Consultation for the development of the July 2006 - June 2010 strategic plan will take place at the ICANN meeting in Luxembourg.
Early in the meeting there will be a general session that picks up, summarizes and updates issues started with the present draft strategic plan, the Mar del Plata meeting, and the questions that will form the basis for discussion during the workshops described below. This session will include panellists from Supporting Organizations and other constituencies and will be led by members of the Board.
During the course of the meeting, a number of sessions will take place to allow individuals to make contributions. These sessions will be facilitated workshops using groupware that allows up to 50 people (25 is the ideal size for a group) to contribute ideas at the one time, and then to discuss the issues that emerge. Each session will be programmed for 90 minutes. These sessions will take place in a number of languages (probably English, Spanish, French, German, Chinese and Arabic) with each session being run in one language. It is anticipated that there will be five sessions in English, two in Spanish, two sessions in French, one session each in German, Chinese and Arabic. This could be varied depending on demand.
These facilitated groupware workshops will allow a far greater number of people to contribute to the process than the traditional open mike public forum. In addition, the opportunity for non-English speakers to contribute in their own language will encourage contributions from a broad cross section of the ICANN community. The focus of the sessions will be on the issues that ICANN needs to be aware of and concerned about as it prepares a plan for the next five years. Questions will be available in advance so that people can give some consideration to the issues before they arrive in Luxembourg.
Members of the ICANN community who are not able to attend the meeting will be given the chance to contribute through a forum on the ICANN website.
In addition to these general sessions, there will be consultation with the supporting organizations and advisory committees using a similar process, with sessions conducted in English.