Ellen,
As the person at the Berkman Center responsible for running much of the
equipment that will allow remote participation in next week's Open Meeting
(and meeting of the DNSO General Assembly), I thought I'd do my best to
respond to some of the concerns you raise below.
You're certainly right that participation in the meeting will require being
awake at odd hours of the morning for people in many parts of the world.
With the open meeting starting at 3:00 in the morning in US Eastern time on
May 26, it'll undoubtedly be a rough night for those of you who resolve to
participate remotely. I wish there were some way I could help -- but ICANN
is committed, indeed bound by its bylaws, to hold meetings in a variety of
geographic areas. No matter where they hold a meeting, it's halfway around
the world from somewhere!, so I guess all I can say is that I hope you and
many others will nevertheless make the effort to join the meeting despite
the hour.
Back to things I can help with, some thoughts on the resources required to
participate remotely. We've made special efforts to keep the hardware,
software, and bandwidth requirements as low as possible -- using a 6.5Kbps
audio stream (perfectly acceptable over a 9600bps modem link!) for example.
I too am concerned that users with certain kinds of 'net access (terminal
accounts, for example) will be unable to access the feed. But I know of no
way to broadcast live audio over the Internet to a user with only telnet
access (or with an exceptionally old or obscure OS or CPU that just doesn't
run modern mainstream software), so I'm left with the solution already
proposed.
Regarding remote participation, you noted that: "it is still unclear how one
can participate in real time through the Internet, how ICANN will handle
such submissions." From my experience accepting remote comments at prior
meetings -- the November 14 Public Meeting, the January 23 Representation in
Cyberspace Study Workshop, and the March 3 Open Meeting -- here's some more
information re the procedure by which remote comments are received and
processed: An interested user sends a comment from a web page form we'll
link to from <http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/icann/berlin> once the meeting
starts. Within 60 seconds (generally somewhat less), a technical staff
person in the meeting room receives the message. If it's substantive and
on-topic, it's printed and handed to the moderator (Esther). The moderator
then decides how to recognize the remote comment, generally asking technical
staff to display the message on a projection screen in the meeting room and
reading the message outloud, then providing a response comparable to what
might be given to an oral comment posed at a microphone in the room. I
should note that all substantive remote comments are posted online as a
portion of the meeting archive, as on
<http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/icann/cambridge-1198/archive/RealTime-comments
.html>.
Those who want to see exactly how this process works in practice can review
the proceedings of the November meeting
(<http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/icann/cambridge-1198/archive/index.html>) and
RCS workshop (http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/rcs>). In November, the
moderators recognized several substantive real-time comments, and in January
we took a number of additional comments from the web. (Unfortunately there
were no on-topic substantive comments submitted during the Singapore meeting
in March, but had there been any, we had the infrastructure in place to get
them to the moderator for presentation to the group and a response.) I
don't know off the top of my head at exactly which minutes in the audio or
video archives remote comments were received, but I'll try to gather such
data tomorrow and provide links directly to those segments. In the
meantime, I hope the above is helpful in providing additional guidance re
how the system operates.
Finally, something personal (speaking solely as myself, not as a
representative of BCIS or ICANN, though I suspect many people at both
organizations might agree): I'm genuinely a fan of remote participation.
But I've personally been disappointed in the past by the exceptionally low
number of remote comments received. So, I sincerely hope that the upcoming
Open Meeting will see a greater volume of online comments to reflect what I
believe is the true power of the medium. I'd consider online participation
a great success if a few dozen of you stayed up all night to send the ICANN
board and assembled group your comments in real-time, and I sincerely hope a
significant number of interested people will do so.
If you or others have additional questions about remote participation or
related issues, you should of course feel free to pose them either on this
list or via private email as you prefer.
Ben Edelman
Berkman Center for Internet and Society
Harvard Law School
Ellen Rony <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
news:<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>...
> I think it is very important to encourage remote participation, and here's
why.
> As Vint Cerf wrote in a recent RFC, the Internet is for **everyone**. Yet
> every time someone wants to see ICANN move in a particular direction and
> posts a message to that effect on this list, the ICANN chair responds
"Come
> to Berlin". Oh my, so very helpful.
>
> A trip to Berlin involves a commitment upwards of $1,500 and several days,
> at least two of which are spent in the air unless you live in Europe.
Most
> people have neither the financial resources, the responsibility-free time,
> nor the steadfast commitment to fly into Germany to make an brief
> appearance, speak their peace, and then watch the nine ICANN board members
> go behind closed doors to decide the fate of Internet administration.
>
> And--despite the puffery produced yesterday by Ogilvy, ICANN's PR
> firm--referring four times on a single page to ICANN's public open
> meetings--all discussion and decisionmaking by the board memebers will
> occur out of the public eye, behind closed doors.
>
> ICANN's chair should be advising those who desire to impact these secret
> decisions, not only to, "Come to Berlin" but also to participate remotely.
> Clearly, she assumes we all have sufficient free time and money to play in
> ICANN's sandbox. Effective participation absolutely should not require a
> physical presence half the globe away from one's own abode.
>
> So, I encourage everyone to use all available mechanisms to partipate
> remotely, although there are significant pitfalls. For Internet users in
> the U.S., the meeting will be held in a time zone that requires us to
> forego sleep. For those using computers with older chips, you won't be
> able to download the software required to receive audio feeds. Also, it
is
> still unclear how one can participate in real time through the Internet,
> how ICANN will handle such submissions.
>
> The Berkman Center will host RealAudio and RealVideo streaming media
feeds.
> http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/icann/berlin/
> Here are some of the details posted on that page.
>
> REAL TIME TEXT can be submitted over the Internet, however, no e-mail
> address is provided yet.
>
> VIDEO/AUDIO ACCESS:
> Requires 28.8kps connection minimum but 56K will be far less
> frustrating.
> Real Player 5.0 (or later), which may be downloaded free from Real
> Networks. A link is on the Berkman site. People should download before
> the day of the meeting. However, older computers, particularly older
68030
> Macs, cannot run Real Player.
> Meeting day connection instructions are not yet posted on Berkman
site.
>
> TIME CONVERSION: This is the squelcher for real time participation.
> * DNSO General Assembly: May 25
> Germany (1:30 pm- 5:00 pm)
> EST (7:30 am-11:00 am)
> PST (4:30 am-8:00 am) Don't know conversion for Asian coastal
zone.
> Possible participation through
> http://www.icann.org/dnso/constituency_groups.html
>
> * Public forum: May 26
> Germany (9:00 am-5:00 pm)
> EST (3:00 am-11:00 am)
> PST (12:00 am-8:00 am)
>
> Meetings of the Membership Advisory Committee and Government Advisory
> Committee, both on May 25, are apparently closed.
>
> All DNSO constituency meetings occur on the same day, at the same time.
So
> you have your choice of running around like a plucked chicken on the
> morning of May 25, or settling in at a constituency room for the duration.
> IMHO, the constituency set-up is just a way of separating the substantial
> domain name interests into competing lobbying committees of the whole.
>
> The day-long open meeting on May 26 is so crammed with important topics,
> that any one of them could fill the entire agenda.
>
> And then, after you have spent $xxxx on your tickets and lodging plus
> another $50 on the Open Meeting and achieved your few moments of ICANN's
> attention, realize that the reward for your dedicated effort occurs on May
> 27, when these nine board members retreat from view to discuss and decide
> the following issues without any public accountability except to
> themselves and ex-post-facto minutes:
>
> * Recognition of Domain Name Supporting Organization Constituency Groups
> * Formation of other Supporting Organizations
> * Independent Review Advisory Committee recommendations
> * WIPO Final Report, including annexes
> * ICANN membership structure
> * Geographic diversity provisions of the ICANN bylaws
> * 1999-2000 ICANN Budget
> * Transition to a permanent Board and CEO
> * Staff appointments, hiring and administration
>
> Substantial remote participation will move ICANN towards greater online
> involvement, and away from funneling input through a quarterly World Tour
> that only works for those with deep pockets.
>
> Come to Berlin. . . come to Santiago. This just rings hollow when the
> board decisions are made in secret. Instead, I say it's time for all the
> board members (not just the chair) to come to the global community online,
> come to the Internet, come to the open process.
>
>
> Ellen Rony Co-author
> The Domain Name Handbook ____ http://www.domainhandbook.com
> ======================== ^..^ )6 =============================
> ISBN 0879305150 (oo) -^-- +1 (415) 435-5010
> [EMAIL PROTECTED] W W Tiburon, CA
> Dot com is the Pig Latin of the Information Age.
>
