#ICANN55 in Marrakech: My Story
When I participated at the ICANN54 Meeting in Dublin couple of months ago I had decided not to apply for the next meeting because it would be very close to Nowruz and the Persian new year but my wife encouraged me to apply despite I thought my chance is low to be selected as a fellow for the second consecutive time but I was wrong and it was a good sign for me to apply for those meetings I’m interested to participate regardless of number of times I’ve previously selected by the fellowship committee.
Anyway I received that famous email on December 12, 2015 informing of my selection for the ICANN55 Meeting in Marrakech as a second time returning fellow with this difference that this time I was completely aware of the procedure and how things will go on and how to prepare for the meeting. It always starts with a detailed email from Janice Douma Lange welcoming everybody and asking them to take the initial steps to confirm their attendance. Then filling out the travel and other required forms and applying for travel visa (if it’s required, that was, for me).
I didn’t have trouble with visa issue this time because there is an Embassy of Morocco here in Tehran that I could go and apply for visa but surprisingly they didn’t get me the visa but a confirmation letter to get it upon arrival (something that I could do by sending an email like many other fellows).
So my travel stuff went very smoothly and I could prepare everything prior to my flight weeks before it but this time something was different in comparison to the previous meeting in Dublin and that was the coaching stuff. In the first email from Janice deciding people into various teams and assigning each of them a coach I was informed that my coach is… guess! She is Mama J! It was surprising for me to have her as my coach because I could learn a lot from the person who has been behind all these fellowship efforts since many years ago. Actually this dream didn’t come true because our beloved Mama J couldn’t attend this event in person due to personal problems and I couldn’t have her as my coach. One more new thing that happened was that I invited to coaches’ Skype group and mailing list but Janice told me later that I need to take one more meeting to be a coach but I still was on the mailing list, so I suggested something new to Janice to test drive during this meeting and it was to be a “Coach Contributor” to be with coaches, attending their online and later face to face meetings (in Marrakech) and learn more about the coaching process to get ready to be a good coach next time. Janice welcomed that idea and for the first time in the history of ICANN Fellowship I wasn’t a coach officially but with the coaches team.
Since my first meeting in Dublin I had a three steps schedule for ICANN meetings: 1- The first meeting to get my feet wet only and select some working groups and constituencies to work with, 2- The second meeting to focus on things and select those areas of interest I really want to work with and 3- The third meeting and later on to do the real job. Now I think the same procedure should be defined by the fellowship committee for coaches as well. Naturally you don’t have the option to express your interest to attend as a coach when you’re applying for your first fellowship but you can do it in your second application; my suggestion is to have those who apply for the second time and express their interest to be a coach as a “Coach Contributor” first then let them to be a coach at their third meeting; this gives them a better perspective to be a better coach as well as this advantage for themselves as well to have a chance to learn more about the coaching process.
My other suggestion that I told Janice and she liked that and told me she would work on it is having a “Fellows Coach” label on badges so that all the fellows can recognise a coach easily (which is helpful when someone’s coach is not around and another coach may be able to help him/her) as well as this advantage that every newcomers can benefit a “Fellows Coach” when he/she is totally lost in the meeting! I hope Janice would be able to make it to the ICANN56 Meeting in Helsinki.
Let’s get back to my story! Unlike the last time that another fellow was selected from Iran, I was alone this time (despite I met some of my friends from the Iranian GAC delegation including Alireza Kashian, Dr. Shahriar Shahhosseini, … in the airport we were not on a same flight) and had to travel alone from Tehran to Istanbul then to Casablanca (where I expected to meet some Iranian and non-Iranian friends) and finally to Marrakech through a domestic flight.
LOL! This photo shows how bored I was during the flight. By the way the national Footbal team of Palestime were on the same flight to Casablanca!
Anyway I arrived at Casablanca airport around 4PM and met my friends there who were all waiting for the same flight to Marrakech. It took about 30 minutes to get my visa upon arrival and I didn’t have any problem with this but I heard some friends had serious problems and were detained in the airport for long hours until they could get out by the help of ICANN Travel Team. This shows that ICANN needs to work on visa issues more as many have stated this during public and private meetings in Marrakech.
We arrived in the city of Marrakech on March 4 and moved to our accommodation place “Palmeraie Village” which was sort of hotel apartments like this:
We settled in at an apartment in Palmarie Village and relaxed a little bit for the next day which was a day before the official fellows meeting. It was a day for coaches.
As I said, unfortunately we didn’t have Janice with the team in person this time and instead Jeannie Ellers (from ICANN) and Naveed Rao Rais (a multiple times fellow and coach) were managing the fellows team; which according to all fellows did a great job.
Jeannie was as energetic as Mama J and I really appreciate her efforts during the meeting which was very helpful.
Now let me brief my day by day journey!
Day 1: March 5
It was one day before first fellows session and two days before official inauguration. We had the Coaches Roundtable on this day where all the coaches along with Jeannie Ellers and Dennis Chang were present and all coaches gave an update and talked about their experience and issues they had with their team and etc. I talked about my idea about coaching steps (which I explained before) and I hope it would help the fellowship program during the next meetings specially in this new A, B and C types of meetings.
Day 2: March 6
We had the first fellows morning session on this day which was an introductory session as always. It followed by the Newcomers Session which wasn’t mandatory for me to attend but because I always like the vibe and atmosphere and information of this session I attended some parts of that but left it early to make it to other sessions I had already planned to attend. Two “How It Works” workshops for the “Domain Registration Protocol” and “Root Server Operation” as well as NCSG Committee Meeting were other sessions I attended on this day. It was also good to meet some guys during the Lunch with ICANN for Business guys where I could talk to some people and explain the problem we still have with some American companies despite the lifting of sanctions and I’m still following up this issue with them to see if I can help resolving this.
Day 3: March 7
The IANA Stewardship Transition was the first session I attended on this day. Now that this transition is completed and the draft is sent to the U.S. Government to make it functional we need to follow the case to see how it will make the dream of multistakeholderism true within the ICANN. Like some other days, I was the ICANN Booth and helped a little bit. The ICANN Booth is always a good place to meet good people from fellowship program, ICANN, etc.
Another session I attended on this day was the GAC High Level Meeting in which the Iranian delegation headed by Dr. Hadi Shahriar Shahhosseini had participated. Dr. Shahhosseini read the I.R. Iran High Level Policy Statement. The full text of this statement is available at https://db.tt/weyCpuid.
This day followed by the Tribute to Fadi Chedade which was serving his last days as the CEO and President of ICANN. Fadi left the ICANN after four years and now Goran Marby is the new CEO and President of ICANN. Fadi is now the CEO and President of Chehade & Company.
The interesting scene of Goran’s first official address to the ICANN Public Forum was when he showed his badge with the “NEWCOMER” label on it but he still has the “ALL ACCESS” one too ;-)
Goran Marby comes from a technical background and I wish him success in his new career at ICANN.
Day 4: March 8
In the morning fellows session, as always, we had the chance to meet some guys from various organisations and constituencies within the ICANN. This time we had Tapani from NCUC, Rudi Vansnick from NPOC, Rafik Dammak from NCUC, Anthony Harris from ISPCP.
Other sessions I attended on this day were
- NCUC Meeting
- ccNSO/GNSO Joint Meeting
- NCSG Meeting
- Fellows Evening Session with NomCom guys and an overview of GAC
Day 5: March 9
During the morning fellows session we had the SSAC Chair and RSSAC Co-chair as well as Chris Wilson from Business Constituency giving information to fellows on how this constituencies work.
The other session which I had on my calendar to attend was GNSO IGO-INGO Access to Curative Rights Protections Mechanisms PDP which was a session with very few participants (!) and very specific to the subject and I couldn’t get much out of it!
During the rest of the day I attended the RSSAC Public Session, GNSO Next-Generation RDS PDP F2F Meeting and Fellows Evening Session where I met John Crain again ;-)
John is a technical guy and I always enjoyed talking to him during the ICANN meetings.
Day 6: March 10
The last day started with the fellows closing session followed up by the public forum and wrap-up reception (which I missed it this time!)
This meeting came to an end too with lots of friendships and connection we made together.
Next Steps
Personally, as I said, I had planned to focus on things during this my second meeting and find the future path of my activities around ICANN; I’m a technical guy in heart but at my first meeting I wanted to try more non-technical sessions and that was the reason I joined the NCUC/NCSG but during this meeting I made my decision to stick to technical areas like RSSAC and technical parts of various working groups and projects instead of other areas which are far from my domain of expertise.
In addition to this, I talked to some guys at ICANN Learn and ICANN Wiki as well as gentlemen in the Iranian GAC Delegation in order to work on producing more Persian contents for these platforms. Both ICANN guys and Iranian governmental men were eager to do this and I’m looking forward to cooperate with them to build some working groups and start to add Persian language to these platforms with the help of volunteers and governmental organisations in Iran.
In conclusion these are my focus points:
- Technical Working Groups and Stakeholders.
- Working closely with the Iranian GAC Delegation to help them engage more in ICANN activities.
- Producing more Persian contents on various ICANN platforms like ICANN Wiki and ICANN Learn.
I’d applied for the ICANN56 Meeting in Helsinki, Finland but isn’t selected for the third consecutive time. I hope I can attend Helsinki meeting in another way other than fellowship and follow up the journey!
