[Gnso-sc-budget] Fellows and ROI

Wed Feb 21 15:23:39 UTC 2018

I was part of the mentoring pilot, and while I had two formal mentees, I recruited two more informal mentees, and then added in one more so that we benefitted in the BC from this program.  All of our mentees, and the additional folks I recruited are now active contributors to WGs -- one is a participant on the CCWG Auction Proceeds, and all are active within the BC itself.Two are now participants in the ICANN Budget Working Group.

All of these were fellows, but were quickly recruited into a formal role. Still, building travel support is very challenging for a "SME from a developing country, and the Fellowship Program helped them to build visibility and engagement, and local support.

________________________________
From: Gnso-sc-budget <gnso-sc-budget-bounces at icann.org> on behalf of Ayden Férdeline <icann at ferdeline.com>
Sent: Wednesday, February 21, 2018 10:09 AM
To: Martin Pablo Silva Valent
Cc: gnso-sc-budget at icann.org
Subject: Re: [Gnso-sc-budget] Fellows and ROI

(personal capacity)

Surely we do hold this data already? The names of the fellowship alumni are public, as are the names of those who are in leadership roles both within the community and on the Board.

It should not be a huge task to map out just how effective the programme has been at bringing in new, active participants into the ICANN community. We have 10+ years of data already available; what else do we need?

I think this would be the most objective approach to take. One of the issues I have with the DPRD survey<https://nam01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.icann.org%2Fen%2Fsystem%2Ffiles%2Ffiles%2Ficann-fellowship-program-10-year-survey-dprd-28jun17-en.pdf&data=02%7C01%7C%7C7f4d6a4d687e48f28b9f08d5793d2f43%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C636548226042812389&sdata=Oi3O6G%2BeDtLK3PT4GhiysoRXBGQMuWRiYwWrF%2F%2BSSqY%3D&reserved=0>, which I think is an obvious flaw, is that is relies upon self-reported data. Fellows were asked to complete a survey which could not be responded to anonymously where they self-reported that they were active in the community. There were also Facebook posts by the fellowship coordinator telling fellows to make sure they fill in the survey before applying again for a fellowship. I think the respondents completed the survey in good faith and genuinely believe they are active participants, but we are relying here on a different definition of what it means to be an active contributor to ICANN policy processes.

Personally, I don't think sitting in a meeting room surfing Facebook and paying no attention to the deliberations makes one an active participant. But there are some who believe being present is in and of itself enough. As someone said on a different call yesterday, "Participating in ICANN is not like listening to the radio" - you can't just dial in and be passive and say you're making a difference. Maybe you're not.

I have been guilty of this myself at times, because there is a learning curve. Sometimes you have nothing to contribute. But I was never under the illusion that my silence constituted meaningful activity. My personal perception is that there is a very active "Emperor's New Clothes" mentality at ICANN with many fellows thinking that being a fellow has made them an expert and an ICANN participant. I think the previous fellowship coordinator did a brilliant job at creating this sense of community (this is not intended as a backhanded compliment; I genuinely think she represented ICANN professionally and intelligently, and tried her best to make the fellowship something special.). But both of these comments are anecdotes.

As you keep saying Martin, we need evidence. So let's use the 10+ years of evidence that we have and map out what has actually become of the fellowship alumni within ICANN. Perhaps we* could put this suggestion forward to the DPRD to compile.

Best wishes,

Ayden

* we as individuals, not as the SCBO

-------- Original Message --------
On 21 February 2018 3:17 AM, Martin Pablo Silva Valent <mpsilvavalent at gmail.com> wrote:

I think is a useful blog post to start a deeper debate. A quick reply I sent to Kevin Murphy, the author of the blogpost, the actual debate should be more structured, methodic and hold data we are yet to gather.

Cheers,
Martín

"I liked your blog spot! Remeber, that ALL fellows come from developing countries, not just most of them, that the first rule of the program. They are also elected by a community/staff committee and is region, gender, and profession and stakeholder balanced.

You are also missing a whole lot of people in your count that should be included as fully engaged. There are leaders and pen holder in almost every structure, and those leaders are a key diversity feature in the MS model that validates and improves what ICANN does. Also, you are only seeing a photograph, while the product of the fellowship is a movie that has produced result though years, like people that got engaged for a few years and left or leader today that held several positions before. Even some of this successful cases only got engaged after years after their fellowship experience, since it took time to find the right way to make sense to be involved.

The fellowship is not only needed because of the lack of resources in developing countries for a specific fellow, is the same structural asymmetry between regions that affect the level of diversity inside ICANN, and as well, the presence and legitimacy of ICANN around the world. So is a street that goes both ways, people from X countries begin in ICANN and X countries IG ecosystem being aware and knowledgeable about ICANN. So fellows might not become penholder in a PDP, but they are still successful if, as leaders in their own profession IG related in their region, they bring awareness and new networks that bring more people that do gets directly engaged.

There are many ways in which ICANN improves its diversity and legitimacy with the Fellowship, and selecting people that will directly be involved is absolutely imposible, since ICANN is a very cryptic and expensive place to be, most people need to first get to know it, sometimes even build a regional network or ecosystem in their country so they later find a useful way for them to get directly engaged. For instance, a lawyer doing privacy issues in it's NGO may not found the funds to be right now a penholder in a PDP, but will teach and use the fellowship acquired knowledge to use DNS in its activities regarding privacy back home. Creating in that way a lot of value to ICANN and very good potential for more people, and more meaningful, to join (since a more developed ecosystem will foster better candidates).

We even have ccNSO people which NICs don't send them because they lack resources or is not a priority or governments!, imagine how far are business or civil society to find reasons and resources to directly and fully engaged someone in leading an ICANN process. The work the fellowship does is hard and very crafty, people are not being remotely fair in their analysis and I blame, the fellowship for not giving more tools and data to properly set the cost-benefit debate.
If ICANN is serious about diversity and a true global MS model, then a program like the fellowship is essential, even if we agree a lot of things could be this way or that way."

On 20 Feb 2018, at 21:28, Michele Neylon - Blacknight <michele at blacknight.com<mailto:michele at blacknight.com>> wrote:

http://domainincite.com/22622-should-icann-cut-free-travel-or-its-own-staff<https://nam01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fdomainincite.com%2F22622-should-icann-cut-free-travel-or-its-own-staff&data=02%7C01%7C%7C7f4d6a4d687e48f28b9f08d5793d2f43%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C636548226042812389&sdata=X%2BFkrMrS%2Bw3idILqTHm48qWLJynEvDxCqwcvn7GohaY%3D&reserved=0>

--
Mr Michele Neylon
Blacknight Solutions
Hosting, Colocation & Domains
https://www.blacknight.com/<https://nam01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.blacknight.com%2F&data=02%7C01%7C%7C7f4d6a4d687e48f28b9f08d5793d2f43%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C636548226042812389&sdata=Wz8KX5Qcj7mrA3XQnw400OKU7anWzm4Mar04wbGmltA%3D&reserved=0>
https://blacknight.blog/<https://nam01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fblacknight.blog%2F&data=02%7C01%7C%7C7f4d6a4d687e48f28b9f08d5793d2f43%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C636548226042812389&sdata=J%2FCXCPSuEkb71FcOJ8Zg%2FrKGBgaXumc7fkd%2FHeZYbjc%3D&reserved=0>
https://ceo.hosting/<https://nam01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fceo.hosting%2F&data=02%7C01%7C%7C7f4d6a4d687e48f28b9f08d5793d2f43%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C636548226042812389&sdata=LnNg9iPGCGUciL6UE4ZeE8mdRp%2FX2nOBwk0P5YQo13M%3D&reserved=0>
Intl. +353 (0) 59 9183072
Direct Dial: +353 (0)59 9183090
-------------------------------
Blacknight Internet Solutions Ltd, Unit 12A,Barrowside Business Park,Sleaty
Road,Graiguecullen,Carlow,R93 X265,
Ireland Company No.: 370845
_______________________________________________
Gnso-sc-budget mailing list
Gnso-sc-budget at icann.org<mailto:Gnso-sc-budget at icann.org>
https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/gnso-sc-budget

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mm.icann.org/pipermail/gnso-sc-budget/attachments/20180221/53b8f2fb/attachment-0001.html>