[discuss] Current drive

Fri Apr 4 21:18:19 UTC 2014

Half of life is just showing up.  ~ Hunter S. Thompson (among others)

The English language page on Wikipedia does not include the quote you cite.  I assume the French and English pages are fairly different (as is often the case in Wikipedia).

Obviously, it's more than just showing up.  I use that term as the antithesis of some top-down invitation.  It's not like I wandered into a bar.  I was engaged through several steps that brought me to ICANN, but none involved a top-down invitation.  I'm sure others have their own engagement paths that ended with them "showing up" at ICANN.

On the flip side, ICANN is engaged in numerous stakeholder engagement efforts, so that more stakeholders will show up and get engaged.  There are other ways to get engaged, e.g., ISOC, IETF, trade associations, universities -- even email lists.  Assembling stakeholder representatives is a process, and one which both the SO's and AC's, and ICANN (but not in a top-down fashion) all engage in and try to improve.

Further, showing up means different things in different groups, registrars and registries (including ccTLDs) do not just randomly "show up," though they are not "invited" either.  (Though some show up more than others.)  These are defined and relatively small groups.  Same with ISPs and the technical community.  As for civil society, nonprofits, commercial interests and the "at large" (end-user) groups, there is a certain amount of "showing up" involved.  Those for whom the Internet is more important are more likely to show up.

And those who do "show up" try to engage others and also try to represent those who don't show up (and some view that as their specific mission -- I would probably advance those in civil society as feeling that most strongly, especially as to those who, in a sense, "can't" show up).

You, like everyone else, are welcome to show up and see if you count....

I'll leave with a further quote from the English-language Wikipedia article on multistakeholderism, discussing Norbert Bollow, in a paragraph that applies to MSM as implemented at ICANN:

With "open" multistakeholderism he refers to settings which are open to anyone coming in and fully participating. The assumption is that this set of self-selected participants will bring reasonable approximation of the totality of perspectives into the discussion. In open multistakeholderism, the risk does not occur that viewpoints may get excluded because those who have power over the selection processes might want to suppress them, or might be unduly influenced e.g. by lobbyists to exclude people who happen to represent inconvenient viewpoint.

Greg

-----Original Message-----
From: Michel Gauthier [mailto:mg at telepresse.com]
Sent: Friday, April 04, 2014 4:54 PM
To: Shatan, Gregory S.; 'Jefsey'; Alejandro Pisanty; John Curran
Cc: discuss at 1net.org List
Subject: Re: [discuss] Current drive

At 21:09 04/04/2014, Shatan, Gregory S. wrote:
>I was never invited to become a stakeholder (or stakeholder
>representative).  I just showed up.

Great!

Wikipedia explains that MSism attempts to address the "Principle of Who or What Really Counts."  It is noteworthy that the people who count at ICANN are those who just show up.

M G

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