ICANNLabs debut, encourage bottom-up

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has unveiled a new digital platform intended to foster collective experimentation and innovation to increase the levels of community-wide engagement, according to its Director, Global Media Affairs, Mr. Brad White.

He told DigitalSENSE Business News that the platform tagged ICANNLabs, could be accessed at labs.icann.org and anyone could sign up to receive updates and provide feedback.

The platform, he also said, would create a truly transparent process, essential to ICANN and consistent with the organization's multi-stakeholder model.

ICANN president and chief executive officer, Mr. Fadi Chehadé, was quoted as saying that it's all about increasing the reach and relevance to new digital audiences which are engaging ICANN through the web,

"We are searching for new ways to innovate and stay true to our principles of bottom-up, community driven policy formation. ICANNLabs is quite simply an open experiment aimed at creating new digital forms of communication," he said.

Primarily, he said ICANNLabs would launch prototypes focused on four initial tracks, namely the Communication, Education, Conversation and Discovery and Personalization.

On communication, he said, this is how could ICANN drive increased awareness and participation in Internet policy discussion by exploring new models for content creation, growth and distribution?

Equally on education, he asked how could ICANN leverage new online learning models to increase knowledge about ICANN the organization, its process, and its constituents.

For conversation, he wanted to explore how could ICANN facilitate deeper discussion and collaboration around policy development, which could extend to ICANN's public comment process?

And finally, ICANN, he said, is concerned about discovery and personalization, which give the diverse interests and needs of its community, how can ICANN recommend relevant policy news, discussion, and education resources?

Commenting, Sally Costerton, Senior Advisor to ICANN President on Global Stakeholder Engagement, said, ICANNLabs offers an experiment for digital space where the organization could showcase beta versions of proposed digital tools and assets and then seek community feedback.

"Using that feedback we will improve, or perhaps abandon certain tools then re-introduce improved versions and continue in that cycle until we have new and useful tools," Costerton said.

DigitalSENSE Business News recalls that during its initial unveiling, ICANNLabs tend to look at tools which frame issues around digital conversations, on social media, on education and on discovery, even as internet public have been invited to register at labs.icann.org.

 

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