[bestbits] Friday 20 June London meeting between ICANN & non-ICANN civil society

[William Drake]

Hello

If anyone in BB land who’s not been involved in ICANN is contemplating coming to the London meeting for a look around, we would like to invite you to join a conversation with civil society colleagues who are active in the space.  In addition, if anyone knows others who might be interested, please feel free to have them ping me and/or jean-jacques.sahel at icann.org.

There will be a lot going on in London that could be of interest—a government high level meeting, multiple NCUC/NCSG meetings probably to include an extended privacy session, At Large’s week-long ATLAS conference on IG and related, ICANN-organized sessions on IANA, globalization, accountability….it will be very full week.

Best,

Bill

> 
> Hello,
> 
> The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) will hold its 50th public meeting at the Hilton London Metropole Hotel, 225 Edgware Road, on 22 - 26 June 2014.  We are writing to invite you to participate in a pre-event to be held at the meeting site on Friday 20 June from 16:30-19:00. 
> 
> The workshop, Civil Society in ICANN and Internet Governance, will provide an opportunity for open and vigorous dialogue between public interest advocates who are active both within and outside the ICANN community.  From within ICANN will be members of the Noncommercial Users Constituency www.ncuc.org , which for over a decade has been the voice of civil society in ICANN’s policy processes on generic top level domain names and related matters (see attached flyer).  From outside the ICANN community we hope to have participants from advocacy and research organizations based in the UK and beyond who are involved in human rights, privacy protection, freedom of expression, access to knowledge, development, and related issues.
> 
> The agenda would be to discuss items such as:
> 
> ·       The role of ICANN in the rapidly changing Internet governance ecosystem;
> ·       ICANN’s current drive to become a more globalized organization;
> ·       The importance of ICANN’s policies for public interest advocates working on diverse Internet issues;
> ·       How civil society works within ICANN’s structures, and how interested actors can get involved;
> ·       Brief overview of the ICANN meeting week, highlights of key debates.
> 
> The workshop will from 16:30-18:15, and be followed by a networking reception from 18:15-19:00.  A more detailed agenda will be shared closer to the date.  If you would like to join us, please confirm your attendance via email to Mr. Jean-Jacques Sahel < jean-jacques.sahel at icann.org>.
> 
> Finally, also please note that participation in the ICANN meeting itself is free of charge and open to the public, and that newcomers are heartily welcomed to attend.  The 50th meeting will be a particularly important one, with governments organizing a High Level policy event on Monday 23rd, civil society and other groups holding Constituency Day meetings on Tuesday 24th, and a wide range of workshops and plenary discussions on ICANN globalization and other pressing issues occurring on Wednesday 25th and Thursday 26th.  The evolving agenda and registration are available at http://meetings.icann.org/icann50.
> 
> Thank you for considering this invitation, we look forward to hearing from you.
> 
>                                                                                    Best
> 
> 
> William J. Drake
> University of Zurich & Chair,
> the Noncommercial Users Constituency
> 
> Jean-Jacques Sahel
> Vice President of Stakeholder Engagement for Europe, ICANN
> 
> 
> 
> 
> ***********************************************
> William J. Drake
> International Fellow & Lecturer
>  Media Change & Innovation Division, IPMZ
>  University of Zurich, Switzerland
> Chair, Noncommercial Users Constituency, 
>  ICANN, www.ncuc.org
> william.drake at uzh.ch (direct), wjdrake at gmail.com (lists),
>  www.williamdrake.org
> ***********************************************
>