ICANN launches ICANN Labs
Group that runs domain name system creates ICANN Labs to help improve communication and engagement.
You’re not a cool tech firm unless you have a “labs” group.
Apparently you’re not a cool tech non-profit if you don’t have one, either.
ICANN has launched ICANN Labs, a fresh initiative to increase participation and engagement in the ICANN process.
ICANN CEO Fadi Chehadé explains ICANN Labs:
The success of ICANN’s multi-stakeholder model hinges on bottom-up, community-driven policy and for that success to continue we need to increase our reach and relevance to fresh digital audiences hitting the web. So we have asked ourselves how we could innovate in a way that stays true to those organizational values, but can help us engage and communicate in fresh ways – and that led us to ICANNLabs, our open innovation platform.
Today, we are inviting participants to sign up and indicate the early areas of interest, so that they can be the first to know, and first to comment on, richer features for collaboration.
Later this summer, we will be kicking off four different projects designed to prototype fresh ideas for generating engagement.
The ability to interact with ICANN and participate in its process has definitely gotten better over the years. One complaint I still hear is the difficulty of participating if you don’t know English. Perhaps ICANN Labs can help develop prototypes to alleviate this problem.
The first Labs “experiments” will be tested in August.
