Recommendation 11

At-Large should replace 5-yearly global ATLAS meetings with an alternative model of rotating annual regional At-Large Meetings, held in conjunction with regular ICANN meetings. Regional meetings should include an Internet Governance School element. Participants should include all qualified ALMs.

While broadly popular, Global ATLAS meetings every 5 years have been difficult to organise and short on effective results. More frequent regional meetings would be more effective in encouraging both policy input and outreach while familiarising more of At Large with workings of ICANN.

The Recommendation explicit says to no longer hold At-Large-wide gatherings and the ALAC strongly believes that there is a real need to ensure that we not function purely in our regional enclaves. Moreover, the detail backing up the Recommendation suggests that there be five regional meetings every two-three years. That is an average of two such meetings per year. The ALAC does not believe that we have neither the volunteer nor the staff resources to carry this out.

Although the ALAC rejects the recommendation to replace the 5-yearly global ATLAS meetings with annual regional At-Large Meetings, the ALAC does not reject the concept of holding regular regional meetings, and in fact has done this for many years. These “General Assemblies” are held in addition to the At-Large Summit (ATLAS) meetings. 

General Assemblies (GAs) are gatherings of representatives of ALSes and individual members (if applicable) of a specific region. GAs are generally held once in every five year period at an ICANN meeting within the region or in conjunction with some other regional event. At-Large Summit meetings are gatherings of representatives of ALSes and individual members world-wide, held roughly every five years at an ICANN meeting. The normal expectation is that in between successive ATLAS meetings, there will be one GA per region. The ATLAS meetings encourage cross-regional understanding and cooperation which the ALAC believes is crucial to a well-functioning At-Large. 

Such GAs have been planned since 2-10 and have been standard practice since 2012.

The exact scheduling of a General Assembly (or ATLAS) depends on many variables: the type of meeting; venue capabilities and cost; other ICANN events planned (such as a GAC high-level ministerial meeting); and the availability of volunteers and staff to plan the event. At times, a GA may be held in parallel with a non-ICANN event, such as the NARALO GA in April 2017 which was held in conjunction with an ARIN meeting. 

Despite the lack of mention of GAs in this recommendation, the Review did include a reference to the regular GAs in the section reviewing the 2008 At-Large Review, incorrectly attributing the newly approved multi-year budgeting directly to the original Westlake review, so the ITEMS team was clearly aware of their existence.

Part of the rationale for this recommendation is that with the EMM, the number of participants will grow and the larger number of ATLAS participants will not be practical, presumably from a funding and other resource point of view. The ALAC does not support the EMM, nor does it believe that if implemented, the number of active participants would grow inordinately. However, the core issue is relevant, and as numbers change in coming years and as the relevance of individual users becomes more important, the ALAC will have to adapt, as it does with all other aspects of its existence.