[CCWG-ACCT] Message from ICANN Board re Designator Model

[Ron Baione]

There is going to be a degree of devolvement in every group that is becoming less relevant to a consolidating power structure, the natural projection of frustration as the new corporate reality becomes clear.  The key, if increasing community involvement was actually a long term goal of ICANN's board, would be to show that they are doing something productive to that end, and not just speaking broadly when the temperature of the community rises, in an effort to run out the clock.  On the other hand, people like to complain and there remains the possibility that people really either really are upset about the board or people are substituting complaining for their lack of solutions and knowledge of the process, like a college student trying to sow disenfranchisement in a boring three hour class just to make it more interesting by asking 1000 annoying questions.  

In this case, though, there does appear to be some real solutions presented to the identified problem of lack or waning community engagement in ICANN, and it remains to be seen whether or not the community suggestions are actually taken into account.  My opinion is that increasingly they will not be.  "We need more money" is always the number one complaint, no matter if a community is becoming more or less relevant, even if that monetary agenda is hidden behind other complaints or factoids.  Remember, the ICANN board is full of smart people with many people in their ears, they are probably fed-up with the general idea of "community engagement" in ICANN and at conferences because those people don't know all the acroymns and policies as well as they do.  Those newcomers also are untrusted, the more power someone has the less they trust the lower people, the lower those people are on the ladder.

Engagement and retainment of people being low doesnt necessarily mean the world is underrepresented at ICANN, think quality, not quantity, when it comes to a "quota" or ever increasing number of people engaged with the ICANN community.  I think the opposite is true, that the community is being phased out.  But, at the same time, the quantity and quality of retained people are low because ICANN is intellectually difficult and overwhelming for a world of people with low attention spans and addicted to entertainment, and with all the boring computer-tech stuff, many future intellectual leaders in the form of newcomers won't spend their money trying to keep up with ICANN (learning what all the groups do, the DNS, Root zone, TLD's etc.) because they have great ideas but never had an interest in what Verisign does or how things are inputed into a Root Zone Cluster,... unless they are the ones doing the inputting,

New leaders aren't being retained by this community because of two additional reasons:: 

1) the amount of unneccessarily drawn out reports, a non-streamlined process of endless boring information and minutes full of sometimes invented "business speak" that brutally manipulates the English language for the sake of sounding smart, and time wasting.  While people like me can understand a system and try to make it work, many say, "No thanks" because it is difficult to learn a new or manipulated language at an older age.  What is the age group of newcomers at ICANN?  Most people can't resrructure their language learning skills past their 20s.

2) The lack of funds to get people to conferences to actually enjoy themselves while traveling half way across the globe to largely be ignored and royally confused by the glut of new information, and new funds that won't be allocated in my opinion would attract people with incentives other than exploiting the time and "good will" of participants.

The board inherently thinks that because of the lack of funds, the rest of the community is probably unnecessary at this point, and should be limited in membership or disbanded, because once ICANN is transferred the rights to the internet by the US Government next June, the previous need to be inclusive of the community will in my opinion probably morph from the current lip-service into your basic corporate oligarchy, which only cares about its volunteers when it can steal an idea or two from them, or when the corporation royally screws up their product, like issuing level 3 keys to a fake microsoft employee.  The mailing lists will increasing ask, "Whats in it for me" and the board will on reasing say to themselves, "Nothing, unless you have a genius idea we can use" or if the board screws something up so badly that it is newsworthy, then it becomes, "We are all in is together."

In conclusion, ICANN will continue to trend towards what most other government-corporate structures of modern times trend towards, Oligarchy, with a cetain degree of "bread crumbs" strewn about to make it appear as if that isn't the case, when it clearly is.

Ronald Baione-Doda
NY-USA
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