ALAC Meeting
(Held June 23, 2008)
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Attendance:
23 june 2008 ccnso
Participants: the ALAC and the ccNSO Council
Cheryl Langdon-Orr
Chris Disspain
Nick Ashton-Hart
Ron Sherwood
Jacqueline Morris
Sébastien Bachollet
Dotty Sparks
Bart Boswinkel
Hong Xue
Fatimata Seye Sylla
Alan Greenberg
Wendy Seltzer
Don Hollander
Staff: Nick Ashton-Hart, G Schmittek, Bart Boswinkel, Frederic Teboul, M Langenegger
APRALO ExCo: (Cheryl Langdon-Orr; Chair)
ICANNN: Nick Ashton-Hart
Chris Disspain, CEO of au Domain Administration Ltd. auDA
Ron Sherwood, trustee of NIC.VI
Jacqueline Morris, ALAC Chair
Sébastien Bachollet, Isoc France President
Dotty Sparks
Fatimata Seye Sylla
John Fung (Director Information Technology Resource Centre, Hong Kong Council of Social Services john.fung@HKCSS.org.hk T. +852 28642971)
Hong Xue
Alan Greenberg
Wendy Seltzer
Don Hollander, General Manager of ABTLD
Minutes taken by: C Langdon-Orr
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Cheryl: Thank you ladies and gentleman. Just noting the time, it’s three if not four minutes after the hour. So while this is a working lunch, please continue having lunch and feel free to get up and get some more because there is plenty for us to enjoy today, but we should start the business part of this meeting. Hello, my name is Cheryl Langdon-Orr and I’m the chair of the ALAC. Gentlemen to my left I think some of you know. Perhaps you’d like to identify himself laughs.
Chris: Okay. Good afternoon everyone. My name is Chris Disspain. I’m the chair of the CCNSI Council.
Cheryl: And at this point and time, both Chris and I are going to take a relaxed attitude to the meeting and hand over to our liaison because we have to make our liaisons work don’t we so we get to put up our hands and join the speakers list when they notice us just like the rest of you. But we are in fact letting the meeting be run by our two liaisons. Might I add, this is not being translated. Nick, nick, is this thing translated?
Nick: Yes.
Cheryl: Okay, I hadn’t turned around that’s all, They might have been having their lunch. Therefore you will need to have headsets unless you speak French, English and Spanish and you need to note that number one channel is for French, number two channel is for English, number three channel is for Spanish and more importantly than that, because it is being translated, the only voice the people listening to the interpretation will hear is that of the interpreters so when you speak please identify yourself and speak slowly, yes. So it just helps the 14. At that point which of you two is going to take control of this meeting, I hand you Jacqueline.
Jacqueline: Okay, welcome everyone. I am Jacqueline Morris the ALAC liaison to the CCNSO and this is Ron.
Ron: Hello, I’m Ron Sherwood the liaison from the CCNSO laughter.
Jacqueline: Okay, what we wanted to do with this meeting was really explore some of the issues that might be of interest both to the ALAC and to the CCNSO and we have a rough agenda. Very rough laughs. We have an agenda that we worked out and said do we leave some of the areas that we thought might be areas we would have joint interest. So is inaudible 03.24. Those are the geographic regions, the IDN fast track for ccTLD’s, the new TTLD process, the length of the public commentary because we have some issues with getting comments and responses from a global community in the brief 30 day period especially in most of the languages. Improving communications between the advising committee and the supporting organization both at the regional level and at the local level and the CCNSO participation working group which is cuts out 04.08. So Bart was going to talk to us about geographic regions yesterday and didn’t get around to it so I don’t know if he has time to come and give us an update on that right now and then we can talk about.
Bart: inaudible 04.24
Jacqueline: You can have lunch first. laughs Okay. Yes Sébastien.
Sébastien: 05
Jacqueline: Okay, thank you Sébastien. So which area would you like to talk to?
Cheryl: Okay, in terms of geographic region. I’m standing up because I need to go and get a spoon anyway or a fork. I can’t eat salad with my fingers, I’m good but I’m not that good. One of the recommendations in this week’s released ALAC review paper is really highlighting the issue we have in some of our regions, but specifically Asia Pacific with the size and scope of that region. Now I’m quite sure that it’s going to be no surprise to anybody in this table that we have, you know, half the world’s population in an enormous land mass and it really ought to be broken up into something smaller to make it manageable and useable. In the interim, prior to reorganization of the geographic localities that ICANN uses, the suggestion was to in fact appoint two additional Asia Pacific representatives to the ALAC. We thought it was important that we had that on the table and get your reaction seeing as we know that you are all very interested in matters geographical. We, as was mentioned yesterday, it didn’t quite get through to our briefing but I’d like to suggest that it’s worthwhile to chat, a very brief chat, but a chat.
Female: Hello, I have short question because in that meeting yesterday there was a paper mentioned of the year 2000 where there was a proposal of building 11 sub-regions so could you… do you know this because anyone could explain that because then we don’t have to invent the wheel again if it’s already there so that would be interesting at least to know, thanks.
Chris: Who mentioned it?
Female: inaudible 08.28 mentioned it, he said there had been a proposal on the plate. They started already the regions because of this presentation problem for users especially so to get a little bit closer to the users to have a better regional representation which was the intent of those who did the ALAC reviews too.
Chris: Well, it’s news to me and it seems to be news to Bart as well that neither of us have heard of it. Dotty do you know anything about it?
Dotty: Too many things at ICANN have changed since then. The year 2000 was part of the old structure and not the restructured of supporting organizations. And at that point they had like 12 ALAC members on the board, which has completely changed laughs. Maybe it wasn’t quite that many but it was quite a lot, it was like an organization designed for ALAC.
Male: Sorry, it wasn’t ALAC then.
Dotty: It wasn’t called ALAC then.
Male: It was WHOIS’s 09.48.
Dotty: Yeah, it was not called ALAC then. But I don’t think that 2000 can offer us a lot of insight into today’s world.
Male: Thanks.
Chris: May I just say something else? Okay, can I suggest that in respect to the geographic regions we’re very happy to run through with you, if you think it’s useful, briefly what our recommendations were and what we would like to see. I suspect that most of what we say is more to do with what we’d like to have happen to find out what we’d like to see because actually we didn’t, as I recall, come up with really many solutions when we did our review. What we came up with was a distinct feeling that the current situation wasn’t acceptable. So Bart is just finishing up his lunch and I will continue to tap down of the spot until such time as he makes it to the microphone. I’ll also give you a little history.
We… the main reason why we started the review of the geographic regions was not because of size necessarily but more because we had an issue with the fact that some territories are put into a particular region because they are… their “mother country” for want of a better expression, is from that region. So to take an example, the Cayman Islands, which as far as I can remember floats somewhere off the coast of America, is actually in Europe according to ICANN. Now it was an issue for some people that this was the case. On the other hand, there are some territories in the Pacific Islands for example that are French territories and for them, and for France it wasn’t an issue at all. So… but we couldn’t come up with, we couldn’t obviously come up with an answer that was firm that said you should do one thing or the other. But because of that, that was the issue that started the ball rolling and once we got into it, we kind of discovered that actually it’s difficult in many ways from a regional point of view.
From the point of view of the CCNSO structure for example, you can’t have four members of the CCNSO in the North American region and, of course, and there could only be another three members I think, ‘cause I think the eighth one is actually unoccupied so it’s hard to see how they could be a member. And yet, that particular region of North America appoints the same number of councillors to the CCNSO council as the Asia Pacific which has, from memory, 75 countries in it but members that, I think we’re up to 20 or something members, and Latin America which has less territories but has an equally high level of membership. So for that reason we looked at the regions and started to think about whether there was anything that we could do. The conclusion that we came to was that we could voluntarily… we could introduce a voluntary election of the territory to be in a region that it was actually geographically located in rather than some, rather than where its mother country was. But we had to insert into that an obligation that the government of the territory agreed because we couldn’t have… we knew that if we didn’t allow for some government agreement on that then it was going to cause a major problem. So to take, to go back to Cayman as an example, Dave Archibald is the CCTLD manager of Cayman, should now be able to elect to be in the North American region if that’s his choice, provided that the government of Cayman is comfortable with that and as it turns out, they are, but only for the purposes of the CCNSO. If you want to come sit here, you can use this microphone.
Bart: inaudible 14.24
Chris: Oh, okay, cool. I thought you were still behind me eating otherwise I would have shut up ages ago laughs. Do you want to take it now?
Bart Yeah, a bit more of the background. If you look at the way the I-CAN geographic regions are defined currently, it goes back to say 2000 at the Yokohama meeting and that was under the, I think the structure at the time. And what was the result is that you have in fact two criteria to define to what region you belong. So in principle there are five geographic regions and everybody agreed at Yokohama that there should be five including the GAC. Now the mechanism to assign the territory to one of these regions is two-fold. The first one is where is the territory located which is what you would say the natural one and the second one had to do with I think At-large at the time. I think it were called At-large at the time. It is a resident’s criteria or a citizenship criteria. And for that reason the Cayman Islands belong to Europe because they have an English passport and this is the way it’s interpreted. Now, so that was up from 2000 up to 2003 and at the Montreal meeting when the whole by-laws were reviewed again, and these two criteria and therefore the geographic regions as they are were confirmed again by the ICANN board so there’s no change. So this goes back, and you can see what Chris already indicated, say within some regions of this world, they’re not just I-CAN geographic reasons but for instance the Caribbean, the Pacific Islands, you have this problem of this double criteria and they are effected by it so that’s what.
The second point is, and I say this is the start of the… more or less this process is, according to the by-laws, there needs to be a review of the I-CAN geographic regions and it should have started somewhere before 2006 but as with all the reviews there is… it takes some time to get them started and it takes… overtalking 16.53
Chris: Well I overtalking 16.54 like to start a review unless he knows what the answer’s going to be.
Bart: Yeah, and in this one it’s really an issue. Now when the CCNSO working group started discussing the I-CAN geographic regions there were in fact, were two major issues. One was a matter of representation and the matter of representation is where, say for instance the Cayman Islands is the best example because he was driving… Dave Archibald 17.22 was driving this process, is he is say very aligned with the North American region.
O: one phone beep - someone has joined
Bart: And then he has, say he belongs according to the ICANN definition to the European region. Now I guess you’d know how many countries around and if you look at distribution, I think there are about 75 territories belonging to the European region and he doesn’t have any connection with Europe. So that was the first issue that was representation and how do you get elected into the CCNSO council and now it gets complicated from hereon in overtalking 18.04
O: two phone beeps - someone has exited
Bart: … want to get into the board and I think the representation issue is one that is interesting for ALAC as well. So there is this combination. The second one, and say the CCNSO working group did not reach consensus on this one, say somebody in the CCNSO working group at the time felt this was also an important factor to increase participation in the work of the CCNSO, specifically in ICANN generally. But say there was a majority within the working group who felt there are other regions why participation is lacking and so you couldn’t use this argument for reviewing the geographic regions. So that is to say the discussions within the CCNSO working group. Now during the work it became very clear that the whole definition of the ICANN geographic regions doesn’t only impact the CCNSO but it also impacts, for instance, the way the board is elected and the distribution on the board, that’s one. Secondly, for instance, ALAC it has I think some consequences for the GNSO as well, but I’m not sure. And what you have as well… and that’s the interesting thing is you have a complete parallel structure which is through the ASO. The RIR’s define their own geographic regions. Well that region’s for instance the Middle East is within the European territory. Because IPE NCC allocates the IP addresses to the Middle Eastern countries and to Russian from say from the West border up till the Pacific Ocean. So the whole Russia is within the European region for that specific reason. So that is a bit outside of the geographic but you’ll see there are parallel structures within ICANN. So that’s the point where we got to with the report.
Now the recommendation itself of the working group is to set up a working group, a broad working group, yeah that’s always… laughter Good recommendation huh? (laughter Yeah, yeah, yeah. Which includes say members from ALAC, GNSO, CCNSO and ASO and to start working on what is a reasonable definition of the ICANN geographic regions. And if you go back, I think it was the Los Angeles meeting when the board passed the resolution? Yeah. Either… or at the San Juan and say at that time the ALAC CCNSO, but that was a bit ludicrous because they came up with the report itself and they think to say if it’s a good idea to start this working group, the ASO / NRO, GNSO, I think ASAC 21.24 as well were requested whether or not to set up such a working group. And what will happen in the next couple of weeks, and I know this has been going on, the ICANN staff is giving follow up on that board resolution to seek input from say the ASO, ALAC, GNSO on whether these constituencies are in favour of setting up such a working group and maybe of what would be the mandate or the criteria for such a working group and start working. And as soon as I can start, as the feedback from these constituencies then we go into the next stage and report back to the board. That’s where we are with the geographic regions.
Chris: Thank you Bart. There was another component that you didn’t mention and that was the language component. You talked about the Middle East but in fact that was divided, the Middle East was divided and you had Arabic speaking people in two different regions and so there are more than the components that have just been discussed so it’s a fairly complicated matter.
Bart: 46 Yeah, you are quite right but this was the final stages and say that was part of the participation. There was severe resistance from the African region to create new types of regions based for instance on language just for the purposes of the CCNSO. So of the five regions I think remain intact, it’s more a matter of distribution among these five ICANN geographic regions but that’s my own personal view.
Chris: Just to cut to the chase there is going to be a review of the geographic regions. There has to be, it’s in the by-laws. We have produced a recommendation that there be this cross constituency ICANN review of the geographic regions. It will happen, it’s just a timing issue but your, your review thing about changes to the regions is perfect timing because it will push hopefully this along a little bit faster and that’s, thank you, that’s it.
Jacqueline: You beat me to the cut to the chase Chris. I’m painfully aware of our limited time and our agenda and clears throat 24.16 normally people can hear me but clears throat 24.18 the translator should be on and hopefully we are of the timing and I’d like to suggest that if there is nothing burning in anyone’s mind to speak to this matter we do move on.
Male: How does it work? It work. Okay, French 24.41. I was just wondering, could we have some input from the ALAC about the way the geographic region are taken into consideration within the ALAC because it’s a bit… as a registry we know a registry is established somewhere. We need to have accountable to a local community. We have to respect the legal environments and everything and I was wondering how the original or the situation of an ALAC member is taken into consideration within the ALAC. Thank you.
Jacqueline: There’s certainly no problem answering that. Certainly I will be using an Asia Pacific example as my particular view but it’s replicated across the other RALOs. We were blessed on high with how we were to be divided. We have no choice. We are the five geographic regions in an Asia Pacific that is utterly ridiculous. What I’m… Yeah sure. If you wear these you hear me loud and clear anyway, even in English. If you have a relationship with your inaudible 25.57 then it is obviously far more sensible if the match goes along with those regions so then we would probably be looking at a closer match with the nicks 26.12 because that’s our local outreach the technical community. In terms of planning, one of the things we’re doing as a result of this conversation is going back to each of the RALOs and the Rockier 26.23 and saying, “Go to your ILS’s and get prepared to put input in on this particular topic.” Does that answer your question?
Male: Yeah, for the process yeah, thank you.
Female: Okay, well the next item on the agenda is the ccNSO IDN Fast Track. I think our liaison to that is Hong and then Chris you want to do a quick overview and then…
Chris: Um, I’m also conscious of time and I’m very happy to discuss the IDN Fast Track. I’ll be even happier when I don’t have to discuss the IDN Fast Track. So I just wanted to say that there was a workshop this morning and I know that some of you were there. There is a CCNSO workshop on Wednesday morning to which you are welcome. It would be almost impossible to start going through the Fast Track in this environment right now unless we took the rest of our time and some but um, Hong, over to you.
Hong: Well thanks Chris. The mornings briefing is very helpful for all different constituencies to understand the progress of Fast Track and I hope the Fast Track could be really fast and hopefully it could be finalized. I mean the document could be finalized on this Wednesday so we could hopefully submit it to the board on Thursday. So Chris, I do have a question for you. You’re really the expert on this. You’re the father of the document of Fast Track laughter. So do you believe to your estimation, is this possible for the board to approve this because look at the new GTLB is being submitted to the board and it is being… we will therefore quite a long time and we cannot afford to wait so long time. We are Fast Track right? So back to you.
Chris: Well we’re perhaps the slightly faster than slow track laughter. We have worked extremely hard, as you know because you’ve been part of it, to create something that we think the board can approve. It would be pointless creating something that we don’t think the board’s going to approve. However, if you assume that the CCNSO and the GAC endorse the document, then it goes to the board. What the working group is likely to say to the board is, “Here’s the report. We suggest that you ask the staff to start implementation planning.” Now whether the board chooses to do that in the same way as they did with the GNSO and say we won’t actually pass a resolution agreeing to do this until we’ve seen the implementation whether they will say, “We agree to do it. Let’s do the implementation.” I don’t know, but my gut feeling is they will probably not pass the resolution until they know what the implementation plan is. And to be frank, if I was on the board, that is what I would do because I think this is such a new thing and so delicate that we have to make sure that the implementation plan. However, you should also be aware that discussions are very, very well advanced in the staff already on the implementation plan. So it’s not as if it’s starting from scratch. They have been working on it for some time already and Bart assures me that he will get laughs 30.15. No, so we’re still hopeful that… our goal is still to have the IDN CCTLD’s released at the same time as the GTLD’s and the goal for that, I believe, is the sign-off in Cairo and release soon thereafter. So that’s the best answer I can give you right now.
Male: Is there any other comment on that or can we move on? Let’s move on. Our next topic is a very serious topic, laughs 30.59 as they all are, I suppose. It’s the response period for the public comment period on all issues. And this is, this has been undertaken by the ALAC and it’s very, very important to the ALAC because of the structure of the ALAC and I’d like Cheryl please, if you would, to report on that.
Cheryl: Okay, thank you very much. Due to the nature of our culturally and linguistically diverse make-up, we have issues in getting documents into the languages that are easily read and understood in our outreach exercises. That’s one part of our difficulty, but the other and possibly equally significant part of our difficulty is not just in the masses of interpretation and translation, but the fact that things tend to come clustered in ridiculously large amounts in very small periods of time immediately before face to face meetings. It appears that there seems to be an aversion to prior planning preventing poor performance and any sort of far reaching staging. Nothing is drip fed up to us, no basic briefings and information are passed onto us in a timely manner and in fact with the translation of documents, they usually happen in the last two weeks before the INS’s 32.27 closing of comment period which, can I just suggest is utterly and absolutely ridiculous and unfair. We also have the matter that our ALS’s are, not all, but predominantly organizations that are run by volunteers. They’re not for profit organizations or voluntary organizations and they may only meet monthly so you can very quickly get totally out of sync. We’re not suggesting that the comment period is extended to ridiculously long periods of time. Things need to be done in a timely manner. What we are suggesting, and this is where we’d like to see back from your support organization on see your views 33.09 is that perhaps if preparation materials were coming out in a timely manner. If translations were being provided early on and during the process and that more attention to getting things actually out and back for public comment that aren’t just clustering immediately before a face to face meeting of ICANN would make us all be able to work a little bit smarter and a little less harder. Now if anybody else thinks I’ve missed anything, wave your hands frantically at me and I’ll pick it up. But I think that’s the synopsis. Yes please, go ahead Fatimata.
Fatimata: Yeah, I think we also talked about using the simple language.
Cheryl: My apologies. I’m the one who usually rabbits 33.50 on about it. The technical action of just the sheer volume in like how these things come out in small bite size pieces, another question we’ve been asked. But to have simple language texts as executive summaries would make the outreach ability to get the grassroots information in. In terms of our ALS structure, we have an enormous number of ISOC chapters that have got the technical expertise to turn it into simple language. They’re not getting hold of the documents in a timely manner to allow them to have them.
Sébastien: Yeah, I want to inaudible 34.29 this last point because when you say gaining global constancies in 30 days, it’s not only the issue, it’s also before increasing awareness about the issue and this is time consuming and if you don’t have a good executive summary of the issue it’s very difficult.
Female: 12
Male: Excellent point. Any other comments or questions?
Dotty: Well, I’ve been totally amazed working with Chris Disspain as the head this year compared to all our other years of trying to accomplish things and he is driving laughter, driving the team and the way that he does it is with periodic teleconferences which brings everybody in and focussed. One of the things about ICANN is that people don’t fully focus on it until there is a meeting or some reason to do so, but this process of having teleconferences and having people either contribute information or questions or even just a quick review verbally between the meetings is extremely useful and I don’t know if your budget allows you to have ALAC teleconferences but if it does, that really, really accelerates the whole process of moving things along. In terms of understanding and the ability to provide input which is one of the most important things.
Cheryl: Just in response to that Dotty, yeah in fact we do have monthly teleconferences. They’re our actual business meetings and we’ll be raising the fact that things are coming onto the horizon. It’s actually getting hold of the documentation for comment that’s our hiatus however, some of what you’ve said we are starting to implement with our briefing teleconferences which are open to wider audiences than just the ALAC, the RALOs, and the ALS’s and I know someone with the GNSO for example and some from the business community joined us in the ones on Fast flux so we’ll be moving more and more into having publicly and inverter commas 37.41 available, briefings on subject matters that we know are coming up just by way of trying to get people up to speed and to get questions answered that where misinterpretations can happen and I would like to think that some of the CCCLD operators might be interested in being involved in some of the inaudible 37.56 liable regional issues. Up or of course global and that’s something that perhaps staff could keep an eye on if it’s a nexus of interest.
Cheryl: Okay, we have Alan and then Chris and then Wendy.
Alan: I’m going to say something which has already been said to some extent and elaborate a little bit. I think the real challenge is to start working on these things well before the comment period starts. If it’s a comment on something the GNSO is working on as an example, there’s lots of load time typically. If we can get the message out, if we can get people serious about it to start thinking about it. Very often the initial documents are short and concise and yes you need someone who’s going to understand the words, but I think the reality is if we’re going to be commenting on policy at the GNSO level, it has to be done by people who comprehend what the words mean at least. We’re not looking for comments from your grandmother who does e-mail. Now these policies may impact your grandmother who does e-mail but she’s not the right person to ask. So I think we need to identify, in our case at the ALS and RALO, people who are primed to start thinking and asking questions at a local level and start doing it at the time the discussions start, not the time that the document is posted for comment and it’s a real challenge and I’m the ALAC liaison to the GNSO and I’m guilty as anyone of not alerting people way early, but that really I think is the challenge and the way to address the problem. There’s no way we can elongate comment periods when we’re already taking so long to do anything at ICANN.
Chris: If I understood you correctly Cheryl, what you’re talking about is asking for our opinion and possibly support in chittying the ICANN staff along a bit and getting things done more quickly and getting documents produced more quickly etc., etc., etc. Absolutely not a problem, I wish you luck. laughter We have, we have, you could go back to minutes of CCTLD meetings going back before Vince 40.31 was a boy and you’ll find constant complaints about the fact that this document was only published the day before etc. And of course in those days it was all based on the conspiracy theory that these documents are only published the day before because we were all on an airplane and therefore we didn’t get to read them. I think we’re passed that stage now and I think we just realize that it’s quite tough to run this thing but I think the point is well made and should be made and I’ll be quite happy to… I’m sure the cc’s 41.02 would join you in making it, however having just experienced, as indeed of you, the Fast Track I can assure you that sometimes you just push it out when you push it out and you just have to say, “Sorry guys, you’ve got a day that’s it.”
Female: It’s Wendy and then Dotty and then I think that we will close it off and go to the next topic.
Wendy: Yes, I think mostly to echo Alan’s comments that most of the issues on which we are ultimately getting papers and short comments are issues that have been bubbling up for a long time and our staff can help us by calling meetings early and calling discussions. I have to disagree with Dotty, I personally much prefer text to teleconferences because we can each run it at our own bend within our own time zone unlike a teleconference. But calling an online discussion or a conference when an issue comes up rather than waiting until the paper has been written and it’s too late to do something about it can help all of us to participate better.
Dotty: Well the teleconferences I was talking about were teleconferences to discuss things that were in text and to suggest changes and improvements and discuss conflicts about them and I don’t mean to repeat what he said but everything takes so long anyway and everybody knows that that even that it crosses the breath of someone to say that the review period isn’t long enough is just a horrifying idea. We have to start from the very beginning laughs to tighten it up.
Female: Okay, any more comments you’d like to go onto the topic about improving communications between the ALAC and the CCNSO both at the regional level. Right now we have the liaison and we’re thinking about having more communication at the regional and at the local level.
Cheryl: If I might just make a little explanation here. Because we have At-large structures in every one of your countries that is an Internet user community resource, that we would like to think you might take advantage of. And we’d like to perhaps put our offer on the table that the At-large structures within your areas of interest in your territories are an opportunity that you could use and of course there could be regional as I mentioned earlier with the APNIC and the APRALO 44.09. Go ahead.
Chris: Yes, in respect to encouraging individual territories to talk to whoever the people are below but to the regional question you would need to talk to the regional organizations directly about that. We won’t and can’t, I mean we can encourage it, but we won’t and obviously can’t make that happen. That’s for the regional organizations to decide and certainly form the point of view… and what might be useful perhaps go… I nearly said going forward, “Oh my God.” laughter What might be useful in the future is some examples of how it’s worked etc. And I’m sure that you and I between us could come up with something in Australia that shows how it works. So, yeah, I think that’s important.
I also think that we should be, that this topic should include at this level and I think we need to try to find… well we need to make sure that we do this but we need to make sure that this is a little bit more… my experience has been that there has been… that there’s a couple of ways you can do this sort of thing with the joint council liaisons. You can make it a simply a gathering where you have a very loose agenda and you chat away and that sort of thing and also quite helpful for it not to be as organized in the sense that there’s time for people to talk to each other ‘cause it’s all about getting to know people. And the other way or… and another way because you can do both, is to have a very structured session on something. So you can say, “Let’s use this ALAC CCNSO session to talk about X.” Whatever X might be, just not triple X, we won’t talk about that laughter but we’ll talk about X. And that’s kind of worked quite well with the GAC ‘cause what happened with the GAC is that we found that if we talked about specific topics, so not so much an agenda with six or seven items on it but like two topics and so you came on just say, 46.25 you came on with a topic, we came on with a topic and there was some presentations and stuff. That also works quite well. The biggest issue for us is timing in the sense of the meeting but I’m sure we can work with that. So I’d like to suggest actually that our liaison are asked to do something apart from liaise laughter and talk to each other, come up with some suggestions for the next joint meeting in Cairo that we can all sort of consider. Like topics and what have you and the other thing is you don’t have to feed us, we don’t actually mind. It’s okay. It’s very nice and let me say that I have been up since five this morning and that’s the first thing I’ve had to eat today. But, okay?
Cheryl: Well, we figured if we fed you, you might actually come. laughs Nothing wrong with a little bribery. Go ahead.
Female: Inaudible from Dat Ki Har 47.39 You were talking about local… you having local chapters in our cc’s and I’m actually wondering because the cc’s actually have our own local internet community that we interact with and we try to accommodate and there seems to be maybe not a huge difference but I think there is a level of difference between the user community at the cc level and the user community at the global level.
Jacqueline: If I can just respond to that. Yes, and in fact it almost goes into interest communities of interest that have become At-large structures, the ISOC chapters for example are very likely to be in your existing community interchange. But we’re attracting very much more variety in internet using public as more and more ALS’s come online. It is our absolute intent to have at least an ALS in every country. Every country. And in fact, many countries will have quite a number within country. Now you might find one is technical, one is much more biased toward civil society or whatever. If you’re locally aware of who has said, “We want to be in ALS and we are interested in naming and numbering and inaudible 49.11 on the Internet. I think as a result that we could perhaps mutually benefit from sharing information across. It takes beyond just the technical community I admit but particularly we are looking, if we did get to new TTLD’s, you might find that that’s a great way of coming with your application well and truly supported. They’ve sort of done the prior planning and got widespread community support by utilizing the networks that we’re putting in place.
Female: Actually my question focus is on whether you see any difference between the global Internet community and the local, the cc user community?
Jacqueline: I’m probably the most biased person at the table here to answer that laughs not to suggest Alan does 49.59 because within Australia we work very close hand in glove so I’ll hand to Alex.
Alex: Certainly in some countries the communities that interact with the domain operator are more interested in domain issues, That is they’re the registrants or the people that somehow interact with them on a daily basis, both the registrars and people involved deeply in that. Whereas in our case, the much larger majority are people who have an interest and a knowledge of the Internet but are not necessarily registrants. Certainly there’s a bunch of them there but the groups are not necessarily focused on those issues directly.
Male: Are there any other comments from people that are not sitting at the table perhaps? Yes, please.
Don: My name is Don Hollander and I’m the general manager of ABTLD. One of the things that we have tried to do over the pass few months is to engage quite actively with the AP RALO and I’m not sure where they’re at, at the moment but if AP RALO does have a meeting of its own, we would very much like to be able to coordinate and coincide and have some overlap between the APTLD meeting and the AP RALO meeting and I would expect some of the other regional organizations might want to do the same.
Male 50
Jacqueline: I don’t know, I think that sounds like a perfect point for us to get the co-chairs to wind up because it’s an update. Chris did you want to make a final comment? I’m happy.
Chris: Just thank you very much for the lunch laughter and thank you for organizing it and it’s something we should continue to do.
Male: Would you have been here without the lunch Chris? laughter
Chris: inaudible 53.27 Uh, yeah. laughter
Male: I would like to thank you all for being here and participating. Particularly I would like to thank Jacqueline. She is a great person to work with and I look forward to a close relationship in the future.
Female: Thank you everyone and don’t forget dessert is available. You’ve got three minutes to get it before the meeting’s finishing. Thank you everyone.
Female: ALAC, RALO and assembled ALS’s we’ve got a meeting in here after you grab your desserts. Do not disappear on me please.
End of Audio 54.09
