[IGFmaglist] May evaluation procedure (Was Online registration for May Open Consultations and MAG meeting)

Fri May 2 05:07:51 EDT 2014

Dear Susan,

Thank you very much for your suggestions.

It is unfortunate that you will not be able to join us in Paris. You presence would be extremely useful. Thank you for the commitment to contribute to the debates remotely.

As far as I understand we will have streaming from room IX (plenary). It may not be available from the break-out rooms. Chengetai will check with UNESCO hosts.

Hope we ill discuss our Paris meeting modalities during the next conference call on 7 May

Best regards

JK

Sent from Surface

From: susan at susanchalmers.com
Sent: ‎Thursday‎, ‎May‎ ‎1‎, ‎2014 ‎1‎:‎41‎ ‎AM
To: igfmaglist at intgovforum.org

Dear Bill, all,

Bill, thank you for raising these questions, and you are not the only MAG member without funding to come to Paris -- I will be joining you as a fellow remote participant.

Below some thoughts on the May meeting procedure:

This is of course up to our Chair, but I'd suggest that the procedure for the May evaluation meeting ("Procedure") should be developed, agreed upon, and understood before the meeting takes place.
In February the MAG adopted a 3-stage process. Stage 1 - Initial Screening* / Stage 2 - Evaluation process to be completed by MAG members by May 2nd** / Stage 3 - Discussion and Finalisation of Programme.
I believe that development of the Procedure should be guided by what the MAG has agreed upon and adopted. (I have attached that document to this email - there was interest expressed in seeing the document during the last call). In relevant part, during Stage 3: 
MAG members look at the results to ensure an overall balance of the themes/topics covered;
MAG members discuss 5-10 proposals just below the threshold of space availability*** to determine if improvements can be made to overcome proposal deficiencies;
Proposers contacted by May 26th and asked to submit revised proposal to address deficiencies by June 16th. If the proposer responds the expectation is they will get a workshop slot;
Final schedule published by June 30th.
Based upon these guidelines I do not see any reason for MAG to break into groups, especially since we decided against assigning subsets of proposals to evaluate, to subgroups within the MAG. In other words, it's expected that all MAG members commit to grading all 200-odd workshop proposals. Also, as a matter of logistics, plenary would be much easier for remote participants.
The score for each proposal is tabulated by the Secretariat. Per what was agreed in February, proposals are ranked in order to scale to space availability, which means that we need from the Secretariat a blank template for the IGF programme, with a predetermined number of slots. The "5-10 proposals just below the threshold of space availability" are then discussed by the MAG in concert. 
Perhaps then it would be most appropriate to take an overall look at the programme and determine subject matter balance.

As part of the team that kicked off the workshop evaluation process, I had hoped to be present in May to observe how we all worked through it together, to take notes on the strengths and weaknesses of the process, so that the MAG could re-examine and improve the process for next year. Unfortunately I won't be able to, so might I ask if all MAG members wouldn't mind jotting down a few notes as they go through the process? I'd be willing to work with some others in digesting these and suggesting improvements following the IGF in September.

I'd really like to hear everyone's thoughts on the above, and would love to work with others on implementation of what we agreed upon. What have I missed? 

I believe that if we work together we can improve by leaps and bounds the process that so many found disappointing and frustrating last year!

Warm regards,

Susan

* Re Initial Screening - Chengetai, were any proposals rejected during the initial screening?

** Re Grading - Has everyone graded their proposals? :-)

*** Re Space Availability - May we have an update on the schedule template?

On Tue, Apr 29, 2014 at 1:37 PM, William Drake <wjdrake at gmail.com> wrote:

Hi

There was some discussion on the last call about the Paris meeting breaking down into groups to consider proposals according to themes.  I would have some concerns about that procedure if it were to lead to outcomes like last year’s, in which some groups were very strict and didn’t approve workshops that didn’t surpass the numerical cut-off point, while other groups were more permissive and for various reasons approved workshops that hadn’t made the numerical cut-off.  There was also some lack of clarity as to whether we were trying to adjust to achieve some measure of comparability across themes, e.g. since some themes attracted @ 50-60 proposals while others got @ 10, did we need to ‘prune’ more in the former case, etc.  

So I’m wondering what the thinking is regarding break out sessions by themes, e.g. dis/advantages relative to doing everything together in ‘plenary.’  

If this approach is to be followed, it’d also be good to know how remote participation would be accommodated.  I don’t imagine I am the only MAG member without funding to come to Paris….Actually, it might be worth knowing, when making decisions on how to organize the work, how many of us will in fact be remote?

Best,

Bill

On Apr 28, 2014, at 2:33 PM, Chengetai Masango <CMASANGO at unog.ch> wrote:

Dear All,

Online registration for the May Open consultations and MAG meeting is now open until the 15 of May.

http://www.intgovforum.org/cms/registrations-for-open-consultations-and-mag-meeting-paris

I will send out the draft agenda soon.

Best regards,

Chengetai 

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***********************************************
William J. Drake
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  Media Change & Innovation Division, IPMZ
  University of Zurich, Switzerland
Chair, Noncommercial Users Constituency, 
  ICANN, www.ncuc.org
william.drake at uzh.ch (direct), wjdrake at gmail.com (lists),
  www.williamdrake.org
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