Beau Brendler: Okay, everybody. I was listening to the crowd a little bit earlier. We need to wrap this thing up pretty quickly today or at least my presence needs to end at about 3:40 so I want to try to do a lot of this pretty fast. If everybody’s up on the agenda page I would like to propose that we move past the standing issues of roll call, review of summary minutes and open public consultations and go straight into recently submitted ALAC statements and go through those briefly.
Let’s start first with the ALAC statement regarding the current situation in Egypt. I know it’s already been made but in the course of that coming together I know there was some discussion and a bit of controversy and concern, and I just wanted to briefly throw the floor open if anybody would like to comment on that, or if anybody has some remaining concerns or anything else to say about the Egyptian statement. Anything there?
Marc Rotenberg: Well, this is Marc Rotenberg. I’ll just say briefly I’m glad that a statement was issued but disappointed that it wasn’t a stronger statement. And I think ALAC missed an opportunity by not making clearer its concern when a government, any government, chooses to disconnect itself from the internet. But what’s happened has happened, and maybe we can learn from this.
Garth Bruen: This is Garth Bruen, and I think we’re going to have an opportunity to improve on it. This may happen again soon in some other countries.
Beau Brendler: Anyone else? I just wanted to say briefly, I think there were some issues related to the process but I would like to put one of the perhaps more long-term members of the community on the spot a little bit, just to talk briefly about basically the issue of making a statement of this kind. It’s been a topic of discussion within the At-Large and within ICANN for a long time, as to whether these kinds of statements are outside the scope of what ALAC does and does not.
I would just like to ask Alan Greenberg, would you mind just sort of briefly outlining for the newcomers what the two camps are on why this would be a good idea and why this would not be a good idea? And that’s bracketing out the specificity of the note in which obviously there are some circumstances here in which people from Egypt were asking us not to say anything. Would you mind doing that, Alan?
Alan Greenberg: I’m not sure I can give a fair gaze into all of the issues. I’m one of those who are very cautious about this kind of thing. I think that we have to be careful of ICANN’s scope. I also think very much that we have to be sensitive to the desires of the people on the ground there.
I’ve been involved in situations before where people spoke out about what they thought were injustices in countries and put people’s lives in danger and people’s families’ lives in danger. And bearing those scars,-- and I wasn’t luckily the one who did it – but nevertheless I tend to be a lot more sensitive than some people are about this kind of thing. The idealism is fine but this impacts real people also, and I think we have to be very, very sensitive to that.
And on top of that, ICANN is walking on a careful edge, wanting the supports of countries. And whether an ICANN unit should be making a statement stronger than ICANN itself does, I’m a little leery of that. On the plus side, clearly we are seeing injustices. We want the internet to run well. We certainly don’t want countries to cut the internet off or parts of the internet off. It’s likely to happen continually but we don’t want it, and saying that is a good thing.
So I think we have to balance all of those concerns. From my perspective we have to, and I’d like ICANN to come down on the side of caution rather than coming out with strong statements in that kind of situation. That’s perhaps a personal issue.
Beau Brendler: Okay. Any additional comments on this? Otherwise I might suggest that it being such a broad issue and having a number of philosophical aspects to it that we take further discussion to the list.
Gordon Chillcott: This is Chilly. Not much to say but I think that it’s the role of At-Large to influence what ICANN does, and so it’s when there is something that ICANN can do we should speak up and say what we think ICANN can do. But otherwise we shouldn’t be telling other people what they should do.
Beau Brendler: Yeah, I agree.
Alan Greenberg: I think making a strong statement to ICANN or to the ICANN Board is certainly within our purview. Whether it should be a public statement or not, that should be a different issue.
Marc Rotenberg: Okay, if I could just briefly reply, and I appreciate that maybe the statement is better directed toward ICANN than the public at large, but I’ve also been in situations that Alan has described with human rights organizations and others facing these kinds of concerns. And they oftentimes look to large international groups with a clear mission who articulate their mission as a form of support. And sometimes silence in these circumstances actually has the opposite effect of what you intend.
And I think in fact this was what we’re seeing play out in Egypt, that those who stood in support of access to the internet are ultimately the ones who probably made the right decision at a difficult moment in time. And silence in these situations is not not-a-decision; it is also a decision.
Beau Brendler: Okay. So let’s move on from this. I will just simply say that in my opinion and I think from a process point of view there was more that I could have possibly done to make sure that the people who perhaps share more of Marc’s view and I think Eric Brunner-Williams is another one – I don’t think he’s on the call. There was a process issue in which I think maybe some people who were on that side of the fence felt shouted down by a majority, which I don’t think we want to- I would like us to not do that again.
So I will the next time try to facilitate a better means of communication for perhaps what might be a minority report. Okay, and please give me any feedback on that on the list.
Let’s move to the ALAC statement on the Accountability & Transparency Review Team’s final recommendation. Do we have anyone present who was working on that group that would like to comment or add anything that’s beyond what’s written down here on the ICANN website? Going once, going twice, okay.
Same goes for the ALAC statement on the interim report of the Geographic Regions Review. There was a fair amount of email on this on the list. Do we have any comments or anything of concern, or issues on this particular statement of the ALAC? Okay.
Unless anybody would like to discuss the At-Large FY ’12 budget proposal, I would perhaps like to save that until we get lower down on the agenda where we talk about the actual NARALO proposal for next year’s budget. I think it would probably flow more naturally out of that discussion. Does anybody have any objections to that?
Okay. Proposed agenda items, we’re now on item 4 – update on current policy developments. Evan I think has not joined us.
Evan Leibovitch: Just hiding.
Beau Brendler: Oh Evan, are you there?
Evan Leibovitch: Yep.
Beau Brendler: Oh, okay. Eric is not on the call. So Evan, are you prepared to just give us a bit on Board/GAC consultation on new gTLDs? I was not part of that so I can’t really contribute anything meaningful.
Evan Leibovitch: Okay. I’ll give a little bit of an update. Our input is limited because as you said, this is something between the Board and the GAC. There is a lot of- I’ve been in contact with some people on the GAC as well as some others, and there is a huge amount of frustration in the GAC that will be familiar to anybody trying to do policy within At-Large; that essentially you try and toss suggestions into ICANN and it gets ignored.
So essentially the GAC has basically demanded an ability to talk directly to the Board without staff or others’ intervention, and so there is a meeting happening in Brussels the end of this month and the only people who are invited to speak are members of the GAC, members of the Board and some of the consultants, subject matter experts that ICANN has been using in the New gTLD Program over the last little while.
What is happening is that the GAC has identified a number of issues with which it has really serious concerns. Many of these actually happen to dovetail with issues with which the ALAC has had concerns. Though our solutions aren’t necessarily the same we’re absolutely united in some ways in having pointed out the parts of the gTLD process that have some really substantial flaws, being some of the issues related to trademark protection and the issues related to objectionable strings.
Essentially what has happened is that the GAC has had the same frustration that we have had, that any comments or issues have gone through a filter of senior staff by the time they get to the Board, so what we really want to say and what the GAC really wants to say almost never comes through. The GAC has been pushing for this kind of direct meeting. I’m delighted to see it happening.
There will be three people from ALAC actually in attendance in Brussels. Olivier, the Chair of ALAC, has been an invited participant, so has Rudi Vansnick who actually lives in Brussels. Avri Doria, is Avri on the call?
Beau Brendler: I don’t believe so.
Evan Leibovitch: Okay. Avri has indicated an intention to attend though I don’t know if she’s received an invite. This invite is for people to participate as observers and are expected not to speak, but there is a shall we say “unusual” definition of open here in that participation that is the ability to speak and participate is limited to Board and GAC but there will be streaming audio I believe from the meetings. So the actual deliberations themselves will be public.
In preparation for this the GAC is preparing a number of scorecards on existing gTLD policy that it wants to deal with. Myself and other people within ALAC have had direct input into GAC members in making sure that they understand number one, that we share their concerns about this; and number two, our own concerns that they don’t go overboard in trying to fix them. In other words, they may share the same objections that we do regarding objectionable strings, but we don’t necessarily want to buy into one proposed solution that says “Well, they take out the entire ICANN process for objectionable strings and just replace that with the ability for any country to object to anything.”
So I probably have even gone on more than I needed to, but this is a very, very important consultation. There is a very unspoken, I think, issue of “What happens if this meeting goes by and ICANN ignores the GAC’s concerns?” And the one thing that seems clear at this point, at least from my point of view, is that the Applicant Guidebook will not be formally endorsed in San Francisco and that certain parts of this are going to go back to consultation for approval in Amman at the June meeting.
Beau Brendler: Okay, great. I don’t see any hands up in the Adobe Connect.
Gordon Chillcott: This is Chilly.
Beau Brendler: Okay.
Gordon Chillcott: I’d just be interested to know where the GAC and the ALAC actually have common grounds, to see a list of things that they both agree on.
Evan Leibovitch: Well, the things that we’re most agreed on are the parts of the Applicant Guidebook that we cannot stomach, so we’re agreed on many of the things we don’t like. And those areas in which we don’t agree, which is necessarily where we’ve come by… Well let me give a for instance without going into detail.
I had conversations last week with somebody who’s fairly influential, and the GAC scorecard on objectionable strings – they did not know that ALAC was as opposed to the dispute resolution service provider concept as they were. We hated it, they hated it; they thought they were alone in hating it. And it was only in fact last week, after years of trying to make ourselves heard that people on the GAC actually realized that we shared their distaste for ICANN outsourcing its morality issues.
On issues to do with trademark, basically the GAC is under heavy pressure from trademark lobby groups, but I think that they’re going to do the right thing in the sense of trying to strike a balance. It’s possible that there may be some things that are going to be reexamined, but for instance the GAC shares our view that the idea of similar strings should not be disallowed; that if .com is allowed you shouldn’t allow .biz because they’re similar in purpose.
That’s the kind of excesses of trademark issues that some people are trying to bring back that I think we have common ground with the GAC in not wanting.
Beau Brendler: Okay. I want to move on now to the other items on our agenda. We can circle back to this at the end of the call if there’s time. Matthias, are you there?
Matthias Langenegger: Yep.
Beau Brendler: Is anybody joining the call to briefly update us on IPv4 to IPv6? We discussed the possibility of that but I didn’t know if it was going to happen or not.
Matthias Langenegger: The possibility we discussed is whether we should have a separate call later in the month with Leo Vigoda, the IPv4/IPv6 specialist at ICANN, but that would be a longer call and possibly with more participants from other ICANN At-Large regions. He’s not on this call but we could certainly facilitate a meeting with him later this month.
Beau Brendler: Okay. I would also like to have someone give us a briefing on, or at least have a more general kind of factual discussion with some expert guests on DNSSEC. It’s here on the agenda but it’s just sort of sitting there, and there are obviously a lot of issues related to it and its implementation, and the good things it could have for users and perhaps some of the downsides.
So we’re going to put that on the list for a future briefing, and by the way, I don’t know if you all saw the note buy Matthias will be leaving us after the San Francisco meeting; moving on to different pastures if not hopefully greener ones for him. So thank you, Matthias. And when you have a chance give him a round of applause.
Okay, moving to #5, any RALO input to Work Team C’s SWOT analysis. This is going to probably be a fairly brief conversation. If you click on the link in the agenda there it will take you to a page that has any RALO input into Work Team C’s SWOT analysis, and there’s quite a chunk of material here. And if you go down to Section A you will see the beginning of where our input is needed, and then Matthias or someone else on staff has gone in and read and said “Here’s where we need some input.”
So the time is running short for this and we need to get into this document and really kind of get our hands dirty in it, and I’m wondering, given the enormity of numbers here on this list if we might not need to schedule a separate call on this kind of input. I don’t know if we’re putting too much importance on doing this SWOT analysis but it is part of trying to improve the system, and I feel like if we don’t do it, if we don’t make our statements known here then it’s going to be very difficult for us to complain down the road when something’s not going the way we want it to.
So rather than going in-depth through all of the items here on this list, I’m wondering if we should just take a brief measure of the NARALO’s opinion as to whether we should schedule a separate call or working group for the SWOT Team analysis. Matthias, does that coordinate with what some of the other regions are doing?
Matthias Langenegger: There hasn’t been a lot of input from some regions. I know that Europe and the Latin American regions will discuss it in their monthly calls this week. They haven’t put up a special working group to discuss the SWOT and it doesn’t really have to be that detailed. I think the members of the SWOT Work Team would really like you to sort of quickly go through this, see if there are items to put on the list and see whether you agree with their general analysis of the current situation.
I don’t think they expect you to come up with detailed suggestions on your own; I think it’s more of a “Are we right on this? Do you agree with what we’ve put up?” So I’m not sure if it’s necessary to put out a separate call but the other regions have done so.
Beau Brendler: Okay, alright. My suggestion is going to be let’s go ahead and continue to move through the agenda, and if there’s time at the end of the call we’ll come back and sort of go granularly through this. So let’s go to the update on the Town Hall event, let’s go to #6 on the agenda: preparations for the NARALO activities at the ICANN San Francisco meeting, since this is really starting to breathe down our neck here.
Update on the Town Hall event at Stanford University. Now this is not ideal, but if you go into the chat field on Adobe Connect – I know not all of you are on Adobe Connect but before the call started I posted in here just some notes that came from Marc about what was sort of going on with this. I don’t know if Marc is prepared at all to just briefly talk about it here or if not I can do it.
Marc, the idea was that Stanford was willing to have kind of a Town Hall that would include the At-Large and also members of the NCUC at Stanford, not all that far away from the venue. Do you have any more you want to particularly add about the event?
Marc Rotenberg: Well, just that there seems to be a lot of interest in terms of participation, but we still have some work to do to nail down the details. We need a venue, we need a two-hour timeslot, and we need to do some promotion. So for this to happen I think that’ll all need to happen pretty quickly.
Beau Brendler: Now I mean is it incumbent upon- Cause I’ve got here your list of open questions: date, time, location as you mentioned, cost and whatnot. I mean is it incumbent upon us to present Stanford with a list of… What do we need to do here in order to make this come off?
Mark Rotenberg: Well, where we last were was with Dan [Krem] who’s at Stanford and also connected to the NCUC, offering to nail down the location and the time and to get back to us about anything further that he needed. I just sent him an email now and copied you to see if we can get a quick update but as I said I think there’s a lot of interest. I think the timing is good, not just because of the general issues associated with ICANN but also because of the recent developments in Egypt as well as developments with the GAC.
Beau Brendler: Yeah, I agree. It would be a shame to get all of us out there and not sort of capitalize as much as possible in trying to get as many people together as we can. Does anybody have any questions or thoughts or any input for the meeting there or for the possibility of the Town Hall?
Heidi Ullrich: Hi, Beau, this is Heidi.
Beau Brendler: Hey Heidi, how you doing?
Heidi Ullrich: Pretty good. How are you? If I could just say a few things on this point, and I’m very happy that Marc is on the call. We have discussed this with the Executive Committee and they are very interested in looking to move this forward. Their first step would be to start a mailing list that includes interested At-Large people/members, also members from Stanford, Marc, that you’ve included in previous emails as well as a couple of members of the NCUC. And I can go ahead and start that mailing list, get that process going today and then we can move forward on that.
Some of the issues that we do need to discuss would be the organization of this. I’ve been in touch with our ICANN Meetings staff and due to the Board/GAC meeting in Brussels two weeks prior to the start of the ICANN meeting they just don’t have the bandwidth to help organize this. So it would need to be something done either by members or I saw some interest in some of the Stanford people organizing that. So that would be great.
I’ve also contacted Annalisa Roger who is a member of NARALO and is part of the ISOC San Francisco chapter to whether she would be interested in helping organize this. Marc, I’m not sure if you know her at all.
Marc Rotenberg: No.
Heidi Ullrich: She’s great. She’s been really active, she’s held conferences on or from ISOC San Francisco. She’s part of the .green organization as well. And also Rod Beckstrom, he’s a member of that chapter, that ISOC chapter, so that would all I think fit in with that.
Marc Rotenberg: Great.
Heidi Ullrich: And then finally the last issue would be that of timing. Marc, you mentioned possibly, I think you said the Saturday prior to the start of the meeting but that would be a little bit problematic because most of our At-Large members don’t arrive until Saturday or Saturday evening.
Mark Rotenberg: Yeah, Saturday would not work.
Heidi Ullrich: Okay.
Beau Brendler: I’m not sure Sunday would either, because most of the At-Large, we have a lot of people who are in pre-organizational meetings.
Evan Leibovitch: Well, Sunday is an all-day policy meeting between the ALAC people and the RALO leadership.
Heidi Ullrich: Yeah, so that would be the issue – the timing. I mean for our people to go to Stanford it would be best if it was during that week of the ICANN meeting, but then we would need to see which days would work best for that. So that’s something that the mailing list could discuss.
Evan Leibovitch: And also, Heidi, between the Gala, between the NARALO Showcase and other things, I mean the evenings are getting pretty filled up.
Heidi Ullrich: Yes, I was thinking that. So Wednesday is the Gala, Monday is the NARALO Showcase, but again, if it’s a little bit later in the evening then we could possibly do that. The NARALO Showcase ends at 7:00, so depending on what time is the best time to hold the Stanford Town Hall it would also determine which days were available.
Beau Brendler: Well, it sounds like we need to hear back from Mr. [Krem] out there. Anyway, I think this is-
Marc Rotenberg: Offhand, would Tuesday from 7:00 to 9:00 work? Is there a conflict?
Heidi Ullrich: I was thinking about that. Tuesday is actually our music night, but I think that those people who would want to go to the Stanford Town Hall would choose that over the music night. I would at least.
Beau Brendler: Yeah, I would too. Well, I think this is really great and has really great potential to be something that is very rewarding. So whatever we can do, let’s keep communicating on the list to try to help each other organize this from wherever we are on our end.
I have a (crosstalk) Hello?
Eduardo Diaz: Hello, this is Eduardo, I have a question. Is this whole activity going to happen at the venue hotel or in Stanford?
Beau Brendler: I believe it’s Stanford itself. Stanford Law School, right?
Marc Rotenberg: Well, it would be physically at Stanford. We’d also want to cybercast and tweet so that people who aren’t there would have the opportunity to follow it and to participate.
Eduardo Diaz: We can do that (inaudible) from San Francisco?
Marc Rotenberg: A little more than an hour maybe each way.
Gordon Chillcott: And they have webcasting facilities at Stanford but the things I’ve just mentioned is that we’ve arranged for the Internet Society Chapter, we’ve hired a live stream channel so we’ve got an ad-free live stream channel which we the Chapter can use for any purpose we like as long as we’ve got it; and we’ve already asked to use it for the Showcase. So if someone can set up a webcam while they’re there then we have a channel that we can use.
Marc Rotenberg: That would be great.
Beau Brendler: Would we need to look into chartering a bus or something?
Evan Leibovitch: Well, that’s what I’d ask. I mean if the event’s going to be at Stanford the idea of at least one shuttle bus that could go from the hotel to Stanford and then back would basically be a make or break issue in terms of the ability for a number of people, including myself, to get there.
Heidi Ullrich: Okay, I can look into that.
Beau Brendler: That would be great. Okay.
Gordon Chillcott: What about money and sponsorship?
Heidi Ullrich: That would be the next question. Actually, that would be the first question that [Nadine Seth] will be asking.
Gordon Chillcott: Should it be combined with the Showcase effort? Otherwise we’re going to be coming on to people from two different directions at the same time?
Heidi Ullrich: No – the showcase effort is already going to cost us about $6000, then our ask would be so much more. I don’t know – I think we should maybe be looking at local sponsors for that.
Beau Brendler: Okay, let’s move on from this and continue the discussion on the list. Eric Brunner-Williams has had his hand up for a while. Eric, do you have a quick comment?
Eric Brunner-Williams: Oh, thank you, actually it’s a question for Marc. Marc, do we have the talent lined up for this event? Do you have all the presenters lined up independent of the venue and the transportation question? Thank you.
Marc Rotenberg: That’s an excellent question. Short answer is no, but I actually don’t think we’ll have much difficulty once we’ve nailed down a date and time. We can look to the relevant constituencies, probably one or two people at Stanford and I think fill out one or two pretty good panels. But we’ll need to nail down the time and date first I imagine before we start approaching people.
Beau Brendler: Okay. Let’s move to the update on San Francisco Showcase from Eduardo. Eduardo are you prepared-
Eduardo Diaz: I can give you… I’m in the car so I don’t have access to the computer, but we have discussed the event a couple times. I think it is well set up, and it’s on a Wiki page. Matthias, I don’t know if you can send the link around. Basically what we’re going to do is our keynote speaker is going to be Vint Cerf, which he has confirmed, and of course we’re going to introduce him. I mean I want to come up and say what awards, and then Rod is going to give maybe a five-minute talk and he’s going to introduce Vint. He’s going to have about 25 minutes to give his keynote speech.
We’re going to give Vint a keynote gift, what I’ve been told is a personalized gift to him. Virtually all of the ALS’s have been involved in this. And then NomCom is going to talk about our outreach efforts for the NomCom, and then the ALS’s are going to present themselves (inaudible). And Darlene is gathering key facts, information and logos from all the ALS’s to put together some kind of presentation format. We’re asking for lots of support in that, and whoever it is presenting in San Francisco will have a chance to represent their ALS and we will present them… I don’t know who they are but just the information.
And then this is scheduled from 6:00 to 7:00 Monday the 14th I think, basically that’s it. I may be missing a couple of things but that’s the fairly simple outline.
Beau Brendler: I had some difficulty hearing a lot of that. Can we make sure that everybody on this call is aware of when the forthcoming… When is the next forthcoming Showcase call?
Eduardo Diaz: This coming Thursday.
Beau Brendler: Okay. My apologies that I didn’t make it on the last one, sorry about that.
Eduardo Diaz: Yeah, we’re trying to have this conference call every Thursday at 14:00 UTC.
Beau Brendler: Okay, I will promise to be there unless I’m dead. Anyone have any questions or comments for Eduardo?
Eduardo Diaz: Again, all this information is in the Wiki pages, so you can look for them. And if you have any questions you can email me. Email me any questions and I will try to answer them.
Beau Brendler: Okay. Other NARALO At-Large activities? I believe that’s Darlene? Darlene, are you there?
Darlene Thompson: Sorry, I was about ten feet away from my phone. I have nothing else to report other than what Eduardo just said. That’s what I’ve been busy with, just trying to collect the information for the fact sheets and the ALS logos and such like that. So that’s all I know of.
Beau Brendler: Okay. In five minutes as we previously discussed I’m going to have to temporarily turn the Chairmanship over to you while I get my daughter from school. Who is on the hook for the fourth bullet item under #6 here, “Highlights of the San Francisco meeting”? I’m going to guess that that’s just a placeholder.
Evan Leibovitch: In terms of highlights, maybe Heidi or somebody from staff can help fill in that part of it.
Beau Brendler: Yeah. Do we know what this is, this item here – “Highlights of the ICANN San Francisco meeting,” Heidi, you or Matthias?
Heidi Ullrich: Matthias, I’m going to pass it over to you and I’ll chime in.
Matthias Langenegger: Thanks, Heidi. I’m afraid I’m not going to be able to say a lot about this. I was hoping that some of the ALAC members who were more involved could give an update to the rest of the community, just to give some idea of what the main goals are of the meeting in San Francisco. Evan has already mentioned that he doesn’t expect the Guidebook to be endorsed in San Francisco; that was the sort of information I was looking for at this time.
Beau Brendler: Okay. Let’s move then from item #6, and Glenn McKnight has just joined us but only through Adobe. I’m going to have to type in here for him that we’re now on item #7 – “Any RALO budget requests for fiscal year ’12.” There’s a good document on this that’s linked from the agenda. If you click on that it’ll take you to the page At-Large Fiscal Year ’12 Budget Proposals.
If you take a look on there you’ll notice that there’s quite a lot of items that LACRALO has requested, and fewer from APRALO and fewer still from EURALO. And the reason I bring that up is I was just nervous at first that we asked for a lot of stuff, but it turns out that we really haven’t.
What is on here from the NARALO is a requisition for funding for a general assembly in 2012. As you go down there further there’s more of a generalized statement I think as opposed to- LACRALO is probably more specific about what exactly, which international consumer-focused IT conferences that we wanted to attend, but we’ve asked for some money for that.
Then if you go further down the list, representation by regional members at the Pacific Community Networks Association Conference; and then further down, a NARALO presence at smaller ICANN meetings involving the contract parties. I think that’s sort of to get at that issue of those folks having meetings without representation from the user community. And then further down – outreach video for YouTube, Look TV and other fora and creation and maintenance of a real NARALO website and presence.
So those are all budget items or proposed budget requests from NARALO that went into the requests overall. If somebody perhaps on staff, or perhaps Evan or anyone who has more information about it than I do could tell us what the process is from here and what the timing is, and if anyone knows if these things will go through?
Heidi Ullrich: Go ahead, Evan.
Evan Leibovitch: So far as I know, and I guess, Heidi, you can back me up on this, the Executive Committee and ALAC I believe has approved to send it forward without prioritization, as in ALAC itself has not made a judgment call on “this is more important than that.” It has basically said “This is all the things we think are important to put forward.”
Staff has essentially categorized them together, so that the various input from the different regions has been collected into things like people want general assemblies and presence, and here are the outreach things. So they’ve been collected together and then taken to ICANN’s Financial staff where they will be considered, matched up against the strategic plan to make sure that everything in the budget has a purpose that’s in line with the strategic plan. And Heidi, you can take the process from there.
Heidi Ullrich: Okay, thank you, Evan. That’s absolutely correct. We categorized it into seven areas, the various templates. My understanding from speaking with Juan Ojeda who is the ICANN Controller is that they were actually spending the last week reviewing other constituencies’ templates that were not as complete as the At-Large ones.
Last Thursday they had their first overall review of all of the templates, and the plan is that Finance will be holding community calls during I think the last two weeks of February. So we’re scheduling one for At-Large where they will update us on our particular requests. In San Francisco there are also two meetings scheduled with Juan as well as with Akram who is our COO to talk about where we are with the At-Large requests. So that’s the update there.
In terms of basic services, I worked with the Executive Committee to review what basic services that were needed that were not to go onto templates. We put in such points as increased interpretation, increased translation of documents; also printing documents, for example reprinting all of the At-Large brochures, some of the RALO brochures, etc.; planning for a few more teleconferences in fiscal year ’12. So I don’t think those are going to be problematic at all though.
Evan Leibovitch: Well, as one example specific to our region, until now the brochures that have existed for NARALO have been printed in English and available in digital form as a PDF in French and Spanish. Part of I think the initiative for this is also to produce printed versions of the brochure in French and Spanish.
Heidi Ullrich: That is correct.
Evan Leibovitch: Another part of this is, as part of the Sunday policy meeting at the very beginning of the ICANN week in San Francisco we’re going to be joined by Scott Pinzon, who is heavily involved in assisting with outreach. And I think he’s also going to be extremely valuable to our attempts on anything to do with outreach, inreach, and communications with the general public.
Heidi Ullrich: And Evan, if I could just add to that, for example we already have one podcast from At-Large having been held or organized, and we’re planning another one on SSAC 044, which again will be on registrant rights, something of great interest to At-Large. That podcast should be ready by San Francisco.
Scott has put out an offer to have a newsletter for At-Large which is something we would want to discuss as well in San Francisco. There’s also some discussion of having At-Large members serve as ambassadors literally for the new gTLDs, and Scott will offer more information on that in San Francisco. And also joining us on Sunday will be Filiz Yilmaz and she is the Senior Director for Participation and Engagement, and she can offer input as well as to how At-Large can increase outreach efforts.
And Beau, are you still there?
Evan Leibovitch: I think Beau’s gone. Darlene, do you have the gavel?
Darlene Thompson: I’m here but I’m busily taking notes, and where I can take notes is about ten feet away from my telephone. So I can’t really talk and take notes at the same time when I’m at work here. Evan, would you mind?
Heidi Ullrich: Or, Darlene, Matthias is taking notes so either/or. Hate to put you on the spot.
Darlene Thompson: Either way. Evan, do you want to continue? You’ve been doing a great job.
Evan Leibovitch: Okay, I didn’t think I’d been doing much.
Darlene Thompson: Sure you have.
Evan Leibovitch: Okay, well then if that’s the case we can move on to update from the- What I have next on the agenda is from the At-Large Improvements Working Teams. Is Seth in on this call?
Heidi Ullrich: No.
Evan Leibovitch: Okay. So if there are people from each of the working teams who can give a very brief update on where things are at it would be appreciated. I guess I can start the ball rolling as a member of Work Team A, or Eric, would you like to go ahead and give that spiel?
Eric Brunner-Williams: Go ahead, Evan.
Evan Leibovitch: Essentially Work Team A was charged with anything relating to the ALAC improvements that would relate to a change in the ICANN bylaws, so in fact there is a set of changes to the ICANN bylaws – not functional but essentially they will become preambles to the description of ALAC and to its role within ICANN.
They strengthen the definition of At-Large as the body within ICANN that is meant to speak to the world at large on behalf of ICANN and also to bring back policy input to ICANN on behalf of the At-Large community. One thing that is important and significant is that unlike bodies like GNSO there is no restriction on the scope of At-Large to participate, so that is anything that has to do with the functioning of ICANN – not just gTLD policy but anything in terms of internationalization, in terms of the security initiatives, in terms of- Basically anything to do with ICANN’s operation, policy or functions is fair game for At-Large comment, which is different from the mandate, say, of groups like the GNSO.
So these things are being put into a series of I believe it’s, I think either eight or nine additions to the section of the ICANN bylaws dealing with At-Large. I don’t have them in front of me but I believe they are on the webpage for the At-Large improvements. And Work Team A has essentially completed its task. We’ve put our steps through ICANN Legal and right now those bylaw changes have been put forward to the ALAC and to At-Large for comment, after which they will go the Structural Improvements Committee of the Board with a timeline that we hope these will be adopted at the meeting in Amman. It’s too soon for them to be adopted in San Francisco.
Okay. Annalisa is not here but Darlene is, so Darlene, can you give an update on Work Team B?
Darlene Thompson: Actually, I’m a horrible person – I missed the last call for Work Team B so I’m not up to date on that. Matthias, were you there and would you be able to say anything about that?
Matthias Langenegger: Yes, Darlene, I was on the call and the call was held on Thursday last week. They talked about several issues; one of them was that they will have a closer look at alternative communicative tools such as Posterous. It’s a new communications tool that will allow us to integrate several different tools into one and make communication much easier.
And (inaudible) has been tasked to look into that more closely and he’s expected to give a report on that for the next call. Apart from the day’s events, most of the other issues and (crosstalk). Sorry? They will be able to complete the work by San Francisco.
Darlene Thompson: Matthias, I had one question there. One thing that we had talked about on Work Team B and I would have brought it up had I realized there was a meeting – we had talked about using Adobe Connect for some of the ALS meetings. Is that a possibility? Would we be able to do that?
Matthias Langenegger: Yeah. There were talks among several members of the call and Heidi actually talked to IT about this and said it would be possible to have- Sorry, Heidi, do you want to cover it?
Heidi Ullrich: Yeah, sorry Matthias. I can just add quickly on that. I have been in touch with our IT services and they said yes, that would be possible. However, what they are asking is if the Work Team B could provide a little bit more detail on what exactly the ALS’s would be using these Adobe Connect rooms for. Also, would we want to start with one for all five regions or would we want to start with one per region? So some of the questions that they’re asking, basically we need to have more information from Work Team B. But the overall answer is yes, it would be possible.
Darlene Thompson: Excellent. Well maybe we can put that on the agenda for next time there, Matthias. Sorry about that, it’s rather belated.
Evan Leibovitch: Okay. Is Gareth on the call? Okay. Alright. Is there anybody here that is in Work Team C that is capable of giving an update on that?
Heidi Ullrich: I can give a 30-second update or 15-second update.
Evan Leibovitch: Go ahead.
Heidi Ullrich: Okay. Basically Work Team C, their main issue right now is looking at the SWOT analysis. That’s why the call went out to all of the regions for input into the SWOT, so that’s their main focus right now.
And if I can just continue on Work Team D, basically they are moving ahead, looking at what needs to be done to finish their tasks under their purview. Also during the last call last week we talked about a consolidated consumer document that included- It was basically a consolidation of documents that both staff had put together on consumer issues as well as Beau Brendler. It received a lot of positive feedback.
So where we are now, Beau was just looking at it to see of any changes and then we will be posting it onto the Consumer Commons Wiki for wider comments. So that’s what Work Team D is doing right now. Back to you, Evan.
Evan Leibovitch: Alrighty. So alright, I guess next is Work Team D. Beau is not here. Chris is on the call, right? Is Chris on the call here?
Heidi Ullrich: Sorry, Evan, I just went over that. I just went over Work Team D. So again, that was the consumer issue, the consolidated consumer documents.
Evan Leibovitch: Right, okay. Sorry. Okay, well if that’s the case then I guess we move on to item #9 which is recent and upcoming activities of the ALAC, most of which you’ve heard in the call to date. Most of the policy-related work is being done in relation to the New gTLD Program. There’s also been movement forward in terms of the internationalization and other things. Basically most of what ALAC is involved with NARALO is involved with, which I think is a fairly good sign.
Is there anybody that wants to add to that? Marc, do you have anything to add?
Marc Rotenberg: No.
Evan Leibovitch: Okay. Is there anybody else here who thinks that I’ve given any particular piece of ALAC business the short shift?
Heidi Ullrich: Evan, if you would like I can just go over which statements are currently being developed.
Evan Leibovitch: Okay.
Heidi Ullrich: Okay. There are three of them. The first one Alan Greenberg has agreed to draft the draft statement that is on the proposed process for recognition of new GNSO constituencies. So that will be coming to you shortly. The next one I’ve asked Edmon Chung who is one of our ALAC reps from APRALO, the Executive Committee has asked him to draft the ALAC statement on the interim report of the Internationalized Registration Data Working Group; and then also Carlton Samuels has been asked to put in a late comment to the GNSO Working Group guidelines. So that public comment has closed but we’re hoping to have it by Wednesday so we can submit it directly to the Council.
Evan Leibovitch: Okay, alright. If that’s the case, does anybody have anything that they’d like to say that’s going on in their ALS or what they’re doing in particular that they would like us to know about.
Gordon Chillcott: This is Chilly. We’ve finalized the date for the INET in NYC. It’s going to be on June 14th, a one-day conference in New York. We’ve got [Litzoff] and Tim Berners-Lee as keynoters.
Evan Leibovitch: Okay. Anyone else?
Danny Younger: This is Danny. Can I get in the queue?
Evan Leibovitch: Absolutely.
Danny Younger: What I’d like to talk about is the US government’s position with respect to the GAC scorecard. I think some of you have seen the news recently that the US government put forward the position that governments should be entitled to a veto power with respect to certain top-level domains, and for me that represents a major issue. It is pretty much diametrically opposed to the founding principles of ICANN that called for a very, very limited governmental role in the process, and I’d like to see whether there has been any discussion on the topic of the US government position.
Evan Leibovitch: I guess I can give at least part of the answer to that, Danny, and I don’t know if it would help you to know that Olivier and myself actually had a direct conversation with the US representation to the GAC on Friday morning.
Danny Younger: Well, I’ve been talking to Suzanne Sene now ever since she released the document privately to a few people. How did you make out?
Evan Leibovitch: Well, of course she can’t speak for the GAC but that was one of the moments where we discovered that she had no idea that we were as opposed to the DRSP process as they were. They essentially thought that this was an all-or-nothing gambit, that the staff had put forward through this cantankerous process that involved an outsourced dispute resolution provider. The US government will not cede authority to the International Chamber of Commerce and did not understand why ICANN wanted to ram this through.
So essentially they said “What ICANN is proposing is absolutely unacceptable and this is our plan B.” When we actually stepped forward, and by this I mean Olivier and me talking to Suzanne and other people within the USG delegation on Friday morning, they didn’t even know that there are other people in ICANN that objected to that process. They essentially thought that it was the governments of the world against the rest of ICANN; that everyone in ICANN was perfectly comfortable with the staff proposal and they were going to be the last bastions against it.
I won’t say “revelation” was the right word but it certainly seemed kind of stunning at the time that they did not know even though we’ve been saying this since Mexico, that At-Large could not stomach this idea either and was absolutely prepared to fight against it. So what you saw was I think partly a matter of ranksmanship and partly a matter of the USG and in fact others in the GAC trying to get ICANN’s attention at any cost by simply saying “What you’ve done is absolutely unacceptable, and if you can’t do it we’re just going to step in with veto power.”
Danny Younger: Alright, well veto power represents a major issue as far as I’m concerned.
Evan Leibovitch: You’re absolutely right, and we made exactly the same case, yeah.
Danny Younger: I think that at this point rather than communicating with the USG or with GAC proper, I think that we should be expressing our concerns on the topic generally to the ICANN Board.
Evan Leibovitch: Well, there’s certainly no shortage of ALAC trying to make its views known on the gTLD process to the ICANN Board. As a matter of fact, it’s been one of the biggest difficulties that we’ve had in trying to get across the fact that we have the same shared disgust with some of these processes. And in fact, the whole idea of the Rec 6 Working Group when it was an attempt by certain parties within GNSO as well as pretty well all of ALAC to say “Okay, we don’t like what’s there – what can we come up with?”
And then this group went and it came up with some really, really good consensus and then staff turned around and basically said “Well, what we want to do is consistent with what you’ve said,” which is absolutely the opposite. So I think what’s happening is in the case of the GAC is they’re saying “We don’t want that staff filter. This is what we want and this is what we can’t stand.”
The GAC is actually not totally clear on what they want; they are only absolutely stunningly clear on what they do not want. They do not want and will not go along with a domain resolution service provider. They will not go for that period. And if ICANN insists on ramming that through then they’re essentially just going to implement veto instead.
Danny Younger: Alright. They’ve also got language in their particular USG document that somewhat neuters the role, scope, and authority of the independent objector. That also warrants a much closer look, but clearly we have to see how things are going to be playing out in the GAC meeting. I just want to make sure that when that meeting is transpiring or immediately thereafter that we have some type of comment from either ALAC or our own organization going up to the Board to address our thoughts on that topic.
Evan Leibovitch: Well, I don’t know if it’ll make you feel any better about this, Danny, but like I say – it was at our initiative that this meeting was held on Friday with Suzanne and other people from the US delegation. We’ve also been in touch with the representatives from the UK, New Zealand and other active countries as well as the Canadian representative who happens to be the current Chair of the GAC.
Right now they’re kind of hard at retuning anyone’s phone calls but we have been extremely active in making sure they know where we’re coming from. The Board absolutely knows where we’re coming from; as a matter of fact, there was a rather fascinating meeting held at the Brussels ICANN meeting where there was originally a workshop on the gTLD process that was attended by members of the Board. And when they came to Q&A it was shown that there were many people involved in the process who did not agree with the staff interpretation.
A very hasty, informal meeting was called the next day that had people from GNSO, people from ALAC and people from the Board sitting around a small table and thrashing this out with Kurt Pritz and other people essentially on the outside of this looking in. And there was some very good eye opening going on. So you have some people on the Board that didn’t even know there was opposition to this that now know that.
You also have a number of new people coming into the new version of the Board, and by that I would note specifically Sebastien Bachollet who was recently elected. He comes at this issue with a very, very good awareness of the At-Large position. There are also a couple of other members of the current Board who are also very, very aware of the problems, very aware of both the government and the At-Large objections to what’s in the process.
Beau Brendler: Excuse me, can I interrupt here? We’re at the top of the hour; it’s 4:02. May I suggest that…
Evan Leibovitch: I’m almost done, I was actually on my last sentence or two.
Beau Brendler: Okay.
Evan Leibovitch: So, well there wasn’t even much more to add to that. Essentially, Danny, I hope it makes you feel at least a little better to know we’ve been active at the Board, active at the GAC; and it’s not for lack of trying to get our point across that our concerns are known, where we share our disgust at the current process is well known, and even where we differ on the proposed solutions has actually some negotiated resolution at hand.
Danny Younger: Alright. The only question that I would ask by rejoinder, Evan, is are we at a point where we believe that formal comments are warranted? So far everything has been informal.
Evan Leibovitch: I honestly don’t know. That’s probably something worth taking to the mailing list and asking out loud. I don’t if I’d be the right person to have good answer on that.
Danny Younger: Fair enough.
Beau Brendler: Okay, I’ve got to stop you guys there. We are, I don’t know who’s got background music there in the background; somebody’s perhaps at work or on hold, but that seems to me a good time to come to a close in this meeting. It’s 4:03.
We did not really address the issue of the SWOT analysis so here’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to go into the SWOT analysis document and I’m going to post things in my role as I guess Chairman of the NA, and I would like to ask everybody for their evaluation of what I’ve put in there. And if you disagree with it let me know, otherwise if you have any comments on the SWOT analysis material for improvements to At-Large please-
The music is very distracting so we’re just going to end the call here. Okay? Thank you.
[End of Transcript]
