North American School of Internet Governance (NASIG)

Summary

Name of your School:	North American School of Internet Governance (NASIG)
Is your School a global, regional or national initiative?	national
Who is the convenor/s of your School?	This depends on where the school is being held so It changes year by year.
Is your School targeting one specific stakeholder group (i.e. do you focus on young people)?	No. The school is set to teach issues across the board within the Northerlies America national scope
Region or country your School is based:	Canada, United States and its territories (i.e Puerto Rico and others)
Year of foundation:	2018
Frequency of your School:	annually
Duration of your School:	2 or 3 days
Besides Internet Governance do you focus on another sub topic?	No.
Is your school associated with or co-located with any other event or process?	IGF, ISOC or ICANN events in the region.
What is the funding model of your SIG?	Sponsorships
Please provide the link to the website of your school:	northamericansig.org
Anything else you would like to tell us about your school?	The model used by the school is that it moves around the countries of USA, Canada and Puerto Rico every year. One or more persons are identified at some point to run the school where they live. These are invited to shadow each school to learn what needs to be done to assemble one of this schools and in some cases to participate as a student or faculty depending on their background. Previous school directors are used as consultants for the new schools.

Individual provided Material by the school

Introduction

The delivery of a successful Internet Governance school (regardless the length) requires a substantial amount of planning and execution to be successful. Most schools have been the inspiration and dedication of a small determined group of individuals inventing the process of operating a school by trial and error. The goal of this document is to provide key ideas to setup and run a successful school. Obviously the granularity of a school is a reflection of the personality type of the founder. No single answer is completely right or wrong but lots of shades of grey

Recruitment of Core Team

Roles and Responsibilities of Core Team

The structure of the volunteer pool is vital in the success of any activity.

Here is an example of NASIG Puerto Rico Organizational chart

Charter of Group ADD

Chair or Project Manager

A critical role of the Chair or Project Manager is provide a 50,000 foot perspective of the entire process, timelines, budget and sponsorship. He or she would work with the various volunteers to make sure none of the aspects of the project from long term planning,event troubleshooting and post reporting and followup. Depending on the number of volunteers or early formation of the school. the chair may need to wear many hats.

Key Skills and Experience

• Attended school of Internet Governance
• Proven project management experience
• Access to arms length bank account

Tasks

• Determine the date and duration of the school
• Determine the city and physical location of the delivery of the course
• Sign all contracts with sponsors, facility, hotels, rental stores, etc
• Assemble a full complimentary team
• Prepare all letters of acceptance for students with their hotel details for VISA purposes

Director of Academic Programme

Scope of Group

This department is responsible for:

• reviewing the previous school year survey responses on the various speakers and topics,
• generate a list of potential topics
• review the other schools topics in order to come up with a draft schedule
• Interface with the Director of Fundraising and Sponsorship on speaker slots
• Open call for moderators and speakers for the event
• Listen to feedback from proposed Moderators and speakers

Director of Sponsorship

Mandate of Group

A critical part of any school is raising money to help ofset the cost of running a school

Various models exist:

• Fee based
• Fee based and subsidies
• Full fellowships

Sponsorship/Grant Requests are an important task that requires a significant amount of time to raise the necessary funds to operate successfully. Many of the sponsors have rigid requirements and payment processes to obtain the funds.

Sponsors demand by sponsorship contract the following:

• Signed sponsorship agreement
• Showcase on website, printed materials and signage of the company sponsorship
• Speaking opportunities at the event
• Clarify what restrictions you will have on the use of the funds

Suggestions

• Creation of a Sponsorship Q & A document( See Q and A document)
• Creation of a well written letter of introduction with timelines and sponsorship request
• Send invoice and details for bank wire transfer

Lead for Technical Services

This person needs to work hard with the facility technology team to assure that:

• AV equipment is adequate and full functional
• Good Wifi connectivity for guests and staff
• Load and prepare all slideshow presentations
• Collect any remote presentations ie. video etc
• Setup any special equipment

See Job Description

Director of Logistics

Scope

• Organize necessary equipment, WIFI, AV, Livestream, equipment rentals
• Booking Hotels for staff, fellows and speakers
• Booking Airfares
• Design for website, logos etc
• Design and order banners, signage, fellow shirts/hats/bags

Fellowship

The fellowship application should be made available six months in advance of the

Month One- Creation of Fellowship Application Form (See Google Form)

Month One- Establish fellowship selection committee

Month One to Three- Promote and Open Fellowship

Month Four- Selection of fellows

Month Four- Send letter of acceptance and detail the type of fellowship , partial, full or other( Letter should be adequate for Visa ( See same Letter)

Communications

Scope

The promotion and advertising of the event has various phases with different target audiences

Timelines:

Month One

• Obtain domain name of IG School and Facebook Group, Twitter Hashtag

Month 1-12:

• Website and Facebook
  • Updates on websites and Facebook
  • Create a information kit/guide for the fellows and speakers which include maps, contact names and numbers, programme etc. See sample

Month 4

• Press Release announcing the fellowship selection

Month 10

• Create an Orientation Guide

Evaluation and Reporting

The feedback by everyone involved with the delivery of a IG School is critical to learn from what worked and what didn't work

See Evaluation