Beau Brendler: Go ahead and get a roll call and before we start the roll call, I wanted to make sure that the record reflects, in case I said otherwise, that Gareth Sherman did participate in the remote call from Costa Rica. And while I'm on this topic, I may as well just bring it up, until everybody gets on the phone. The demands on staff at the meetings in foreign places and things like that have become pretty severe.
I agreed or offered that should be Prague conference take place sometime around the time the next NARALO meeting would take place we would not have an NA meeting remotely, that we would just handle it the week before or the week after. I just want to make sure everybody is okay with that in the community. It's just one more meeting that the staff has to deal with and it probably better, alright? Okay could we have the roll call please?
Gisella Gruber: Yes, welcome to everyone on today NARALO call on Monday 16 April. We have Allan Skuce, Alan Greenberg, Beau Brendler, Darlene Thompson, Gordon Chillcot, Olivier Crepin-Leblond, Garth Bruen, Eduardo Diaz, Evan Leibovitch, Seth Reiss, and Joly McFie. Apologies from Cintra Sooknanan, from staff we have Matt Ashtiani, Heidi Ulrich, Gisella Gruber and Silvia Vivanco will be joining shortly.
If I could also please remind everyone to state their names when speaking for transcript purposes, I hope I haven't left anyone off the attendance list. Thanks a lot over to you Beau, thank you.
Beau Brendler: Okay and Allan Skuce is on the call, Allan are you there?
Allan Skuce: Yes.
Beau Brendler: Just wanted to let you know Allan, we haven't forgotten you. But sort of the events of the survey have somewhat superseded our previous plan. And we have had trouble returning emails to you because they seem to come from a domain that I can't send emails to, which hopefully explains why we have not gotten back to you. If you have any questions subsequent to that you can just email me or give me a call one of the two.
One other thing I wanted to mention was that at 45 minutes past the hour I'm going to have to go outside to pick up my kids. But I'm going to try this time to so it without disconnecting from call. However, I will be away from my computer at the time, so hopefully we’ll be involved in a spirited discussion at that point and won't have to worry about it. Current calls for Working Group membership and public comment.
There are some mailings that have gone out about various comments. One of them there is a call for comment on the ALAC statement on .com registry agreement renewal. That went out on the 15 April. There's also a call for comments on the At-Large statement on the VeriSign request to implement redemption, also the [inaudible 00:03:34] redemption grace period for .name. That also went out on the 15th.
If you are uncomfortable making that comment directly to the At-Large, you can email it to me if you like. But I don’t think anyone here is necessarily uncomfortable doing that. There have also been a couple of At-Large votes. The At-Large voted to make a statement on the Fake Renewal Notices Report. That actually is an announcement of the vote. The vote hasn’t happened yet. Maybe we can get a little more of an update from that from our At-Large representative.
There are some vote results on the statement on the statement on the Security, Stability and Resiliency of the DNS Review Team with 12 out of 15 members voted. The vote passed 12 to 0, 0 no votes and 0 abstentions to the question “Do you support the ratification of the ALAC statement on the Security, Stability and Resiliency of the DNS Review Team Draft Report.” And that will be now I believe sent to public comment.
There will be a chance if you wanted to get a piece of that to see it again. And I think that carries us through current public comments. Number 1 on the agenda, New gTLD Program Participant Update, I'm going to look to the community out there for some of that because really the only issue I've paid attention to with regards to that is that the application system went down due to some technology problems and there's been some discussion about that on various news sites and blogs and things like that.
And it appears to have put off the reveal date for a couple of weeks, possibly more. Does that sound like - does anyone have any different or more current information than that on the applicant system. Alan Greenberg has a hand up.
Alan Greenberg: Yes thanks Beau. My reading of the document of the announcements has been that they do not plan to change the reveal date this point, it's still set for 30 April. Obviously that may change if the system is down for an additional extended period of time. But last I read I think it said they do not plan to change that date at this point.
Beau Brendler: Oh okay anybody have any more updated information than that? Yes Heidi?
Heidi Ullrich: I believe that there is going to be a statement from [inaudible 00:06:23], later today.
Beau Brendler: Okay I see also Garth has posted a link to a story in Arts Technica. So that’s good to see, that’s great. Does anybody have any update or anything they want to share about their own current experiences with the new gTLD program? I don’t believe we have our representative from, Dr. Greene here with us today, but is there anyone else? Okay so let's go down the agenda here, ALAC statement on the reservation of Olympic and Red Cross names in the TLD applications procedure.
Correct me if I'm wrong but I believe the ALAC made a statement to the degree that they did not agree with or they did not necessarily believe that the Olympic Committee and the Red Cross should get a special exception. But they were contravened in that and I know that the issue’s gone through a couple of more steps since then. I'm not entirely sure where it is, but I know that other organizations have now asked for exceptions. I see Alan’s hand up again, so go ahead.
Alan Greenberg: Okay the ALAC said essentially the Red Cross and IOC shouldn’t have gotten any exemptions at all. Of course the Board already gave it to them and that was a done deal in terms of the first round. The ALAC said that there should be no changes to this at this point. The GNSO did have the recommended changes. The Board chose to not take any action on them. Nothing is changing in the first round with regard to top level domains.
It's exactly as published in the Applicant Guidebook. And the process now continues as some level or another, it's not clear how it's going ahead. The Drafting Group is still talking and there's discussion in the GNSO about whether to do a PDP or not on the more generic version. And I honestly can't remember if it was voted on in this last meeting or not.
Beau Brendler: Thank you Alan has there been reflection or comment at the GNSO level about other requests that have come through, such as the one from I believe it was the State of Delaware asking for corporate suffixes as domains to be protected?
Alan Greenberg: Well the international organization one was a letter that came in several months ago was forwarded to the GNSO and GAC by the Board asking for advice, so that one is on the table in one form or another. And the Secretaries of State Association and Delaware Secretaries of State, ICANN did answer those letters. I sent out a pointer on the ALAC list. But it's in the ICANN correspondence form. I thought ICANN’s response was quite good.
We have is there is an objection procedure and you have a government representative on the GAC, if you in the United States think that there's something that should be done, then speak your government representative.
Beau Brendler: Okay. Alright well I appreciate that. Any questions or anything for Alan on that regard? Okay two I’s here under the next one, ICANN Board Conflicts of Interest Review, I wanted to congratulate our region on this because from my perspective, we made a statement and in Costa Rica the At-Large took it very seriously. Some events happened of course during the course of the meeting, Rod Beckstrom making a rather surprising public statement leading to a lot of soul searching and discussion and I think it's had some far reaching impacts.
And I'm proud of our region for raising that issue. It's not specifically a technical issue but it is an issue of importance to ICANN in current atmosphere. The At-Large has come up with a statement. It's fairly lengthy. I don’t know where that stands with At-Large at the moment, there was a vote to actually approve it and where it goes from there, I'm not entirely sure. Anybody like to add to that or have any questions about how that kind of unfolded? Okay WHOIS Policy Review Team Draft Report, now -
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Thanks Beau. The statement was - well the first statement was sent over to the public comment. Not many statements were received by the people running the public comment. The first statement was sent and in there we mentioned that it was an interim placeholder. We basically said it was a first statement that we’re making on this. There is still a chance to have a more extensive statement actually filed as an answer to our first statement.
I noted that several other of the statements that were made said that the 21 day comment period was too short. It was the same thing for us and having filed the first statement saying a second statement was coming, we could effectively reply to our first statement. And therefore I will be circulating something in the next 24 hours I hope. And have input. I think we have until the end of the week. I'm not quite sure when the actual reply period closes. The reply period closes on 24 April, so there is still about a week until the closing time.
As I said I will be circulating a copy of an expanded statement which is all taken from the input that was taken on the Wiki. I would appreciate if NARALO because NARALO was really the source of the first drafts of these statements, NARALO members would be able to look at it and to add their comments on this. We have a chance to have a pretty punchy statement in place there.
At the same time we also don’t want to be following the inquisition and shooting down too happily anything that we think might be somehow in a conflict. I have to remind you that our own, the ALAC's own selection of Board member has a conflict as well. And that’s another thing which I just wanted to bring up quickly. There will be a call of the ExCom later in the week and I have invited our Board member to join us and to discuss his conflict and explain what the conflict is.
I think it's important to show full transparency both within our ranks and if we basically leading by example and finding out if there is a conflict, what it is and if it is as extensive as it might seem when it's seen on paper. Okay I think I've spoken too much now, thanks very much Beau back to you.
Beau Brendler: I appreciate it, thank you Olivier. I very much appreciate that update and hopefully everything will turn out well. And we certainly are proud of the work that our Board member has done for us. Hopefully that will have positive outcomes. Looking at the list, I think we are lucky enough or actually before we proceed on the agenda, I see in the chat that Evan has posted a line “I still stand by my recommendation” oh I think that’s in reference to travel issue which we will get to a bit later.
A-3 WHOIS Policy Review Team Draft Report and we are lucky enough, just in the nick of time to have Seth Reiss, it's our own [inaudible 00:15:59] with his distinctive voice and handsome face and cheerful Hawaii demeanor, can you give us an update from the sunny island on the WHOIS Policy Review Team?
Seth Reiss: Okay sure. Luckily I was paying attention. I think we’re still revising our final draft and we’re a couple of weeks away. We’re scheduled to have the final draft at the end of the month. We’re taking into consideration all the comments we've received. And I think that’s including the comments from the ALAC. I know it's considering all the comments. I think that’s all I can report.
We’re struggling with the final changes. I think many of the changes are in the area of the proxy privacy, the interface and the internationalized domain name issues as they relate to the WHOIS. I can answer any question if there are any.
Beau Brendler: Actually I have one Seth, would you just mind for the edification of the group here, can you tell us what ‘thick’ WHOIS versus general WHOIS? Is that within the [inaudible 00:17:22]?
Seth Reiss: Yes well it's one of the things we looked at and it does relate to one of our recommendations. I think it's a question that was asked very early on and I guess it still confounds people. A ‘thick’ WHOIS is a WHOIS that has all the information available that is maintained which are the registrant name, the registrant contact information, administrative name, the billing name, contact information, the registration date, renewal date, that sort of thing, so all the information that’s maintained in WHOIS.
A ‘thin’ WHOIS is nothing more than typically the name of the registrar who is holding the domain name. If you get to a ‘thin’ WHOIS you really get no useful information in terms of who’s registered the name and how to get in touch with them. You have to go find the ‘thick’ WHOIS. And the ‘thin’ WHOIS is only maintained in two gTLDs, the .com or .net or.org -- I think it's .net. And so it's two of the largest gTLDs.
And that makes it frustrating when you're trying to look somebody up when you're in law enforcement or anyone else who’s trying to look somebody up. Our recommendation, I think it's 17, I don’t have it in front of me, recommends an interface whereby you can go to one location and it may be the inter NIC that’s maintained by ICANN where you can just type in the domain name and it finds the ‘thick’ WHOIS for you so that you don’t have to go chasing around various webpages to try to figure out who’s holding the ‘thick’ WHOIS for a domain name.
That’s our solution to the current situation. The new gTLDs are mandated to have ‘thick’ WHOIS and all gTLDs have ‘thick’ WHOIS at least in the non ccTLD space, except for the .com and think it's .net. Does that pretty much cover?
Beau Brendler: Yes, I think that’s excellent. We have two hands up, Alan and then Evan.
Alan Greenberg: Yes okay thank you for clarity regarding ‘thick’ WHOIS and ‘thin’ WHOIS, they both, if everything is operating properly, they both have the same net effect, that is all the information is available. The difference is that in ‘thin’ WHOIS most of the interesting information is stored by the registrar and therefore it's up to the registrar to ensure that information is in fact there and it is only accessible at any given moment if the registrar’s site is accessible and useful.
In ‘thick’ WHOIS it's purely up to the registry to make sure that the information is available [inaudible 00:20:34]. The validity of the information is still contributed by the registrar but it's stored in the registry. In a ‘thin’ WHOIS if the registrar is not fulfilling their obligations, the information may not be available at all, thank you.
Seth Reiss: Yes I agree with Alan, that’s a further clarification and that’s correct.
Beau Brendler: Alright then very good, thank you Alan, thank you Seth, Evan?
Evan Leibovitch: Hi, I just wanted to add one more thing to what Seth had said about the fact that the .com is one of the registries still not using it. There is actually work is going on about revisions to the .com contract with the registry operator. And ALAC and At-Large are in the process actually of putting together a statement on that that is asking that a ‘thick’ WHOIS provision be added into the .com agreement. We've spoken previously on the issue that At-Large is generally in favor of the ‘thick’ WHOIS. And now that the opportunity exists to possibly put this into the .com contract, we’re specifically asking that it be done, thank you.
Beau Brendler: Alright. Any other issues on this before we move on to the next item? Coming up to the next one we've already mentioned the draft ALAC statement on statements currently being reviewed by ALAC, we mentioned the draft ALAC statement on the SSRT at the top of the hour.
We also mentioned the draft ALAC statement on the VeriSign requests at the top of the hour, draft ALAC statement on the Fake Renewal Notices Report, we also noted I believe at the top of the hour but I do not currently have any information on the At-Large Draft Advice Letter on Consumer Trust, is there anyone who is involved in that who would like to give us any sort of a briefing on that? I see Evan?
Evan Leibovitch: Actually I could speak very briefly to it but I have been only an occasional participant in the working group. I would basically just say that I have been fairly constant in my comment within that working group. Olivier has his hand up and he can probably speak better to the issue at hand.
I can just say that my own participation has been to try to make the group aware that its scope is very limited and that by measuring consumer trust only within things like choices of registries, choices of registrars that ICANN may be missing the point that there's a larger picture to do with consumer trust in the domain name system. And that a true survey of consumer trust and choice is not really complete until they look outside their own walls, thanks.
Beau Brendler: I appreciate that comment, thank you Olivier has his hand up.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Thank you very much Beau. Just to add to Evan's point, yes Evan actually mentioned this in the working group and a line was added or a small paragraph was added in the report of the working group itself. The thing that we have to remember is the working group was tasked with a specific task that was worded with the word consumer being used and really that is the main thing, the problem that the Board itself took internet users as being consumers. When really it's a different thing, it’s not a consumer of domain names. You could have non consumers of domain names.
On top of that the term consumer introduces a problem because in some languages a consumer has a totally different meaning to a consumer in the English language. And this is what our proposed statement actually reflects. It was originally drafted by Wolf Ludwig and Yrjo Lansipuro in EURALO. It's on the Wiki at the moment and it's up for comment. I believe it's still up for comment at the moment.
However the important thing is this will be filed and hopefully the - well I know that the working group is fully aware of this problem. Hopefully the Board will also see that there needs to be a change in the way they address the interests of the internet users rather than addressing the internet of consumers. Thank you.
Beau Brendler: Thank you Olivier. Anyone have any additional comments on that issue at all? It doesn’t look like we do. Moving on then to Item 6, Draft ALAC Statement on the IDN Variant Issues Project, this falls quite far outside my area of expertise. I don’t have anything to report on that other than what is here that the ALAC vote closes on 27 April. If you have any questions or issues related to that you can let us know. Olivier I see your hand up?
It's down, okay. Moving on then to C - currently open policy forms, the ALAC is considering the Second Annual IDN ccTLD Fast Track Process. Comment period closes on 30 April. The [inaudible 00:26:59] Post Agreement Amendment comment period closes 9 May. Is anyone in the weeds on .post who would like to say anything about it or offer up any insights?
Alan Greenberg: I'm not at my computer, I can talk about it. I don’t have any particular position to take on it. but I can -
Beau Brendler: Sure I think we always would like to hear about things that we don’t necessarily know about, so we’d love to hear it Alan.
Alan Greenberg: Okay the .post agreement like virtually all the other gTLD agreements has a provision saying you cannot register at the second level any new names that correspond to existing TLDs, which essentially says all of the gTLDs and all of the ccTLDs. .post I think obviously would like to have a .ca.post, .us.post, .uk.post; it sort of makes sense for the kinds of things they're interested in. They’ve asked to have that restriction removed.
To do a level set, the new gTLDs do not have a similar restriction in their new rules. Their rules say you cannot have any two letter characters -- the cc part but not the gTLD part. One more thing I forgot the current rule says .post as any other gTLD can assign a new two letter character code with the agreement of the appropriate government. If for example the Canadian government said sure you can have .ca.post or .ca.com for that matter it is currently allowed under the agreement.
They're asking for the restriction to be taken off and that they can use TLDs without having to go to the government and ask may I? That’s the sum of it.
Beau Brendler: Okay well I appreciate that Alan, thank you. I see Evan's hand up, go ahead.
Evan Leibovitch: Just a small addition to that, that’s one of the issues that was considered and I actually think that this is something that’s worth applauding from an end-user point of view. I recently was mailing something and the post office domain names for the UK post office, Singapore post office, Canada post, they're all very different, all very difficult to find. And the idea of being able to go to .sg. post to .uk.post or .ca.post to me is actually a really good thing from an end-user point of view in terms of reducing confusion. I just go in saying that I didn’t think that a comment was necessary because I'm actually quite in favor of what they're looking to do.
Beau Brendler: Thank you Evan.
Alan Greenberg: As a follow-on Beau, when I initially sent the announcement I notice there were some negative comments about allowing .com, .net, .org to be used. In light of the fact that new gTLDs do not have any rule against that at all, I'm not sure we would really want to object to it in the case of .post. So the real question comes down to should .post be able to use country codes without asking the government? That’s the short version of what the question is.
Beau Brendler: Okay alright any other, Darlene you have your hand up there.
Darlene Thompson: Yes I would just like to say before you move on to Item 3, that I have nothing to say about .post.
Beau Brendler: Okay thank you very much. Then checking the agenda here, Recap of Current Projects -
Darlene Thompson: Beau, I wanted to have my comment before you go on to this.
Beau Brendler: I'm sorry I misunderstood you; I thought you didn’t have anything to say about .post.
Darlene Thompson: I don’t but I wanted to say something before we moved on to the next item. Item 2 says current calls for working group membership/public comment. I noticed we haven't covered - there's no item here under current calls for working group membership. However, right now there is actually a call for the working group on the ALAC Rules of Procedure. The Chair is seeking to have at least two representatives from the ALAC in addition to the ALAC liaison who is already appointed and at least two regional members appointed as representatives from each RALO. We have our two regional members appointed but if any ALAC or anybody else wants to take part in this working group or the Metrics Working Group they're more than welcome and should contact staff, thank you very much.
Beau Brendler: Thank you, yeah I believe also a call for additional members for the new gTLD Working Group may be going out in the next day or so if it's hasn’t already, thank you. Okay recapping then the current projects, I won't say too much about the survey because we seem to bring up the survey at every meeting. But progress is good, there's a nice development in that ICANN staff has helped us out with basically getting the survey translated which was not in our original scope of work but we’re more than delighted to have that of course because the more people who answer it the better.
And as a result of that we chose to not necessarily focus on surveying the internal ALSs within NARALO but of course the survey URL when it's completed will be distributed far and wide. At the moment now I believe we’re just waiting for translations and then also we've hit a switch of service provides so to speak from Big Pulse to Survey Monkey. That should be happening before Prague. Ideally we were hoping to present some results at the Prague meeting so we want to remain on track for that. Any questions on that?
Okay the NA statement on conflict of interest, I think we've already touched upon that in ample fashion and in certain circumstances we will be or at least I will be independently pursuing other issues related to that. If you have any questions or what to be a part of it or what to know more about what that entails, let me know. Results and success message is something I remember writing but at this point, have no clue why I put it there. I assume that it appeals directly to what I said about conflict of interest, so we can leave it at that.
Okay so discussion about geographic regions, this was suggested for the agenda but we don’t actually have the guest speaker on hand who was going to talk about. And I'm reluctant to sort of launch into it here because there are some aspects to it at least how I'm thinking how it's defined that are somewhat controversial. Darlene has her hand up and why don’t we just acknowledge Darlene who may know a little bit more about this than me, go ahead Darlene.
Darlene Thompson: Yes actually Cintra Sooknanan was never going to be our guest speaker on this; it was me that was going to be speaking on this.
Beau Brendler: Oh great.
Darlene Thompson: Yes, I just wanted to for those that haven't been paying attention to the geographic regions issue, I just wanted to kind of give an overview of what's it all about and a little bit of a head’s up without getting too political or into anything too nasty. There's many places in the world where they don’t agree with the region that they've been clumped into. Let’s use Romania as an example. They've been clumped into APRALO. All of their historical and cultural ties are with Europe.
Everything they do during the day, all their ties are with Europe, and so they aren’t allowed to be joining EURALO. Well it's because of the geographic regions that ICANN has put together and has said okay no you have to be here because of the UN rules. There has been at every meeting, a discussion about this saying that a sovereign country should be able to decide what region it belongs to.
Now there's been discussion on well should they be able to decide maybe once every 10 years or should it be anytime they want to or stuff like that. That’s an ongoing discussion that’s been happening at every ICANN meeting that I've been in attendance to for a while anyways. How this actually does impact us is with the LACRALO you’ve got the Spanish speaking people and then you’ve got the English speaking people in the Caribbean.
And they've been having a lot of discussion as to whether the Caribbean wants to break off and become part of North America. It's just something I wanted to give you a head's up about because there is a lot of discussion there within LACRALO as to whether that should happen or not or whether it should be allowed to happen. But a lot of it also has to deal with whether ICANN will allow it. But it may be something you might want to think about as to we would have to allow it as well. That’s just what I wanted to say.
Beau Brendler: Okay well thank you for that Darlene. As Chair I suspect it's probably not the best idea in the world for me to express too many opinions on things but in this particular case I certainly think that should another group such as that wants to join us for good reason, then in lines with being okay with ICANN itself then I certainly think that we should be open to it for more than purely selfish reason. The selfish reason being is that growth in NA region has been static.
We have not had a great deal of growth in terms of ALSs joining up with us and I see that as something of efficiency on my part. As much as possible in the months going forward separate from the geographic regions issue, I want us to be very contentious of growth of membership in NARALO. That’s my opinion. Now I have stepped away from my Adobe Connect room because I need to keep an eye on the corner when the school bus comes around otherwise my children will be whisked away to a transportation facility that’s 10 miles away and we don’t want that.
Does anybody have any comments or questions on the geographic regions issue?
Evan Leibovitch: Just something quick to say, there are some issues out of Costa Rica. There were some definite political issues that were coming up and people were talking about the idea of some possible countries or ALSs wanting to request affiliation with NARALO. This is probably something that we’re not in a position to initiate anything. I mean that would be downright colonial. But we should be thinking about it and the possibility that there may be requests in the future and we should start thinking about how we would want to deal with those should they happen.
I would also want to toss out one other possibility and one other thing that I've heard individually from people, we are still this long after the creation of the RALO process, the only region that actively encourages individual’s participants within the RALO and acknowledges them within our agreement with ICANN. I have actually heard from people who are individuals participating in other regions who've said that they want to be participating in the At-Large process. Their own region does not allow it.
Do we have any recourse or should we have any response to somebody who lives in another region, is barred from participating as an individuals in another region and is made a request to us as the only region allowing that to come in, is there any action that we can or should be taking? Obviously our meetings are open. Our calls are open. Anybody is free to participate in a phone call. But in terms of actually being a member of the region, I don’t know what the ramifications are of that.
But it's strange, we've heard from a number of regions that have said they're investigating individual membership. But here we are four or five years from the time that the RALO infrastructure was created and I believe still on the books we are the only region that actively has a mechanism for accommodating individual members, thanks.
Beau Brendler: Thanks Evan, I think I've already disclosed by bias on this issue which would be towards being as inclusive as possible. Although I think in this particular situation the key would be representation. We would just have to be a little more structured than I think we currently are in terms of having a representative structure for individual members. But again, I can't see the board, does anyone want to jump in and comment on this?
Alan Greenberg: Thank you, two things. First of all with regard to Evan’s last suggestion, my recollection but I haven't checked it, is that one of the few things that is in the bylaws is that members of RALOs must live within the region. I don’t think we have that discretion but one would have to check on that but I think that is a bylaw restriction. With regards to the - when I'm saying bylaw I don’t mean NARALO’s bylaws, I mean the ICANN bylaws.
With regard to the reassignment of regions for any given country, my recollection is that the options that are nominally on the table are leave it as it is or move people to based on how they addresses are given out by the regional address assignors, by the RARs with the option that they could choose not to move if they don’t want to move. If we followed that one which allows some people flexibility for instance, we would end up with a curious situation that Jamaica could become part of NARALO but not Trinidad and Tobago because Trinidad and Tobago does get their addresses from LACRALO as opposed to Jamaica.
The options on the table are sort of fuzzy. They don’t necessarily satisfy everyone's needs. Although options have been suggested that is anyone could make one change every three years or something by simply asking and all parties agreeing. It's a messy subject. It's politically hot. And not clear where it's going but if people have opinions they should say so, thank you.
Beau Brendler: Thanks yes opinions are always welcome. And after this meeting I'll send to the list a note that perhaps we should convene a small NARALO subcommittee on geographic regions so that we can keep the communication open but also keep it somewhat circumscribe. Before Olivier talks this is actually a question that can also apply to him. I don’t think it's necessarily a violation of privacy to say that I think that there were some thoughts about a resolution towards the end of Costa Rica between the politically disenfranchised members of LACRALO that involved the Ombudsman. Did that go anywhere? Are we looking at a better situation now?
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Thank you very much Beau. I was first going to speak about the geographic regions review briefly. There was a statement from the ALAC that was sent to the public comment on the 19 December 2011, so it's only a few months ago, and our statement mentions a third avenue which is not to look at specifically the RIR model for a model of geographic regions because the RIR model was actually set up for no specific particular reason. It just happened as it did.
There was no rationale behind the cutting up of resources in this way apart from just the luck of the draw, the person who lived in location X found that they managed to get an address from one RIR then from another because they knew that person personally or other reasons. The geographic regions themselves as we know at the moments still follow the UN geographic regions.
The suggestion that the ALAC made in its statement was that it remains as such, but those countries or territories that are in locations that are a boundary between one and another region might wish to choose which one of the two regions they might wish to join, whether it is a one-time offer, whether it is the country itself that needs to deal with this, whether it's an ALS that needs to deal with it, is something which we've left for further discussion. But certainly that might be able to find some answers to the problems that we've got today.
With regards to the meeting with the ombudsman that took place, we made use of the ombudsman. As you know, LACRALO was facing a bit of a challenge to rewrite their bylaws. We made use of the ombudsman to try and act as a mediator. I understand there is progress that has taken place because of that since.
The call actually just took place before the NARALO call was one of the Rules of Procedures led by Cheryl Langdon-Orr and Cheryl made it known to all parties that due to the aim of the ALAC and of At-Large to have a more uniform set of bylaws across all regions it might be a wiser thing to wait until the wider At-Large work gets done on the bylaws rather than trying to rewrite bylaws only to have to rewrite them a few months down the line. That was one thing out of the way. For the rest, the LACRALO region is now going through a set of elections that are taking place. So it looks as though the region is progressing towards solutions for their challenges, that’s it, thank you.
Beau Brendler: Good to hear. Who’s next anybody?
Darlene Thompson: Alan did you still have something to say?
Alan Greenberg: Nope, sorry.
Heidi Ullrich: Just wanted to let everyone know that LACRALO does have this one their agenda for their monthly call this week for next steps for the General Assembly, for the working groups that were formed in Costa Rica, so it does look like they are continuing to make progress on this.
Beau Brendler: Good, that’s good to hear. Is there anyone else who wants to comment on this? Otherwise we will move to our last item in any other business.
Evan Leibovitch: I also have something else to add to AOB.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Could I just add one more thing on the LACRALO thing?
Beau Brendler: Sure.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Thank you Beau. I was just going to add of course I just spoke about the General Assembly which they had but I totally forgot to mention that they had an amazing set of events that took place over there. They had the Showcase which was another of these really memorable times with absolutely incredible dancing and speech and the Minister of Telecommunications that turned up as well.
And they had a set of capacity building sessions which really have produced a lot of positive feedback from everyone who was involved. Because yet again it was the case of many people from ALSs coming over, it was the first time they actually felt what an ICANN meeting was like and it's the first time that they actually understood how policy, how the bottom up system actually works and felt that now they were really part of it. We’re looking at a lot of positive results on that.
And with this I would like to also hope that with the forthcoming Toronto meeting and we still unfortunately have not had any feedback from ICANN Finance, but I really do hope that the NARALO region will be able to get its General Assembly and all of the events that it wants to do over in Toronto and have that funded. Because really it's an amazing boost and it's great.
As Chair of the ALAC I've seen this now happen with two regions so far and it's just been quite incredible to see people at the beginning of the week and then at the end of the week and their view of the way things work having changed completely. And certainly knowledge coming straight to them, is something they've been very happy about. That’s it, thank you.
Beau Brendler: Excellent. Evan you had something to add?
Evan Leibovitch: Well actually I had an issue for any other business. But the timing is good since it relates exactly to what Olivier had said, and that is there is absolutely nothing on the agenda that talks about preparation for Toronto. I guess I just wanted to ask this group if there are any plans, before San Francisco, Eduardo you’ve lead a very good team that was doing the Showcase there. We've got [inaudible 00:51:38] there.
We had an awful lot of work done. Now to my knowledge, there haven’t been any North American ALSs added since San Francisco. So I'm almost wondering if there is starting to be a bit of what I call Showcase burnout. EURALO is not doing a Showcase in Prague. And I think we need to start making a decision relatively soon whether or not we want to have another event for Toronto of this kind or not.
There's already been a proposal to have the ICANN Academy. There's already going to be a lot of things going on. And so I think NARALO ought to make a decision for itself what extent it wants to have special events going on at the Toronto event, thanks.
Darlene Thompson: A little Showcase burnout, don’t want to do it. That’s just my opinion.
Beau Brendler: Thank you Darlene. Yes, well I tell you what I think there's probably some similar sentiments all around here on that. We should probably just put it up for a consensus vote in the region by email which I will do as an action item in the next week or so. Yes I didn’t put Toronto on the agenda because as I recall from the discussion at the NARALO meeting in Costa Rica, we didn’t feel it was necessarily appropriate yet but that’s fine.
We mean can make it a standing agenda item from now on, as I think we did with San Francisco. I will certainly take that under consideration. The other item for any other business and we have a couple of minute to discussion this, we’re almost at the top of the hour, is Ganesh Kumar as told us that - well you can see the details in the chat - he's not going to be able to make it Prague.
There's been a proposal to use the funds for having Dev Teelucksingh come. I will just open that up for discussion. And I still can't see the board, so Darlene if you will just please take over the comments.
Darlene Thompson: Okay we have Evan with his hand up first and then Eduardo after him.
Evan Leibovitch: Hi I'll speak as a person that made the first initial request. Essentially what had happened as Beau said is there is a travel allotment that we have available to us. And given the situation of the current LACRALO elections, Dev as of this moment is not funded to go to Prague. However, he has been the author of a great many of the things that At-Large is going to be relying on including the very important gTLD objection process where he's had an extremely heavy involvement in that.
And so that is why I'm suggesting that we - if we can by any means have Dev to attend Prague that it is going to benefit all of At-Large by having him there. Not to belittle anybody here that is not funded but just given what's happening with the gTLD process and the need to have a good objection process in place, that’s why I'm recommending that Dev be given our allotment.
Darlene Thompson: Okay Eduardo?
Eduardo Diaz: Yes this is a clarification point. I'm confused. If LACRALO is having their general elections before Prague, because otherwise if that is the case because Dev is the Secretariat of that organization. [Inaudible 00:55:48]
Evan Leibovitch: Eduardo, I can answer that. Before actually making the recommendation I asked about this specifically and while the LACRALO ALAC representatives are going to be elected and will see it along with other new terms starting after the Toronto meeting, LACRALO is going through its elections now and as of this moment, according to the LACRALO bylaws, Dev is not Secretariats, so he is not funded for Prague. I triple checked that before making this request.
Eduardo Diaz: So that means that the LACRALO doesn’t have any Secretariats [inaudible 00:56:31] as of this moment?
Evan Leibovitch: That’s possible. I'm just going based on what I've been told, that Dev is not funded to go. Whether or not how LACRALO has chosen to fill that spot is up the region. The one thing that I know is that it's not going to be Dev. And I'm suggesting that if we can help it that we need to get him there.
Alan Greenberg: I was just going to say that my understanding is that he is not planning to run. So since the understanding is there will be a new Secretariat selected prior to Prague, he will not be eligible at that time. It's not an issue of whether he is Secretariat today.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Thanks if I could just add something. Actually the elections are going to take place I believe before the end of the month. And the new people are immediately drafted into position. So the people that will travel to Prague are the Chair, that will be chosen by the region, and at the moment there's only one person running for the Chair and that’s José Arce, so it's highly likely that he will be. And then the Secretariat and two people are running for the Secretariat position. But Dev is not one of the people running for the Secretariat position. One of the two people running for the Secretariat position will be making it to Prague and will be funded. But Dev will not, thank you.
Beau Brendler: Okay any further comments?
Alan Greenberg: To echo what Evan said, but somewhat stronger, the amount of effort and work that Dev has put in recently and the amount of homework he has to do to be able to do that work particularly on the objection process, which ended up being exceedingly familiar with the whole Applicant Guidebook, I think is exactly the kind of participation we want to encourage in these meetings. and I don’t know what's going to happen going forward, but I think he’ll be invaluable in the meeting in Prague because a lot of things are coming to a head at that point, thank you.
Beau Brendler: Okay well it sounds like there is something of a consensus here, however in the interest of fairness, I think we should give the region a week or so to contemplate this and if you wouldn’t mind sending emails to - or if you have a thought on this or perhaps you want to discuss or you want to make known - if you could send the email directly to myself and to Darlene we can handle this in a way so that feelings and such don’t get hurt. Okay?
Evan Leibovitch: I would simply note from history that this decision when it has been reallocated in the past to people like Garth and Eric Brunner Williams, has normally been done on the Chair’s discretion but that’s mainly been done because there's rarely been the luxury of time to actually have a NARALO meeting to make the decision beforehand.
Beau Brendler: And by that you mean we have a little bit more time to make a decision?
Evan Leibovitch: Yes, usually the judgment call is constituency travel is saying either we need somebody named in the next 48 hours or you're not getting it at all.
Beau Brendler: Okay, is that an argument for taking a little more time to make this decision?
Evan Leibovitch: Yes.
Beau Brendler: Okay.
Alan Greenberg: I think we have more than a week or so.
Beau Brendler: A week okay, well then let's make it stand as it is then, based on what I'm hearing from this group there is some regional consensus but let's take say until Thursday for anyone who wishes to make a different recommendation or such to email myself and Darlene and we will handle it with discretion. Anything else? We are not five minutes past the hour, so if there isn’t anything else I would say that we should bid each other adieu until next month. Anything else? Very good, thank you for your time and thanks also to the person who fleshed out the agenda. I don't know who that was but I'm glad that you did it. And it's a good model for the next one so we’ll keep to it, thank you.
[End]
