Comments on: Online participation - practicising what you preach

by: Lucy

Fri, 23 Mar 2007 13:13:01 +0000

Actually - that isn’t a bad place to start. Hey, Kiers, have you thought about doing guest speaker spots for comp-sci undergrads?

Luce

by: Leo

Tue, 20 Mar 2007 17:04:33 +0000

It’s worth noting that ICANN staff and board members regularly attend all sorts of technology industry events, including IETF, RIR meetings, various NOG meetings and so on. I don’t think there’s a problem with the techy crowd not knowing about ICANN. Getting involvement from a wider slice of ‘public’ is not easy, though. That’s where the creative thinking will be useful.

by: Kieren

Tue, 20 Mar 2007 15:38:42 +0000

I’m at the IETF - what more do you want?!

Kieren

by: Ed

Tue, 20 Mar 2007 13:26:24 +0000

Well, perhaps you should be aiming at the “tech” audience more. Obviously writing for The Register helped with that - are you still going to do that, or will someone else?

by: Kieren

Tue, 20 Mar 2007 09:27:28 +0000

I agree Ed. I’ve been pondering this. My broad feeling is that there’s no point advertising ICANN per se, but instead it is worth being very public about matters that come up that will interest people and then point out the role that ICANN plays in it.

Kieren

by: Ed

Tue, 20 Mar 2007 01:02:44 +0000

Well as I’ve said before, its about making people aware that ICANN even exists. I’m doing a Computer Science degree and I bet that 80 or 90% of the people on the course (who are all relatively geeky!) wouldn’t have heard of ICANN, let alone know what it is or that they can get involved with it. We’ve had whole courses on the Internet, without any mention of ICANN or anything related to Internet Governance…

Maybe ICANN should start promoting itself to the public if it really does want input. Look at groups here in the UK like Offcom - many people are aware of roughly what they do, yet they clearly have little individual impact to most people. ICANN is in a similar situation, except even worse - it’s international.