women in technology, and assorted semi-geeks concerned about the interface between technology and society) via sundry mailing lists and participation in World Bank forums. 
Usually overtired, with the typical freelancer's erratic schedule, but usually able to meet deadlines. 
Libra with Scorpio ascendant, apparently, which seems to interest some people... What else do you want to know? 
Oh, yeah -- I'm in Montreal and know quite a lot of potential members but might be meeting more at the upcoming Global Community Networking conference if my schedule lets me get there.

>DRAFT MISSION STATEMENT for outreach@large:
>
>The mission of the Outreach Working group is to act as a Co-ordination group
>to offer help to regional volunteers, as they set out to attract ordinary
>internet users to participate in the way the Internet is run by joining
>icannatlarge.com. This outreach will operate at global, regional, national
>and local levels, and will also operate through the interface of relevant
>"issues" of concern to internet users all over the world. Areas of help to
>be provided by the Working Group will include: generating publicity
>materials in multiple languages, initiating global publicity initiatives,
>helping to disseminate the shared experiences of local groups, acting as a
>hub for large numbers of local @large organisations. In addition, it will
>sustain a structure of Global - Regional/Issues - National - Local >outreach, in a non-directive fashion, with bottom-up initiatives being >self-organised by users at grassroots level.

This sounds good in principle. One issue to be resolved, of course, is the mission of what this icannatlarge.com group will become: until we have some idea of the structure and scope planned for this "umbrella-group", we can't know whom to contact or what to tell them. It would be a bad idea to recruit people with broad expectations if we intend to stick to a narrow range of activities.

>1. Boundary and scope - we cannot change the world overnight - avoiding
>mission creep, what are we really to be about?
>
>2. As I see it, it's all about network. I've listened carefully to Jefsey
>Morfin. At first I did not properly understand. But I believe he is right.
>Our medium: the internet. Our potential: networks.

To me, it's about two kinds of networks:
a) the technical kind which needs to be more secure and less monolithic, and which requires some form of international governance (i.e., not just an ICANN under an MoU from the U.S. government)
b) the human network, as yet largely undeveloped and somewhat unco-ordinated even where it has been developed, which consists of people using the Internet for their various activities and mostly unaware of the fragility of this resource they have come to count on.

The latter requires international *participation in governance*, which can only happen once the mechanisms are in place for people to have elected representatives who can speak on their behalf on such non-technical issues as ensuring against subversion of the Internet by those whose financial or political agendas conflict with the public good. I see this organization as the core-group trying to organize this human network and to set those mechanisms in place which will enable a worldwide constituency to direct overall Internet policy.

>3. Access to old @large e-mail lists? Are any still in existence?

I think you'd have to ask Esther Dyson ... or ask Karl Auerbach to start another lawsuit to obtain access to them.

>6. Preparing outreach material, with different messages for different
>audiences. Let us be clear. We need to target a multiplicity of groups, and
>many of these need to be "accessed" at their own point of interest. We need
>a collection of materials which will work for a variety of targets. And we
>need translations of these materials.

I'm all for clarity! but, to me, that's not "different messages for different audiences" but a single core message. Mine would be that "the Internet belongs to everyone and that all users of the Internet (not just big business and governments) should be involved in making sure that it remains free from proprietary limitations, political interference and corruption as well as technical failure." There are a lot of sub-messages within that one, and they will be more or less important depending on the group addressed and what this group decides is its mission.

>7. It's about Individuals AND organisations. Let us not forget the
>organisations! They are the gateway to mass-registrations. There are many
>organisations to interface with and to "infiltrate": for example...

As I see it, the main thing is to decide on a message and then get the word out as widely as possible. That means contacting organizations of various kinds, as well as individuals, but I think we're deceiving ourselves if we think that contacting organizations (even with large memberships themselves) will necessarily bring us a lot of members. What is crucial is contact with the kinds of organizations that will redistribute our message to people who will be interested in it. The effectiveness of a campaign relates less to how many eyeballs see a message than to how many of those who see it remember it and do something about it -- that is, how well the campaign is targetted.
 
>(Notice one thing here, as you pause : we are a world away from ICANN. >There is no profit issue, no vested interests, just the idealism of >individual human beings and the indomitable human spirit - and... >community!)

That is the very thing ICANN doesn't "get". To them, it's about the "Internet industry" and doing what will ensure that commercial registrars and ICT industry players can profit from the resource -- the Internet as a sort of private club, fighting off government oversight on one hand and citizen input on the other. Somehow, the people focussed on making money from the Internet haven't noticed or understood the Internet culture which exists independently by virtue of the natural urge to help one another when we can without hurting ourselves.

>9. ccTLDs : Jefsey Morfin has propose these should constitute an entirely
>separate working group. This indicates the significance he attributes to our
>interface with them. And I agree. The network of local communities will
>attempt to work closely with the ccTLDs. These ccTLDs should (ideally) work
>for the cause of local internet users (against the intrusive powers of >ICANN or global corporate organisations).
>
>As Jefsey has stated: "The @large
>organizations will have to join with ccTLDs and probably with Govs and
>consumer organizations to develop a global concerted gouvernance."

I'm not sure I understand this. It's hard for me to imagine Canada's CIRA working closely with local communities, which really have nothing to do with its operations as registrar even if some of them do use .ca domain names.

>As Michael Geist wrote: "Student groups are a good start for specific
>projects, but I think we
>need a single responsible individual for the site.  Spreading
>responsibility among several groups may lead to trouble."

I would agree that a single person should be in charge of co-ordinating and safeguarding the Web site. But I also think making one person "head honcho of the Web" is asking for trouble: I think there needs to be a committee of at least 4-5 people who plan the work together and each supervise some aspect of the site. There is no reason why the actual work (programming, log-checking, updating or whatever) can't be parcelled out to student groups or other volunteers, but somebody has to supervise what they're doing and make sure it corresponds to what the organization asked for. Obviously, we're in no position to hire a fulltime person to supervise everything, so it makes sense to have several people, each with a smaller workload and a specific project or team to work with, co-ordinated by one (also part-time) person who remains answerable to the committee as a whole.

>14. We are seeking help with translations. This is very important. We need
>all the help we can get, from almost every nation.

Once we know what the message is, it will be easier for me to co-opt some volunteers from amongst the professional translators ;-)  I can't promise results for every language in the world but can get the call out to about 3000 people, some of whom will forward it on to still others.

>16. ISSUES. As well as geographical-based outreach, what ISSUES can we >build recruitment around?

This is **crucial**. I don't believe for a moment that anyone will join just because there is an organization in their country or community -- people join a group if a) they strongly support its goals, or b) they expect to experience some direct benefit from belonging. Everyone is probably too concerned about bigger problems to join a group whose primary message is "we need better Internet governance" or "the root server system is inadequate".

>In addition, part of Outreach involves education. Many of us knew little
>about ICANN or the DNS before we fell victim to corrupt processes or
>policies.

I'd go further than that: ALL outreach involves education. For us, some of it will be teaching about ICANN and the DNS but a larger part of it will be teaching people who we are and what we stand for.

>21. The use of e-mail and Mailing-lists and Newsgroups that people belong >to: mentioning our organisation in context of our normal participation in >some
>of these groups. This needs cautious discretion. Spamming nearly always
>backfires. But I have often found if you send a preliminary personal mail
>saying "I'm writing to ask if I could have permission to discuss 'x' with
>you, please disregard if you don't want to..." that quite often people >reply "Sure, go ahead".

"Spamming" is something I heartily detest but, strictly speaking, it means sending unsolicited commercial messages. Our message won't be commercial in nature and, assuming we're not idiots, it will go out to individuals and mailing lists which are at least tangentially concerned about its content. 

For example, not too long ago I posted an announcement about our Editors' Association conference to several lists for translators or freelance writers. Nobody complained, and within two days several people who got my message registered for the conference ... because it included some things that interested them. A brief, informative message stating the name and purpose of the organization, why it's important, and a URL for more information is not spam: it's just letting a group of Internet users know there's a problem and they can be part of the solution if they want to.

Newsgroups are rather a different matter. People get quite irate (sometimes irrationally so) if they find the same message in dozens of newsgroups about totally different subjects. Personally, I'd write a different type of message for alt.politics.canada from the one I'd send to alt.soc.Internet or whatever and send it on a different occasion, but I'd be even happier to let somebody who reads the newsgroups daily decide which lists should receive a given message.

Anyway, that's far more than I intended to write tonight (it's nearly 5 a.m. already!) but I hope it's of some use.

Regards,

Judyth

##########################################################
Judyth Mermelstein     "cogito ergo lego ergo cogito..."
Montreal, QC           <espresso@e-scape.net>
##########################################################
"History teaches us that men and nations behave wisely once 
they have exhausted all other alternatives." (Abba Eban)
##########################################################
See the UNESCO OBSERVATORY ON THE INFORMATION SOCIETY!
http://www.unesco.org/webworld/observatory  



---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: atlarge-discuss-unsubscribe@lists.fitug.de
For additional commands, e-mail: atlarge-discuss-help@lists.fitug.de