[ICANN-EU] Increasing representativeness

[Vittorio Bertola <vb@vitaminic.net>]

First of all, please excuse me if something <icann-europe@fitug.de>
will have already been said - I joined the list yesterday and browsed
the archives but could have missed something.

I am the webmaster of the only Italian site devoted to ICANN
information - then I decided to jump on the other side and be a
candidate myself, mainly because I was completely unsatisfied by ICANN
nominees. However, I know that non-German candidates don't have de
facto any chance to get in the two only available places (maybe they
had if there were five or six) ;-)

Even if we are just at the beginning, I think that there are already
some lessons we must learn. 

The first one is the incredibly high number of candidates, which in my
opinion constitutes a problem. With 75 or 100 candidates, nobody will
ever care to read all presentations. Simply, everyone will search for
candidates from his own country, take the 3-4 most voted of them and
choose among them. I'm not so sure that publishing the number of votes
received by the candidates is helping the democracy of the process
(basically, all candidates who for any reason did not get endorsements
in the very first days have no chances) but I also understand that you
cannot browse a list of up to 100 candidates and this is the "less
worst" criterion you could think of.

However, I am sure that these 100 candidates do not represent 100
different views on the matter. This is why I think that the solution
to this problem is aggregation. This phase of the elections should
generate, if possible, "alliances" or groups of candidates that share
a common program and commitments. By the way, I don't think that it is
possible for anyone to keep in contact with the whole European
Internet community by himself alone. A network of at least one ICANN
At Large representative per country should be definitely constituted,
be it official or unofficial. There should be a virtual regional
council through which the European At Large Director can get the
consensus or at least the voices of everyone about important decisions
to be taken.

This could also reduce the concern tied to the German ruling of these
elections, which I'm sure won't help ICANN in getting credibility and
support in the other European countries. Though we should get rid of
the nationalisms, I know that it won't be so easy. So it's better if
we find a way to make everyone feel that they have a chance to be
heard. Believe me, it's not so nice to spend your nights and weekends
gathering people and making them register to ICANN, and then not
having a chance to be considered because your family name is not
German.

Does anyone agree on this? I have other points but this is the most
prominent one.

-- 
.oOo.oOo.oOo.oOo vb.
Vittorio Bertola     <vb@vitaminic.net>    Ph. +39 011 23381220
Vitaminic [The Music Evolution] - Vice President for Technology