Gisella Gruber: The recording is ready to start, Cheryl. If you’d like I’ll do a quick roll call.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Let’s get on with it, thank you very much.
Gisella Gruber: Good morning, good afternoon, good evening to everyone to today’s Taskforce call on Monday, the 30th of January. We have Cheryl Langdon-Orr, Dev Anand Teelucksingh, Sergio Salinas Porto, Yrjo Lansipuro, Olivier Crépin-Leblond. Apologies: we have Natalia Encisco.
From staff we have Seth Greene, Matt Ashtiani I believe may be on the call; Heidi Ullrich, Silvia Vivanco and myself, Gisella Gruber. If I could also please remind you to state your names when speaking for transcript purposes. Thank you, over to you, Cheryl.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Thank you very much. Okay. We have a delayed start today so we have a much shortened call. We will be stopping at the top of the hour but it may mean that we don’t get as fast through our Part 5, Recommendation 5, sorry – line item #5, Recommendation 5, in the Work Team C proposal. But we can do our best.
Last week we got as far as looking through the sections that were relating to Work Team C’s recommendations and we had wound up the “conduct periodic SWOT – strength, weakness, opportunity, and threat – analysis.” And we had some draft language that we needed to consider as a point of follow-up or any other business, and I believe that Seth has got some language for us ready to look at today. So we will start with a review of that.
And then the new work for today’s call is to start with the “articulate ALAC’s and At-Large’s vision and mission.” We noted last week in preparation for this part of the review of the implementables that Work Team C had indeed created wording articulating the mission of the ALAC; that the mission of the ALAC is “To facilitate the voice of the individual end users of the internet within the policy development and other activities of ICANN.” And I don’t believe in any of our calls or interactions with ALAC did Work Team C get particularly strong indications that any of that wording would need to be changed.
However, we have in fact not articulated a vision. Whilst vision and mission are very closely related we very clearly need to do a little bit of wordsmithing. So we would be looking for this to be in near completion but still in progress.
Firstly Seth, do you have the text for the periodic or the peri-idiocy perhaps if I can invent a word of the SWOT which is a carryover from last week? And I think this will be the only action item that we need to deal with but I’ll check that while you’re sharing with us.
Heidi Ullrich: Cheryl, this is Heidi.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: I see it, Heidi, yes?
Heidi Ullrich: Yes. The text that Seth prepared after the Taskforce prep call last Thursday is in the chat.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Excellent, I see that now. Thank you. Alright, I’ll read that to the record for transcript purposes. “The proposed text, which is our carryover text from last week’s discussion on the periodic SWOT analysis implementation is as follows: ‘The ALAC has determined that for this action item to be effective it must be performed on a recurring schedule. The item has been completed previously on…’ and we’ll insert dates of the two SWOT analyses done back in 2007 and also with the Work Team C activities in 2009-10, ‘and the ALAC and ICANN staff will consider when it should next be,” – sorry, “next” repeated – “by the At-Large community.”
This is… I’m getting confused reading this, Heidi. Are these square brackets “will be considered and have scheduled to be repeated by.”
Seth Greene: Cheryl, if I may?
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Thank you, Seth, please.
Seth Greene: No problem, this is Seth for the record. The beginning of the text, starting with “The ALAC has determined” through the words “and ICANN staff and the [e-list],” that’s proposed as the set wording. Then after that there are three options that could follow. Either we’ll consider when it should be next repeated by the At-Large community; or have scheduled it to be repeated by the At-Large community once every year in January, or an alternative to that would be once every year prior to the ICANN AGM meeting for example; and the third option would be have scheduled it to be repeated by the At-Large community once every two years.
So basically the first option is saying that the ALAC has not decided yet but will decide when it should next be repeated. The second option is it’s been decided to be repeated once a year in January, or before the AGM meeting, or any other way that the ALAC would like to fill that in. The third option is every two years.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Okay, thank you. That’s clear. It must have been how it got transcribed into chat where the formatting is lost. Thank you for that clarification, Seth.
I know that a few of you had suggestions last call and we certainly, I thought, were heading towards as you were encouraging us to do a biannual, two-year cycle. I’ll open the floor for discussion but I thought that was the general lay of the land from last week’s meeting.
Go ahead, Dev.
Dev Anand Teelucksingh: Okay, thanks Cheryl – this is Dev Anand Teelucksingh. I would think that having it once every two years is quite adequate. I think it might be too much if it’s something that we repeat every single year. So that’s my thoughts on it.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: I couldn’t agree with you more. So perhaps might I ask those of you in the Adobe room to indicate your agreement with the biannual option, meaning the third option, as a suggestion, as a baseline? I see one other tick of agreement, two other ticks. If I could have Tijani weigh in on that. We only have three regions so we have to have three different regions agreeing; we only have three out of our five regions. Tijani, do you agree with the biannual?
Excellent, okay, that might be just slightly more [comfortable]. Alright, so let’s assume that we will now be going with the third option then, which is “have scheduled it to be repeated by the At-Large community every two years.” Can we now ask ourselves do we prefer to have it prior to an ICANN AGM or in January? I’d almost like to put up a poll but perhaps I’ll do it… Thank you, Sergio, we note your agreement as well.
The concept of doing anything in January in volunteer world seems fraught with danger to me. The advantages of doing it prior to an ICANN AGM is that we have a mid-year face-to-face meeting where we have transitions. Every year there are new people joining the ALAC and indeed the leadership of the regions with whatever rotation, elections, selections and appointments are going on. So perhaps I could encourage you to indicate your agreement with a “prior to ICANN AGM” option. That is certainly my personal preference but let’s see how everyone else goes.
I’m agreeing with a pre-AGM. I see Dev, I see Yrjo, I see Tijani, and I suspect Sergio will agree with you, the LACRALO representative as well. Yes he does, okay. So we’re getting this wordsmithing done on the fly here but we’re going with option three and it will be “prior to ICANN AGM meeting.” Thank you. I’ll just ask you to clear your agrees.
With this text, yes, go ahead Olivier. Oh sorry, Olivier doesn’t want to speak – he’s trying to get back in the room. He must be back in his hotel room. With this text, do you wish to give a “and be reviewed at future date?” So do we want to lock in a two-year or biannual, and that will allow us to have one more and only one more before the next review of the ALAC, remembering we do have an ALAC review looming upon us in the not-too-distant future? Do we need to say anymore or is this enough?
We’ll open the lines for a quick discussion then. Are you on audio now, Olivier? He may not have managed to dial in yet. Oh, he’s still on the phone, he’s just muted. Well, you can unmute yourself now if you’re in the privacy of a hotel room. Okay, nobody feels we need to add any more words so we’re going for option 3 which is the biannual and tweaked it to the AGM. Yes, go ahead.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Cheryl, it’s Olivier here. I’m still on the audio because there’s a real big lag on the Adobe Connect. I’m experiencing what many of our members are experiencing sometimes and I was in a wild white-knuckle ride in a taxi in (inaudible) just now so I’m just kind of catching my breath. So thank you, sorry, but I’m on the Adobe Connect if you can bear the ten-second delay. Thank you.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: We can surely bear that sort of delay to get you to vote, that’s fine. Just obviously if you had a problem with the deliberations and outcomes so far you would have let us know just then. Terrific, okay. Correct me if I’m wrong but we don’t actually have any other carryover action items from last week. Is that the case?
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: I believe there aren’t any. Thank you.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Nope, I didn’t think so. Good. Alright then, so without any further discussion I think we can actually put that into the completed pile with that new discussion piece, sorry, with that new text. The one piece of carryover is we do need to have a look at the Wiki page and make sure that the SWOT portal for want of a better word is in good working order and appropriate to be linked to in our reporting documentation before Costa Rica. So Matt, I guess that just needs you to double check on that if that’s okay?
Matt Ashtiani: Sorry, Cheryl, I only got about half of what you said. Can you please repeat that?
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Okay, I’ll repeat it so you get all of what I said. I would think whilst we can mark that particular periodic SWOT analysis as completed as it can get, and with that new language which we will put to the ALAC in Costa Rica – we would need that language also mentioned in the SIC reporting as well in Costa Rica – the only carryover part of that would be to ensure that before Costa Rica, and so we can link to the portal area for the SWOT analysis, that needs to be double checked that we have the original 2007 documentation and reporting linked to a page; we have the report of Work Team C all neat and tidy. And I assumed that fell to you. Is that the case?
Matt Ashtiani: Yeah, I’m sure it will. I’ll look into it.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Okay, so that’s just one little action item just to ensure that the SWOT portal is in good working order and looking all bright and shiny before we start putting links into reports.
Okay, let us now move on to the new business for today and we’ve got a full 25 minutes left on the call, which is to articulate ALAC’s and At-Large’s vision and mission. And as I said earlier on the call we have Work Team C’s suggested wording which in principle has been endorsed by ALAC but not specifically endorsed by ALAC, which is the mission: “The mission of the ALAC is to facilitate the voice of the individual end users of the internet within the policy development and other activities of ICANN.”
And I think they’re particularly reasonable mission words. Vision, however, we need to work on. The proposal I would like to ask Tijani to speak to – and I note Olivier has stepped away from the Adobe Connect room briefly but he will unmute and leap in if he needs to. I would have assumed that we need to engage as wide a possible grouping of ALAC and At-Large and regional leaders in the development of the vision words; and what we may be able to do is have them discuss in our workshop time that we have in Costa Rica – and I’ll ask Heidi just to remind us all of when that is and what other discussions are happening in a moment – that in fact if we start with our mission and ask that that be endorsed and ratified in the Costa Rica meeting by having it being work shopped by ourselves and then presented to the ALAC for specific endorsement or acceptance or however it is Olivier wants to do it, and that we workshop the vision language face-to-face.
What’s the feeling from everyone else on that, though? Perhaps first of all, Tijani, because you were Co-Chair of Work Team C. Go ahead, Tijani.
Tijani Ben Jemaa: Cheryl?
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Yes, we can hear you. Go ahead.
Tijani Ben Jemaa: I don’t understand the question. Can you please repeat it? I am sorry.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Okay, I can. Work Team C, yours and Olivier’s team, articulated the mission of the ALAC and At-Large but we did not get out of Work Team C the vision. Should we workshop that in our half-day face-to-face meeting in Costa Rica?
Tijani Ben Jemaa: Yes, absolutely yes.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Okay. I assume Olivier would agree with you on that. He’ll yell at me if he wants to. Yrjo, please go ahead.
Yrjo Lansipuro: Yeah, thank you – Yrjo Lansipuro for the record. I would support the idea that we have a workshop on that because to work on a vision for the ALAC and At-Large, I think that actually gives an opportunity for good and deep discussion. To my mind, vision, what vision is in this context is a sort of ideal state of affairs which we would like to see; and obviously it’s something where the At-Large and ALAC would play a role comparable to other stakeholders. But I think the workshop piece is a very good opportunity to work it out. Thank you.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Thank you, and I certainly agree and I see a number of other ticks as well. I note Dev is in agreement with you. Okay, so we will set our agenda for our half-day workshop to include a significant amount of its time I would have thought to be devoted to this particular activity. Heidi, can I ask for you to share with us the exact timing of the Workshop for the Taskforce and also any other meetings that the Taskforce members need to know about for Costa Rica, please?
Heidi Ullrich: Yes, thank you Cheryl. This is Heidi for the transcript record. In Costa Rica, the timing of the At-Large Improvements Taskforce will be Tuesday, 2:00 PM to 6:00 PM. Currently there is only one other At-Large call scheduled during that time; we’re trying as much as possible to keep that entire time free. And the other meeting that is currently being planned and has not been confirmed yet is a separate meeting of the Taskforce group, members of the SIC – the Structural Improvements Committee – and that is currently tuned to be scheduled for Thursday between 11:00 AM and 11:45 AM. Thank you, Cheryl.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Thank you, Heidi, and I think I see an opportunity there but I’ll ask the rest of the Taskforce to consider it now. With a planning time of 2:00 till 6:00, is the other… Sorry, let me ask you a question first, Heidi. Is the other call that may take At-Large people’s time at that space, is it the whole of that time or part of that time or…
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: It’s currently only one hour and let me just confirm, let me double check which one that one is… We have scheduled it to not take people away from the Taskforce Workshop as much as we can.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Sure, so it might be the 2:00 to 3:00 block before the mid-afternoon break?
Heidi Ullrich: I’m just confirming; I’ll get right back to you.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Alright. Assuming that Heidi may confirm that that’s where we have “the competition,” what we might do because I would think there would be a fair amount of wider community interest in the mission and vision of ALAC and At-Large is that we have that piece of business as the main part of the agenda for the after 3:30 part of the afternoon.
Heidi Ullrich: Okay, Cheryl?
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Yes, go ahead.
Heidi Ullrich: Yes, okay. The other meeting that is currently scheduled for the afternoon is the At-Large meeting with ICANN Compliance, and that time has not yet been confirmed. It’s just we know that it’s in the afternoon. So could I ask if you could let me know what time you would like that Compliance meeting to be to least impact the vision session?
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Certainly – 2:00 to 3:00.
Heidi Ullrich: Okay, I will suggest that. Thank you.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Excellent, and that leaves us a block of time at the beginning of our half day where we can get on with some adminis-trivia if we need to, and then we can dedicate the rest of our Workshop as a proper block to the interactive things that we need to get on with as well. Is everyone happy with that? And more to the point, if anyone’s unhappy let us know and if not we will set the agenda accordingly…
Alright, so that will be completed in Costa Rica. We can move on now in the final 15 plus minutes of this call to the next line item under Recommendation 5 from Work Team C, which is “Use appropriate metrics to make sure that the ALSes are diverse, effective and well-informed. These measures could gauge, for example, the production of Beginner’s Guides and podcasts.” Now the second part of that of course is just a suggestion and we have of course even suggestions that take us in many ways in things like Beginner’s Guides and podcasts. ALSes are not producing these as such but I’m more than welcome to utilize the ICANN-produced ones.
I assume, Heidi, if we were to have ALSes start to produce them there would be considerable budget impacts, for example, so we as a Taskforce might need to think about the measures that could gauge or form what these metrics need to be. We also would probably have some cold, hard analysis metrics as well such as the number of ALSes from the dashboards… I know that Sala has recently done a review looking at where our ALSes are in the world and of course we have the comparison between whether the GAC has members in those states and territories, and whether or not the ccNSO does as well.
Do you want to put the discussion of these metrics, and perhaps do we need any more metrics discussion other than the diversity issues? Do you want to do that as part of our Workshop or how do you want to approach that? It seems to me that we have a Metrics Work Group that is looking at metrics for leadership but this is not part of their remit; this is metrics for the ALSes. So we really ought to engage the regional leaders if not the ALS members themselves. How do you want to proceed? Floor is open. Go ahead, Tijani.
Tijani Ben Jemaa: Okay, thank you. I think that it is a very important point that needs to be discussed with the regional leadership, and I think that Costa Rica will be a very good opportunity to do that. I don’t think that we can discuss it only inside this Taskforce.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Thank you, Tijani. I certainly agree there. So does anyone object to us having that as a second topic for our face-to-face Workshop in Costa Rica where we can interact with as many of our At-Large members and regional leaders as possible?
Heidi, I will definitely help with the Workshop sessions but perhaps first of all we need to work out how many of them there (inaudible). Dev, go ahead.
Dev Anand Teelucksingh: This is Dev, thanks. Well, I agree with Tijani, yes – I think it should be part of our Workshop in Costa Rica, the dashboard. I would be willing to help update those [mailer] dashboards showing the comparison between countries where we have ALSes, countries which do not have ALSes and also in relation to, at this time, the ccNSO. I could work on updating that in time for Costa Rica. So that’s all.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Dev, I think that’d be greatly appreciated but I would strongly suggest that we ask Sala to also join you in that effort. I know she did ask for all those metrics for a reason and she may be able indeed to put together a little presentation and some materials that she was thinking about from an Asia-Pacific perspective. So we might devote perhaps ten or fifteen minutes in our lives in Costa Rica on Tuesday to doing that review.
It might also form an ideal opportunity, I would just note, for regional leaders who may not be as familiar with the dashboard as they should to have a damn good look at that excellent tool you developed. (laughing) Terrific, so there is an ongoing-between-now-and-Costa-Rica AI on Dev and I’ll let Sala know she’s being volunteered. Heidi, I might ask you to make sure that we do let Sala know promptly about that. Okay, alright – we can get rid of that one as well.
Now the next one, which I think is one that I’d like to think events had overtaken but I suspect I live in hope and may die in despair, we need to “Initiate, develop and maintain an institutional knowledge management and retention system for At-Large.” Part of this is happening with the new Wiki work; part of this is happening with the reorganization of how pages are associated with each other in the tree structure of the Wiki which Matt is undertaking, along with the ongoing updating which I’m sure Silvia will be relating a lot of the regional work to as well.
But it indeed a lot more than that. We have the ICANN webpage itself being renewed, refurbished, rejigged and indeed many pages therefore archived. We need to make sure that any we need to get access to have stable links that we can utilize when we need to utilize them. But we have bleated about this as being not just an At-Large issue but more importantly an ICANN-wide issue, so how do we wish to pursue it? Do we wish to put the brief together, say what it is we can do with the tools we have available; and punt it across the wall to ICANN and say “ICANN-wide knowledge retention is an issue; or are you just going to keep hoping with fingers crossed that the few people who exist with a long-term memory don’t drop off their perches before someone gets the material out of their heads?”
Should we be suggesting that now that ICANN has a project done which gives us a new finance software module, that they’re currently looking at a human resources model, that in their strategic plan up to and including 2015 that a knowledge management and information retention system should also be a priority? Is that all we need to do on this or what? The floor is open.
Olivier, are you going to weigh in on whether or not we should punt this across to the whole of ICANN or whether we just keep it ourselves? Whilst I’m waiting for Olivier to formulate his thoughts go ahead, Yrjo.
Yrjo Lansipuro: Yrjo Lansipuro for the record. I think that it’s really an ICANN-wide project because a lot of information we would need from the past is not I guess At-Large- or ALAC-specific; it actually relates to the entire organization. Another thing which may not be exactly what is meant here, but when you talked about people hopefully not dropping off before their brains have been sort of examined for the history – I know that in some organizations there are oral history projects, and while we still have most of those who actually invented the internet with us, somehow I think their memories should be preserved and so on. But this may be actually different from this institutional knowledge management project. Thank you.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Thank you. Over to you, Olivier.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Thank you very much, Cheryl. Can you hear me?
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Yep.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: I thought I’d ask because the last time you asked me I was speaking for about a minute and of course I was muted. But I think Yrjo touched on something that was very interesting. Certainly there is a lot of questions as to what ICANN’s history is all about. I guess all of the communities came a very long way to reach the position that they are in today, and it would really be to ICANN’s advantage, especially on the public relations side of things, to basically show the history of the involvement of the ICANN communities from the beginning all the way until now.
That said, it is a wider project than having an institutional knowledge management and retention system for At-Large, but that said, in addition it’s also a big problem with ICANN as a whole not to have such a knowledge management or retention system. Every SO and AC and every part of ICANN has its own system and there’s no coherence across the board, and it’s very difficult for newcomers to be able to adapt themselves and understand how a decision was made and reached without having to burrow really deeply in the ICANN archives which are I would say all over the place when you try to look at a more global picture.
One of the reasons is because ICANN has been accused of, and in fact has functioned in several ways in silos, and each supporting organization and advisory committee has talked in its own little room and not spoken across. So if you want to search through silos you have to search sometimes through all of the silos, and it’s sometimes very difficult to find those.
I would suggest a couple of things: the first one to speak to the relevant department in ICANN to find out what work is currently being done at ICANN-level on the staff side, because I also understand that there is a similar problem with new staff coming in and not having one location to look for to find out where we are today and how we reached this point today. So it is something that really goes in the wider sense further than At-Large.
But that said, I also am aware that Matt is currently putting some shape to our own Wiki space and certainly helping out with being able to make the information more easily available and at least classified in a certain way so as to make it reachable rather than having to do a global search on the whole database every time. So perhaps there is a first step which is to continue having ICANN staff cleaning up the Wiki and putting it into some kind of a frame so as to know where to find what – something that is a little more easily accessible than today.
But then there’s also a wider thing that could be done with the relevant staff in ICANN, and that would probably be the longer-term project. Thank you.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Thank you, Olivier. I couldn’t agree with you more. Perhaps what we need to do then in terms of our reporting to the SIC in Costa Rica, and we may also find some time to discuss this with the Secretariats as well during the Costa Rica meeting because I think there’s a regional knowledge that I hear we need as well. This implementable is an At-Large one, not just an ALAC one, so Silvia might want to start thinking about how she and the regional leadership can see before things get too far lost what we might need to reclaim and how we might need to modify the portal and things that the regions have been looking at to use for their own resources as well.
So can we then perhaps say that whilst it is going to be staying as an in progress piece of reportable it’s one that we are doing the following things, and outline what we’re doing, to get our own AC house in order; but make a firm recommendation and discuss it perhaps with the SIC in Costa Rica that it is a very appropriate project in the next couple of years to be a priority ICANN-wide. And those ACs and SOs for example could find very much historical value in the oral history-style project that Yrjo was mentioning.
I mean just look at the talent we have still active in the SSAC and the ICANN Board, or certainly in the alumni of those two parts of our organization. To be able to effectively prioritize getting some of the oral history out of those people before they are unable to give us an oral history might be very wise indeed and perfectly good PR. So is that going to be our way forward on that one? I see no disagreements; I’m still agreeing with myself which of course I’m [prone] to do, I (inaudible).
And then in our final moment we should note – one moment, Olivier, and I shall give the floor to you – that we will be starting next week’s call with the matter of encouraging the five RALOs to coordinate their outreach and inreach, dealing with the At-Large growth; and there’s a subunit there related to funding with the ALAC Outreach projects. Much of this of course really does wrap itself back into the flowcharts and the proposals that we heard discussed earlier for a cross-regional approach to some of these things already, so we should probably be able to wrap that up fairly quickly. And I’d like to suggest that we bundle those perhaps back together next week. Go ahead, Olivier.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Thank you very much, Cheryl – it’s Olivier for the transcript. On the historical side of things, it just struck me that Scott Pinzon from the Communications Department has often been asking us what we would like to talk about. And one of the thoughts that just came to my mind is perhaps we can actually have our RALO leaders interviewed by Scott about how the RALOs started, and this could then be transcribed. So rather than assigning someone to actually have to write this, they could actually be speaking about it, how things started, and perhaps speak about various issues on how we reached specific decisions that were made; and then make use of transcription to be able to cast this both in writing but also have it as a podcast. I wonder what this group thinks about this.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Okay. I can ask you at the top of the hour to indicate your agreement or otherwise to Olivier’s proposal. I think that’s an ideal way forward so I’m popping up a bright green tick. I’m seeing the same from Yrjo, from Dev, from Tijani and I suspect when the delay comes in, yes and Sergio. Sergio’s slightly delayed; it must be a few seconds’ delay between his pushing the button and it getting to our screen.
Okay, well it sounds like there’s overwhelming support for that proposal, Olivier. And I like to end on a high note, so let me thank each and every one of you… Oh Titi, you’re joining us at the end of the call. I do apologize. You’ve got it but we do end at the top of the hour so I look forward to seeing you perhaps an hour earlier on next week’s call. True – “Better late than never” she says, so if we mark you as present it’ll be indeed for the last sixty seconds of the call.
But thank you one and all for joining us. You know where we’re going to be starting off next week which is at the top of Page 7 of the At-Large Improvement Project listing as it is listed in the Milestone Report of 9th of October, 2011. There’s a couple of AIs but not many, and I thank one and all for your attendance and your energies into today’s meeting. Bye for now.
[End of Transcript]
