At-Large Secretariats
First Session – 28th October 2007
Summary Minutes
Original Draft of the Minutes prepared by the Staff.
Present: Rajnesh Singh (APRALO), Edmon Chung (APRALO), Darlene Thompson (NARALO), Didier Kasole (AFRALO)
Apologies: Wolf Ludwig, EURALO (travel problems), Carlton Samuels (LACRALO) – arriving Monday
A discussion about the work being done by the ALAC at their meeting the same day, and of efforts of members of that committee to try and instill better working practices and to raise the tone of discussions considerably. The meeting were of the view that the ALAC at present was operating in an unsatisfactory manner and not producing value for the community. If this situation does not improve, given a reasonable amount of time, then several options were discussed, such as denying travel coverage to those ALAC members who are not participating and, in the worse case, abolishment of the ALAC and use elected officials instead.
The Staff provided an update about the status of providing the end-user focussed news articles which had been promised in June and noted that these were starting to come in as drafts, which were in the process of being checked.
Guests: Kieren McCarthy and Paul Levins
Kieren McCarthy joined the meeting at 0900 and noted he was keen to hear the ideas of the Secretariats about the types of information which could be usefully provided in order to reach a wider audience of Internet end users.
It was unanimously said that short and clear versions of long reports are essential. Half-page or one-page in length. For Africa, French and Portuguese editions are needed. The domain tasting reports are an example of something hard to follow. Nick noted that the Issues Report style is not mandated; Staff had to create it for the first time for the ALAC request, as that was the first time an AC requested an IR. Kieren noted that he was continually urging that good, jargon-free end user executive summaries should be a part of every document.
Darlene suggested Kieren send to the secretariats list if he has any ideas or wants support for an idea. Kieren urged that the Secretariats continually reinforce their needs to others in ICANN and that responding to the Strategic Plan process was particularly important as this was a very important way to ensure that resources are allocated to producing and disseminating more publicly-accessible information.
Didier mentioned the AfrICANN list as a useful location for ICANN to provide updates about its activities as it was widely subscribed to across Africa.
Didier suggested that non-Internet communications to Africa would be helpful on basic ICANN issues. For Radio, BBC and RFI cover Africa even though they are not based in Africa. Other stations will charge to disseminate information.
Rajnesh noted that too often ICANN and ISOC preach to the converted. We need to reach out to real Internet users if we really want their views. He does a radio show in the Pacific Islands and it has proven difficult to produce info that is sufficiently entry-level. He suggested a mix of factsheets, podcasts. Need to keep in mind that podcasts will take ages to download on limited bandwidth. He setup an Internet radio station and found an 8K stream worked for limited bandwidth situations.
Didier said there is a CD of ICANN information which is very useful. MP3 files can be quite small, especially if they’re spoken word. He could distribute things on CD. Kieren asked what should be on the CD. Things like the IDN video, Vint Cerf’s interviews, factsheets all on one CD. Nick noted that the CD image files could be made available for download and then anyone could make copies of the CD or access the contents from the image, and ICANN could send out physical copies where that would be helpful.
Rajnesh said that the regional liaisons only go and preach to the converted instead of reaching new audiences. Kieren noted that they have been consumed with IGF and other political issues and hoped that after the IGF they would be more accessible.
Nick asked if there were meetings that would allow us to reach new audiences, they all said that there were. Rajnesh mentioned several specific meetings upcoming in the AP region. Nick asked if the Secretariats could send out information about meetings they felt ICANN should engage with as they learnt about them and they agreed they would do so.
Kieren mentioned the magazine and asked for submissions, as he’d love to include information from the RALOs. The Secretariats noted that they’d be happy to provide news from their regions.
Nick mentioned the domain name guide and asked if the RALOs would like to take finishing it off and make it a product of the regions. This was felt to be a great idea and Nick said he would ensure it was distributed for comments and Secretariats could simply provide guidance and the writer would then incorporate them.
At this point Paul Levins joined the meeting. He stressed the importance of telling the board and in the public forums that public, down-to-earth information about ICANN’s work is necessary. He felt that providing this kind of information was essential for the public to understand ICANN and its mission and the relevance for the public and end users. A brief recap of some of the ideas discussed with Kieren was reviewed.
Discussion with Liz Gasster
Rajnesh suggested that apart from language barriers information put forward is not in clear language. For the public to participate you need documentation that laypeople can understand in parallel to the detailed, jargon-rich reports. Most people will switch off when confronted with a 100-page document.
It was noted that not all issues resonated with every region. Small numbers of responses for an issue in a region may mean that issue isn’t resonating regionally. In AP, we use ccTLDs almost entirely so issues with generic or sponsored TLDs are generally not important.
Nick asked if telephonic briefings were a useful mechanism. Rajneshnesh responded that this depended upon whether or not the timing was right – and also only a few people in each region are truly active, and 1 per ALS are participating but less active. Comments also based on cultures some are not direct, they respond one-on-one.
Nick asked if a recorded briefing which could be accessed at leisure, with accompanying summaries or powerpoints, would he helpful – this was thought to be more successful than a briefing at only one time or two times.
Rajnesh suggested perhaps meetings, as side events at regional meetings to brief on policy could be helpful. Perhaps one hour on each topical issue could be briefed on, publicised so that people could come to briefings on the topics that they cared about. It could be done by even one person in the room, and others over the phone.
Didier made the point that in Africa, since all ALSes are voluntary and so having many meetings is less helpful than having a good stream of information by email or on wikis.
Darlene made the point that far more outreach needs to be done and that it could be less expensive for participants per head to participate if it were done differently.
Nick noted that he’d love to be doing more recruitment and once his new hires were brought onboard that would be much easier to do and he would love nothing better than to help send more people to the meetings.
Nick asked how we could provide feedback for contributors to public consultations. Didier suggested that a response thanking you for responding should be sent to their email address and be personalised if possible. Rajnesh noted that the IGF posts comments received on the IGF page providing a feel-good factor. Nick asked if it would help if contributors are notified when their comments are incorporated in a subsequent report. This was unanimously seen as important and a good way to reinforce the importance of participating, as there was a feeling that there was no connection between responding to a public consultation and that response impacting the resulting policy.
Didier suggested that if people could make a contribution to a consultation in 5-10 minutes that would increase input – and even more important that there be a way for contributors to see how their input was recognised or used. Nick noted the survey-style input process for Domain Tasting and asked if that was a more useful, easy way to participate and it was felt by those who had seen this that it was better than emails especially if there were links in the survey to further information on the question from the materials which were the subject of the consultation. It was highlighted that it was essential that consultations be held in multiple languages on an equal footing to English.
Didier noted that a real need in Africa was for more training in IPv6. He wondered if it was possible for this kind of training to be added-on for At-Large attendees of ICANN or other ICANN-sponsored meetings and also for those in the Fellowship programme. It was noted that this was outside ICANN’s mission but that didn’t mean ICANN couldn’t help others to provide sponsored opportunities to these audiences as add-ons. Nick offered to pursue this internally and revert back to the Secretariats.
Regional Priorities
NARALO:
Need more education and leveraging of knowledgeable people in region to build understanding of the issues. The issues ICANN is dealing with now do resonate with the community in NA.
AFRALO: Outreach is the priority. Africa has only a few ALSes and given the voluntary nature of ALS work having a broader pool of active ALSes was essential for the region to be more active in issues. IPv6 issues are a priority in terms of capacity building in technical knowledge in how to deploy.
APRALO: Face-to-face meetings a priority, preferably regional, even subregional, the at-large summit is a great idea but it isn’t necessary for it to be an annual event, and shouldn’t displace regional activities. Outreach important to non-traditional ICANN participant end-users. Then relevant policy input – those issues that we care about.
As all regions seem to need education and outreach it was discussed that perhaps we need to do more grassroots education in conjunction with regional meetings. These would be separate meetings but attached to the ICANN meetings and would discuss such things as "What is a Domain?", etc. Without doing elementary education in this way, we will never be able to bring in more people from the end-user community. This would also be an excellent way to leverage funding for ICANN meetings from other sources.
Travel Support
NARALO: Want to decide our own parameters on who gets to travel. Staff said they were happy to have the regions decide criteria for deciding who gets to attend providing the criteria were fair and equitable and the region came up with them in a transparent fashion.
APRALO: We are already doing this – the Hong Kong meeting was an example of this where some people wanted to go but there wasn’t enough funding for everyone, and the regional officers worked behind the scenes to ensure that things got allocated in an orderly fashion.
ACTION ITEMS
1. Give Kieren the address to send into the secretariats list.
2. Find out the address of the AfrICANN list.
3. Secretariats to send in updates for ICANN magazine monthly.
4. Nick to send out the draft domain guide for the Secretariats to review and provide comments on for Miriam Sapiro to use to revise the text.
5. Kieren to get together the contents of a CD and share with the Secretariats. Nick can host the ISO image on atlarge.icann.org/public.
6. Bring up IPv6 training with NRO
7. Nick to speak to Paul L and Mandy about training addon for IPv6 for Fellowship, At-Large ALS participants
8. Nick to speak internally about having more recorded briefings on policy prepared with accompanying printed information.
9. Nick to speak internally to staff with Liz about the structuring of public consultations using tools like surveying.
I assume that the Staff, including Nick, participated in this meeting, or functioned as the secretariat, as the meeting note was created by him. If so, I ask to include the staff names present in the meeting summary for transparency.
I further like to ask for clarification for the first paragraph. What exactly are you adddressing the problem of ALAC, and what is your solutition to that? AND was that the view of all the secretariat at present, and, without the attendance of any of ALAC members, to me, it is not a good indication to publish this in open wiki space, without even an advance notice or consultation with the ALAC members. Are you part of ALAC, or not? Are you trying to work together? Honestly, if the summary is the exact reflection of the meeting outcome, I have serious question of our own working relationship.
izumi
contributed by iza@anr.org on 2007-10-29 19:38:55 GMT
I cannot resist but make another comment. IF ALAC problem is spending too much energy on proceess and forget on policy, I agree. But then, making this kind of "blame" is further dragging us into process, but not policy - I hope this is not the case nor intention.
izumi
contributed by iza@anr.org on 2007-10-29 19:45:29 GMT
Like Izumi, I also have a comment in the first paragraph of this summary.
> The meeting were of the view that the ALAC at present was operating in an unsatisfactory manner and not producing value for the community – in fact the unanimous view expressed was that if the ALAC cannot become more useful and productive and comport itself in a more adult and professional manner very rapidly it should be abolished.
I heard about these comments purely by accident. I will start by saying that I have voiced similar statements about the ALAC's viability and professionalism myself. However, I feel that to post this in a public forum without even the courtesy of informing the ALAC that it is being done, is inexcusable.
contributed by alan.greenberg@mcgill.ca on 2007-10-29 20:05:00 GMT
Having given comments, and read Alan's comment yesterday, I urge all who were present at this meeting to take appropriate action, PLEASE. If you think there is the serious problem of ALAC productivity, manner, etc, fine, please come forward and talk to the ALAC people with possible solutions to work together. However, if this is just left as is without any proper actions to go forward, I think this as is not the professional way and manner you are trying to push. And therefore, it will be of the best interest to take out this para.
contributed by iza@anr.org on 2007-10-30 18:00:14 GMT
I am concerned that Secretariat are having separate meetings beside ALAC not have a joint meeting, this division is not useful, the current ALAC members and secretariat are elected by RALOs and its very important for both to work in harmony to serve the At-Large community .
If we started planning each others some could have an opinion about duties of the secretariats currently, we should joint our efforts, define responsibilities and work according collaboratively .
contributed by guest@socialtext.net on 2007-10-30 22:42:35 GMT
—
Thank you Darlene for modifying the meeting summary, with better tone and substance. I can share part of the concern about the performance of "ALAC" - but still would like to see, as the comment avove suggests, more proactive way to work together to tackle the problem. The way it was presented look like as if only 15 ALAC members are doing bad things but not analyzing the root cause nor overall framework, working relation/structure within ICANNN, ect. I hope we will sit down together articulate the issues, think hard for possible solutions, rather than just making the negative suggestions of cutting off the travel support or abolishment. I also like to see that we will focus our attention with the scheduled (and delayed) AtLarge review, in a objective and productive manner.
izumi
contributed by iza@anr.org on 2007-10-31 18:17:42 GMT
