[governance] ICANN ads for "general public" (new subject header)

[Dan Krimm]

At 12:19 PM +0900 9/11/07, Adam Peake wrote:

>I'll pass your comments on to the NomCom's staff support and ask them
>to keep for the 2008 committee chair.


Thanks Adam,

Just want to emphasize: this ought not get bottled up in just NomCom, as
the principles here apply to any external advertising by ICANN at all,
especially if there is a potential for ICANN to advertise to the general
public to participate in public comment fora (which is how this sub-topic
arose in the first place).

Frankly, someone ought to talk to Paul Twomey to get ICANN to hire a
marketing person in-house to coordinate all advertising strategy.  Perhaps
this will not immediately rise to the VP level, but the position ought to
at least report to VP and have actionable authority to craft ad strategies
coherently.

Pro bono policy-making people do not generally have the expertise or
resources to do this sort of thing properly.  Support staff who are charged
with answering to the policy people (i.e., are not given authority to make
decisions that constitute policy making in and of itself) do not have
enough authority to direct ad strategies.

In short, unless defined explicitly in the staff hierarchy, there is no one
steering the ship here, and it will likely stay adrift unless and until
this paid professional position is established and appropriately empowered
at ICANN.

That is the crux of the problem: who has the authority and responsibility
to make external advertising work at ICANN?  My comments are merely about
manifestations of that root problem, as if I had the hypothetical authority
to direct such a process myself, for example.   But if there is no one
designated to make it happen, it will not happen even if some people in the
general vicinity know how to make it happen.

So I hope NomCom support staff will pass this stuff along more generally
among ICANN staff, perhaps in digested form (in principle rather than the
detailed case study, which could be reshaped as an appendix perhaps).  If
the staff structure is not explicitly corrected, then similar outcomes are
extremely likely moving forward.

Best,
Dan
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