Domain name owners have traditionally complained that ICANN does not listen to us, and there is indeed plenty of evidence demonstrating the group\'s obliviousness to community input [PDF]. Nevertheless, as domain owners, we need to begin giving ourselves a share of blame too. It\'s time to reflect on our failures so we can come up with an actionable solution.
In short, yes, ICANN does need to listen to us, but there are a few steps we ought to be taking ourselves.
1. Community members should start listening to each other. Right now we aren\'t. Consider:
a. There is limited dialog in blogs [PDF], especially across viewpoints and disciplines.
b. Everyone is his own sole expert. Other disciplines build on the shoulders of giants from within and outside their industry. We do not, as evidenced by:
i. Scarcity of collaboration. ii. Scarcity of referencing others\' analytical work. iii. A wealth of representative rationalization, whereby we only accept models that fit our prior beliefs. iv. Lack of a multidisciplinary collaboration platform.
c. We suffer from the \"not invented here\" syndrome, as evidenced by our insistence on our own valuation and appraisal models despite the existence of long-established financial and statistical models. We also use our own models of risk diversification when instead we could adjust established models to fit our industry\'s needs and spare ourselves a poor reinvention of the wheel.
2. We need to aggregate views using prediction markets when a single action plan is needed.
3. We need to better classify valuable information generated by domain name blogs and forums through an information authentication mechanism [PDF].
4. Conference presenters should post online, at least, their PowerPoint presentations. They can be used as proof of quality information to ICANN, the industry, and outsiders.
