ALAC – GNSO User House Meeting – Cairo ICANN Meeting
(Held November 04, 2008)
Legend
Name: First name of member of group
Name L: First name plus first initial of last name if there's more than one person with the same first name.
Name?: If we think we might know who's speaking but aren't 100% sure.
Male: Unsure of who's speaking, but know it's a male.
Female: Unsure of who's speaking, but know it's a female.
cuts out: Audio cuts out for less than 2 seconds. We may have missed something. We do not put this if it's just natural silence where no-one is speaking. We only put this if we can hear that there was briefly a technical problem with the phone line and/or the recording which resulted in temporary loss of sound.
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List of Participants
Important Note: Please note that this should not be considered to be an "official" list of the attendees. This is just a list of the participants that we were able to identify during the transcription. There may have been others present that didn't speak and some people may have participated that were not on the official list of attendees published on the internet.
Aizu, Izumi
Andruff, Ron (Business Constituency)
Brendler, Beau
Cade, Marilyn (Business Constituency)
Drakes, Tricia (Nominating Committee)
Greenberg, Alan
Guerra, Robert
Holmes, Tony (ISPCP Chair)
Jamil, Zahid (Business Constituency)
Langdon-Orr, Cheryl (ALAC Chair)
Leibovitch, Evan
Metalitz, Steve (Intellectual Property Constituency)
Mueller, Milton (NCUC)
Preston, Cheryl (NCUC)
Rodenbaugh, Mike (GNSO)
Rosette, Kristina (Intellectual Property Constituency)
Samuels, Carlton
Sheppard, Philip (GNSO)
Williams, Liz (ICANN?)
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Cheryl LO: I feel like co-chair for the beginning. Milton.
Milton: Alright. Well, thank you all for coming. As you know, the GNSO Improvements is a complicated process and we will be developing a proposal for the Non-Commercial Stakeholders Group which we’ve been consulting with ALAC about just as of yesterday. And we just had some interesting conversations and very encouraging conversations with the Board this morning, with Board Governance Committee members I should say, this morning. And we’re very interested in how the Business Stakeholders Group will be handling some of the same problems and the degree of consistency that is expected across the houses and any other issues that might come up.
So in terms of inter-house issues, I think those are the least difficult and would hope that we spend more time talking about how we develop these proposals for our own stakeholder groups.
So with that being said, I’ll turn it back over to Cheryl, who can then turn it over to Philip.
Cheryl LO: laughter cuts out …Oh, I’m on 2. Okay. Okay.
Now in terms of the inter-house issues, we’re… I’d really like to make good use of the talents we have working within the GNSO. How we approached from the ALAC perspective was that we had our GNSO liaison take the lead on our negotiations on many of these points. So what I am actually going to do is not say what we said and that you heard from Alan, but actually segue to Alan, and I’d like to actually have feedback for how fast do we think we can actually get this done. I have great concern about the inter-intra-house issues getting done in a timely manner. I think there’s concern about what happens in the transition period, and I’m certainly concerned that some of what’s written is a little bit fast, but that’s just my personal opinion. I’d be very keen to find out what the opinion is of others around the table. The bicameral work that we’ve agreed to… I’m not… I’m reading this, you know, literally off your screen and I’m unsure what else you’d like… we should be doing with it other than saying, “How are we going to manage this?”
Male: Yes.
Cheryl LO: And particularly then move to the next part. So is it a meaningful timeline? Alan? We’ve got… You’d had some opinions on…
Alan: You mean the June timeline?
Cheryl LO: That’s right. The June timeline.
Alan: inaudible 02.58
Cheryl LO: Microphone.
Alan: I’m somewhat pragmatic about it. I thought the original December/January one was totally unreasonable and someone’s vivid imagination, and pushing it much past next June and the annual meeting, or at least the June meeting and preparation for the annual meeting I couldn’t see. So we have to make it work in this timeframe. Could we stall it out longer? Sure. laughter
Milton: I agree with that. I think there are some issues related to the elections that we’ve just had in terms of the terms of the people that we’ve elected, but I think these are details that can be worked out and that the goal of… It’s actually a very significant issue, whether this new system kicks in after the June meeting or before the June meeting. So I would just ask for more specificity on that question.
Philip: I mean, the discussion we just had in the cross-constituency meeting I think was two-fold – one which is we thought we could probably be ready with a transitional arrangement to get our councillors ready for June, and we’re going to be working on that with a view to a transitional arrangement that makes sense to a longer term for perhaps a more integrated set of… a more integrated way of working as a constituency. On timing, the other topic 04.31, timing issue was pointed out, of course by Mexico we’re expected to have a charter for our stakeholder groups, which is a pretty tight timeline, particularly with holidays at the end of the year and that sort of thing. So we were hoping to come up again with a minimal thing for that.
Cheryl LO: Sorry, it’s a piece of housekeeping. The interpreters have asked is anyone listening to the Spanish interpretation? pause The answer to that is no. Sorry for the…
Philip: No, we just had one hand.
Cheryl LO: Oh yes?
Philip: No?
Cheryl LO: No. Okay, sorry. Sorry to put you off.
Philip: Not at all. So… And our feeling was we could probably… we could totally do something in time, but it was again going to be of a transitional nature. Was that your feeling too?
Cheryl LO: Well, remember, you’re talking here to the ALAC, which has written ad nauseam that it is as a per se entity not going to be involved. laughter What we want to do is facilitate a proper user and registrar 5.35 voice from some of what we believe our membership can reach out to. So it’s not a matter of us getting ready, we as an ALAC are not trying to be a part of this process.
I see Alan, and then I see Izumi.
Alan: I have two questions. The first is to Milton. You said you heard some positive things this morning, and sharing them might be useful. And to Philip, you said you have a transitional plan. Does that imply you just won’t be fully fleshed-out or does that imply that it will work for the three existing constituencies but not if that number changes in the interim?
Philip: It will fulfil the need of getting councillors ready for June and it will be a pathway towards a more encompassing arrangement.
Alan: Even if the Board approves the fourth constituency in that timeframe?
Philip: Then we’d have to be fleet of foot.
Cheryl LO: Izumi?
Izumi: This is sort of a housekeeping, but some of us are very near to this and some of us don’t have good memory like me. Could we not go around but just show your hands, who are from the ALAC and who are from the GNSO? Something like that, and then when speak, introduce your name and affiliation because otherwise it’s very difficult to keep track. Thank you.
Cheryl LO: Actually, I’ll take a variation on that theme. The short answer is no, we will not go around. If we are not absolutely recognizable, like the people who have spoken so far as to who we are and where we belong to – in other words, everybody but those who have spoken so far – the new chair of the NCUC, Tony Holmes, people like that, then yes, please say, “Hello, my name is Mary and I am from…” But we’re not going to waste the valuable time we have now going around.
Milton: Okay. So to answer Alan’s questions and Philip’s question, we have been working on a draft and we think that we’ll come out of this meeting and by December 1st or thereabouts, we will have a rough draft, and the Board members that we met with asked for that and really appreciated that we would have it ready by then, so we will. And I don’t see any problem with the March deadline in terms of having a draft charter proposal from our side.
Now in terms of what they said that was encouraging, we had this discussion yesterday about “Are they wedded to the old concept of constituencies?” It’s pretty clear that they’re not – at least those two governance committee members. Or definitely not and that their main criteria were very reasonable ones, that they want to make whatever structure we have facilitate the coalescence of voices. And I don’t want to use the word “representation” because that’s not what they meant, but the expression of different voices, and that was their top priority. They said that was even more important to them than the balancing of the different voting groups.
And then the other thing they said was that they do want the stakeholder groups to have autonomy in determining how they solve these problems.
Mike: Thanks. Excuse me. I’m Mike Rodenbaugh, I’m a GNSO councillor from the Business Constituency. I’m afraid I might have misinterpreted either the question or Madame Chairman’s answer to the question about ALAC’s intentions in participating in the new user stakeholder house. Could you please just state that one more time?
Cheryl LO: Absolutely. I’ll have the t-shirts printed if that’s what it takes. The ALAC is the At-Large Advisory Committee with a particular place and space within an ICANN structure. It as an ALAC is in no way, shape, or form going to be involved as an ALAC in what we are actually discussing here. However, we have outreach capability to people who do need to bring user voice into a non-commercial user house and we also have At-Large Structures – in other words, right back at the grassroots level organizations – who may very well wish to be involved in a new constituency. So please, like 10.01 just don’t say “At-Large” and “ALAC” – they are not the same thing. There is 110 currently registered and accredited with ICANN At-Large Structures worldwide and some half-dozen or so either having their applications prepared or their application’s in the first stage of due diligence. You are talking of 15 people when you talk of the ALAC. Big difference.
Ron: Sorry, Madame Chairman. Ron Andruff, Business Constituency member. 15 people? Could you just clarify that for us? I didn’t catch it. I don’t understand who the 15 are.
Cheryl LO: Certainly. The ALAC, the At-Large Advisory Committee, is 15 persons. There are 5 regions. Each region has a Regional At-Large Organization. Each Regional At-Large Organization is simply an executive form of the At-Large Structures in that geographic region to talk together and to do business. So North American At-Large Structures formed into North American Regional At-Large Organization. They have elected secretariats, they have elected chairs, they have meetings on their own bat, and it is those structures that bring the actual grassroots information from the user end. The North American Regional At-Large Organization and each of the other four appoint two by whatever mechanism, whatever election that their memorandum with ICANN agrees to, to the At-Large Advisory Committee, and the Nominating Committee provides a third from each region.
So if we do nothing else out of this meeting than finally put this confusion to bed, I will personally be a very happy woman.
Ron?: Thank you very much.
Cheryl LO: Yes indeed, Alan, go ahead.
Alan: We tend to use the term “At-Large.” Within ICANN, “At-Large” has a hyphen between the two words and capital “A” and “L,” and it’s the composite of the At-Large Structures (the ALSes), the RALO, and the ALAC. We also tend to use the term occasionally “at large” meaning – forgive me – the rabble, the users of the world. And we tend to use that in lower case. And that’s not meant… it really isn’t meant in a derogatory sense, it says we’re talking about the real people out there who may or may not be affiliated with one of these arcane ICANN organizations. And the effort we’re in right now is to try to make sure there’s a lower-case “at-large” representation within the GNSO structure so that as policy is being formulated, issues related to users can be considered not just by commenting after the fact. And since we happen to be the representatives at the capital “At-Large,” we have taken it upon ourselves or been asked, depending on who you talk to, to sort of act on behalf of the lower-case “at-large” to try to help pull it together.
Milton: And then there’s of course the sense in which Osama bin Laden is still at large.
laughter
Alan: And they may be related.
Ron?: Thank you for clouding the issue, Milton. Actually, no, but At-Large, the upper-case and lower-case At-Large is very helpful, because it helps a lot of us make that distinction, because I for one have been very confused about that. But now that leads to another question, if I may, and that question has to do with, is the upper-case “At-Large” is the body that… No. What I’m trying to find out is who is the body that’s kind of coming into the user summit.
Cheryl LO: The upper-case “At-Large” stands at the moment as 110 bodies. The intention is to have one per country as a minimum. So do the math. That’s a lot of bodies. Some of those organizations will not have the capacity to be involved fully in the policy development processes that are required, some of them may not be able to work in the English requirement that of course the GNSO currently is structured to use, therefore they won’t be coming into this pathway.
Mike?: inaudible 14.52. So as you sit here today, is it your expectation, desire, understand that the capital At-Large groups might form together into a constituency on the users’ group?
Cheryl LO: I’m going to get Alan to answer that actually. It’s probably best you do.
Alan: At-Large is the overall envelope. If we are talking about the At-Large Structures, the ALSes – which is a horrible name, but nevertheless the one that they were blessed with – if some of them choose to join a constituency within the Non-Commercial Stakeholders Group or join the stakeholders group if that’s the mechanism for doing it, they may. Many of tho-… Virtually all of those have lives of their own before ICANN. They might have been Internet Society chapters, they might have been local computer clubs, they might have been whatever, and they decided to add to that portfolio of whatever they are the affiliation with ICANN through this mechanism. They may also, if it fits their model of life, choose to join some sub-entity of the GNSO. On the other hand, I can also envision other groups that have nothing to do with At-Large coalescing and joining the Non-Commercial Stakeholders Group in one form or another. And the example that I always use is the consumer protection people of the world who have an interest in these things – you know, one particular of them happens to be an ALS, Consumers Union US, but most of the others don’t. So it’s a mixed bag.
Cheryl LO: If I may, to give you an example of what does and doesn’t work, just to use the upper- and lower-case, pardon me, and could we say, “Could we gather the 110 existing ALSes together?” Well, apart from their capacity to actually serve, which is another issue, there are organizations, some of them very new – the one that I can speak absolutely on is the one I’ve just finish forming within my own country – that are organizations that are peak bodies of peak bodies. Now they are not ever going to be an At-Large Structure but they could very well, as for example the recently mandated on, we’re just waiting for the Prime Minister to sign off for our continual funding, is the Australian consumer interest groups with anything to do with telecommunication and communication, some 50-odd organizations, and that includes all the disability sector, have gathered together and formed themselves into a one-stop shop. Now that’s exactly the sort of organizational structure that could very well have very meaningful dialogue and input into policy development processes and particularly very well have not just straight into the working groups is something like that they’d like to do in the houses.
Yes, Marilyn.
Marilyn: I think this sounds all very helpful.
Male: inaudible 18.04
Marilyn: Oh, my name is Marilyn Cade. Sorry. I’m a member of the Business User Constituency. I think this all sounds very helpful, and I like you think that is one of the achievements of this meeting is that we’ve all deepened our understanding of the organizational structure of the ALAC, it is a very good thing. But I just want to move maybe away from the discussion about whether it is going to be possible… whether it’s possible that there are non-commercially focussed groups or entities who may form a new constituency and ask a slightly different question. They may, but it’s not necessarily easy to get people coalesced around filling out an application and submitting and application. We went through that before a number of years ago and, you know, it takes a little bit of coaching, I think, sometimes for people to feel comfortable with forms, the process, etc. Is there something envisioned that would provide, you know, a webinar or handout or something that could be… not just the form, but something that would demystify the process for such parties?
Cheryl LO: First of all, we were trying to come down from a 50,000-foot view and we’re really getting out the microscope at that level of response. But if you’re asking the question of the ALAC and it sees itself as having a facilitation role, that’s exactly the sort of thing that would be quite appropriate, to look at various of the international consumer organizations, the brand new Austra-… and I’m sorry, it’s the Australian Communication Consumer Action Network – it’s ACCAN.
laughter
Cheryl LO: I didn’t do that, I really didn’t do that. But yet they could be gathered together on a telephone link, we could go through a webinar, absolutely. But that’s getting down to the minute.
Yes, so… I’m sorry. I thought I had someone else inaudible 20.21. Please, go ahead.
Ron?: I don’t want to dominate the microphone but I did want to just then ask, based upon what we now know – capitals and lower-case – at the relationship between the capitals and the NCUC, the new Non-Commercial Stakeholders Group, can you tell us what the dialogue is between you two so we now understand a little bit better that. Thank you.
Cheryl LO: We have a liaison to the NCUC and in recent times, we have met at each ICANN meeting.
Milton: And many organizations that are At-Large Structures would also be qualified to be members of NCUC, and some of them are in fact both At-Large Structures and members. But not that many actually actively participate in both.
Philip: Just for…
Cheryl LO: Please, go…
Philip: Just for those of you who had even noticed an agenda, we’ve clearly…
Cheryl LO: laughter
Philip: …given up resisting the tide of questions and we’ve moved on to agenda item 3. We’ll try and go back to 2 with some of the inter-house issues a bit later, because this clearly seems to be where the interest is. Thank you for the clarifications in terms of relationships. Two key questions that came out of our cross-constituency group was to do with your – and I’m addressing this to both NCUC and At-Large – where you see the likely expectations of the development of the non-commercial users house. First do you… First, as I understand it, NCUC itself will be expanding. Secondly, do you foresee additional constituencies forming within the non-commercial users house? And thirdly, is part of At-Large… is part of ALAC facilitation to facilitate specifically the formation of a constituency within the non-commercial users house? So those I think were the three key questions that came out of our session this morning.
Milton: Can you repeat the first question, because I’m not sure I understood that one.
Male: Stakeholder group.
Philip: First was the expansion of NCUC regardless of anything else on this 22.52 happening. The second was the foreseen…
Milton: “Is it expanding?” Is that the question?
Philip: Yes, “Is it expanding?” Yes. So the second question then was the principle of foreseeing new constituencies within non-commercial house, the Non-Commercial Stakeholder Group. And third, specifically if yes to question two, is ALAC a facilitator of such a constituency?
Milton: Okay. So, umm, yes, NCUC is expanding its membership quite a bit in the last month or two because we have created a provisional individual membership category, and this has made it possible for people who… You heard Marilyn talking about, you know, filling out forms, and you can imagine if somebody at a large-scale organization like a university is trying to get their organization to join, it’s virtually impossible, the hoops they would have to jump through. So the provisional individual membership has succeeded at allowing like academics mainly, but also some people affiliated with other larger public interest organizations, to simply join with a minimum of hassle. And we have a vetting process that tries to make sure that they’re really interested in the non-commercial perspective and aren’t stalking horses for Philip. That was a joke.
Cheryl LO: Right.
Milton: laughter
Cheryl LO: Hmm.
Milton: Insert laugh. Yes. So new constituencies in NCSG. I will send you the document that we’re working on. We have a very well considered approach to constituencies, such that not only will there be new constituencies but the plan is actually for the NCUC to dissolve and not exist after the transition, and that there would be a possibility once you joined the Non-Commercial Stakeholders Group that the people within it assemble themselves into new constituencies and it’s very easy to form new constituencies. So we expect, some of us believe there will be five or six new constituencies, others believe that there may be a very large number of new constituencies over time, but the point is we’ve created a process by which any sort of grouping principle could be recognized as a constituency when you have some kind of representation in the policy development process.
So yes, the answer, the simple answer is yes, there would be many new constituencies. And third, is ALAC facilitating that? Yes, they are facilitating in that they have helped us… It was really conversations with Alan initially that made me give form to this approach to constituencies. And secondly, there are At-Large Structures that have expressed interest in joining. And there is apparently some scuttlebutt about some group within ALAC trying to form a constituency, but we haven’t got any formal notice of that, but, you know, it could happen.
Cheryl LO: This is ICANN, there’s always scuttlebutt. Yes, Tony.
Tony: Yeah, thanks. Tony Holmes, Chair of the ISPCP. Milton, you said that you have an individual membership category. What is the difference between that category and the other categories that you have?
Milton: Well, if you’re joining as an organization, you have to show that you have an organization – I mean, that there’s more than one person involved, that it… Just let me explain a little bit – that there’s more than one person involved, it may be formally incorporated, it may not be formally incorporated, but it would have various kinds of manifestations of collective action such as a website that shows more than one person involved. And of course most of the organizations that join are formally incorporated – they might be, you know, non-profit 301 corporations in the US or the equivalent in foreign countries, or they might be, you know, formally universities or something like that. Yeah.
Tony: Just a quick follow-on to that, Milton. Do they have the same rights within that group? I mean, do they have the same voting rights, or does that vary?
Milton: No. We’ve always had a small organization/large organization tier, so that the large organizations got twice as many votes. And so now we’re going to have individuals have one vote, small orgs two votes, and large orgs four votes in our voting structure.
Cheryl LO: Missed you, Steve. And then Alan.
Steve: Thank you. Steve Metalitz with the Intellectual Property Constituency. I had two questions. One is, is part of what you’ve just described, Milton, is there a part of it that includes outreach specifically to try to bring in major educational institutions, charitable organizations, and so forth? And my second question really is about the stakeholder template that the staff sent out, and have you guys looked at that, and does that fit in with what you’re talking about or is that going to require changes?
Milton: In terms of outreach, you know, the Board has expressed interest in outreach and we’ve told them, “Outreach costs money. It’s very fine if you want to talk about outreach, but if you really want somebody to do it, then put some dollars behind that and then we’ll talk.” PIR has also expressed interest in supporting some outreach – since they’re kind of the .org registry, they have an interest in sort of mobilizing those people.
The more interesting question is, is there a looming confl-… not “conflict,” that’s too strong a word, but is there some kind of a tension between this constituency intent form that has been distributed, which is based on the old concept of a constituency, and what we are proposing? The answer is certainly yes, there is, and that’s why Alan’s question to Philip was so interesting. He says what if, you know, you get somebody who recognizes a constituency under these old terms in the next six months, and then you form your new business stakeholder group, how does it fit in? It’s kind of a monkey wrench in the whole process. However, the good news there is that we talked to the… again, these Board Governance Committee members and they seem to recognize, after we explained it to them, that that is a problem and expressed may I say a little bit of wry amusement at the idea that the Board would act so quickly as to recognize a new constituency in the next six months.
laughter
Steve: If I can clarify my question, because… and I remember seeing that exchange you had with Denise about that. I was actually referring to a different template which she sent out last week about stakeholder groups. Because we’re both in the same position here, we’re both trying to form stakeholder groups and the plan has to go forward to the Board before the Mexico City meeting and now we’ve been given a template for how to spell out that plan. I don’t know if you’ve looked at that. Okay. Well, we’ve just started to look at it too and I’m not quite sure that it works but it…
Milton: I’m sorry I haven’t. I wish I had. When was it sent?
Steve: I think it was sent on the 28th.
Milton: Oh.
Steve: So I just was wondering, we’re just starting that too. We’re kind of developing our stakeholder charter, if you will, but we just wanted to make sure that it is actually what the Board is looking for.
Milton: So let me see.
Zahid: Just a question about the NCUC.
Male: inaudible 30.55
Zahid: Oh, sorry. Yes. I’m Zahid Jamil, BC councillor. Sorry about that. A question regarding the NCUC criteria for constituencies. Is there a specific number that’s being considered? Has to be a minimal number of criteria… of numbers of people getting together to form a constituency within the NCUC?
Milton: cuts out …members.
Cheryl LO: Alan.
Alan: But I thought members could be people? I don’t want an answer to that.
The repartee between Milton and Steve on “Did you read the e-mail?” fits very well with, I was going to start with. I suspect everyone in this room has not read every document ICANN has put out in the last few weeks and every e-mail that’s been sent on every list. Just to summarize a few of them. We are trying our best to self-form whatever this Non-Commercial Stakeholders Group user group i-… or is. At the same time, the interim report from the Board Governance Committee Working Group on the ALAC Review has made a statement roughly to the effective of they are very concerned that the NCUC is accepting individual users and does not believe individual users have a place within that structure. And the Board has submitted a question to a number of bodies, including the GNSO and ALAC, saying, “Just what is the position of users within the GNSO structure and ALAC, and what should it be?” implying that just perhaps they may make a decision on our behalf.
So all these three efforts are going on in parallel. Who knows what it means.
Cheryl LO: Go ahead.
Ron: Milton… Ron Andruff. Milton, the five members for a constituency, could you kind of expand on that? It’s just… to me it seems like an extremely low threshold and it could lead to a tremendous amount of instability if people wanted to really abuse that strategy. And again, I don’t know enough about it, but 5 seems like… 50 would seem more reasonable, or 500, but 5? It sounds a little bit too low of a threshold. I would just like to know the thinking on that, if I could.
Milton: Again, you’re probably stuck in the old concept of a constituency, in which it means that you get three council seats, you have all of your positions have to be represented in reports and so on and so forth. So if nothing is tied to a constituency except the right to submit policy proposals through the stakeholder group, what’s wrong with having lots of constituencies? Furthermore, I would disagree that… Well, we could debate whether the threshold should be 5 or 8 or something like that, but you show me any organization or any part of ICANN that really has 50 active members – I mean, in terms of somebody willing to…
Cheryl LO: Hello? laughter
Milton: …actually… You said it was 15. laughter
Cheryl LO: I’m… The Advisory Committee is a membership of 15. It represents active participation of 5 regions numbering 110 active members.
Milton: And who long did it take you to get those? Was it three years or four years?
Cheryl LO: We moved a lot slower than that from the first ALSes because the Regional At-Large Organization structure came in a three-year span, and it was once that started, it needed to be regionalized, that we actually moved to a more effective participation model.
Milton: Right. So the point is not to criticize ALAC or anything, the point is, is that if you make these constructions very, very heavy, then they’re very, very hard to form and you won’t get very many of them, and if you make them light, then they will come into existence and possibly go out of existence over a shorter time span, and we think that’s a good thing. We think that’s what the Board is asking for. They said, “We want to make it easier for people to have voices in this process.”
If you can organize… Let’s suppose there’s, you know, a phishing phenomenon that probably, you know, comes into an existence at a certain time and then maybe over time it goes out of existence as a major concern. So you form an anti-phishing constituency within the Non-Commercial Stakeholders Group. You know, why should it be a difficult thing? Why not just have a simple threshold and then allow it to go into operation? All it means is that there’s a group that now has the ability to formulate policy and promote it within this stakeholders group.
Ron: I appreciate the… helping flesh that out, but I still have a problem with that. Five of us could sit down at the bar… I don’t mean to be putting this in the wrong way, but five of us could sit down at the bar and decide that today we have a constituency, and tomorrow I’m going to fill out the paperwork and I’m going to bring all this in. And you’re going to have lots of people show us 36.05, “If they’re doing it, then I’m going to do it,” and which are going to create… This is not what the Non-Commercial Stakeholders Group is supposed to do in my understanding. And I’m not criticizing, only my understanding is that we should be having institutions, whether they be institutions that are coming from the academia, whether they’re institutions coming from family issues, whether they’re institutions coming from wherever they may come, but they’re more about institutions because the At-Large and the ALAC is more about providing the voice for the individual user of the internet. That’s just my understanding, but I’m concerned about a threshold of five people. If in fact there’s five representatives, five members…
Milton: Not five people, five members. So it could be the American Civil Liberties Union, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, you know, etc. etc., which could mean 500,000 people.
Cheryl LO: Or it could be five individual hot 36.55 bodies.
Ron: That’s it. And so if there was a threshold saying 5 members with membership of 20 or more, or some threshold. But the whole point here is that our future is we’re married, we have to figure out how we’re going to organize our household under one roof and we have to make sure that we all kind of find that… what our wife, children, brothers and sisters are doing is palatable and works for us. So we have to find that way. It’s a poor analogy, but you understand what I’m getting at.
Milton: overtalking 37.23 Tell me how it impacts you.
Ron: It impacts the community as a whole when you have this…
Milton: Tell me how. Tell me how.
Ron: Well, my fear is that five people coming together and making… five people with organizations behind them come together and all of a sudden decide to start taking positions, which will bog down the ability for us as a community under one house… We’re one house now. We have to work together and we only have so much time at these meetings to have conversations. We get a few people that come together in a small constituency that decide that they want to just basically take over that meeting, we will get nothing done. And that’s my concern.
Milton: No, no, no. You have to deal with our council representatives. You don’t have to deal with our constituencies. The working groups have to deal with our constituencies, but you don’t have to deal with them at all. I don’t see how you’re impacted by this at all. If you decide that you want two constituencies and you have to have $40 million and 800,000 members, I don’t think that’s very good, but I’m not even going to utter a word about it because that your house, your stakeholder group’s business. I don’t see how that impacts us.
Ron: Well, with all due respect, I think everyone in this room is concerned about the holistic approach, the community as a whole, and I think that it’s important that you, I, and all of us look at it from that point of view. I don’t think we can just say, “Something happens within my group, it happens independently.”
Female: Yeah. Again, I think there might be some disconnect in what this means, to be a constituency. What we’re… Say it’s 5 people, say it’s 10 – this isn’t determined yet – but what we’re talking about is all these… this means is these people get a voice, they get to participate in a working group, they get to issue their own statement. That’s not something that’s going to, you know, hurt the process. That’s just bringing more voices in, hearing more opinions, getting more… a robust dialogue and discussion. And then what comes out of that, the policy that comes out of that is going to be so much more rich because we’ve had so much more input.
Ron: But why do I need to be a constituency? Why can I just not be a member of the Non-Commercial Stakeholders Group?
Female: Well, that’s a good question, and I think that is a question to ask the Board.
Milton: Actually, under the new working group proposal, you don’t have to be. It’s open. Do you remember that?
Ron?: Yeah.
Milton: So are you against that… cuts out
Cheryl LO: I see Zahid, I see Steve. I had Alan. Do you still wish to speak or has it gone beyond that? Oh, sorry, Kristina. I definitely see you Kristina. And I see Izumi, and I would suggest that you all remember that we mentioned we were taking sort of a macro view and drilling down? We’ve certainly drilled down.
Can I just say from the At-Large Advisory Committee’s perspective, which has only seen this model as of 6 PM yesterday, we have not begun to digest what this may or may not mean, how we do or do not wish to be involved, and what we will or will not say to those parties we were hoping to encourage into this part of the house? But things like bona fides, things like actual voice, things like why bring an organization that represents every single consumer of communications modalities in a country to a table that a tea and coffee club could equal are definitely on our agenda to discuss as well. So these are not fait accomplis, these are things we’ve yet to start discussing ourselves, so let’s step back from that.
I had the order and I’ve now totally forgotten. Thank you, Alan. And I keep forgetting you, sorry.
Philip?: inaudible 40.52
Cheryl LO: Just take over, you’re the chair as well.
Philip: Indeed.
Alan: Cheryl… Oh, I’m sorry.
Philip: Just for a clarifying point. Milton, as I understand it, what you were saying is that your whole focus is on the creation of the stakeholder group. The voting pattern you describe, the 1-2-4, is the stakeholder group membership?
Milton: Yeah. 41.19
Philip: Right. And that you are looking essentially at that as being the membership body, that being the body where a charter?
Milton: Yeah.
Philip: And your concept of constituencies is almost now the wrong terminology because we’re…
Cheryl LO: It’s confusing.
Philip: …we’re confused in terms of the old model. And it’s a birds-of-a-feather sort of policy people who may have policy ideas in common that they push through that structure, but structurally you’re looking at one structure with little policy groups that may give you policy input in some way or other for which a new Non-Commercial… a new NCUC will be one of. Is that correct?
Milton: Almost, but not quite. First of all, the constituencies do have membership, they do have their own structure insofar as they want to build one. They do nominate a chair and/or a representative to other bodies. So they can be as big and heavy as people want to make them, but the point is that the voting for the councillors is done at the NCSG level. Does that answer your question?
Cheryl LO: I still do have Alan, and then you, Zahid. Sorry.
Alan: A couple of things. As Cheryl so eloquently said, those with user non-commercial interests in this room have not come to agreement yet. We just started the discussion somewhere around 6 o’clock last night. Milton is presenting roughly what he presented to us. We had some interesting discussions. And how that comes out is not clear. Whatever the envisionment of the stakeholder group and the constituency that comes out of each of the four stakeholder groups is going to have to be approved by the Board, who may or may not approve it, and we don’t know that. So debating whether it’s the right one or the wrong one in this form I’m not sure has an awful lot of merit, and having spent a few hundred hours of my life on the creation of the overall GNSO structure that we’re talking about right now, I don’t remember an awful lot of formal interactions between the two stakeholder groups in a house. You know? And informally we may come to all sorts of nice things where we work together, but as an entity that has actual business to do, there is virtually none at this point. That may change as we evolve and the concept of… warm, fuzzy feeling of being in a house helps us, but right now I don’t think it’s a major issue, especially since as Milton said the Board is likely amenable to each stakeholder group having a different model from the others as applicable.
Cheryl LO: It was Zahid first, then…
Zahid: I’ll cede to her.
Cheryl LO: Okay. You cede? Go ahead.
Kristina: Thank you. Kristina Rosette, IPC. The question is primarily for Milton, but to the extent that it applies, Cheryl, to ALAC, it would be helpful to have your understanding too.
One of the issues that we’ve talked about this morning was cross-membership. In other words, do we want to have rules that would prohibit or guide participation in multiple constituencies, multiple stakeholder groups, and/or both houses by the same organization or individual? And that’s something that frankly we decided we weren’t going to have a chance of resolving in our two and a half hours and we’re going to continue to talk about. I would like to have, to the extent that there’s a position or a position in formulation as regards the non-commercial side, what those thoughts are. And again, Cheryl, to the extent that, for example, it’s come up about “If an ALS forms a constituency, can they remain an ALS?” etc., how you envision that all working because I think we’re going to see a lot of crosspollination.
Cheryl LO: If I may, Robert, I’ve got you in a speaking order if that’s fine. I’m just going to take the opportunity of answering because my answers are probably going to much shorter than Milton’s on this because again, we’re at arm’s length in this process. We already have situations where sitting around our At-Large Advisory Committee table are the operators of country cc-… So yeah, absolutely. In emerging and developing economies, in the many hundreds of new At-Large Structures that will be joining us in the next five to six years, you are unsuccessful if you’re trying to separate commercial, business interests, government input, and that of the voice of the user. However, if they would not be serving as an ALAC member as such, because when they get to serve the ALAC they’re serving for that committee, so we’re not looking at the same sort of risks, could we see an ALS sitting in both commercial and non-commercial? Very likely, particularly from some of the Africa and Asia areas. But as Carlton…
Is Carlton in the room, because I hate to paraphrase Carlton if he’s…? Carlton!
Carlton: Yeah.
Cheryl LO: Just come to the microphone for one moment and say how many hats you wear and that you are very capable of segregating them. He’s a perfect example. Jamaica. Oh here. laughter
Carlton: Well, I probably won’t use the same language, but the point that I was making was that in a lot of cases, at least where I come from, and in the part of the world where I come from, one person can wear a lot of hats. Like I probably wear about four and I don’t find any problem in just changing roles depending on where I am and what is required of me. And this is the way I’ve been living for lo these many years. And I don’t think I have a split personality at all.
laughter
Carlton: And so I find it extremely strange, the notion that you could not have multiple interests resident in one person. It really demeans the idea of the brain and how you can manage to work that. I just find it strange.
Milton: I’ll answer your question now. So we are dealing… Nobody denies that people have multiple interests, that, you know, I can be doing commercial consulting and I can be a university professor and I can be working for the government, you know, as a consultant or serving on some kind of a board. That isn’t the point. This is a political representation structure that we’re doing, okay? This is what you have to understand. The whole point of having different stakeholder groups is the assumption that these two entities have fundamental differences of perspective that need to be somehow balanced or represented. So the question of overlap or multiple participation really calls into… if taken too far… there may be marginal cases where you can do it, but if taken too far it calls into question the whole notion of having different stakeholder groups. Right? You just throw us all into one big pot and let us talk and work out something voting as a plenum. But if you are going to separate things, if you’re going to say, “Hey, registries and user groups have fundamentally different interests,” then I’m not going to let representatives of registries into the Non-Commercial Users Constituency. There is a conflict of interest that is indeed artificial – it’s a construct, but it’s a construct made by the need for a political representation process in which we’re trying to balance interests.
So if… You know, all I would say to people who have multiple hats is pay your money and take your choice. Which one do you want to be in? Insofar as the structure allows you to be in two, be in two or three, but if there’s a fundamental exclusivity that has to be enforced in order to maintain this structure, then you’re just going to have to make a choice. So a clear example in my case would be Commercial versus Non-Commercial Stakeholder Group, and particularly with respect to individuals. You know, if an individual can float freely between us and between them, that means that I can come into your meetings as a member of the Commercial Stakeholders Group and harass Philip, or vice versa. You know, what’s the point of having the different stakeholder groups to begin with?
Philip?: You reserve the right to harass me.
laughter
Milton: So yes, built into our assumptions is the idea that if you are a member of the Non-Commercial Stakeholder Group, for example, you are not a member of the Commercial Stakeholder Group, you are not a registry, you are not a registrar.
Cheryl LO: He’s been very inaudible 51.06. Philip just wants to respond, so…
Philip: This is not a harassing point, but just on the conflict of interest point, I mean, it’s something that we have had a few times within the business constituency. We have clearly in our rules conflict policy to say if you’re a register 51.24 or a registrar or very like it, then we will probably refuse your application, and I think that sort of conflict would continue because there’s a different place to go. There have always been grey areas and sometimes we’ve been flexible and sometimes we’ve been a little tougher. And when we have been flexible and accepted somebody like that, we have always told them at the time what the rules are in terms of the expected behaviour and given ourselves a right to go back, if you like, and to say, “Well, if your behaviour proves different and you appear to be advocating points that are in conflict, then we may come back to you and then we may ask our credentials people to look at you.” So that’s the way we’ve done it there. I suspect that sort of philosophy will continue within our stakeholders group.
Cheryl LO: Thank you, Zahid, you’ve been extraordinarily patient.
Zahid: Thanks to the Chair. And I’m Zahid Jamil, BC, yes, yes 52.25 inaudible. I’ve learned from my last time. I’m new with the GNSO, so I apologize. Some of the things I’m learning about the restructuring so, but this is what my understanding would be a problem, if supposing you had unlimited number of constituencies or small numbers sort of proliferating within the non-commercial construct, the issue is impact, the impact would be to proportional representation. My understanding is that the working groups are going to be formulating the policy. If more constituencies have a say or have a voice within those working groups from the NCUC, they would… and I agree with the point about the voice, but voices can drown out other voices as well, so that’s a question. And that’s why I think it’s a concern to many people in other constituencies, would an excessive number of constituencies without any sort of restrictions put the representative basis in the working groups into trouble or would there be… some sort of a stop gather 53.30 would take place. Thank you.
Milton: Yeah, it’s really not going to be a problem because the working groups are going to be open, so that if these… let’s say there’s 50 people that want to enter one of these working groups and 25 of them are for the Non-Commercial Stakeholder Group and 25 are from other stakeholder groups, if we can dump or – I shouldn’t use that word – if we can put 25 people in the stakeholder group…
laughter
Milton: I’m sorry. I’m being sarcastic and you shouldn’t… I mean, it’s just been a long day and…
Cheryl LO: We are live, the transcripts are posted, the mp3s get posted, and it goes into UN languages.
Milton: Yeah, yeah. Okay, good. Because how do you translate “dumped” into inaudible 54.15?
laughter
Cheryl LO: That’s what worries me greatly.
Milton: So if we can put 25… if there 25 people from NCSG who want to go into that working group, it doesn’t matter whether they are part of a constituency or not, it doesn’t matter what labels or packages they carry around them, they all go into the working group, and they, you know… So I understand if constituencies again were tied to some kind of representational structure, then this would be a problem, but the whole point of our structure is that they’re not and that makes it easy to form them, and so we say why not?
Zahid?: Can I just quickly respond to that? The WTO does have the concept of “dumping” and maybe there’s an anti-dumping agreement that we need here.
laughter
Zahid?: So with regard to the issue of open working groups, I completely understand, but I’m glad that you raise the point because we may need some sort of rules there also as to in the working groups, is it completely unlimited and anybody and anybody and any number can join? Because that might be something that we have to address, because if we’re just going to have a free-for-all, you might as well have the whole ICANN within a working group. So it’s something that we need to sort of think about.
Cheryl LO: Carlton, are you wishing a right of reply?
Carlton: cuts out …for clarification purposes, let us talk about universities, two universities. I would like to know what would be the position, let us say Harvard University were to apply and the University of California at Los Angeles, would you accept them both or not? And if so, on what basis?
Cheryl LO: To repeat the question, was would you accept Harvard or…
Carlton: Two universities.
Cheryl LO: Two universities, would you accept them?
Carlton: Harvard and the University of California at Los Angeles, and let us suppose that they applied for this new construct you’re talking about. What would be your… Would you accept them both and on what principle?
Milton: Why wouldn’t we accept them? They’re educational institutions.
Carlton: But one is a private corporation and one is a public one, one has lots of… one has a lot of patents that in some way makes it even almost a commercial entity, the other one… It’s all mixed up.
Milton: Yeah. Well, I understand that non-profits can be very profitable.
laughter
Milton: Fully aware of that, but in fact they’re organized as a non-profit and they would be eligible under our membership rules. Whether they are a…
Carlton: cuts outs …corporation.
Milton: …public university or a private university does not matter.
Cheryl LO: Robert, you’re the next on the speakers list.
Robert: I’ll just… I mean, I’ll speak briefly, but I think it’s…
Cheryl LO: Robert, who are you?
Robert: Yeah, my name is Robert Guerra. I’m a member of the At-Large Advisory Committee from North America. There’s a lot of comments that have been expressed in regards to At-Large and others that I think are not final. We just had a discussion yesterday and there was a presentation as to… you know, these discussions just kind of started yesterday. And so we started that discussion yesterday. I think what I’m saying in this meeting just now is that there are some of us that are just absorbing and seeing how this conversation is going, but really a small, limited number of people that are very actively involved. A lot of the back and forth really seems to be with some active individuals, and that’s great, but some of us actually need to… you know, some time to… umm, to just develop a position on this.
So I think that we’re proceeding on this slowly. My concern is that we have some limited time together, we have a comprehensive agenda, and we’ve not really moved forward. And so I think that let’s take advantage of other issues on the agenda as well and not just stay focussed on one issue. So I think I’m just concerned that we have limited time and we’re not really moving on the agenda.
Cheryl LO: Liz.
Liz: Taking note of my… Liz Williams. I’m on the Business Constituency’s Credentials Committee, which Philip promised me was a really easy job, but it actually sucks, because it brings together many, many, many of these issues that we have to deal with in terms of building new membership. And I’m also on the Nominating Committee. I’m also on the Nominating Committee and that starts on Friday and Saturday. So my broader interest in listening to the discussion is to think about ways in which we achieve broader objectives which are building…
Cheryl LO: Hello, Liz.
Liz: Hello, Cheryl. I was hoping you wouldn’t see me. A bit tired. But I think one of the things that we need to – and taking Robert’s point – we need to come back to the agenda. The broader principles are improving participation, getting willing volunteers to do unpaid work, and moving forward on really, really significant policy issues that are enabled under a sensible structure that is relatively transparent, relatively straightforward, relatively workable, and just do it, just do it so that we can move on to the really important work, which Milton has described, is the outreach to enable participation in ICANN from different groups of people.
And I agree with Milton entirely, having over many years worked in an environment where people give their time freely and it’s a very, very hard work, and it’s disagreeable and it’s contentious, and it’s expensive, and if you want to build the organization, you allocate resources to it and you do it properly. It’s a business development exercise, not some loosey-goosey “Oh yes, we’ll all be good mates and we’ll meet again in Cairo and then we’ll meet again in Mexico.” It has to be far more thoughtful and far more deliberate than just saying, “This is what we’re going to do over X period of time” and just hope that everyone comes along for the ride.
Cheryl LO: Robert. pause Okay, which means Beau, and that’s the end for this before we go back… In fact, could I just defend the agenda? We actually zoomed through a large part of the agenda. We mixed several points together, so… Sorry, Izumi?
Izumi: Am I on the queue or not?
Cheryl LO: I did not recognize you on the queue. If you wish to be on the queue, let me know.
Izumi: I’ve been waiting for 35.
Cheryl LO: Well, if you’ve been waiting for a long time, I will close off after you. Evan, you wanted to be there too? Beau?
Beau: I will pass in favour of continuing the agenda.
Cheryl LO: Thank you. Izumi, concise please.
Izumi: Yeah. I was wondering by the looking at the agenda, what exactly is “Inter-Stakeholder Group Issues” 59 or are.
Cheryl LO: Thank you. The chair of that session will clarify that question, won’t you? Evan?
Evan: I’ll yield if it means speeding things up and getting to the other stuff.
Cheryl LO: cuts out …in which case, Philip, it’s all yours. Three.
Izumi: Excuse…
Philip: All I did on the agenda was try to separate issues that are relevant to all of us here and some issues which are on item 2 which were between the two houses, and that was the only concept I was doing and with interest in addressing some of these issues, on the election issues there were two… there were a number of issues to do with elections I think there. We’ve heard in terms of how the approaches should do with council elections, that’s clear enough.
One question that we had is besides what’s likely to be some element of geographical diversity which will be imposed upon us, which may change from its current form, are you considering any other form of diversity besides that which would naturally emerge? And the second question is do we have any particular views in terms of Board election, bearing in mind also possible Board reorganization and slimming down whereby our original idea of one per house may be 24 because they’re only planning on having one from the GNSO altogether?
Izumi: If I may, to ask for the question to clarify, I was expecting certain issue-based or policy-related areas of our common interest, being the user house versus the supplier house, such as new gTLD or many other policy areas. But seemingly we are only concentrating on the structural issues. For the time being I’m fine…
Philip: Mexico, Mexico.
Izumi: For the time being, fine, but I just wanted to clarify, these are the sort of areas beyond the structural things, right? The substantive areas as well.
Philip: I mean, this is our first meeting, we just wanted to have a, you know, internal organizational issues. But I agree. I mean, I think, you know, once we’ve done all this nonsense and we’re actually back to what we should be doing at ICANN, then policy is what we’ll be talking about.
Izumi: And I’m sorry, by name is Izumi Aizu from At-Large, RALO, outgoing member of ALAC.
Philip: 31, inaudible.
Milton: I just heard you say that the Board representation of GNSO is… Is this just a rumour that it’s being cut to one or is it a decis-…?
Male: Recommendation… overtalking
Cheryl LO: It’s one of the recommendations.
Female: It’s in the Board report that was circulated yesterday.
Philip: It’s a recommendation external evaluator for an altogether slimmer Board. Steve, you’ve got some clarification on that?
Steve: Yeah, we have a short-term issue and potentially very long-term issue, maybe. The short-term issue is that the one unresolved piece of the 30-day consensus group recommendation on restructuring that was adopted by the Board, the one unresolved piece was our unanimous recommendation that basically this house would get to nominate or select one of the two people that the GNSO Council sends to the Board under the current structure, and the other house, the contracted parties, would select the other. And my understanding is that basically the concern has been raised by staff that this is not a good procedure and would conflict with the fiduciary obligations of Board members, and they’ve just circulated an alternative, and I just wondered whether… I think our position would be… although I haven’t really looked at this alternative very closely, but I think our position would be that since everybody in the working group, all the people from both houses agreed to this structure that we talked about, that we should certainly press for it if we can.
That’s the short-term issue because they have to decide that, you know, in the next month or so. The issue about whether we would go down to one, that’s a recommendation that was just brought out yesterday in the Board review so I think we’re a ways off from that if that is taken seriously at all, but obviously that review opens a lot of issues.
Alan: Just a small one, and it’s not of any concern to At-Large as such, but the recommendation that went out of the GNSO reorganization working group or whatever it was called, it was also noted just after the paper was submitted that there was probably no way to transition from what we had today to what we had then because of the way the seats were staggered and who they were currently allocated to. And we left it saying, “If they accept it, we’ll have to figure it out,” but it wasn’t clear there was an answer. So before we recommend it again, we should probably figure if it’s actually implementable.
Philip: So just on the election, can we take it that that recommendation that we came up with in terms of wanting to be able to at least recommend a name from this house for the Board election remains our position? Anybody feeling that’s where we are still? Okay.
Alan: At-Large, or ALAC took a position that we really would like to see voting across the entire council to say that this, these people were elected by the Council to the Board.
Philip: Yes, I think…
Alan: The mechanism of how the candidates were selected was not an issue for us.
Philip: Yeah. Thank you for the clarification. Second issue that’s also relevant to that, I think, is just clarification also where we think things should be, but my understanding is that by June or whenever the timing is, there will need to be new appointments from all of us into the new structure, and that will include the existing Nominating Committee people, and we would be going back to the Nominating Committee with the new descriptions in terms of the, you know, “One for this house, one for that house, and one yet undecided,” in terms of what they’re doing. That is our working assumption, we have yet to validate with the Board. Is that a vision you share also?
Milton: We’re getting really elaborate here. So if I recall, then yes the At-Large… the Nominating Committee appointments to the GNSO Council would still be three people, and one would be assigned to each house and the third would be homeless. laughter So… And…
Cheryl LO: laughter 05
Milton: What did they decide? Did the third… Did the homeless one vote or not?
Male: inaudible
Cheryl LO: No, no.
Milton: No. The homeless one is non-voting. Okay.
Male: inaudible
Milton: And that’s right, Avri has volunteered to be the homeless one, right? And… Yeah, okay. So…
Steve?: Yeah, and…
Male: inaudible the issue.
Male: inaudible
Steve?: I think the point that Philip was… If I can interrupt?
Milton: Yeah, yeah.
Steve?: The point Philip was raising is that this isn’t about Avri or any particular individual.
Milton: No, no, no.
Steve?: No one is inheriting a seat here. The Nominating Committee has to appoint new people – it could be the same people if they want – but just as nobody… as the people that the Intellectual Property Constituency has elected to the GNSO Council will not be… will not automatically remain on the Council, they will only be on the Council if they are elected by the stakeholder group or to the extent they are elected by the stakeholder group once the new Council is seated in June. And our view is that that applies to all the voting members of the Council, that they have to go back to the organization that put them there and they need to be appointed. In our case, the organization that put them there no longer has the right to put them there.
Milton: Okay. So my view of that, speaking really only for myself, but I suspect that most people in the NCUC would agree once we discussed, is that we just had an election, okay? As of the end of this meeting, we elected, you know, two new councillors and a new chair, and we would not like to re-elect anybody in six months’ time. We would like for the three existing councillors that we have to serve out their full term, and then when we’re expanding to six we would like for the new entity in a transitional basis to elect the additional three…
Steve?: Well…
Milton: …and we see… This seems like a transitional issue. It shouldn’t be difficult to execute.
Steve?: So in other words you’re saying that the… regardless of how the Non-Commercial Stakeholder Group is organized, the Non-Commercial Users Constituency elects three members to the Council? 05… overtalking
Milton: Only for the term that… the ones that… to fill out their term.
Male: What term?
Milton: Their two-year term.
Steve?: If it goes beyond June then the Council they were elected to will no longer exist. I mean, the way we approach this problem in our constituency, as we obviously have the same problem, as we had elections coming up, is we amended our bylaws to extend the terms of our existing representatives and they will serve until the new… until the stakeholder group elects its people that will go on the Council beginning in June.
Milton: But we had this election…
Steve?: We 35 that because we elected these people… Our constituency no longer has… will no longer as of June have the right to elect anybody, and neither will your constituency, so the stakeholder group has to elect them. Now the stakeholder group may say, “Okay, we’ll endorse or ratify that decision,” but again, in the case of the Nominating Committee, like the Nominating Committee has to decide who they want to appoint to those posts.
Milton: Well, I think that that should be up to the stakeholder group pretty much how to decide, you know, how they do this transition. And because, you know, the… I mean, again, it’s a question of efficient use of time. Do we want to be thrashing about having another election every six months or do we want these people to be on the Council and functioning?
Alan: There’s going to have to be another election, the question is do you elect three or six?
Milton: Yeah, okay. There’s going to have to be another election. But yanking people out of office after six months is not a very smart thing to do.
Alan: May I suggest this is yet another thing that the various contributors to the NCSG have to decide and then be approved by the Board, so debating the merits here are probably not right? My view by the way, for the NomCom people, is assuming that the existing two people – because there’s… – well, or three people for a month or two could come to an agreement on where they fit within the organizations, that they would not be reappointed, but that was my take, I never discussed it with anyone.
Philip: Thanks for the point. Now from Cheryl on my left an then from Steve.
Cheryl P: It wants to stay there. 16 Yeah, okay. What I’m wondering is… Oh, Cheryl Preston. I’m in NCUC as a member. In the new stakeholder group, the question is what’s going to be different if the new constituencies are just merely voluntary collections of people who say, “Yeah, we agree on this or that,” then it doesn’t change the representative nature or the input of voices at all. And if the new constituencies… I mean, if the stakeholder group votes on everything as a majority, then it’s just whichever stakeholder… whichever individual constituency has the most members still elect all the Council seats. It seems to me that once our new stakeholder group is formed, we have a new charter, that we’re going to have to reconfigure and renegotiate how those voices are represented and therefore it would mean a new election.
Steve: Yeah, thank you. Just two brief points. The reason I raised this was not really to get into how the stakeholder groups would elect their people but to see if whether we had a common position on the NomCom people, and perhaps we don’t but I raised that for that purpose.
And second, I think, you know, Milton, you have to look at it from our perspective. Yes, it may be a matter of indifference to you whether you re-elect the three because the three you elect will be able to go on, but we on this side of the house don’t have that luxury because obviously the nine people re-elected at various times cannot automatically go onto the Council. So we have to have an election, we don’t see why we should have an election and you wouldn’t have an election…
laughter
Steve: …and we certainly don’t see why the… if we both, all have to have an election, why the Nominating Committee wouldn’t have to make its selection again.
Milton: But I don’t understand the linkage there. I mean, the fact that you have to have an election has to do with the fact that you had nine representatives and are going down to six, and in fact we’ll have to have an election to add three to the three that we already have, so I don’t…
Philip: Well, alright, okay. There are all sorts of transitional rules and we can have, you know, last in/first out, first in/first out rules as well applied. But anyway… And I think we need to look at that.
Beau, I think you had a point, and then I’d like to move on to just raising the issue of vice president and all that. Beau first.
Beau: Well, forgive me, because this might interrupt the flow, but my name is Beau Brendler with the ALAC. I’m trying to figure out how to explain this to people here and I’m one of the people who… There was some reference to “scuttlebutt” about a group brought up earlier, I happen to be one of the people who is part of that scuttlebutt and we were thinking about trying to form a new group within Milton’s structure, or within the structure that was evolving because we felt that some of the issues…
Philip: But for the purpose of the translators, could you define “scuttlebutt” in a less colloquial way?
Beau: 39 Rumour. I don’t… Yeah.
Philip: Thank you.
Beau: So anyway, what I’m trying to figure out with this thing here is if we’re… if this group, this untranslatable group wanted to break off and represent issues that we did not think were being adequately addressed within the realm of the ALAC, then what happens? We elect so-… I mean, I want to kind of like take this to people and try to get them interested in it and tell them about it, but I have no clue what any of this ultimately translates to. So I know we’re going to talk about elections and vice presidents and all that, but I still don’t get why we’re talking about this. And I don’t mean that as a criticism, I just mean it’s way too abstract for me to explain it to anyone.
Milton: 33, okay, after this meeting?
Beau: That would be fine.
Philip: Okay. Let’s… Let me just raise that last bullet point there, “Vice President.” One of our roles as a house is to elect our own vice president.
Male: It’s “vice chair.”
Philip: Vice chair. It’s always “vice chair,” isn’t it? Yes. I’m lost in French sometimes. The… Just open thoughts really in terms of any views as to the way that we do that, the timing we do that, we’ll need to think about that, etc.
Got Marilyn, yeah.
Marilyn: Philip, I have a question. My name is Marilyn Cade, I’m a member of the BC. What is the job description of the vice chairs? Is it the same job description now that there’s one vice chair? There was previously no vice chair, now there’s one vice chair. Is the job description a… the split of that job description or is there a new description? Do we know?
Philip: Even the current description of the current vice chair is not as comprehensive as it might have been, because that particular element… job was curtailed, and indeed there is no job description of these two new roles.
Marilyn: Just a follow-up. It seems difficult to think about hiring a person to fill a position when there is no job description, so to speak.
Philip: Indeed. Thank you for bringing up the point I was hoping was going to be raised.
Cheryl LO: Alan, I am going to repeat that into the mic. laughter He indicated that that’s never stopped us before.
Philip: Other points to do with our own internal relationships before we go back to agenda item 2, which is to cover some of the relationships between our houses? No. Alright, Mike.
Cheryl LO: It’s all sorted. laughter
Mike: Well, I guess… I heard Milton say that in the new… in the Non-Commercial Stakeholder Group that the existing NCUC would have three seats, and that seems to me to be presumptuous. If there’s several other constituencies that join, won’t you all have to sit together and decide that issue?
Milton: Well, our process for creating the NCSG will have to be approved by the Board and by, you know, the people involved in making it, yeah. But let’s put it this way. If we are going to make this transition and you want a de novo election, then I would say let’s do that after the June meeting because that means basically we have to start planning the election in March essentially. And so we just had an election and again, it’s just a distraction – it’s not policy making, it’s not what we’re supposed to be doing, there probably isn’t going to be a huge difference because these new constituencies will not be suddenly, you know, completely altering the composition or character of the Non-Commercial Stakeholders Group. We don’t see any evidence that there will… you know, there will be massive change in that regard and because there’s three more slots, there’s plenty of room for new people to fit into the Council. So it seems like the cost-benefit ratio is a bit screwy there.
Mike: And just to be clear, I wasn’t suggesting that it happen tomorrow. I actually was suggesting, or meant after the June meeting. Same with our house, we will continue to have nine representatives until the June meeting, so…
Milton: But I think it’s a very critical issue whether we continue the old structure up to and including the June meeting or whether we do it… we end it before and implement the new one at the June meeting. That’s a big difference because that means that there’s a three-month back period in which you’re preparing for the new structure.
Mike: I think we agree on the latter, that we would start the new structure after the June meeting.
Philip: I think the phrase might have been “by June.” I’m not…
Milton?: By the June the meeting.
Philip: Oh, okay.
Cheryl LO: “By”?
Philip: Yeah, Council is seated by the June meeting. Here we go.
Mike: Yeah, well, new TLDs were expected a year and a half ago as well.
laughter
Philip: Well, indeed, yeah. Timelines are transitory maybe, yeah.
Okay. Let’s just go back and take up a couple of these inter-house issues. And if that… I mean, bullet point 2 there… We covered one earlier. Bullet point 2, the “Expectations for Appointee of the third NomCom,” and actually that raises partly again the issue that Steve was asking. I mean, one of our reasons for thinking that we would like to see the NomCom reappoint all three is precisely because their job descriptions are changing. If the person’s going to be assigned to one house or other, that’s different to the way they have been so far and we need to see indeed what the expectation is for the third non-voting NomCom in terms of what their role is, and that might also change the parameters for appointment.
That was the thinking that we had. What’s the view around the table?
Milton and then Liz.
Milton: Again, my view in terms of minimizing thrashing about, minimizing bureaucracy is that there should be some continuity as a transitional thing so that the existing NomCom appointees, I would prefer to see them simply, you know, self-selected or assigned to one of the two houses and when their term runs out, they’re replaced. I really just don’t want to see everybody on the Council being there new. It’s just…
Philip: Liz.
Liz: Just a question for clarification. Who’s writing the job description of the third… To use Marilyn’s phrase, who’s writing the job description of the third NomCom appointee and how does it make its way back to the Nominating Committee? And I did see Tricia here was in the room, the Chair of the Nominating Committee. But how does the Nominating Committee know what you want? How is that going to come back? Because that does matter. It does matter in terms of…
Philip: I sus-…
Liz: …quantum of skills… Sorry, Philip. This is… two parts to the thing. Quantum of skills around the table. If you go with Milton’s point, which is a sensible maybe transition, “Yes, let’s not have two much newness going on all at once,” do you want someone completely outside? Do you want somebody who could come out of the pool? I’d urge specificity about what you require because the Nominating Committee cannot operate in a vacuum of “Oh, bloody hell. We don’t know what they want. We’ll give them something entirely inappropriate,” which doesn’t match for the work that has to be done, coming back to the practicality of the work that’s required.
The second part of it is, is there a necessity to… Again a question, a clarifying question. Is there any necessity to appoint the third Nominating Committee member or indeed anyone to a specific house? Can they not be floating between the two as information exchanges? Yeah, so the point about appointing to one house or the other or self-selected isn’t a question, it’s they must be floating between the two.
Female: 27
Male: What do you mean by “floating between the two”?
Liz: That… Sorry? What’s the ans-…
Milton: The requirement under the bicameral structure is that one of the NomCom appointees is to the user house and one to the supplier house.
Liz: And the third?
Milton: And the third is homeless.
Liz: That’s…
Male: 46 sits on Council.
Ron?: Tricia just walked into the room. Perhaps she might answer the question.
Liz: Lovely, excellent.
laughter
Alan: One is going to be appointed to each house, not on a stakeholders group but just in the house, and one is appointed to Council with the functional equivalence to the ALAC liaison, for instance, that sits on Council, can talk, can’t vote. And I’m assuming… My assumption was, assuming the three existing councillors can decide on which place they feel comfortable in. The NomCom is not really geared up to appoint someone for the 1st of June, that they would take the… The only slightly controversial part is to determine whose terms… you know, whoever’s term is up this coming year and they take that particular slot, that’s the one that’s renewed. It would be nice to tell the current NomCom which is going to be which so they know which position they’re filling, and I’m assuming just like Council is asked every year what you’re looking for in this year’s appointment, the answer will differ based on which house it’s from or if it’s from the non-house. But it’s business as usual.
Liz: So the top-line point is be specific in a framework of uncertainty, if there can be specificity about what’s required by when, it just makes people’s lives a little easier. Yeah.
Alan: You may have an easy job this year with specificity or not. We’ll see.
Philip: No, I think that point is right. Remember the third NomCom is non-voting as well, so that is a slight… a difference.
Going back to earlier point about who writes the job descriptions? I suspect that should be a role for the new committees and teams formed within the GNSO. That would seem to make eminent sense.
Male: 43 every year inaudible.
Philip: Yes, exactly. But that should be I think where it happens.
I got Ron and then Steve on the list.
Okay. Oh, Ron was pointing our Tricia. Okay, Tricia, would you like to respond to anything or…
laughter
Philip: …do you feel capable of responding to anything yet?
Tricia: No, I probably need to know the questions 03 inaudible.
laughter
Tricia: …and also in which role you’re asking me that. laughter
Philip: Okay. Let me take Steve’s point first. That might help close off this particular discussion, and then we’ll come back to that.
Steve: Well, yes. I don’t want to thrash about aimlessly either, but I’m kind of mystified that people don’t see this. This is a fundamental question of the legitimacy of a person sitting in a decision-making role within this organization. Everybody on the Council that is seated in June will have been selected by a stakeholder group for the position in which they are sitting. And I’m not going to get into the details of how any particular stakeholder group is going to do that, but they’re going to have some method, and it’s not going to be because they were on the Council before – that by itself will not be enough. And I think the same is true of the Nominating Committee appointee – it is not enough that they were on the Council before, and if the Nominating Committee wishes to appoint them again, that’s great and they should appoint them to the specific seat that’s involved, because it now makes a difference which seat they have. It didn’t make a difference before. Now it makes a difference (a) whether they have a vote and (b) where that vote is counted.
And it’s to the Nominating C-… As this not jiving with the schedule of the Nominating Committee, I recognize that. We did not create this problem. We did not create this problem, but it is a problem that has to be solved and I think it has to be solved by the Nominating Committee.
Milton: Well, just to respond, I think you’re being a little too rigid about the nature of this transition. This is the “GNSO Improvements,” it’s not a complete rebirth and reinvention of the GNSO. So that the idea that there’s some overlap between Council representatives on a transitional basis is not a legitimacy problem. It’s basically a practicality problem from our point of view. And the problem will go away. I understand that Steve is a little bit irate about the overall nature of the change, but don’t take it out on us.
Philip: Tricia, do you want to make any general comments? I mean, we’re having discussions really about how we do some of this stuff and some of the principles behind the nature of working together, the nature of how the new… in particular how the new non-commercial group would look. And a couple of the differences that we came up I think with there is that, you know, whereas in the commercial group we’ve got three robust constituencies who are sort of coming together and may later add others and we’re looking at how that works in transition, whereas the vision here is an expansion of NCUC and then essentially a dissolving of that so that the stakeholder group becomes the place where the action happens, where the main charter is, and where the elections are happening as it will with us, but also… and then we’ll allow in potentially numerous constituencies who will have more of a policy, you know, birds-of-a-feather role rather than the more formal administrative roles they’ve had in the past. So that’s part of the discussions we’ve been having and just, you know, any observations you have would be very welcome.
Tricia: Well, I think I should say I’m delighted. When I left this room, which was probably about 20 minutes ago because I had to make a phone call which turned out to be longer, I wasn’t sure that actually there was going to be any agreement or moving to-… So I think progress has been made while I’ve been out, so that’s very good.
Answering on… laughter Answering your point in just very general terms, I mean, I think in terms of Nominating Committee guidelines and rules – and those that have sat on Nominating Committee before I’m sure are going to be helpful to the Chair – I think there isn’t an overriding responsibility in terms of the broad representative interest to make sure that you’re taking into account what is needed. So there’s the overall responsibility in terms of the broad interest but also in terms of the areas that you’re solving as well. And there’s been some discussion actually with Chris Disspain on the specific 43 which again bring that out.
So at a very helicopter or 30,000 feet even, around helicopter level, I think anything or any structure or any requirements that are needed have got to be taken into account, and that we will need to make sure happens. And that actually is the case. I think this year’s Nominating Committee is going to be very interesting because of the various changes which are happening. And I think in the same way, as for the ALAC Review Working Group where we were aware that things were going on, we had to work out how we could take some of those things into account, I think the same’s going to have to be true on Nominating Committee as well. And I think one important factor – and this is me speaking personally now – is really trying to identify the requirements for each agreement and then also reach agreement on the transition arrangements, because if the transition arrangements – and this is what I would actually have said to Steve who raised this with me yesterday – then I think it’s then clear as to what we’re working to. So there’s a broad agreement as to what is going to happen and then in terms of the timing of that, agreeing when that’s going to be implemented because you might in the transitioning decide that actually that’s going to happen over a period of a year or two, in which case that can be fed in, or you can say, “It absolutely has to happen by XYZ date,” in which case that can be fed in.
So I think we’ll need input from you not just on what’s your requirements and what’s going to happen but be also to consider the transition timing and then that has to get fed in to the Nominating Committee’s work. Fortunately, we can get on with the job because there’s a lot of work of getting the Statements of Interest, working out the different candidates, working out the 54. So you’ve got a few months with at least one or two ICANN meeti-… well, let’s say one ICANN meeting, to try and get some clarity on that point. And that’s where I’m thinking of that we move to hand-… Any other way I don’t think will work.
So I don’t know if that’s… that’s in general terms, but if that’s helpful.
Philip: Yes, it is. Thank you very much. Unfortunately the clock is against us, so we need to close very shortly. Just before we do, a quick question. I certainly found this an extremely useful meeting. I would recommend we had another one in Mexico City. Does that seem to be like a good idea generally? All those in favour say “aye.” Very good. All those against say “nay.” laughter
Male: Can we have a 37?
Philip: And indeed, there’s even chance, Izumi, we might actually have some policy on the agenda then. Let’s see if that’s also possible, perish the thought.
And on that note, thank you very much to my two co-chairs. We’ll close this meeting and we can adjourn to our little bunkers. Goodbye.
Cheryl LO: And principle of housekeeping, there is another meeting starting in this room right now. Therefore those of you who desire to not be somewhat more rudely than at other times asked to leave, particularly those around the main table, please do so. Coffee is being served, that should be a great motivator to get you outside for the next 15 minutes. laughter
Male: Cheryl… 23
Izumi: The next one is a working group thing on the At-Large Review, followed by the Knujon or the report from the fast flux thing.
Cheryl LO: Izumi, you will have to give five minutes to clear the room. pause
Robert, I need to talk to you and Milton outside in five minutes. Can I… 59…
01 to 1.51.20
Izumi: Okay. Are we ready? I have extracted the latest versions from Patrick and Carlton and a comment from Beau to my draft text. I don’t think we can do all of them in 45 minutes thing, so we better have some priority. And because we were sort of blamed that you only concentrating on the Board seat thing, so shall we set aside that and talk about this individual internet user thing first? pause I put that on the screen if you like to see and I can read it.
“The ALAC agrees that it should be the main channel for individual Internet users to participate in the ICANN policy making processes, noting its bottom-up representation process contributes a lot to its legitimacy.” And then there’s the alternative, or the Board made some amendment on the definition: “The ALAC agrees that it should be the main channel for individual Internet users – from novices to experts, who may or may not be domain name registrants – to participate in the ICANN policy making processes…”
And then a second paragraph: “At the same time, the ALAC thinks there is some merit to have Internet users, including individuals, but also academia, domain name registrants and small businesses, acting in their own capacity, to be represented in GNSO.”
And then: “Regarding the strengthening of processes for providing advice on policy the ALAC welcomes the suggestion to improve the interactions between SOs and the ALAC. With regard to the policy advice work for the ALAC itself, the committee points out that the very nature of the multi-layer, bottom-up process within the At-Large requires more time to elaborate positions. The 30-day comment period will be difficult to match without short-circuiting a large part of the community, which is against the very nature of the At-Large. Even a 40-day period implies very tight deadlines.” That’s what Carlton wrote, right?
So what to do with this?
Robert: I just want to suggest two maybe minor changes. Can you just go to the top? Umm, I think there’s…
Izumi: You mean the 47?
Robert: Yeah, we used… Okay. So that second… Yeah, so the second paragraph, I would say “…noting bottom-up representation contributes a lot to its legitimacy…” would it be better not to just remove “a lot to its legitimacy,” because then someone might say, “To what extent?” So just that, we’ll just remove a little bit of the doubt.
I think, let’s see here, there was another… I think towards the last sentence or the last paragraph, if you just go down to the bottom bottom.
Izumi: Where?
Robert: Uh… Yeah, okay. So here, “The 30-day comment period,” what we’re not mentioning is the consultation that we do. So let’s say “The 30-day… is difficult to match as it would not allow for consultation” or something like that. So somehow saying that the reason why we need more than 30 days is that we just don’t comment, we actually have to seek consultation and from there then get comments. And so that… So “We cannot conduct an adequate consultation,” something like that, and so that way they would say that, well, we actually are doing that role and that’s why we need more time.
Izumi: 03
Robert: inaudible
Izumi: Well, this can be worked up later inaudible
Robert: Yeah, yeah. But just to get that sentiment.
Izumi: Some subject areas.
Umm… So are we happy with 19 thing here? inaudible we may or may not… overtalking
Male: Have you seen the link to the…
32 to 1.56.03
Beau: Are we being translated and transcripted again?
Female: No.
Izumi: 06
Beau: Okay. pause Wendy sent me a message. I haven’t heard any protest about that wording. Wendy did send a message that raised a philosophical issue that I’m not necessarily sure about. I see her point, but…
End of Audio
