[Advisors] Making the best use of our resources

[Marita Moll]

Hello all. We have been having a very interesting discussion about civil 
society participation in internet governance via ICANN's structures and 
it's been a lot of bad news. And I won't argue with the evidence that 
says the system is rigged against civil society success. But that's 
pretty old news. When have citizens NOT had to fight against powerful 
interests for their fair share of the pie.

The thing is, we have more influence than we think. We can band 
together. We have a lot of expertise among us, great ideas and wide 
networks. We have an organization, we don't need to create another one. 
And TC, as a group, is pretty close to the mythical "end users" the 
multistakeholder system is so desperately wanting to connect with. A few 
of our member organizations, Vancouver Community Network & Ottawa 
Freenet for example, are composed of thousands of end users. Believe it 
or not, that, by itself, is quite powerful. We do have a right to speak 
in both national and international fora and I never feel like I am 
standing alone - although I often wish I could have more evidence to 
wave around. We may not have any money, but we do have resources that 
are hard to buy. So what can we do with that?

We probably can't turn ICANN around .. at least not in the short term. 
But we can do education and advocacy -- we can collect data, take 
positions, speak to government reps, participate in events, build up 
knowledge about internet governance in our own community, support each 
other, and do a lot more sharing than we have been doing lately to 
fortify our positions. TC getting involved with larger projects like 
ICANN does, in the end, boost our position at home, even if we don't 
manage to change the world on our tour of duty.

Just a couple of upcoming meetings to keep on your radar. There will be 
a Canadian Internet Forum in either Ottawa or Toronto (Toronto seems 
likely) in late February as well as an ICANN meeting in Montreal next 
October. There will be lots of ways to participate. Maybe we can find 
ways to get more of our community to those meetings -- both in person 
and virtually.

Marita


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