Re: [wg-e] Looking for editors for Part 3 and Part 4

["Ben Edelman" <edelman@law.harvard.edu>]

Absolutely agreed on all of Chuck's suggestions below.

I thought about the very issues he raised as I attempted to make
improvements to the ICANN-Santiago remote participation technology, and in
response I made a few adjustments to the system.  In particular, I added to
the remote participation sign-in form a field requesting that users
(optionally) identify their geographic location.  I then tabulated that data
and reported it as a part of the Santiago archives, later doing the same for
LA.  See
<http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/icann/santiago/archive/remoteparticipants-geog
raphy.html> and
<http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/icann/la/archive/remoteparticipants-geography.
html>.

I also maintain a list of everyone who has preregistered for ICANN meetings
(starting with LA, the first meeting for which the Berkman Center ran the
preregistration database; Santiago organizers had a similar database for
their event, but unfortunately they never gave me or ICANN a copy of the
data, despite repeated requests for same).  In fact, just the day before
yesterday, I sent to all members of that list not also subscribed to ICANN's
Announce list an email telling them how to subscribe to ICANN's Announce
list and forwarding introductory information about the upcoming meetings in
Cairo including registration and remote participation information.  I'd be
interested to hear suggestions on other ways to use this data; whereas I
feel comfortable sending two or three messages *to all remote participants
from prior ICANN meetings* reminding them of an upcoming ICANN meeting or
other important event, I've been hesitant to send such an announcement to
the hundreds of LA preregistrants -- but would seriously consider doing so
more often if the consensus of this group was that that's appropriate.

My means of measuring outreach effectiveness are admittedly somewhat
limited.  I track HTTP referrers to various portions of the Berkman Center
web site to note who's linking to us, particularly around the time of an
ICANN meeting.  But I haven't taken this to the next level; I haven't sent
out distinct URLs in various emails to track the effectiveness ("yield
rate") of different means of promoting ICANN-related webcasts.  (Doing so
would allow me to determine how many of the "no referrer" hits were from
which of my email and newsgroup announcements.)  So while I have a gut
feeling on the subject -- that sending email and discussion list
announcements is helpful in increasing turnout but ultimately limited in
effectiveness -- I'm afraid I can't offer much data on the subject.  (Note
that links for Cairo will indeed be customized by announcement method,
though, to allow precisely this kind of tracking.)

Looking forward to additional suggestions from members of the WG.


Ben Edelman
Berkman Center for Internet and Society
Harvard Law School




Chuck Gomes wrote:

> It seems to me that we need to establish procedures for
> measuring the effectiveness of outreach activities.  How
> effective have the activities to date been?  We need to
> collect and analyze data regarding past activities as well
> as activities going forward so that we can focus energies in
> improvingly effective ways.
>
> Do we have good records for the outreach efforts that have
> already occurred (e.g., number of participants, geographical
> regions represented, evaluation forms, etc.)?  If not, we
> should make sure that we do in the future so that we have
> the data to evaluate the effectiveness of what we do.
>
> We need to be able to answer the question, "are outreach
> efforts successful?"  If they are not, we need to look for
> new strategies.  If they are, we need to do more of them and
> continue to improve them.