Hong Xue: Okay, great, we are actually quorum, and now it is eight minutes after five UTC, so I suggest we start right now.
V. C. Vivekanandan: Hi, this is Vivek joining.
Hong Xue: Oh, hello Vivek. Thank you so much for joining us, you are very, very welcome. We are expecting you to do an outreach on behalf of NomCom. Thank you everyone for joining us in the new year. This is a new start, a brand new beginning for our organization, for all At-Large structures for all of us. Oh, who joined? Hello?
Male: Hello. (crosstalk)
Hong Xue: Okay, the first agenda item is a roll call and apologies. I haven’t seen any apologies. Pavan, have you received any apologies?
Charles Mok: Hong, it’s Charles. I am actually with Pavan and Edmon in the same room, so I didn’t call in, but I’m here.
Hong Xue: Oh, welcome Charles. Thank you so much for joining us. Pavan, have you received any apologies from anyone?
Pavan Budhrani: No.
Hong Xue: And for participants, now we have Cheryl, [Kiva], Holly, Pavan, Fouad, Edmon, Vivek, Charles, and Hong. Anybody else that I missed? No, okay. That’s very good. This is a quorum monthly telephone call for APRALO. It’s a very good beginning for the new year.
The second agenda item is review of the draft minutes from the last informational session we had in Cartagena. Is a face-to-face meeting live conference call, anyone has any comments about the draft summary minutes, including the recommended action--well not really action because we were not quorumed in Cartagena--recommendations? No, no comment on that?
Then shall we look at the recommendations, have a quick review, a quick see-through. There are actually four issues listed on that page. Secretarian Pavan to contact ARSs to encourage them to participate more. Well, thank you very much, Pavan, now we are quorumed. Okay, that’s issue one. Issue two, staff to organize an At-Large briefing on IDN in an Asian-friendly time. Well, it’s being organized, thank you very much, Matthias, Heidi, all the staff. It was partially Asia-Pacific friendly. I guess most of the people here joined the call.
Cheryl, Edmond, Hong and many others, so thank you very much; issue two. Issue three; staff will coordinate with Charles and working Team D policy advice development schedule presented at APRALO Cartagena meeting. This is terrific issue, I guess Charles would have a lot of things to report to us and update to us. Wonderful job, Charles, well done and congratulations. Your proposal, presented by Edmond in Cartagena, was so welcome and appreciated in a large community. So we are looking forward to your greater contribution.
Thank you so much Cheryl, for bringing our message to Work Team D, it’s always organized but not at an east-Asian time, very challenging for Charles and me. Issue three is going on very well. I guess we have an item today to specifically talk about working Team D policy development process for APRALO and its recommendations to ALAC.
Issue four; last but not least, staff will consult with APRALO list whether next call should be held December 21st or January 4th. The issue has been resolved now, we will have the meeting January the 4th, and we are quorumed. Very good, so review of action items. Any comments? No, okay.
Go to agenda item three; that’s APRALO announcements. Actually we do not have a lot of announcements, but we do have a lot of works waiting for us. The first issue is a kind of fall-out from ICANN Cartagena meeting. The Cartagena meeting is a very important meeting, even though it was unfortunately un-quorumed. It addressed specifically two things; first is the formal announcement to the transition of leadership, and secondly, present our proposed policy development process.
There’s a big achievement by this new organization and of course, the people presenting the APRALO face-to-face meeting made very useful recommendations on a couple of other things; such as how to do outreach, how to build our strategic plan, how to integrate with other RALOs and the whole at-large community. They were very useful. There’s a brief review of Cartagena meetings. Well, the next issue in agenda item three is the ICANN leadership position--oh, music. Somebody using mobile phone? Background music, very good, that’s really the music to our ears--another music to our ears is announcement by ICANN nomination committee on ICANN leadership position.
Our APRALO fortunately elected our representative on our committee, that’s Professor Vivekanandan. Thank you so much, we have the special delegates from NomCom to join us today. Vivek would like to do an outreach on behalf of NomCom, to us---is that right, Professor?
V. C. Vivekanandan: Yes, I would like to just brief you. The fact is that I landed just yesterday back in India from outreach, so I’m trying to organize my thoughts. My plan is to do some outreach as part of the new institute of minority called [DVAC], so we are in discussion tomorrow about working on something to be an outreach in India, most probably in Delhi. So once this is framed up within a week, ten days, I’ll be able to communicate to all the APRALO members.
Hong Xue: Thank you, thank you very much. This is very interesting, especially for people doing research, great, congratulations. About NomCom?
V. C. Vivekanandan: Yeah, this is to focus about the outreach and to focus on the leadership team and all (inaudible 0:08:07), so I’m hoping that a couple of organizations down here will be (inaudible 0:08:13) suit, so that they will pick up this message of leadership of NomCom. And you must be noticing that Olivier’s photograph of NomCom in the website, in the front page, in a very good position. Most probably I will also be coming to San Francisco, as per Adam, our chair, and we are working out a notice also.
So I am more contemplating trying to see what I can do in this space, actually in India. So this plan is basically combining this outreach in general, trying to talk to ALSs, as Hong pointed out in the beginning of our talk. We need to motivate and invigorate the ALSs, who in my discussion we all noticed, as did Hong, there’s a bit of a gap, in terms of communicating to them or on the writing list, so I thought I would combine these two, outreach to the ALS as well as also qualify the matches of NomCom in terms of a leadership solution, specifically from the Asia-Pacific region.
Hong Xue: Thank you, thank you very much, Vivek. That’s very useful information and if we click through the link we can see the announcement made by NomCom on the ICANN website, that this year NomCom is recruiting two members for the Board. So that is three for ALAC, oh wow, including one from our region, Asia-Pacific Region, and two members from council of GNSO, one member from council ccNSO. Okay, that’s very important information so the people here should take note. Any comments on this or questions for Vivek?
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: If I may, Hong? Cheryl here.
Hong Xue: Of course, yeah, go ahead.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Thank you. Vivek, thank you very much, and I think it’s extremely important that we have someone who’s active and engaged and has a knowledge of the ALSs in the region when we are looking for a member of the at-large advisory committee to be put in from our region. However, I would like to know how you are going to approach the fact that under normal circumstances the nominating committee appointee to the ALAC are people who are bringing in fresh area or fresh concepts.
They obviously need a grounding in DNS, but it really is a pathway for at-large structure members to join the ALAC. That’s a mechanism that we normally avail ourselves through the regional at-large organization. How can we, as ALSs, help you to look outside of our field for perhaps importing to the at-large advisory committee from some of the areas that we’ve yet to even develop ALSs in, perhaps some of the (inaudible 0:11:31) areas and Central Asia, and some of the areas we need to develop, and therefore that person might be in a position in their two-years term to grow for our region as well as ALAC in general? Or is that something that your nominating committee for this year is not interested in?
V. C. Vivekanandan: Well, one of the cardinal rules about seven things that we should work with in the NomCom plans is worked out, and we had a preliminary meeting and we only took stock of the issues and forming of guidelines. We are going to have a NomCom conference call sometime in the third week of January and that many concrete things will be settled. This is from the top of the NomCom side, we will have this conference call and then I will know what sort of strategy about how they want really reach out.
As far as (inaudible 0:12:43) from my learning curve and experience, I think very briefly Asia-Pacific, which I consider almost, you could say in my rough estimate two-thirds of the population, you have to consider the reputation of the ALSs that we select, it’s not that we have been inactive, especially you as the ALAC Chair, you’ve been doing great work. From my feedback, they feel they are getting information but there’s not much involvement. I really don’t know whether it’s from our side or from their side, but taking stock of the situation, I thought the best way to have my own strategies coming from this region and appointed here by all of you, to work on each of these business matters to form more ALSs as well as encourage them to participate.
One thing I wanted to share with you, (inaudible 0:13:44) that is from India has fashioned a fellowship program of about ten candidates who they’ve selected and had a small training about a couple of weeks back in (inaudible 0:13:55), and they are planning to send them to some of the ICANN conferences. I consider that as one step that these people are going to talk. They are not applying for fellowship of ICANN but they’re going to come from (inaudible 0:14:10) in India to some of the conferences. So I’m awaiting details, because their conference ended about three days back in (inaudible 0:14:17) and I just reached, I’ve been trying to get in touch with the entire panel before it’s made.
So my position would be, apart from the NomCom thing, as part of being APRALO and being committed to here, we need to find more ALSs to come in, and as well all of us know our own strengths, and how to strategize and get more people, because it’s a huge region and we each have a duty to manage, how to go about it.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Obviously I hear what you’re saying, and I certainly agree. My concern comes from my experiences within the ALAC, and remember, I’m not in the ALAC as of the end of this year. So I am no way talking about my future at all, what we do need, we do get – the ALSs and their involvement, that’s a regional issue, that has absolutely nothing to do with the ALAC, outside of what the ALAC requirements are for facilitation, and we should tape that on to a separate agenda.
What I guess I’m particularly concerned about is for example, the type of person that you might be having come to the meetings through the fellowship project that you just outlined seems to me to be an ideal time and space to perhaps be looking for the Asia-Pacific representative to the ALAC, because of course, what that third person from the region, brought on by the NomCom, should be bringing is a non-ALS view. But if they are in a position to then grow At-Large in the area that they have their domicile or work in, then that’s an added bonus. Your next meeting you’ll probably know a lot more. I look forward to working with you all, anyway.
V. C. Vivekanandan: The last one minute I could not hear because of some interference.
Male: Okay, I’m sorry, I think I’m not on mute. So I will go on the mute now. Sorry.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: I was just saying I think the fellowship program, the non-ICANN fellowship program is an ideal example of where we might be able to see (inaudible 0:16:50) being found by the NomCom, and that obviously there would be a side benefit then to such a person who has a grounding in ICANN, but is not from an ALS, because to be honest, the nominating voice is supposed to be a non-regional voice, a non-RALO voice, but a regional voice, to the ALAC.
V. C. Vivekanandan: My comment would be that I’m not official, but I thought this would bring a good awareness and kind of motivation in participating will lead us to come up with more ALSs to join the RALOs, and thereby get their stripes. So I think we need to work up, in my opinion, as I said to the Chair, as we said to start off the new year with a good beginning, is work out a long term strategy, for example a year or so, or quarterly how we plan to get more ALSs because we obviously need fresh faces and probably some other hidden talents to come out.
My personal opinion that the number of ALSs from our region should be much more, if you look at the internet users and the future growth of internet in this part of the world. So there has to be more ALSs, so what will be the long term strategy? Probably not immediately on this call, but if we take some notes and put it and keep a year to year map, I think the results will go from there.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: I couldn’t agree more. I look forward to working with you on it.
Hong Xue: Thank you. Thank you, Vivek, and thank you, Cheryl, for your kind information exchange. To talk about fellowship, actually we have good news. Our Sheila has just been awarded a fellowship to attend San Francisco meeting, congratulations to Sheila. And so we are looking forward to you participating in those APRALO meetings and ALAC meetings. Okay you have a busy schedule in San Francisco. Well, that ICANN’s leadership position, thank you very much for the outreach by the NomCom delegate, Professor Vivekanandan. It’s very informative, insightful and valuable. Thanks again. Last but not least for agenda items --
V. C. Vivekanandan: Thank you, Hong, thank you.
Hong Xue: Oh, do you have a comment on this? And you are welcome.
V. C. Vivekanandan: No, I’m very happy to come back to ICANN again, so I am looking forward to meeting you.
Hong Xue: We are all looking forward to meeting you. So it shows the livelihood of our organization. Very good. The last issue I want to mention for agenda item three, is not really an announcement, but it’s something for us to think about and to plan ahead. That is the election for APRALO leadership. I think that APRALO is only three elections, not very impressive, but that is really about our leadership position cycle.
I hope the staff can help us draft the election cycle, and before doing that, I see [Terry] has a comment – before doing that, I suggest we have a Wiki page set up to let the people comment and discuss openly about a methodology, the selection process, anything they want to raise a comment. So we can collect these ideas and improve the whole process. To my rough calculation, we need 1.5 weeks for nomination, one week for acceptance of nominations, and 1.5 point weeks for election.
That’s already one month, four weeks, and we may need one to two weeks for planning, for preparatory work and possible extension, that will be six weeks. If we want to complete the election of Chair, vice-chair, and secretary which will finish the term they were elected at Mexico City in 2009, at APRALO meeting at At-Large summit. We want to finish that by the San Francisco meeting, we need to really plan ahead.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Hong, why? My hand is up for a reason. Why are you working toward San Francisco? Because it doesn’t need to be done until it’s supposed to be done, which is the 30th of June because even though the election in 2009 was in San Francisco, the roles were not active until 30 June, and it’s 30 June that the Chair and vice chair and other positions, including the replacement of me has to be done. In fact, the replacement of me doesn’t take their position until the end of the year.
Hong Xue: Oh, Cheryl, I’m sorry. That’s different. I’m talking about APRALO --
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: I’m talking about APRALO operating principles, and the APRALO operating principles state very clearly that the vice chair and Chair roles, in fact it doesn’t say when the Chair role starts, but it does say that the vice chair role, in the odd year, starts on the 30th of June. It also states that selection should be completed in any given calendar year by the 30th of June.
I want to be really clear that the only reason we ever got March into our schedule was the bizarre event of the At-Large summit, where all of the regions took the advantage of all the ALSs being together to hold their general assembly. But in fact, our by-laws do not call for us, and in fact you are technically Chair until 30 June, not March at all.
Hong Xue: Oh, thank you Cheryl. That’s very insightful information.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: I just confirmed that we’re cutting ourselves too short a plot here, when we in fact have time to engage the ALSs and then get more people to put them forward, which is I think a very big positive.
Hong Xue: Oh well, great. You are very right. I will review the operational principles again. It seems that it didn’t specifically say the starting day of Chair, but it mentioned the vice chair starting for an odd year. So I guess for the vice-chair, for Charles’ position, he replaced Lesley to finish the remaining term, so his remaining term should be by June 2011, that’s good. And we have Fouad of course, he was elected in May 2010 and he was promoted to two year vice chair in June 2010, Brussels meeting, so these two are in good shape. For Secretariat, Pavan was elected March 2009 at the Mexico City summit.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Yes, the secretariat needs to be looked at, but also your Chair.
Hong Xue: I should be replaced, definitely, I think so. I’m interim to temporarily take care of the organization, I guess the two vice chairs are doing so well, they are doing much better than me, so probably we only elect the Chair position, we open this position.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: And my replacement. You must do my replacement.
Hong Xue: No, I guess your term should follow the normal cycle, to June 2011.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: No, Hong, the operation principles are clear. My replacement must be chosen by June 30. I was chosen in February 2007, I didn’t take my role until --
Hong Xue: Oh I see, this is right. It does restate my position that your position should absolutely not be open for election in March 2011.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: We can, as long as it’s completed by June.
Hong Xue: Well, that’s not an issue for now. So it seems that we only think about election, open election for the position of Chair to replace me, and for all the others I do suggest we defer and follow the operational principles to June 2011. I guess that will be a more feasible approach. Well, this is my initial thinking. What we need to do is open up our minds, so probably we need some discussion on the list.
But I think the by-laws, the operational principles have made terms quite clear, so we don’t need to think about Cheryl’s term, Charles’ term, Fouad’s term and secretariat. So what I’m suggesting right now is to think about to replace the Chair, hopefully by the end of San Francisco. Any other comments? Oh Cheryl, you still raised your hand in the room.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: I’m most concerned that we are mucking up these dates. KV was the vice chair when Raj left. He, as vice chair, was chairing from March to June. His election in March 2007 made him a two year Chair for a term that started June 2009, sorry, not 7, 9, and ran to June 2011. We really have to be very careful about this. You keep talking about March, and it’s not. They are all June.
The only reason the election happened in March was this one off event of the At-Large summit, and the only reason KV was already being Chair then was from his VC role, so he was left for three months. We’ve got to keep it in synch; otherwise we’re going to have a problem.
Hong Xue: Oh, we’ve got to keep thinking. This is really new, sorry I messed up these things, but I thought the Mexico City was a holy day.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: We can work through this, Hong, but we need Matthias and you and probably a couple of others, I would think Fouad and Charles; we need to have a meeting off this particular agenda, we need to set the dates out. I feel like I’m the repository of fact here; we need to put the dates out and be really, really clear, and one of the problems is, Matthias, you know what I’m going to say, don’t you?
The old voting history has been lost, in the bookcase, and they are often pages that we still need to find in the confluence Wiki, but it’s all around June. Now, we can start at San Francisco and run the whole election process through to June, and that would be quite appropriate. But as I understand it, you are Chair, you are completing KV’s term until the end of our AGM in June, in Asia.
Hong Xue: Oh, thanks Cheryl, for the very useful comments. Well, Matthias, I probably need to work with you to start on these days with the new information and I also need to look into the history of elections. I hope by that time you joined ICANN and have all the records for us to check. But Cheryl’s comments, and I see Fouad is actually agreeing with her, are very valuable and useful information to think about.
Well, and I personally welcome any comments on this issue, but it seems very complicated and we won’t have sufficient time to spend on this issue any more for this call. So we leave it to the member’s discussion. Okay, Fouad is agreeing in the room, he says it should be an email thread. Okay, that’s a good idea, actually. Let’s move on to next agenda item.
This is on policy development, I am going to hand it over to Charles, and I thank you again for the very thoughtful plan made for us, and hopefully you delivered our message to ALAC to contribute to the whole community. So, Charles?
Charles Mok: Yes, can you hear me?
Hong Xue: Perfectly.
Charles Mok: Yes, I wasn’t in Cartagena, so Edmon made the proposal. I think basically the idea is that we found that because there are so many consultations from ICANN it is very difficult for any of us to keep track and to really feedback in a reasonably useful manner. So this is a way that we are attempting to rationalize the whole system and make it more systematic so we can at least schedule ourselves, as a RALO, to make these responses. Now, Edmon just sent out the proposal to the APRALO list, so those of you on email may have just got it a while ago so you can look at it.
My understanding from Edmon is that in the last meeting, at the ICANN meeting, it wasn’t finally approved yet, so we need to get a go ahead maybe from ourselves in APRALO with our feedback and position on this. Number one, in the last couple of days I got the email from the ICANN working group B, that they are saying that they would want to take a look at our proposal and have us present it in a meeting a couple of days from now. Now I can join that meeting, I just sent back a reply to Cheryl and Matthias and so on, and we can present what we have and present to them as our contribution, but first things first, I think we need to get some feedback from ourselves in APRALO of how we feel about this.
Get a confirmation on going ahead with it, and then we need to also prioritize ourselves with the consultations that are coming up, just like some of those that are listed on the agenda right now. Then we need to work back to date to see which ones we can start using this system. We sort of tried to fix the number of days that we need to do a consultation, get feedbacks, and so on, and go through the loop, so we need to so that. And then we need to get a confirmation from APRALO members, ALSs, about prioritizing ourselves.
Possibly we cannot do for all the consultations, but the ones that are relevant to us, or the ones that are most relevant to us. Those probably, we will have to do with email threads, more than just discussing in too much detail in our monthly meeting like this. But that’s the status that I have, and I want to see Hong and the other member’s feedback about the plan and see how we can take it forward. That’s my report for the moment.
Hong Xue: Thank you so much, Charles. That’s terrific. I see Cheryl and the others were applauding in the Adobe room, for you. That’s terrific, and especially we love the three level policy encouragement ideas. That’s how to improve our participation at ALAC level and how to encourage the individual policy participation and how to develop the policy of APRALO. They are all very thoughtful, terrific. I feel you have answered Cheryl’s question, she is very eager to know if you will be able to join the Work Team conference call.
Charles Mok: It is only 3 a.m. for me, so yeah.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: I do understand.
Charles Mok: Maybe I should give Cheryl my number, so if I overslept, you call me. Very well, I’ll be there, Friday morning.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: We’ll give Adego a number to call out to you. Matthias, can you organize that please?
Matthias Langenegger: Yes, Cheryl, I’ll be happy to.
Hong Xue: Okay, wonderful. So Charles, do we have any specific discussion, any policy issues today?
Charles Mok: Well, first of all, I think we need to understand the procedure on these. What we are going to do with it, because we can search legal to the Team D and present and share, but to me that is pretty much a sharing and sort of discussing and letting others in the ICANN world know what we are proposing. But we need to confirm whether or not, at least in APRALO ourselves; we are going ahead with it. My understanding is that has not been totally confirmed in the meeting in Cartagena, so we need to discuss it first, and then approve or confirm it, so that’s the procedure that we need to take to do that.
Hong Xue: Thank you very much Charles, for your information. And Edmon, for our friend elected to the ALAC as APRALO representative, and then elected by ALAC as IDN liaison, so I’m quite sure that he will be a very strong representative on policy development. We do want to work with him very closely, and he started working already on IDN initiative, so we have a head start, that’s great. That’s on IDN. Another issue is on strategic plan.
We had hoped that Mr. Kurt Pritz could join us on this call, but he was still on leave until next week. He was unavailable today, but I would encourage all the ALSs, all the leaders of APRALO to review the strategic plan and send in the comments. Please do send in the comments to the ALAC Wiki. The deadline for the comments to my information and Cheryl’s briefing is the 10th of January. So we a few days to comment, so please do. I’m quite sure Charles in encouraging you as well.
Charles Mok: I’m encouraging Edmon who is next to me to, if possible, come up with something that we can circulate quickly, but that is only for this particular consultation, and I think also, first of all, as far as the system that was proposed, we need sort of a go ahead from this group so that we can work out the schedule for the upcoming consultations.
Hong Xue: That’s great, terrific. Any other comments? Edmon, do you have a comment on this?
Edmon Chung: Yeah, I guess the comment – I don’t know if you want to open the discussion here or if we should take it to the list is that I guess what Charles and I have been working on is sort of a framework, a process that we can develop these kind of things. We were looking issue by issue and then as before, I think things quickly start to get out of hand, because we don’t really have a process in place.
The general idea, of what I sent around, is to have the working group sort of prioritize the items and really take out some of them. At this point, it’s unrealistic to think we can just turn around and provide comments to all consultations, so we need some sort of working group that would meet that would say ‘these are ones that we would respond to”, and sort of propose to this monthly meeting and prioritize and then generate those statements of those positions.
This particular framework is something that we need to agree to. That’s sort of I guess what Charles is asking, and Hong, as the Chair, the question is how do we take up discussion on the process of creating these things that take place? Here or on the list? How do we go about this?
Hong Xue: Thanks, Edmon. I see Holly has a question. Holly, go ahead.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: *7 to un-mute.
Hong Xue: Holly? I see she is working on a new team herself. Well, Edmon, thank you very much for the follow up and your briefing at Cartagena, and Charles’ explanation just now is very, very useful for us to understand the framework. Now we fully agree with you, we are so enthusiastic about this new working plan, it looks so workable. What I’m suggesting now is that you have a new title ALAC and then IDN liaison, what I mean is you can – oh, Holly left.
Holly Raiche: No, no, I’m here.
Hong Xue: Oh well, Holly, you’re back. Do you have a question or a comment?
Holly Raiche: I did, and I do not what’s happening, but I keep getting disconnected and then connected again. Edmon, just a question. There may be some issues that are particular for one or other of the groups, so maybe if we all have a look at a particular list and say “That’s important to me, that’s important to me” and we prioritize, but it may be that one or other chapters will have a particular interest more than our chapter, and maybe that chapter or that ALS can start the discussion rolling and people can think about it. I don’t think all of us are going to have all the same issues.
Edmon Chung: Yes, that’s exactly what Charles and I were starting down this path about how we focus, and the issue is how do we do it on a consistent basis? On a particular issue, do we run a poll every month? That’s the thing we wanted to get discussed here, whether on this call or in this meeting or somewhere, how to go about prioritizing things and then really put people behind it with a pen and start drafting stuff. The problem is the prioritization part and how we go about that. That’s sort of what I wanted to raise and see how we could come up with a process with Hong.
Holly Raiche: Just a thought in response. Rather than wait for every month, as an issue comes up maybe just circulate and say is this is importance to people? Get some initial feedback, and then have a group of say maybe three or four that calls for responses and then reports back saying these are the things that we think are important, and these are the deadlines, and that will give people a chance to say ‘yes, I agree’.
Edmon Chung: The suggestion might be when something comes up we do something just to circulate the issue and sort of take a poll, and then at every monthly meeting we sort of lay it out and say these are things that people thought were priority, and then do a list taking or I should say do a short listing to make it a process like that.
Charles Mok: Actually, if you look at the so called proposal that’s exactly what we were saying. That for the urgent issues and the not so urgent issues we sort of systemize it and so we propose a certain timeframe for the identification of the issue, for drafting the comment, the initial comment and our statement and getting the circulation done.
We just basically set up a kind of timeframe so we can schedule ourselves and follow the work, it’s like if we don’t give ourselves some sort of a framework then nothing ever gets done. That’s the key thing, and I think that like what you were saying, that’s what we were proposing.
Holly Raiche: Well, it’s the first step, people just need to get back and say “Yes, that’s the right process”, because I haven’t had a chance to look at what you’ve done, but get back and say “Yes, that’s the way to do it,” and then we have a small group of say two or three, whatever, so that on the agenda for each meeting there’s a report back to say ‘these were the urgent items, this is how we dealt with hit, these were unurgent, this is what people thought” either the one or two or three things we would do, and that just becomes a standing agenda item at every meeting.
Charles Mok: Right, right, exactly.
Hong Xue: Okay, thank you, thank you very much for the discussion, this opens up our mind. Any other comments on prioritizations and policy development process? If no, we move on to agenda item five; update on outreach and inreach. I hand it over to Fouad and Pavan, so please.
Fouad Bajwa: Thank you, Hong, do you hear me?
Hong Xue: Yes, go ahead.
Pavan Budhrani: Well, at this moment with regards to the inreach and outreach activities within APRALO, the current status is that Fouad has completed assembly on the recommendations from DNS survey, which includes a couple of issues with regards to how the ALSs, that level, their representation was their use of social media tools or getting us to communicate the feedback. And their work was with regards to the ICANN issues, the issue of integration and so forth.
Along with these, in one of the series of meetings on 26th October 2010, I also gathered comments from various documents and sources and DNS survey to suggest some possible inreach/outreach recommendations, to look at how we can keep in touch with the ALSs and how we could have active communications going on with the ALSs so we can have them aware and ready to participate in the APRALO processes, as well as the administrative policy processes, as APRALO is wanting to.
So the situation is with regards to this at the Cartagena meeting I was to get these and our number one approach at the moment is to look at the outreach whereby I propose that how we can increase the membership of APRALO, it was a suggestion at the country to country level, which means that in the documents listed on today’s agenda, and which you can see that and open it up, it suggests that if you use the APRALO participation and outreach communications program in order to encourage any individual and any end user participation in APRALO should increase.
Under this program, 17 At-Large structures will be incubated and members will be inducted; for example, (inaudible 0:49:46) At-Large, (inaudible 0:49:47) At-Large, (inaudible 0:49:48) At-Large, each country At-Large structure will be mentored by APRALO, in order to effectively (inaudible 0:49:55) within APRALO. At-Large and ICANN activities; each (inaudible 0:49:59) will be able to participate in APRALO processes. This will help develop participation in APRALO.
With regards to this idea, this has to be in line with the operating principles of APRALO’s permission, and as part of that we have to ensure that our membership rules do reflect the ability to include individuals in the membership if we do go this way. The idea comes from also (inaudible 0:50:40) separate report on the work of Work Team B. The idea also comes from the RALOs, which encourage that individual membership, individualization of the schedule for themselves and the RALO in North America. They have an unaffiliated individual membership model. They also group up their individual members into shorter (inaudible 0:51:07) structures so that they can have a voting right into the NARALO processes.
So this is also something that we can explore, that each ALS needs to reach a certain level of membership, and of course we cannot do this individually or independently at all. Each ALS has to be first informed by ALAC, and then the process of direction has to go for their recognition. So this is, there are modalities which we have to discuss, but this is so far on the outreach and this is something we will have or continue a discussion on. And how can we look at amending the membership articles, the APRALO bylaws with regards to membership, whereby we can encourage individual membership into APRALO?
The second issue comes in when such an approach is adopted or the current state of (inaudible 0:52:14) like for sixty days at least to get in touch with all the other processes – write their own replies, write their own emails, and update them. So this is one thing I think we should start now seeing as the issue of elections will also be coming up, and then so many things- I would say that this year is starting June, ’11, and we have three upcoming meetings for ICANN. Before we introduce the (inaudible 0:52:49) from the staff, which updates all the ALSs, what are certain activities waiting on? Because if the ALSs are not they’re not going to participate, and they have to be informed on a monthly basis.
A side window already exists and the- I think the issue of the rotation of the secretariat only comes in, my recommendation on that was only that if we have a steady secretariat amongst the ALSs on a yearly basis, we’re expecting them to participate in the core processes of APRALO. But this may only be a single-sided view at the moment because I need more suggestions on this. This is also part of the inreach activities to encourage the secretariat to be (inaudible 0:53:39).
Apart from that, the Work Team B, we had our meeting in Cartagena, and this was the meeting about participation. And as part of that if you have any suggestions on how to approach the issue of capacity building in the RALOs for number one, and in the ALAC members. Number two, the incoming community of ALAC, which is the ALSs, members from the ALSs. Number three, incoming leadership from the RALOs to these meetings, and so far we’ve applied for the available space within ICANN. The (inaudible 0:54:37) sent capacity building sessions that ICANN was having for introducing people to issues at ICANN, like the gTLD introductions and so forth. They actually set up a pretty good performance over there. It was perceived very well by the community and people learned a lot from that.
So those kinds of ideas were also discussed, that how can you free express or express ideas that are not going on in ICANN, to be used as a possibility to introduce people to the issues if there are no formal meetings going on. So these kinds of issues are out, they’re reflected in the Work Team B meeting summary. We have seen (inaudible 0:55:24) because it was falling close to their Christmas and New Year, so we have moved it to January. Hopefully the meetings will be next week for Work Team B, and I encourage everyone who wants to be a part of Work Team B. Thank you, I can take any questions.
Hong Xue: Are there any questions or comments?
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Yes, Hong. I do. First of all, I’m obviously excited. You know I’m supportive of this because of my work in Work Team B, but I just wanted to make the point that the format of this meeting agenda for our region has also been a very useful thing, where the Chair has highlighted for us the particular current review for public comment policy pieces that have clear ramifications and interest for our region.
Now, we can get smarter about working out which ones of those are indeed of interest to our region, but I think this kind of forecast and format, particularly when we should start to get them two meetings ahead; this lot are all ending in January, but we should be looking at the ones that are ending in February at the meeting, February and March, at the meeting at the end of this month, at the end of January. So I think that’s a great step forward, and I just want to recommend that as a good thing to continue.
The other thing I thought we should point out is putting on the ATRT hat for a moment, is one of the reasons that the accountability and transparency review team recommended the forecasting requirement for ICANN as whole for policy development and key parts of where policy and working group would be working in any given 12 to 18 month period was to allow people like us, out at the edges, to have better forecasting abilities. So I think where we’re hitting here is to demand, I think of ICANN, to be smarter about forecasting about what’s going to happen in the future, so we have a better idea.
And also us getting smarter about looking forward and analyzing better what we do or don’t want to contribute to. That said, could I encourage APRALO to make a comment in the next 45 days? In other words, I’m suggesting what we do is replace the repeat of the geo-regions one, we’ve got two of those in the list for some reason, take the last one out and replace it with a suggestion that APRALO also comment on the ATRT final recommendations paper. If nothing else, picking up on this forecasting point, because we do have two-thirds of the world’s population here.
We do have 51 if not more languages to deal with. We do have huge demands on our ability to outreach, let alone cover the region we have, and the more upfront we can do, the better. I think that would be a very appropriate comment from our region to pick up on that forecasting part of that document. And obviously I’m happy to help with the drafting of that.
Hong Xue: Thank you Cheryl, thank you very much. Fouad’s line unfortunately dropped, he was not able to hear the second half of your comment. He is saying that he hopes you will post it on the Adobe room. Sorry for that. That is very useful. Holly, do you have a comment?
Holly Raiche: I do, and I think it ties in exactly with what Charles and Edmon were talking about, and that is if we have a little small group whose main job it is to keep an eye on the policy issues we should be watching, then in fact the work of the Chair is already done. It’s sort of an ‘we already will know what we have identified”, and of course with Cheryl’s point, being able to forecast one, two, three months down will help with the suggestion that we have a more coordinated policy for identifying issues that are of importance and being able to come up with a sensible reply.
So I think that all fits into a nice package, and I think it’s just a coordination between the people who put together that kind of policy response and the Chair, so the agenda always reflects, basically, what the little committee has already done, the work that has been done. So it seems to me that those two things fit very comfortably together. But Cheryl, you can tell me I’m dead wrong.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: No, no, not at all. I’m in rampant agreement.
Hong Xue: Thank you, thank you Holly, thank you Cheryl. These are very insightful indeed. It seems we can perfectly merge our outreach and inreach program with the policy development program, they are intertwined, this is terrific. So we use one stone to kill two birds. That’s on outreach and inreach. Fouad, I hope you’re back, well, he’s not. Any other comments to Fouad’s plan and suggestions? No? Okay, let’s go to the last agenda item.
We’re looking forward to hearing updates from our ALAC representatives, Cheryl, Edmon, and the NomCom appointee. Cheryl, do you have an update?
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Well, a very, very brief one. Obviously we had a couple of fairly important pieces of policy commentary that are – in fact, each and every one of the most important ones are covered in today’s agenda, and we’ve discussed those. I would like to suggest as the executive committee of the ALAC and the leaders of the Work Team B will be putting together at least an early drafting for ALAC consideration on the strategic plan public comment that, as you said Hong, if people can go to the page. Matthias, can you post the link to the strat plan on the confluence Wiki page up for everyone, please? And make it part of the minutes?
If everyone can go in and comment and add a page, what they would like to have either from ALSs or from the region as a whole, then those comments and our views can be integrated as part of the larger public comments that ALAC will put in. However, as AFRALO will be putting in their own regional plan, I did wonder whether it was something that the Executives – thanks Matthias – the executives of APRALO might like to consider. Hong, I know your comments are already on this Wiki site, but I wondered if you and Charles and Fouad might, perhaps even with Holly’s help, just put up something, not too onerous, just something to go in specifically as an APRALO comment by the 10th of January.
If that is possible, I think that would be a very good thing. ALAC’s already voting on the single character – the comment piece which you know was fit in the 30th of December, and we did have that public comment in time. Like many other organizations we’ve not had much in the way of meetings between the close of the Cartagena meeting and now, but this week is back to full Work Team meetings and other work group meetings, and indeed, an executive committee meeting will be running this week. The only other thing I should mention is to do a sales pitch for ALS representatives to look to the ALAC Work Team, the ALAC improvements Work Teams, A, B, C, and D.
You had Fouad do a very good report on the activities of Work Team B on today’s call, but each and every one of those Work Teams is looking for more members. At the moment, Fouad and I are pretty much covering for APRALO. It would be delightful, would it not Fouad, for us to have some more company in each of these Work Teams? That’s it for me.
Hong Xue: Oh, thank you. Thank you very much, Cheryl. And for the information, Cheryl is now the vice-chair of ALAC, after finishing up the very much appreciated Chairship, and liaison to the ccNSO Council. Congratulations to Cheryl.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Thank you.
Hong Xue: And Edmon, do you have a briefing on policy or any issues?
Edmon Chung: Not really at this point. I just joined and we had an orientation session for me and some of those who just joined the ALAC. I haven’t been to an ALAC meeting officially yet, but it should be coming up this month.
Hong Xue: Okay, thank you. And James? We don’t have James on the call. Any other comments or questions for Cheryl or Edmon? Well, if no then I thank all for participating in the call, and let’s keep on working on the list, and on wiki. Okay, any issue you want to comment, you’re welcome to send a message to the list or comment online. Okay, the call is adjourned. Thank you all and goodbye.
[End of Transcript]
