[ICANN Academy WG] Draft outline for a Pilot Leadership Training Programme in Toronto

Thu Aug 23 13:09:51 UTC 2012

I offer a possible adjustment, as I do agree with most of what has been said by others. The present approach isn't actually targeted to build capacity among those who are not expert. And many of us who want desperately to contribute to something that is broadly useable, not limited to only a select few, are struggling with our own time demands for a very important meeting. 
I wonder if we might scale back our expectations for this session and make Friday a face to face discussion about what and how to do the kind of capacity building thatwe can all support? That would make the use of the Chairs time useful; provide a face to face examination of how we all see how best to proceed with content development. We can do small overviews, perhaps, of the outline of information that we think should be provided about our individual 'groups'; but make this a one day session. 
The BC wants to see something from ICANN that is broadly useful to anyone interested in ICANN, not just focused on Board members, or appointees to Councils.  In my personalview, we must all lead where we are -- and the real work that makes ICANN meaningful, responsible, and accountable is done by the broadest base of participants. :-) NOT just theBoard and Councilors who are appointed, or ALAC appointees. It is important that all have a common base of understanding. Otherwise, we create a further elitism of "I've been through the Academy", and the broad base of our incoming and present participants are not up to speed on common fact based information.  
Using Friday for this initial gathering seems manageable to me, but ICANN will have to pay for the extra hotel costs for those of us who are supported by ICANN funding, for us to arrive on Thursday. Also, I am coming in from probably the mid East and my travel is going to have to be tightly managed in any case. So, the point is, I need to know fairly soon what we all can support and agree to. 
The BC wants to make meaningful contributions. 
IF we were able to bring in a new business person as a 'participants' and test case, from the BC,  I'd bring in the African Regional V.Chair for one of the BC associations, who is knowledgeable about ICANN, and actively participates, but has only been able to attend one f-f meeting, but is anxious to support online training and written, downloadable approaches to capacity building. 
Marilyn 
From: filiz.yilmaz at icann.org
To: at-large-icann-academy-ad-hoc-wg at icann.org
Date: Thu, 23 Aug 2012 05:48:17 -0700
Subject: Re: [ICANN Academy WG] Draft outline for a Pilot Leadership Training Programme in Toronto

William,
Thank you for your mail and thoughts. 
Regarding your points about conflicts, we are aware that there are other meetings that are being scheduled on Friday and Saturday. This is inevitable unfortunately. We had to utilize the closest possible days for the pilot too. This obviously helps optimizing the budget available, allowing more participants' attendance,  as well as towards the constant feedback that working time before the heavy ICANN meeting starts should not be over-extended.   
You mentioned the sort of curriculum the WG developed prior, which I believe is the one Sandra provided the link to in her mail and which I also attached on this mail for quick reference. That curriculum was foreseeing a 3.5 day training with:
Prior to ICANN Meeting:Day 1+Day 2: Core topics spread in first 2 days. If you look at the attached file, these topics are covered in the new curriculum too, but with less time as we have only 2 days for the whole training, not 3.5 days. 
Day 3: Focus on current issues. New curriculum is covering this with 2 discussion sessions both on Day 1 and Day 2. 
After ICANN meeting: 1/2 Day: Wrap Up at the end of the ICANN meeting for reflection and clarification on specific topics. Again due to time constraints this does not seem to be feasible for most of the Chairs but I think we can look into possibility of covering a short gathering on Friday morning. However I seriously doubt that this will be possible due to travel arrangements and scheduling of most participants. 
So the main differences I see between the two curriculums are the following: 

1. The 1.5 hrs session that I volunteered to talk about "ICANN Engagement Tools/Mechanisms'. (saturday 11:00-12:30). 
Sandra and I added this based on the feedback we received on this mailing list, namely from Eduardo Diaz, dated 12 July 2012:
"We should include how the SOs, ACs, Board and staff work together in unison to get things done in ICANN. What is the process flow between them. Terminology such as PDPs, Frameworks of Interpretation, WGs, Study groups, Council vs. Constituencies, etc. should be interpolated when explaining the processes. Also, there should be something about how to use the wiki's and how are they organized? "
I am happy not to talk about this and leave the time available to some other topic that the WG thinks missing from the curriculum and should be covered instead.

2. The other difference between the curriculums is probably the Leadership Sessions (Saturday afternoon):
---13:30-15:30: Leadership – Suggested Speaker: Elad Levinson
•	The power of facilitation and facilitative actions•	ICANN responsibilities for members and chairs of meetings•	Chairing meetings-the four keys of meeting leadership•	Preparing to lead meetings-how to set it up for success•	What is consensus? How to reach it?•	Reaching and establishing consensus within groups-how process enables agreements
15:45 -16:45 More on Leadership Responsibilities (I) – Suggested Speaker: Elad Levinson
o	Examples of best practices when working with consensus and leading in a multistakeholder environment----
As this is a leadership training for the incoming leaders of ICANN and for all the current ones at least for the pilot in Toronto, I think these sessions make sense and well geared towards the target audience. Consensus-building is a main leadership activity within ICANN and knowing the best techniques of facilitation within a multistakeholder model to do so surely will equip our leaders well in their tasks and responsibilities within and across their group interactions. 
In fact again, these sessions are in essence in the previous curriculum too, where the multi-stakeholder model: concepts and practice and how groups work were noted  are also related to these sessions too. 
Also note that Elad provided a similar session back in Costa Rica where Sandra noted it was well received and found very useful by their group at the time. So we added these sessions to the curriculum. 

If you see specific sessions/topics that are missing in the new curriculum, please let the WG know and if agreed, we can see if we can fit it in the program, considering the suggested speaker's availability too, or we can try to cover them under some other session by extending the scope of that existing session. 

Kind regards
---Filiz YilmazSr Dir Participation and EngagementICANN

From:  William Drake <william.drake at uzh.ch>
Date:  Thursday, 23 August 2012 11:48
To:  Avri Doria <avri at acm.org>
Cc:  "at-large-icann-academy-ad-hoc-wg at icann.org" <at-large-icann-academy-ad-hoc-wg at icann.org>
Subject:  Re: [ICANN Academy WG] Draft outline for a Pilot Leadership	Training Programme in Toronto

Well, I'll split the difference and say I share Avri's concerns but congratulate you anyway for the hard work.
Now as to the concerns: There are lots of ways to do capacity building, but crudely put there's a clear bifurcation between training people on how xyz is done and training people to be able to not only do it, but think about what it means, the costs/benefits, whether it could be done better, how it relates to their own interests, etc.  By even cruder analogy, at home in Geneva the WTO trains developing country delegates on how to implement market opening agreements by devising complex national schedules of commitments.  In contrast, UNCTAD (where my wife works) trains the same people not only on scheduling commitments, but how to critically assess WTO policies and procedures, identify when and where these may or may not match their interests, how to think strategically about maneuvering in the space to advance their objectives more effectively, etc.  In short, one build a narrowly defined skill set, the other empowers people to be able to function in the space knowing what's really going on.
Both dimensions are really important, but one doesn't sense the presence of the latter in the configuration below.
Personally, if I was in the indicated target group of participants, I can't imagine choosing to blow off NCUC's Friday workshop or the Saturday GNSO Council meeting in order to watch staff run through power points on the respective PDP processes followed by AC chairs on what they're into etc.  And an overview of ICANN meetings and between meetings for people who've already been through multiple meetings….?
The sort of curriculum the WG developed prior would have been a lot more enticing.  
Is there any way to blend the different visions into a new and more provocative synthesis?
Bill
On Aug 23, 2012, at 10:23 AM, Avri Doria wrote:
  On 22 Aug 2012, at 15:22, sandra hoferichter wrote:   We are aware, that the discussion in the expanded WG is just about to start and this outline will not cover all the needs and ideas, however this pilot project should be see as a first step to build on an inclusive capacity building programme within ICANN. The WG is should review the pilot project critically and develop strategies and recommendations for future projects. To get a feedback from the participants this WG is asked to develop a survey, to be filled in by every participant in this programme.   I cannot see this plan as the pilot for any sort of education.  To me it seems like the normal indoctrination given by ICANN:   "   everything is good ICANN,   we have no challenges at ICANN, and   there isn't an outside world ICANN needs to concern itself with "  I am afraid that I cannot congratulate you on this plan.    I understand that this program is the ICANN program and as such, it was it is.  But please lets not consider it any sort of pilot for a volunteer designed educational program.  avri _______________________________________________ at-large-icann-academy-ad-hoc-wg mailing list at-large-icann-academy-ad-hoc-wg at atlarge-lists.icann.org https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/at-large-icann-academy-ad-hoc-wg

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