Participants: Wolf Ludwig, Manuel Schneider, Olivier Crepin-Leblond, Sandra Hoferichter, Yjro Lansipuro, Oksana Prykhodko, Sebastien Bachollet, Christopher Wilkinson, Annette Muhlberg
Apologies: Rudi Vansnick, Lutz Donnerhacke
Staff: Heidi Ullrich, Matthias Langenegger
Review of Summary Minutes and Action Items from Last Meeting
AI: Staff will send the links to the proposed Bylaw modifications and comments to the EURALO list and ask the EURALO members to read the documents prior to the call and give feedback on the currently proposed changes.
DONE
Wolf: There were comments from several of our members on the proposed Bylaw modifications.
Open Public Consultations
Recently submitted ALAC statements:
Draft 2011-2014 Strategic Plan
Wolf: We forwarded our input on the Draft 2011 Strategic Plan to the ALAC and as far as I know, most of our suggestions made it into to the ALAC statement.
Olivier: Kurt Pritz introduced this issue on 16 November to EURALO. We then drafted an ALAC statement based on the input from the RALOs. Unfortunately, the comment period ended shortly after the Holiday season. ICANN has to think more carefully about the timing of its public consultations. Next year, I suggest that we start in late October/early November. We hope we will receive a positive answer on most of our recommendations and we did ask for feedback from the Board on our submission.
Draft Final Report on Policy Aspects Regarding Introduction of Single Character IDN TLDs
Olivier: This was originally drafted by James Seng and modified by Edmon Chung. Chines, Japanes and Korean speakers are highly affected by this issue. The ALAC submitted the statement in time.
Discuss possible Bylaw Modifications
Wolf: This is an initiative that stems from some time ago and was a major issue at the GA in Vilnius.
Modifications to include individual members
Wolf: Olivier, Sebastien and myself are in favor of option B.
Annette: I think it is strange to have an ALS where the only commonality is that all members are unaffiliated individuals.
Christopher: I have had similar reservations, however, in this occassion I think this is the ideal solution in this particular case.
Yjro: I agree with Christopher.
Wolf: Most seem to prefer option B because it is more practial.
Sandra: I agree with Annette. We need to respect Europe's diversity. It might be more practical for EURALO or the ALAC but it is not very practical for the unaffiliated individuals.
Olivier: Actually, if you look at option A, unaffiliated members would still need to organise themselves. Options B does not differ very much in terms of the internal structure of the unaffiliated member constituency. Another concern I have with regards to option A has to do with a certain competition. Why should an interested individual join an ALS when it could just become an unaffiliated individual? If you just want to be heard, it might be easier to become an unaffiliated member. I think we need to encourage the ALS structure.
Wolf: Option A requires the unaffiliated members to organise themselves more rigorously. If we want option A, we need to modifiy our MOU with ICANN.
Annette: I don't think changing the ICANN MOU would be a difficult issue.
Wolf: If we choose to go for option A, we would have to go through a public consultation process which would require much more time and resources than option B.
Yrjo: I am inclined towards Olivier's argument. As he noted, unaffiliated individuals would still need to organise themselves according to option A.
Wolf: Option B offers an additional option to joining an existing ALS.
Sandra: If we go with option B, I think we need to include rules that ensure that we preserve Europe's diversity.
Wolf: According to my understanding, if we go for option B, we would still have time until the end of April to improve and complete proposal B. The suggested modification need to be completed four weeks in advance of the GA end of May.
Annette: Perhaps we should include a clause to review option B in, say, two years.
Wolf: I think this is a good idea.
Olivier: I support Sandra's idea. It would be EURALO's job to write the Bylaws for this ALS. I support the idea that this ALS has to go trough a review process, perhaps one after two years and then every two years if they wish to continue the reviews.
Wolf: In summary, we agree to move ahead with option B. In the months to come we will work on the details of option B before we submit it to our members before our next GA.
Modifications on Term limits for Board members and Officers
Sebastien: There are two point here. We need more people involved and many EURALO people are involved in many different fora such as the NomCom, the ALAC, the Board etc. I support having no term limits for Board members and a limit of 3 consecutive terms for the Board Officers.
Annette agrees.
Olivier: what term limits do the other RALOs have?
An overview of the RALO instruments is available at: https://community.icann.org/display/Improve/Overview+RALO+Instruments
Olivier: I support that we discuss this in Belgrade. EURALO is still in start-up mode and term limits is great when you have many candidates. Also, spending a lot of time working for free will always make it difficult to find volunteers. I suggest that we we suspend term limits for the forseeable future, say 3 -5 years, to help EURALO grow further. This would not make it necessary to revert our decisison a couple of years from now.
Wolf: I like this proposal. We would make a proposal for a temporary solution to our members in Belgrade.
Annette: Don't we have to make a decision now?
Wolf: We have to prepare ourselves for the election in Belgrade and we need a workable solution. If EURALO decides not to change its term limits, I could volunteer to be the interim solution after Belgrade.
AI: The EURALO leaders will propose an interim solution regarding officer term limits to the EURALO GA in Belgrade.
Additional areas for possible Bylaw modifications identified by Sebastien
Wolf: Sebatien pointed out other areas for possible revision. However, I think we need to finalize the proposed modifications as they are most pressing at the moment.
Sebastien: I agree with this timeline but we do need to look at the rest of our Bylaws.
Wolf: I think we should look at that at the subsequent GA.
Annette: We should not spend too much time on our Bylaws. Are those changes crucial, Sebastien?
Sebastien: Well, there are some officer positions according to our Bylaws that we never implemented such as a treasurerer.
Annette: But why not go the other way? Why not try live according to our Bylaws.
Sebastien: The current Bylaws are based on the idea that we will have a budget and this will not be the case in the forseeabe future.
Wolf: Perhaps we should have a taskforce to look at the Bylaws in detail. We should have another look at our Bylaws.
Modifications to allign EURALO Board and ALAC representative elections
There was general agreeement that the elections should be alligned as proposed under:https://community.icann.org/display/EURALO/Bylaw+changes+to+align+the+elections+of+the+EURALO+Board+with+the+ALAC+representative
The proposed modification will be presented to the GA for consideration in Belgrade.
EURALO Input to Work Team C SWOT Analysis
Olivier: There is a wiki workspace where we collect the input from the EURALO ALSes at:https://community.icann.org/display/Improve/EURALO+input+into+WT+C+SWOT+analyses
Olivier: I hope that somebody volunteers to take care of this and collect the ALS comments.
Wolf: I encourage you to look at this URL and submit your ideas before we review them during the next call.
AI: Staff will add an agenda item on the SWOT analisys for the next EURALO call.
EURALO Position on Geographic Region Interim Report
Wolf: There were a lot of discussion on this in Cartagena. Also, in EURALO we had instances where the ICANN Geographic regions did not seem to reflect political realities, such was the case with the ALS application from Azerbaijan last year. If we formulate a regional position, we need to do so before the end of the month. I suggest forming a task force to discuss this further and draft a EURALO statement.
Yjro volunteered to participate in this taskforce.
Olivier: I suggest putting out a call to the EURALO list to get more input.
AI: Staff will work with Wolf and Olivier on a call for volunteers to join the EURALO Geographic Regions Statement WG.
AI: Staff will carry over the agenda item on the Outreach Recommendations from At-Large Improvements WT-B to the next call.
Recent and Upcoming Activities of ALAC and EURALO Members
Olivier gave a summary of the current activities of the ALAC.
Heidi pointed out that the budget requests for the coming fiscal year will need to be finalized shortly. Staff will send out an detailed email.
The meeting was then adjourned.
