ALAC Monthly Teleconference
(Held September 09, 2008)
Legend
Name: First name of member of group
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.
XX joined If the phone system has announced that a particular person has just joined, it will be shown in square brackets at the left margin.
unknown joined If the phone system indicates someone has just joined, but doesn't announce their name.
XX left If the phone system has announced that a particular person has just left, it will be shown in square brackets at the left margin.
unknown left If the phone system indicates someone has just left, but doesn't announce their name.
Translator: If translator actually translates French or German for a participant we will note it as “Translator.” It will normally be evident from the dialogue who the translator is translating for. If not, we will include a note in square brackets with respect to who they are translating for.
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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.
Adam Peake
Alan Greenberg
Annette Muehlberg
Beau Brendler
Cheryl Langdon-Orr
Danny Younger
Darlene Thompson
Evan Leibovitch
Frederic Teboul
Hawa Diakite
Hong Xue
Jacqueline Morris
Matthias Langengger
Nick Ashton-Hart
Patrick Vande Walle
Rachida Jouhari
Robert Guerra
Ron Sherwood
Sébastien Bachollet
Tricia Drakes
Vanda Scartezini
Wendy Seltzer
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Sébastien Bachollet joined
Sébastien: Hello. It’s Sébastien.
22
Jacqueline Morris joined
Sébastien: Hello, Jacqueline.
Jacqueline: Hey.
Sébastien: It’s Sébastien.
Jacqueline: Hi, how are you doing?
Sébastien: Fine. And you?
Jacqueline: Good. It’s kind of… The volume’s kind of low. But the going’s good. Just kind of… 05.47
Sébastien: inaudible
Jacqueline: Huh?
Male: inaudible
17
Cheryl Langdon-Orr joined
42
Sébastien: Hi. I’m already online.
Cheryl: Ah, so am I.
Jacqueline: Hi, Cheryl.
Cheryl: Hi there. Somebody has a radio or something on in the background. There was washing-up noises too a minute ago. laughter
Jacqueline: Oh, that was water going into my cup to make a cup of tea.
Cheryl: Oh, is that what it was. It was you, Jacqueline. laughter
Jacqueline: Well…
Cheryl: Sorry about that.
Jacqueline: Well, I got called a little earlier than I expected.
Cheryl: That’s alright. I thought, “Oh, somebody’s having a cup of tea or washing up or something.” I could hear. laughter
Jacqueline: Yeah, it was a cup of tea.
Cheryl: Ah, good on you.
55
Jacqueline: Alright. Let me just touch… 09.55
Cheryl?: Okay.
13
Darlene Thompson joined
Cheryl: Hi, Darlene.
Darlene: Hello. How are you?
Cheryl: I’m fine, thank you very much. Let’s see if people are being called early, and they’re probably on mute, and when I joined there was…
Beau Brendler joined
Cheryl: If people are… People would just be dialling in now. Hi, Beau.
Beau: Good morning. How are you? Or “Good evening” if it’s for you.
Cheryl: overtalking 11.45 …all the same. Just it’s easier just to say hello. laughter
Danny Younger joined
Darlene: I almost said “Good morning” too and then I just went, “Whoa. No, no, no.” laughter
Cheryl: laughter It’s some time of day, anyway.
Beau: We’re about to get like a Category 3 hurricane here from what I can understand.
Alan Greenberg joined
Cheryl: That doesn’t sound very pleasant at all.
Beau: No.
Cheryl: Is that common where you are?
Beau: It has been the last couple years, although they… I mean, they’re pretty dissipated by the time they reach this far north and inland. But yeah, we do get them. We get pretty severe weather in New York.
Alan: It sounds like we’re talking about weather.
Beau: Yeah.
Cheryl: Mmm, indeed. So do you lose communications and everything go, or…?
Beau: Sometimes. I mean, I actually do these calls from home and then drive into work, so we can lose power, but I wouldn’t anticipate that happening today.
Cheryl: Oh, okay. Well, we’ll keep fingers crossed for you, anyway.
Beau: Yeah.
Cheryl: I assume if a cyclone is actually around, you don’t drive into work. laughter
Beau: Oh yeah, we do.
Cheryl: Oh, inaudible 13.05. laughter
Beau: Cyclones are relatively well contained.
Cheryl: Okay… overtalking 13.12
Beau: You just don’t want to be in front of one.
Cheryl: Yeah, okay. I certainly wouldn’t want to be in front of one, you’re right.
Darlene: There was a hurricane or something just went past Saint John, New Brunswick, and they got a really good dump of rain the other day.
Beau: It’s funny, when I bought my house five years ago, we looked at it and realized, “Oh wow, this is a really cool house. It’s a metal frame house.” So my house is basically built with metal frames. We thought that was kind of neat, and then we found out later that we live in what’s called the “hurricane corridor” of central New York, so no wonder they built it with steel frame.
Alan: You might want to add a lightning arrestor.
Beau: Yeah, we’ve got one of those.
Alan: laughter
Beau: My dog.
Cheryl: inaudible 13.57 laughter Sounds like it’s a very good thing that it’s well built.
By my reckoning, and I don’t know how many are staff, we should have about 9 or 10 on the call.
Alan: I was number 10 when I joined.
Cheryl: Ah, okay. That means my guess was not too bad at all. I haven’t seen… Is… So none of you have actually started up a Skype chat for this? Are we in… Is anybody still in the Adigo…
Nick Ashton-Hart joined
Nick: Hello.
Cheryl: Hi, Nick. I was just saying, “Has anybody joined…” I was going to say, “from staff.” laughter You’d be the 11th, so I’m assuming…
Matthias Langenegger joined
Alan: How’s your cold today, Nick?
Nick: Worse.
Alan: Oh, good.
Cheryl: Oh dear.
Alan: laughter
Nick: Yeah, worse. I would be in bed if I weren’t on this call, so I may not be very chatty.
Cheryl: You might… overtalking 15.08
Alan: You could do both.
Nick: No, because we can’t. If… All the technical stuff that you don’t see that we’re doing behind the scenes, it doesn’t really…
Cheryl: Telling us how many… overtalking
unknown joined
Cheryl: Well, I make it just one minute after. Will we wait a few more minutes here? It sounds like… overtalking 15.34
Hong Xue joined
Hong: Hi. Hello?
Cheryl: Hi, Hong.
Alan: Hello.
Nick: Hey, Hong.
Female: inaudible
Frederic Teboul joined
Hong: I’m now at a conference.
Cheryl: Yeah.
Hong: I can’t stay very long. And I can’t shout 16.01.
Cheryl: Yeah. That’s fine, Hong. Whatever time you can stay here is greatly appreciated.
Hong: Right. When are we going to start?
Cheryl: So…
Frederic Teboul left
Cheryl: Now somebody has a need to mute their phone, because there’s background noise. So if you need to mute, please use star-6, and make it easier for everybody.
Alan: There’s also a huge amount of static or fuzz on the line.
Cheryl: I don’t have that, but I do have… Oh yes, there is a bit of static. Yes.
Alan: Must be closer to my side, I guess.
Frederic Teboul joined
Cheryl: So Frederic has come and gone. You’re back now, Frederic, so…
Frederic: I’m coming back, I’m coming back.
Cheryl: That’s alright. Are we… Are people in the Adobe Connect Room for this meeting, or are we not using that for this meeting? I didn’t notice it on the… overtalking 17.24
Darlene: There’s a few of us in here.
Cheryl: Oh good. Alright, well… overtalking
Alan: Is there an Adobe Connect…?
Darlene: Yeah.
Cheryl: There should be. Eventually my computer will be kind enough to get the website open and I’ll join you.
Alright. The first…
Alan: Oh, there it is.
Cheryl: The first portion of tonight’s pre-call is going to be devoted to the travel problem… changed their 17.47 travel policy. One thing that I think we all need to ensure that everybody is aware of, and that’s the response from Denise. And is it possible, Nick, inaudible 18.05 still opening, could you copy that as a background document to the website, since it’s not loading for me yet?
Matthias?: Cheryl, hi. The…
Nick: Sorry. It’s in three languages on the website now.
Cheryl: Oh. In Denise’s response?
Nick: Yes.
Cheryl: Oh, good.
Nick: We got the translations back this morning. They have also been sent to the announce board.
Cheryl: Thank you. That’s great, Nick. Okay. So can I assume that everybody has read that and seen a somewhat satisfactory change in attitude, at least for the short term? And are there any discussion points or questions that people wish to raise on that matter? Particularly the RALO people. Darlene? Have you got any points inaudible 19.03?
Darlene: Umm… Oh god, I’m being put on the spot right first thing in the morning. laughter
Cheryl: Oh, sorry. You can pass the baton to somebody else. laughter
Darlene: I think I would… Yeah, it is good to see at least now they’re starting to talk about regional face-to-face meetings, which before we haven’t seen, so I thought that was a definite improvement. It’s also good to see that Secretariats would still be coming to the meetings at least this year so that we could get better support features, you know, in place. So I thought that was at least a good thing.
Cheryl: Yes, indeed. Yeah. So are we feeling in general from the regions and the ALSes who have fed into the regions, likely great at 19.48 inaudible, is that satisfaction with the way it has developed the current state of agreement and outcomes suitable for us to go ahead and just work through this next couple of months, or do we have an issue?
If you just note, Nick, that – and Adigo, perhaps – that Vanda is having trouble dialling in. She’s getting a busy signal apparently. Perhaps that needs to be double-checked 20.23. And is the feed on the expo site perhaps that she’s trying to get into call inaudible.
So is there anybody who wishes to raise any points for the ALAC inaudible 20.39, the next inaudible time between…
Alan: Cheryl, I can hardly hear you.
Cheryl: Sorry.
Darlene: Yeah, you’re really competing with the small children in the background.
Cheryl: Yes. Well, I did ask for…
Alan: And that static.
Cheryl: I can’t do much about the static, but whoever has the small children can in fact mute, which means star-6. If you could please use star-6.
Now what I was calling for, Alan, was for a general measure from particularly the regional people that are here – that’ll be for anyone from any ALS and any other language channel – as to whether or not we have a level of satisfaction with the current state of to-and-fro in the travel policy.
Alan, you did a lot of work on this. Would you like to…?
Alan: Well, some of you may have seen the spreadsheet I did comparing the various years and the various groups. Nick has provided me with actual budgets for fiscal year 2008 – not actual spent but actual budgets – which are substantially different from those using the numbers in the policy. I will over the next few days, as soon as I get a moment, reissue that document including Nick’s numbers and some commentary on what the implications of Nick’s numbers are.
Cheryl: That will be no 22.10 inaudible.
Alan: I think the document itself, although it hasn’t had wide distribution at this point, has had very marked effect because, although I may be wrong, I suspect it’s one of the things which cause a perhaps radical change in the funding issue for this meeting and this year. But I will be following through, it’s just not been as high priority since we’ve already seen the results we needed for Cairo to a large extent.
Vanda Scartezini joined
Cheryl: Yeah, that’s certainly my level of comfort and I do want to have on the public record the thanks for the work you did on that. And I agree, I think it probably was greatly instrumental and it would be very useful to have the real figures in terms of real budget figures.
Vanda?: Hello.
Alan: They do add more… They do add some more questions than I’m sure we want to raise at this moment, but the numbers are what they are and it would be nice to have real year-end numbers, but those apparently are still not available.
Cheryl: Right. Well, I was wondering if you may be able to give us an indicator of what it will do to the percentages and reductions that have been highlighted in the original set of numbers.
Alan: Well, the actual amounts budgeted to fund our travel are…
Ron Sherwood joined
Alan: …measurable under the numbers that you get using the ICANN numbers in the travel procedure. The implication of that is, number one, we travel cheaper than they think everyone else is going to, and that may need an adjustment in the other people’s, which will lower the actual commitment of ICANN in providing these travel funds and therefore, assuming the same money is there, they should be able to fund more people. You could take a negative look at it and say they’ve been real cheap with us and don’t plan to be that cheap with anyone else. But regardless, if you take the numbers that were budgeted compared to what they say they’re going to budget in the future, the decreases are not as large, obviously, since we’re starting with smaller numbers.
Cheryl: Okay. Alright. Thanks for that. And you’re looking at perhaps sometime by mid-next week, being able to get that out?
Alan: I’m on assignment starting this Friday. I hope to get it out before. If not, then I have 10 hours of plane rides which might… and a good number of airport hours which may allow me to do it.
Cheryl: laughter Right. What you’ll have…
Alan: If it doesn’t get done by the time I hit my destination, it probably will not get done for that week.
Cheryl: Alright, understood. Well, look, if you can just keep us posted on that, if it doesn’t arrive before Friday and you find that a crossword puzzle or a novel is more exciting on your plane journey, then please do let us know. But I’m very interested to see those… Nick’s level 25.02 figures.
Nick, did you try and say something then? I thought I heard someone make a comment. If it wasn’t Nick, then whoever it was, make themselves known, please.
Nick: Umm…
Vanda: Cheryl?
Cheryl: Yes. Vanda, was it you?
Vanda: Yeah. How are you?
Cheryl: Okay, Vanda. Go ahead, if you have something to say on the travel and the current state.
Vanda: Okay.
Cheryl: Thank you. pause Vanda, did you wish to say something on that?
Vanda: Yeah. I’m okay. Okay. Well, just a comment, that during… some time back, I was one that was, you know, pressing for having a more unified solution for travelling. But think about and we make this agreement with American Express, but since then I’m checking that most of the tickets they buy, they used to buy to me, I can get cheaper than them. So I don’t know. I probably will raise my hand in the summit 26.25 travelling open discussion in Cairo to question if there is no better solution, because mostly when you go out of the country, it depends on the traffic between those countries, the price of the airline are completely different. And sometimes buying like states 27.00 for some important places to go, it’s higher than… I don’t know, if they go from South America to Africa or something like that.
So this in our case probably could significantly the price of the airfare, and…
Translator: Rachida is on the line.
Cheryl: Thank you… overtalking 27.31
Vanda: So it’s just to raise this alternative that we may have to buy ourselves or something like that. I don’t know. It’s something to think about.
Alan: Yeah. Vanda, that came up in the last round for Delhi and…
Cheryl: Alan, just…
Alan: Sorry.
Cheryl: Sorry. We have people on the other channel, so just be sure you identify yourself.
Alan: Oh, it’s Alan Greenberg. The issue came up in a major extent in the last meeting and I believe this travel policy has some words saying there are exceptions where they’ll allow you to buy your own ticket and be reimbursed if the change is really, really substantial. I think I saw words like that.
Vanda: Yeah. I don’t know.
Alan: They’re willing to spend more for the simplicity of not having to reimburse.
Vanda: Yeah, certainly. That was the… and for audit, it was audit committee, and for audit it’s much more easy to control than the other side. But when you come with the, you know, reduced budget, we need to think in all alternatives to fill out our interest 28.43.
Alan: There is no question that flying, especially from a developing country to a developing country, the changes can be absolutely radical.
Vanda: Yeah, yeah. It is.
Alan: Factors… Orders of… You know, a factor of two or three sometimes.
Vanda: Yeah.
Cheryl: Indeed. And Darlene, I think you’re next.
Darlene: Yeah. And I just had a comment for Vanda here, and I don’t know if this may be part of the difference that you’re seeing in the plane fares or not, but I noticed that ICANN pays for full fare economy so that it can be upgraded or, if it needs to be cancelled at the last minute, it can be. So there are cheaper airfares if they aren’t… you know, if you can’t cancel them and such like that, but this is full fare economy. I’m not sure if you’re taking that into consideration or not.
Alan: They never pay that for me. It’s Alan.
Darlene: Oh really? Because I read that in the policy, but ha-ha-ha, who knows?
Nick: I’ve got something too at some point.
Cheryl: Nick, I don’t see anybody else with their hand raised. Go ahead.
Nick: I just wanted to say that with respect to the variance to the cost per person that At-Large budgets for travel and the assumptions in the travel framework, if you look at the way in which the travel framework actually works in terms of per diems and hotel covered and airfare, they actually work exactly the same. So while on the surface one could think that somehow At-Large… we’re being cheap with At-Large or At-Large is being forced to travel in a way that is less preferential than the others… Now except there’ve been a couple hotels that we’ve been put in which are not equivalent, but the actual travel framework is supposed to be the same for everybody, even for us, and in fact the FAQ that they are going to post about the overall travel framework is largely the same as the one that we have had for more than a year.
So I think what’s going to happen is, as Alan says, they’re going to find that it’s less expensive than their assumptions provide for people to travel.
Alan: Or… It’s Alan here. Or since we now know what the averages are, we can go closer to Darlene’s standard of full fare economy.
Nick: Yeah, that’s the other kind of 31.17 possibility. I didn’t want people to have the idea that there were two different classes of travel. I mean, in fact there are, in that the Board does travel business class at the present time. But for all other volunteers, one of the ideas behind this was actually to standardize so that everyone was treated the same.
Alan: Yeah, the Board also, and at this point…
Annette Muehlberg joined
Alan: …NomCom people other than ALAC get actual expenses reimbursed, and that can make a significant difference in some cases. If we look at Cairo, a US citizen pays $16 or $18 for a visa, a Canadian pays $75, and that doesn’t get reflected in many of the estimates.
Cheryl: Yes, there’s a number of parts to the equation that simply have not been looked at in full. However, in the short term, we seem to have a satisfactory enough way forward. I don’t think it’s a topic we can afford to let drop, however, and I have in fact been given a set of – let me count them – four points from Adam Peake who is joining us as a NomCom appointee for the Asia-Pacific region. So 32.38 inaudible around running. I don’t know that the timing here… Can someone tell me, has Tricia or Patrick joined us yet?
Nick: I think not yet.
Alan: No.
Cheryl: If they haven’t, then we will continue with travel until they do, then we’ll move almost seamlessly, I hope into…
Translator: Rachida would like to say something.
Cheryl: Yes, just one moment. That I will forward if you wish the four points, but now let’s hear from Rachida in the French channel. Please go ahead.
Translator: And, you know, you should know that in Africa, it’s something that’s very important from Africa, and there’s a lot of people, you know, that have a lot to add to the pot 33.32 and it’s a matter of analyzing well. And I can, for example, do a calculation of fares, for example, to see how much, you know, a ticket could cost in economy class, let’s say from here, because here economy tickets are a lot cheaper if bought in advance. And so for each trip, for each meeting, I can actually do a list, you know, and showing all these prices to see how these tickets may cost, and then this can be presented. And, you know, either the person can buy their ticket and maybe try to be reimbursed later if possible.
Alan: It’s Alan. That option is available if the difference is very significant.
Cheryl: And – it’s Cheryl here – that may be something that we need to actively pursue in the future when we are trying to maximize the number of people who we can move to face-to-face meetings beyond those that are going to be funded in the travel policy, however it ends up. We hopefully will get to the point where we are able to get as many people as we can manage on a given amount of budget rather than a somewhat more limited line-by-line attitude.
Is there anyone else on Spanish or French channel who wish to make a point?
Translator: Well, because in Cairo, you know, we can definitely… you know, we can create, you know, these budgets usually in advance. We can definitely have a much larger number of participants and this could even try to be done for Cairo more than Mexico at this point per se 35.43.
Cheryl: Yes, that would be good, but if we are looking at that, I actually think it’s possibly too late. Nick, could you give us some advice?
Nick: I’m not quite sure what the suggestion was. I’m sorry, I didn’t quite understand.
Cheryl: The suggestion was, if I may paraphrase, it was that local organizing travel from within Africa could be a cheaper option for ALAC’s travellers – the economy fares bought within countries for example would be significantly cheaper. And that may have been a way to get more people to travel to Cairo on the existing dime. My question to you was I thought that it was already too late for such a radical change to be proposed before Cairo.
Nick: Well, in fact, I talked to Stacy about this… starting in June, actually, after the Cairo meeting. Stacy came to me and said for all kinds of reasons it would be better to use an African travel agent, especially for travel within Africa for exactly the reasons you’re suggesting as well as there are often more options available. I told her about a regional meeting in Kigali that ISOC was a part of and gave her the contact information for the person in ISOC that had handled that meeting, and said, “Perhaps they used a travel agent in Africa to support that meeting.” And also, Anne-Rachel, I pointed her to Anne-Rachel, who of course lives in Niger, because Anne-Rachel does deal with a local travel agent. I believe as a result of all of this that they are going to be booking travel through that travel agent for tickets that that makes sense for.
Cheryl: Alright. 37.53 inaudible seems to be some indicator that they’re trying to work smarter. Yes, Sébastien, you wish to say something else?
Alan: Yeah. No. It’s Alan. I was going to comment. At this point, all that does is reduce ICANN’s costs. I don’t think there’s any opportunity in this window to increase the number of people.
Cheryl: Yes. It doesn’t benefit us at all.
Alan: Yeah. It’s not a bad thing, but there’s no chance of getting more people because of it at this point as I read things.
Cheryl: However we will continue the dialogue, and I don’t think that this is an issue that is going to go away quickly, so we do need to maintain diligence. It would be very useful if everybody from the Regional At-Large Organizations could try and elicit some level of comment or reaction from their ALSes, even if it was simply a matter of a short paragraph or a sentence or two regarding how being able to attend the local meetings is either a positive step 39.02 or otherwise for them inaudible.
Ron Sherwood left
Cheryl: And to that end, I’d like that in Cairo we might be able to have a section of time where… whilst the ALAC is meeting on the topic, what they’re bringing to the table is very specific regional and At-Large Structures within their regional areas used 39.28.
So I guess that’s a little bit of homework to be set. And I would also like to think that that is a conversation and meeting that we can plan where Denise and the financial people who are in charge of the budget, and heaven forbid even the people who are in charge of the travel, it would be nice to actually be able to talk to Stacy in that context as well for future planning. Nick, is that a reasonable desire or am I in a pipe dream here?
Nick: It’s certainly reasonable.
Evan Leibovitch joined
Nick: I would also note that…
Evan Leibovitch left
Nick: I would also note that in Denise and Doug’s note, it was made clear that the objective is to have a dialogue with the community over the next year related to the year following and following years after that. So yes, taking time in Cairo would be entirely reasonable I’m sure.
Cheryl: And with actual documentation and information being brought to the table – for example, the local information that Rachida 40.52 was talking to us about.
Translator: Do you already know the members who are going to be participating in the African structure for Cairo?
Cheryl: I’m sorry? What’s the other question?
Evan Leibovitch joined
Cheryl: Please explain your questions.
Alan: And say who you are.
Ron Sherwood joined
Translator: And this is Rachida speaking. Do you already know the names of the people that will be participating from the African region in Cairo?
Nick: No.
Cheryl: The answer was no. pause Okay. We have…
Alan: I have one more comment on travel. It’s Alan.
Cheryl: Go ahead.
Alan: I’m asking Nick, formally asking Nick…
Patrick Vande Walle joined
Alan: …to…
Translator: So I would like to suggest – this is Rachida speaking – we… that… pause
Cheryl: Is he continuing?
Alan: Cheryl, I don’t know who’s speaking. I don’t know who’s supposed to be speaking.
Cheryl: Well, Rachi-… That’s the French translator saying it’s Rachida speaking. Can you please wait? Rachida needs to wait until Alan Greenberg has finished. Go ahead Alan.
Alan: I would just like someone to formally ask when we will start travel procedures. Stacy sent out a note last week saying we would get stuff later that week. It’s a week later and nothing has arrived. Because of my travel schedule, it’s going to be very hectic, I’d later 42.35 like to know when the procedure will start. That’s it.
Cheryl: Okay, thank you. Rachida, go ahead. pause Do we have anything more from any of the language channels, French or Spanish? pause Yes? No? Okay.
Nick, are we able to ascertain whether Tricia and Patrick are joining us? If not, we should…
Patrick: Yes, hello. Patrick is there.
Cheryl: Ah, Patrick. You snuck in on us. Thank you. laughter
Patrick: Yeah. You’re working 43.37.
Cheryl: You’ve been lurking. Good heavens. Okay. Now Annette has just asked if there’s going to be a Skype chat set up for this call. I’ll tell her no, there is the Adobe Connect. And we should now, with great apology if Patrick has been there for any length of time, because we were actually…
Patrick: No, no, I was there for only 30 seconds.
Cheryl: Oh, that makes me feel so much better. Thank you. laughter I’m more than happy to spend several more minutes on the… into our ALAC meeting on the important of the ALAC review, because after all that would have been on our agenda anyway, inaudible 44.28 just closing off on the travel discussion.
Hong Xue left
Cheryl: And we knew Hong would have to leave, and she has posted her liaison report, so we should note that.
That of course that travel is only one of the package. There’s several ways that we need to look at increasing participation, but I do believe we need to maintain and plan for proper discussions in Cairo, that at this stage of our development, it is still an important part of participation in the absence of timely and suitable interpretation of documents and in the absence of everyone being at an ALS level at least totally au fait with what ICANN is asking them to and the background to the commentaries that they’re being asked to make. We’re certainly doing a lot in our briefings now, but the face-to-face meetings at this point are still a vital part of the foundational work we’re doing.
Patrick, I know that in terms of your desire to hear from the wider group of At-Large people – both those that are of ALSes, within RALOs, and the ALAC – you’ve heard plenty of responses on a couple of the recommendations – notably number 7, not surprisingly – but there are, I’m sure we all know, another 23 recommendations that the ALAC would like to get a broad view on so that we can put a consensus or at least overview document through to you, Patrick. And is there anything you’d like to…
Wendy Seltzer joined
Is there anything to begin with in this 10 or 15 minutes we’re going to devote to the ALAC review? And Patrick, can I just say we have people on the Spanish and French channels, so if you can make sure that you identify yourself when you answer 46.47 inaudible as I am now, and speak slowly so that they can do the interpretation.
Female: Yes?
Cheryl: And star-6 is the mute for this call.
Female: Hi.
Cheryl: Patrick?
Patrick: Well, I don’t hear you that good. So do you want my comments from the…
Tricia Drakes joined
Patrick: Yeah, so… Do you want my comments on the review of the ALAC?
Cheryl: Yes.
Patrick: Yeah. No. Well, that’s the question. I’m not sure I totally understood what you were saying previously.
Cheryl: Okay. Patrick, I’m obviously talking to a Patrick which I have made an error in assuming who you are. What is your second name?
Patrick: Uh…
Sébastien: No, I am not sure you are speaking to the same Patrick. It’s Patrick Vande Walle from the European…
Cheryl: Yes, that is exactly right, Sébastien. I have just worked that out. I apologize…
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Cheryl: …for putting you on the spot, Patrick. I thought you were the Pat Sharry who we were expecting on this call. My apologies.
Patrick: laughter Okay.
Cheryl: If you would like to 48.04 tell us about your views, please feel free.
Tricia: Cheryl, you’ve got Tricia.
Cheryl: Ah, excellent. laughter
Tricia: And just Patrick I hope is joining. I had just left him a message to say that I might be a few minutes late, but in fact I was fine, but what it does mean is I’ve got to leave by 10 minutes after the hour, so that’s in – what? – about 35 minutes’ time.
Cheryl: Okay. Well, I think we definitely need to power through this then. So Tricia, I don’t know whether you heard my question to the wrong Patrick…
Patrick: laughter
Tricia: No, I didn’t. I came in just as Patrick realized that he was the wrong one. laughter
Cheryl: I had pre-empted the conversation by saying that your committee has heard a great deal of feedback on one or two of the recommendations. Particularly notable is recommendation number 7, but there is at least 23 others that need to be discussed, and the purpose of our call tonight before our ALAC meeting is to explore opinions on some of those. But I was asking whether there was any particular introduction or selection, a shortlist of those recommendations which you wish us to pay attention to first.
Tricia: No, I think… I mean, just by way of brief introduction – and I know, Cheryl, and probably some others have heard me say this over the last week when we’ve been on some of the calls – really this is not in lieu of the written feedback, which is needed by the end of the period of the 12th. And we’re looking really for input and feedback, preferably not in relation to the points that you raised, Cheryl, which is the voting rights and other aspects which in fact have been covered very fully, and we will 50.15 delighted to hear more reasons, but we’re also looking at the substance on other aspects.
I suppose, from the committee’s point of view, Recommendation 12 is important, but also the recommendations covering what I would call some of the operational aspects that came out from the report, because there clearly are a number of those which affect you and which we’ve had very little input so far on and it would be really helpful to have that.
Cheryl: Okay. If I might take the lead on your…
Tricia: I’m sorry. Just finishing off, and we’re here to listen. So it’s really we’re gathering input rather than entering into a discussion any of the things at this point.
Cheryl: That’s understood and appreciated. Taking your second point first, a number of the operational aspects are in fact things that the ALAC and the pursuit of a better communication model between the ALSes, the RALOs, and the ALAC, which is our current focus – it certainly was in Paris and continues to be – are addressing a number of those. And in the ALAC response, which you will get by the 12th, those will be highlighted and covered. But perhaps we can look now to get the wider view on any or all of the other recommendations, but specifically Recommendation 12. And I’m just scanning down through the document, so… overtalking 52.05
Tricia: That picks up in terms of NCUC and the sort of… the GNSO and policy input aspect point.
Cheryl: I just want to read it because we have both a French and Spanish channel operating at the moment, so that everyone has the interpretation. The Recommendation 12, which we would like to discuss, is as follows: “That the ALAC should explore ways to differentiate between organizations that genuinely represent individual internet users and are therefore ALS candidates, as opposed to those which may be a better fit with the NCUC.”
I certainly have a response to that but I’d like to hear the responses from others on this call. If you have on Skype, please indicate on Skype that you wish to respond. If you are in the Adobe room, please indicate there that you wish to respond. And in the absence of anybody waving at me, I’ll start naming people and asking them to respond. pause Okay. Somebody said, “I would like to speak.” Ah, Sébastien, go ahead. laughter
Sébastien: Yes, thank you. It’s Sébastien from France. It’s a little bit difficult and interesting question, is that do we have organizations to just speak in one box in the ICANN arena? And I don’t think that even one single person could fit just in one single box. And it’s the wrong question. Around this table, the discussion, we have people who could speak on behalf of different stakeholders, but they are here because they are ALAC or ALSes, they are here because they want to speak for and on behalf of the end-users. But tomorrow they could be sitting 54.39 on a table and they will speak on behalf of a business, a government, a non-profit organization, a university, whatever. Because all of us are multifaced and our organization too. For example, for ISOC France, when we decided to join ALAC, we had a long conversation and we decided to also open, in the future hopefully, the participation to company 55.12, to the French chapter, and if we do so, we think that it could be also interesting for our members to become members of the business constituency. And I don’t see why the discussions is just “Are we fitting within the NCUC or within the ALAC?” It could be much more broader. Thank you very much.
Tricia: Sébastien, if I can just perhaps clarify something, and as I say, we’re here to listen rather than… But I think this point is important. The Recommendation 12 is from the Westlake report, from the independent report. What we are looking to do…
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Tricia: …is actually to review and build on that. So actually your comments about, you know, “It isn’t one size fits all and we may belong in different places” is very good input that you should put in… to put into this. And in fact it’s… from some of the other outreach meetings that we’ve taken part in, that’s some of the comments that we’ve had.
Cheryl: I now have Alan wishing to speak. Alan, go ahead please.
Alan: I’m going to say something to what Sébastien said, and Tricia has already heard this in several other meetings but I was asked to speak here.
Tricia: That’s why I made the point from Sébastien’s, so we’re, you know… he’s reinforcing, which is very helpful, something that’s saying…
Alan: I just want to add one aspect which the other ALAC people may not be aware of, the ICANN bylaws specifically say that you can join one GNSO constituency and that doesn’t preclude you from joining and working in another in parallel at the same time.
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Alan: And I think ALAC is in a similar sense. If you have interests that say you want to look in detail at gTLD issues, then you fit well within the GNSO and we now have a good home for it with the new reorganization. If on the other hand you want to look at things in a more pick-and-choose fashion and be able to comment on anything in regards to ICANN, whether it’s a policy issue or ICANN structure itself, then the ALAC is a good home. And any given group may find they fit in one or the other or both. So I think the question is poorly worded at best.
Cheryl: laughter Well, I think it was an observation, and I’m actually very keen to make sure that in the ALAC response, we respond to each of these 24 recommendations. I’d be keen to have further input on this. Go ahead, Alan.
Alan: My real concern was the way the question’s worded demanded certain types of answers, and I think wording the question like that prejudices the answer and I think we have to be careful of things like that.
Tricia: I think, Alan, we’re on the same wavelength. As I say, the recommendations are… we have that, that’s the report, and the working group, you know, had no part in that. What we’re trying to do is to encourage feedback and encourage feedback on all aspects of it.
Alan: Yeah. No, I understood that. I wasn’t making my speech for your benefit but for the other people who haven’t heard it three times already.
Tricia: Okay, thank you.
Cheryl: Thank you, Alan. Is Beau… Do you have any comments you’d like to bring forward? And not on Recommendation 7, please. laughter
Beau: Turning off mute there. I’m sorry, I didn’t… Do I have any comments on this particular issue or the ALAC review in general, or…?
Cheryl: ALAC review in general, Recommendation 12 if you wish to address it, but we are not looking at Recommendation 7 specifically.
Beau: Well, in the discussion that’s just been had on Recommendation 12, I guess my concern would be that the… I’m not sure that the ALAC is well served necessarily by people being in the business constituency and being in ALAC. If I heard what was discussed clearly, I think the ALAC should be not necessarily limited but it should represent the user community. So if people have other interests that could be seen as or could be deemed a conflict of interest to the user community, then they should probably go join that community. I know there’s been some commonalities with the business constituency and ALAC in the past and that’s probably not a big deal, but there could arise conflicts with the registrar constituency, in which case I don’t think it would be appropriate that someone be in both.
On the ALAC review in general, I made a comment on yesterday’s NARALO call that I will just restate briefly, which is my biggest concern in the ALAC review – other than the fact that it did not appear to represent what… I didn’t see a lot of what I told the Westlake people reflected in there, and other people I talked to seemed to have the same reaction – is just that it didn’t go far enough to make the case in my opinion that the ALAC needs to have some sort of stronger role than simply an advisory one in order to be considered legitimate both inside and outside the organization.
Cheryl: Thanks, Beau.
Annette: Annette here.
Cheryl: Can I just remind the callers that if you have background noises or conversations that are going on in your office space or where you’re making the call from, that if you can use star-6 to mute, that would be greatly appreciated.
Is there anyone on the Spanish or French channel who wished to contribute to the ALAC review conversation? If not, I have Annette. Go ahead, Annette.
Annette: Okay. Thank you, Cheryl. I would like to reaffirm what just has been said. The role… Well, first, it does not really reflect what many people have been telling those who actually made this report and it is a very ahistorical report. And ahistorical, it is important because it really – how do you say? – it is important for the structure of ALAC and what people expect ALAC to be and how they work with it. And one issue, voting rights and not just advisory role. The other issue is budget and sort of a little autonomy to actually be able to organize things, of course in cooperation with ICANN staff but to actually know, yes, that we do have as a RALO a certain amount of money and yes, this is what we think it should be spent on, and this really helps to organize work and does not create such a lack of efficient procedure. So the role of budget is extremely important and it’s not mentioned at all in the review. The role of staff is extremely important. It has been mentioned several times that staff has not only been supportive but also disruptive in several meetings and organizing of meetings. Yeah. There’s a list of issues mentioned and… Yeah, I’m willing to discuss this longer in a personal talk and give some examples.
Cheryl: Annette, if I may, if you would care to have any of the specific points you wish to have raised incorporated even as a minority report in the ALAC response, please them forward to us.
Annette: Please, I didn’t understand the last sentence.
Cheryl: Can you please pass on any specific comment you wish to have include on your behalf, even if it’s a minority report? You do not have to have consensus support for it to be included in the ALAC response.
Annette: Okay.
Cheryl: That goes for all the people on this call. Okay, Wendy, go ahead.
Tricia: Sorry. Just before then, Annette, I don’t know whether you’ve received the various little e-mails that I’ve sent, but I’m very happy to call you and, you know, have a talk and discuss some of these points as well personally. I’m very happy on that.
Annette: Great.
Wendy: Wendy…
Cheryl: Wendy, go ahead.
Wendy: …here. I want to agree with much of what Annette and Beau have already said – I won’t repeat their… just echo their comments on the ahistorical nature of this and the report not listening to the input from me and from dozens of other people that I’ve talked to. So I’m hoping that the review group is reaching out to as many people as the reviewers should have reached out to to try to hear those comments or to get the raw materials that the Westlake reviewers had, because I’m otherwise afraid a lot of important discussion is lost.
Tricia: Wendy, just one point on the raw material – that we can’t have access to. Westlake’s confidentiality I think destroys everything. So, you know, it may be something to look at reviews generally, but we…
Wendy: Okay, I understand.
Tricia: …so we don’t have access, yeah.
Wendy: Right, that makes sense to me. It’s unfortunate because it means…
Tricia: Yeah, we spend a lot of work on it.
Wendy: …there’s no way either to check the reality of what they’re saying.
Tricia: Well, I’m thinking of one comment into the review process generally of almost having a health warning to say, “If you input to the reviewer” – and it’s in fact correct that they are not allowed to… you know, they do have to keep things confidentially and not allowed to divulge – but saying, “Please keep a copy because from the review process it would be… you know, it might be really helpful to have that if you don’t mind, you know, once the report is published.” So it is frustrating. It’s frustrating for us as well because quite apart from everybody saying… you know, 02 people saying, “We’ve done all this already,” etc., and being unhappy, we’re also unhappy because we can’t have it as well. So I think it’s something that, you know, can get input reviews generally, but at the moment we’re all stuck with it and unless anybody gets 19…
Wendy: Right. No, I’m glad to have that incorporated into the general review of the reviews. One the specific subject here, I hope the working group is sort of taking a broader look at what needs to be done within ICANN to make the ALAC effective. The reviewers seem to spend a lot of time almost nitpicking at details of the ALAC structure – procedurally we should use wikis instead of mailing lists and terms of the chair should be two years instead of one year – without addressing what to me has been the critical problem, and many others have brought it up, that with this attenuated input channel, it’s hard to get anyone’s attention among the people we want participating in the process. It’s really hard to say, “Come join us, give your valuable input” into a funnel that goes through Regional At-Large Structures to Regional At-Large Organizations to an Advisory Committee that can say something that the Board might or might not say something about but that really has very little bearing on the policy development process or the decisions made by ICANN. So what needs to be done within ICANN to make this structure one that legitimates ICANN as a public benefit corporation that’s listening to the interests of the individual internet users and that is giving ICANN the true benefit that it seeks from what individuals and public-interested and internet-using individuals have to say?
Tricia: Yeah. Well, certainly… 26… those that have been on some of the other calls, I hope it’s clear that we are (a) trying to get, encourage as much feedback, good and bad we want to hear, but (b) also then to try and look at, you know, real positives and work with you 45 positive ways of using that to do exactly what you said. pause Clearly there isn’t a “one size fits all” though.
Cheryl: Indeed. Is there any other…
Wendy: The last comment I will add very briefly is I still think it would be helpful to give a comparison baseline of “How is ALAC functioning as compared with alternatives?” The alternative that I continue to champion is that of direct At-Large elections, and the review group can say, “That is something that has been rejected,” but I think it would be useful as a matter of comparison to say, “Does this complex and elaborate structure function better or worse?” on a few key elements as compared to one could do with a general At-Large election. Thanks.
Tricia: Thanks, Wendy.
Cheryl: Okay. Tricia, we really need to I’m afraid look at wrapping this up now within the next 60 to 90 seconds or so because we have an agenda to continue with. Is there any particular points other than Recommendation 12 and the operational ones, which we will be addressing, that you wish to ensure we get responses 23?
Tricia: No. Really, as I say, Cheryl, it was the operational, because as you know with the GNSO review, I think the operation recommendations of the report were actually widely accepted as being helpful. It was obviously the structural things there was a lot of discussion on. So on the operational, I think it’s really important, and a lot of what Wendy and Annette and others have said, you know, 58, so that’s really helpful. 12 was really helpful because obviously that’s new and that’s very current. But no, this was really, as I say, to outreach and to encourage feedback or points that people want to raise.
Cheryl: Okay, thank you for that. I notice Evan typing in Skype at the moment. Evan, did you wish to make a point before we close off on this part of the meeting?
Evan: Well, I’d only had a question. Somebody’s had a comment to me on a side chat mentioning that Westlake was quite clear in Paris that they were not using their conventional reporting procedures, that they were given instructions not to use their standard investigation techniques, and as a result this may have had a bearing on why there were so, so many comments that were received that were believed to be simply ignored or put by the wayside or not at all reflected in the summary report, and I’m wondering whether or not the BGC has received that same kind of input.
Tricia: Well, I’m not aware that there was any limitation at all in terms of the way that they operated, and I’d be very happy to actually ask Richard Westlake directly to ask what limitations he felt he had. We actually had an open discussion with Richard Westlake with the working group, I think our second working group meeting, to see if there were issues or other things. But I’m not aware that there was anything that was done which… or any instructions which, you know, stopped them from doing things that they would normally do.
Evan: Alright.
Tricia: So if whoever… you know, if anybody wants to either provide details or… I’d be very happy as well to even take it up or get the working group to take it up directly with Richard Westlake. But I can honestly say that this was done very independently and they were free to do whatever they wanted to do.
Cheryl: Thank you very much, Tricia, for that clarification, and if we can… anybody can give you the information that they have come by, I think what’s important for all of us on this call and obviously the experiences that we’ve had between Paris and now with the committee’s outreach to us is that you’re making every attempt to be as inclusive and as open for dialogue as possible, so I’m quite sure many of us will take individual advantage of that, but wish to assure you that an ALAC-wide response will be forthcoming. Whilst I have a number of RALO people on this call, I’m obviously more than hopeful that the RALOs will be sending in their own regional responses if they have anything 23 important that might be lost or diluted in an ALAC-wide response. I think that’s essential that a inaudible repetition of important points goes inaudible and I’m certainly aware of a number of ALSes that are also intending to respond by the 12th. So Tricia, I guess we can just say that you should be getting a number of things – probably very close to deadline, but we’re all volunteers and that’s just the way of the world at times. laughter
Tricia: Cheryl, so are the working group, so we understand that as well.
Cheryl: 04
Tricia: And just in wrapping up, I mean, my intention with the… and the working group’s intention with the report is if there are either minority views or 21 raised which are not reflected in the recommendations on the report… And bear in mind for Cairo, we’re looking to do an initial thinking document, we’re not planning to do the final report until Mexico, so there’ll be an opportunity to gain further comment after that’s presented, and we’re hoping that we’re going to leave enough time that translations can be done and we’re hoping that they will be there for the discussion. But also, if there are minority views or strong views that are expressed on any particular topic, we won’t hide from reporting that these have been raised so… and, you know, just put in a dustbin, that we will not do. You know, we’re looking… we would actually bring them out and perhaps say either we’re still considering them or that we have rejected them, but certainly we’ll be giving feedback. And all I can do is – now because I need to get off and you need to get on with your agenda – is just really to thank you for the opportunity, thank people like Alan and Cheryl who have been… and Evan as well, who have been on several of the calls, so may have heard some of the things, but I think it’s been really helpful and it will all get fed in as well as the written comments that happen.
Cheryl: Well, thank you very much, Tricia. We certainly appreciate a two-way communication exercise and it will go a long way to making the Spanish- and French-speaking participants very happy indeed if timely translation of documents were available. So keep up the good work, we can only hope. laughter
Tricia: laughter Well, I’m not doing… All I can do is encourage Nick and staff to encourage the people that do the translation and also to give enough time to do them. Beyond that we can only hound to try and get them.
Cheryl: Well, I think hounding is definitely helpful, so thank you for the efforts. Alright, so we’ll draw that…
Tricia: Okay. Thanks so much.
Cheryl: Thank you, Tricia. We’ll draw that to a close now and return to our…
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Cheryl: …standard meeting. For those of you who have been having a side chat on the Adobe Connect Room about why were are spending this time, it would have been a significant agenda item for the ALAC anyway, and to have the opportunity to engage with ALS members and RALO representatives as well as members of the review committee was a vital opportunity that the executive of the ALAC felt was necessary to do. And we also noted that for some reason on timing, our guests actually arrived later than planned, which pushed back our allocation by some 15 minutes at least. So my apologies to those of you who had little or no interest in the previous conversations of travel and ALAC review, but many people had dialled into the pre-meeting specifically for those two topics to be discussed and it was important to complete them.
In closing of that topic, it’s very important that not only do the independent views of individuals and of ALSes and the group views of RALOs get sent forward, but please give the ALAC lists as much feedback between now and Thursday to assure that your comments, if you wish them to be compiled in an overview response, are compiled.
Other than that, we’ll now move on to the standing agenda items. Nick, just before we do get into the depths of that, I assume we will be looking at the… we won’t be using the Connect Pro Meeting area now again, will we? Are you going to show any of the website areas on that, or are we just going to work off the attached documents later in the meeting?
Nick: I believe that it’s all on the website. Sharing the computer screen in Adobe Connect doesn’t work all that well unless you have nothing open but what you’re sharing, and that’s not the case for me, so…
Cheryl: Not possible in this circumstance. Okay.
Nick: Not really… 32
Cheryl: In that case, if there’s anybody who is only… I’ll just check. Is there anybody who is only on the… I think Danny is only on the Connect channel and there’s a few people who aren’t on our Skype as well. We will leave that open so I can see if anybody is wishing to speak through that format.
Okay. Now the adoption of the agenda, I trust everyone has had the opportunity to…
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Cheryl: …simply call for any other bits of items to be added to tonight’s formal ALAC meeting. In which case, they can raise their hands now for anything to be added.
Alan: My GNSO report is there but I would like some time to talk about it.
Cheryl: Okay, Alan. How much time do you need?
Alan: Assuming there’s no discussion, I need five minutes. I suspect it’ll be longer.
Cheryl: Alright then. We’ll allocation between five and seven for the purpose of that, and we’ll do that as we come to the point of the reports.
Any other agenda items? If not we’ll move on…
Jacqueline: Cheryl.
Nick: Umm…
Cheryl: Yes, Vanda.
Jacqueline: It’s Jacqueline. I just posted up some stuff from the ccNSO last meeting, but they have their meeting the week… next week, so there’s not much new until after next week.
Cheryl: 07
Jacqueline: But there’s nothing much to really discuss except for that initiative that you… with the chairs from… that you had with Chris…
Cheryl: Yeah… overtalking
Jacqueline: …so I don’t know if you want to talk about it.
Cheryl: Well, that’s an agenda item, so yes, we will. So that’s fine… 23
Jacqueline: Okay.
Cheryl: Thank you, Jacqueline. Yes, Nick. What did you want?
Nick: I don’t… We don’t have to do the announcements now. I just… We wanted to announce the upcoming briefings for the next month at some point. That’s all.
Cheryl: Well, I think while we probably still have some others than just ALAC people on the call – although I’ve noted and I assume we’ll note in the minutes that some have had to leave us for the formal meeting – please go ahead and make those announcements now and then we shall just move through to the summary minutes.
Nick: Matthias, I hand it over to you. pause You may be muted.
Matthias: Excuse me, did you talk to me?
Nick: Yes.
Matthias: Oh, I’m sorry. Yeah, I was muted.
Well, there are two meetings coming up this month. We have the SSAC presentation on DNS response modification with Dave Piscitello. This meeting is on September 17th – this is next Wednesday at 1300 UTC. And then we will have another meeting on the 29th of September on IANA, an overview of IANA, what it is doing and what relationship it has with the Department of Commerce. And this will be Kim Davies from IANA who will be in charge of this presentation.
Yeah, and then of course we plan to have two more presentations on the RAA, right? This is actually not really… This has not been planned yet, but we are currently trying to see if there’s an interest for this kind of meeting.
Nick: Yeah. What the announcements are, that there will be a forthcoming two briefing related to registrants and the impact of the existing system and stakeholders in the registration of domain names, and how they affect users will be one briefing, and the second briefing will be how they affect registrants.
Cheryl: Okay. Thank you, gentlemen.
Moving on to the adoption of the minutes from the 12th of August. I assume you’ve all had the opportunity to review those summary minutes. Is there any amendments or changes anyone wishes to propose to those? pause If not, can I have someone move that those minutes be accepted?
Sébastien: It’s Sébastien. I want to move the minutes, but just before I would like to… we don’t do the roll call, then I just want to introduce our new member of the ALAC, that’s Patrick Vande Walle who is taking the seat of Veronica Cretu. He has just joined us and was just elected, and I think it’s good time to welcome him even if we can’t do that in person. Hopefully in Cairo too.
Cheryl: Thank you very much, Sébastien, and my humblest apologies – I’m for a number of reasons a little more weary than usual and did skip over number 2. We will in fact call for apologies from any member, and we won’t do a full roll call, but welcoming Patrick is a very important and very pleasurable task. So Patrick, welcome indeed, and in fact I’m looking forward to working with you as we have worked in the past in the ISOC world with a slightly different hat on. So welcome aboard, Patrick. And I’m also looking forward Adam Peake joining us, and he may join us in the call later. He has a competing IGF meeting tonight unfortunately, but that won’t be a problem for future meetings.
Alan: Cheryl, it’s Alan. Before we continue, since we’ve had so many people drop off from the pre-meeting, it would be nice to know if we at least have quorum here and who’s here in case we take any formal actions.
Cheryl: That certainly is the case. Staff should have a list of who’s on and off. Are we still quorate or do you wish us to have a roll call of ALAC members? pause Matthias? Nick?
Nick: Matthias?
Matthias: Yeah. Sorry, I was muted. Yeah, I can give you a list of names. Just one second.
Cheryl: Well, are we… Do we have a quorum?
Matthias: We have Sébastien, we have Beau, we have Cheryl, we have Alan… pause We have Vanda, we have Patrick, and that’s it. That’s it from the ALAC members. So we have…
Cheryl: That’s not a quorum. We’ve lost… Sorry? Who’s this? pause 33
Sébastien: Don’t we have Hawa on the French channel too?
Cheryl: We have Hawa, yeah.
Matthias: We have Hawa on the French channel. Fatimata’s not here. Yeah. So we have seven.
Cheryl: We have seven.
Sébastien: And Robert.
Cheryl: We have Robert. So we’re right. Yeah.
Nick: Actually, Robert’s gone. He said that he had to leave, I believe.
Alan: Yeah.
Beau: Yes, he did.
Cheryl: Did I hear Annette leave as well?
Nick: And Annette left, yes.
Alan: Yes.
Cheryl: Well, let’s drop this below quorum.
Alan: Okay, then let’s just continue with the non-business.
Cheryl: Continue with the non-business, which, is might I say, a little bit frustrating because we were well over quorum, anyway, and it’s not as if we’ve gone over our allocated meeting time.
Alan: Sorry for mentioning it.
Cheryl: No, I’m glad you did, but I did expect that we still had Robert. I thought I heard Annette leave, but here we are.
Translator: And… I’m sorry. This is from Hawa. And it’ll be important to introduce Rachida as well as one of the new ALSes.
Cheryl: Ah, yes. Thank you for that, Hawa. Yes, and welcome to one of the new African ALSes, and indeed, Rachida, thank you for your contribution in the earlier call. I should just let you know that when we are discussing items within an ALAC meeting, votes and comments are called for only from ALAC members and Hawa will be representing Africa 04 tonight, but if we ask for further comments, then feel free to let Hawa or people on the French channel know.
Nick is noting that Annette is still on Skype, so if we can ping her if she’s going to continue on Skype, we may have to… Well, yes, I heard her leave the call, Wendy, but I did wonder whether or not… if she’s still on Skype, whether she could rejoin us.
Okay. Right. Back to the summary minutes. If you move them, Sébastien, I’m afraid we can’t actually vote to accept them, but we will do that online. And we can review the August 12th action items in a great deal less time than 8 minutes, which was the allocation. I believe that all of the action items have been attended to, and in fact most of those which have ongoing actions form part of tonight’s agenda. So unless anyone objects, we’ll move on to the next item. Is there any objection?
Alan: No.
Cheryl: Okay. Current status of ALS applications. Have there been any changes that we should be aware of, Nick? pause Those of you who are new to…
Nick: Sorry, I was muted.
Cheryl: That’s fine. I was just saying those of you who are new to us, for looking at the state of ALS applications, please note that you need… it’s a Google Document, so you’ll need a Google Document account.
Yes, Nick, go ahead.
Nick: At this point, we have ISOC New York for which we are… pause Oh, that application’s been accepted. Sorry. We have the Foundation for Building Sustainable Communities in North America, where we are awaiting the regional advice. We have Internauta Chile, which I think we’re about to receive regional advice on it – it’s due by the 10th of September. So… Can anybody hear me?
Patrick?: Yes.
Cheryl: I can, but Vanda’s not hearing you.
Nick: Vanda’s apparently not… Sorry, Vanda. So I think we will shortly have regional advice to approve Internauta Chile – in fact, I’m pretty sure about it. And thanks to Karaitiana Taiuru, the vice chair of the APRALO, ISOC India has applied for ALS status. And that application is on track – it’s a very new application, though.
Cheryl: Yeah. And I think it’s very exciting to have a new run of new applications, and I’d like to think that in the next 12 months we’ll be seeing an incremental increase of these.
Evan, you…
Nick: One other thing I would say is Evan is noting on mine that the regional advice was given, and I remember him saying that actually so I think it’s just a matter of us needing to update this spreadsheet.
Cheryl: Alright. Thank you for that. Moving on to the liaison reports, all of the liaison reports that have been linked… The role at the moment for liaison reports is that they be linked and people should look at them, but we have a placeholder on the GNSO 08 liaison because Alan wishes to speak to his report. Please go ahead, Alan.
Alan: Okay. First of all, I’ve taken a different tack on this report. The last GNSO meeting was two hours long. It took me something like double that to write the report, trying to both reference all the relevant documents and extract where appropriate so people could read quickly. I really would like some feedback from the committee members to what extent it is worth that kind of effort, if people really go through it.
I’m assuming people are going to read it. I’ll highlight a couple of items, however, which require or request ALAC input. One is inter-register transfer policy. There’s a massive amount of work that has been done or will continue to be done on various aspects of inter-register transfer. The first phase has been completed and will be going out for comment within the next couple of days 09.
unknown joined
Alan: The ALAC has to decide whether we’re contributing or not. Constituency statements are requested but not necessarily obligatory for ALAC.
There’s a huge amount of noise in the background. Does anyone else hear that?
Cheryl: Yes, there is something.
Female: Yeah.
Cheryl: Can you please mute using star-6.
Alan: It’s gone now.
Cheryl: If not, we can mute everybody.
Alan: I’m not an expert on registrar events so I would suggest that someone else look at it and decide if indeed ALAC needs to comment on this – I suspect the answer is no, but we should make a conscious decision.
On new gTLDs, a number of things…
Sébastien: Sorry, Alan. On what topic? On what topic you… we have to… overtalking
Alan: Inter-register transfer policy. It’s in my report.
Sébastien: Yeah, I know, I know. I read carefully and it’s really good report.
Alan: Thank you.
Sébastien: Thank you, Alan. It’s Sébastien. I just want to say something on that subject because as you may know, and I wanted to add that to your report, that I am into this working group and I think it’s a very important one. We need to answer because one of the questions, it’s how we can give available the mail address of the registrant to the registrar, the losing one and the winning one, and I think it’s really, at least for this question, one we need as ALAC to… At-Large to answer. Thank you, Alan.
Vanda?: Yeah, I agree.
Alan: Then I will expect you or you will find someone to try to instigate a response. Is that reasonable?
Cheryl: I heard Vanda agreeing there as well. Does… I also think it’s well worthwhile responding to.
Alan: As I go along, you’ll note that there’s a lot of things that are worthwhile that we haven’t been good at doing, so I think we need to pick our targets carefully.
With regard to new gTLDs, the process of developing the… the development of the process to handle applications is developing. The one thing I think to note in that is there has been an ongoing discussion whether to use auctions or not. There have been a number of comments by several people including some At-Large people. Assuming it goes ahead and auctions will be used, there’s going to be a potentially huge influx of money. I would think that the ALAC should make a statement on how some of this money be used because there are opportunities for outreach, there are opportunities for helping developing countries and other disadvantaged parties in the gTLD process, and I think we should make a short but very clear and very strong statement.
There was an interesting discussion on the US Department of Commerce letter regarding the RAA. There was no substantive issues raised but the fact that it was discussed as a separate item was interesting in its own right.
A report on the add grace period thing again. Neustar has reported results for a second month and allowed ICANN to release them, and they are doing exactly they hoped the AGP change would do – that is the volume is way down and staying down. Afilias has not yet implemented.
As a matter of information, GNSO previously could only vote in person or on teleconferences. Over the last number of months, they requested that the Board make a change to allow voting to be done online in some ways, to make sure that on policy and important votes those who are not at the meeting have an opportunity – a short opportunity but an opportunity – to cast their vote. That’s now been done and it has in fact been used in the first time in this meeting.
Regarding Whois, there is a… it’s been a long process that a number of groups, including the GAC, have suggested that studies be done prior to additional Whois work. It was decided that prior to such studies, one should try to come up with specific hypotheses – that is, to say what it is you’re trying to test in any given study to make sure that we don’t end up getting information that does not address the original issue. A group was put together to attach hypotheses to the various studies that have been suggested and a report has been issued. ALAC has explicitly been asked to comment if we wish, with preliminary comments in time for the September 25th council meeting and formal comments in time for decisions to be made at the October 16th council meeting – so that’s a tight timeframe.
In terms of geographic regions, a year ago the Board said that they’re going to look at geographic regions. The ccNSO came out with a proposal for an ICANN-wide task force and a number of groups including the GNSO and ALAC were asked to comment on this. The intent was staff was going to summarize statements by early September, which is now. To my knowledge, the ALAC has not formally done anything on this yet. Am I right, Cheryl, or is something going on?
Cheryl: Other than agreeing that we agree a 58 a cross-constituency working group is merited, no.
Alan: Have we agreed or have we said it to the Board?
Cheryl: I don’t believe we’ve sent it but we have discussed it.
Alan: Okay. One might want to look at the GNSO one. It also strongly supports it, but in addition gives them a number of principles which it thinks should be followed in such a task force. We might want to do something formal and the timeframe is very short on that apparently.
On GNSO restructuring, as you may know, the Board has approved the bulk of the restructuring that was recommended by the workgroup – that is the bicameral house and a number of things. Some of the issues have not been settled. One of the statements they did make was that constituencies must re-register themselves to say they still meet the criteria and then do so again every three years. The criteria has to do with things like fairness, openness, transparency, and representativeness.
It is interesting that the Board did not make the same statement about stakeholder groups. Now since the stakeholder group is the entity that decides who actually sits on council from the constituencies, I think this is a glaring gap and I think the ALAC should make a very strong statement to the Board prior… in time for its September 30th Board meeting – that is we expect a similar level of openness at the stakeholder group level as at the constituency level. And I would be glad to lead that effort, but I think we need to do something and need to do it very quickly and very formally.
Cheryl: Yes, thank you for that, Alan, and I’ll take you up on that volunteer offer.
Alan: And lastly, on the discussion on the ALAC review with Tricia Drakes, a comment was made at the end that it is reasonable that constituencies verify their openness and representativeness to the Board, so should the ALAC, and that is we should be able to do it and be required to do it. An interesting comment that we need to think about.
That’s it.
Cheryl: Okay. Thank you.
Alan: And I reiterate, I would like comments back. Thank you, Sébastien. On this level of report, it took many hours to do, but if people actually read it and get something from it, it’s worthwhile. If they don’t, I’m not going to put that kind of effort into it, so let me know please.
Done.
Cheryl: Okay. Thank you, Alan. And I certainly think it’s an enormously useful liaison report, particularly with a very busy and active period that the GNSO’s been going through. And Wendy has also mentioned that on Skype, if you didn’t pick that up. 55 if you are on that Skype channel.
Alan: Yeah, I am. I will point out that if you look at that, now that was a two-hour meeting. One of our targets is to achieve that much real work and real discussion in a two-hour meeting.
Cheryl: Hmm, excellent. Excellent, indeed. Right. Is there any questions for Alan on that?
If not, the question of issues to be raised at the ICANN Board meeting. Are any of the regional meetings, most of which I think have already been held for this month, have they brought up any particular things? I know Asia Pacific has one thing it would like to raise, but are any of the other regional reps wishing to bring something forward for Wendy to raise with the Board? Africa? pause Matthias or Frederic, whoever’s been attending the regional meetings, are there any points and issues that need to be raised at the next ICANN Board meeting?
Translator: And just a comment from Hawa on Alan’s report, it was very well done and it was very good.
Alan: Thank you.
Cheryl: Okay.
Alan: Do we have any comments from regional people on the geographic issues? I would think they should be the ones most concerned.
Cheryl: Well, Asia Pacific is very concerned…
Alan: laughter
Cheryl: …and desperately needs to ensure that an ICANN-wide approach is taken to it. laughter
Nick: There’ve also been comments made about this in the LAC region. Just to follow up on your comment, Alan, I know that the GNSO has gone far beyond simply saying that they believe that a cross-community group should be formed to look at geographic regions, but it is a true statement that at this time that all you do need to say is, “Yes, such a group should be formed.”
Alan: I…
Nick: And Cheryl did say that, so…
Alan: Okay. I will point out, now that the GNSO has stated principles, if we disagree with any of them, we probably should say so.
Cheryl: Yes, or we might need to actually review that, because my response to the question was “Yes, we agree.” laughter I think that’s a job that… the executive better have a look at that, but Alan, you might want to assist things 33 past that development.
Alan: In this particular case, I will volunteer.
Cheryl: Thank you very much.
Okay. Getting back to issues to be raised at the ICANN Board meeting, in the absence of any other Asia Pacific representatives being on this call, I think it’s the desire of the Asia Pacific RALO that we find ourselves, not unsurprisingly, I suppose, on the questioning of budgeting and money most concerned that we as a region have had not just a workshop but a main lead workshop accepted for IGF that actually is to run as a merged one with another organization called ICANN. And interestingly enough, despite several attempts at contact, we’ve had no feedback from ICANN – either of the staff members, one of them being the Chief Executive Officer – as to whether or not APRALO may be able to seek any sort of travel funding for support to get the one or two people who wouldn’t be going to the IGF anyway there. Unless concern from an APRALO point of view about whether or not we have to go and sell cakes at some sideshow to get ourselves there, then I am in what appears to be utter disregard for a genuine request in a timely manner. We are now looking at… correct me if I’m wrong, staff, but I think this is now a five-week old request.
Adam Peake joined
Cheryl: Welcome, Adam, and I am now no longer the only Asia Pacific representative. laughter It is absolutely serendipitous that you have joined us right now…
Adam: Good.
Cheryl: …because I was just raising under “Issues to be raised at the ICANN Board meeting” the fact that the Asia Pacific Regional At-Large Organization has had its proposal accepted by the IGF, but our request for feedback from ICANN, both staff and CEO, on the matter of “Are we able to get any support to attend?” has not been answered. And I guess you won’t be happy to hear that, 16… overtalking
Alan: One must point out that Adam is in fact European in this context.
Cheryl: Oh yes, of course. My…
Adam: I am. Yes, I’m going to be…
Cheryl: Of course. You see, I feel I own you. I do apologize for that.
Adam: That’s alright. No, I’m very British today.
Cheryl: Yes, you’re being British today. Right. Hard to forget you really belong over here in our area. laughter
Adam: Ah, well…
Cheryl: Thank you, 36.
Adam: But I do work on IGF issues and I can, when I see Theresa and others, mention it to her next week if you wish.
Cheryl: Hmm. Well, put it this…
Adam: But maybe.
Cheryl: Put it this way, we were less concerned might I say about a definitive answer on, you know, could we actually get the leads in that project to attend from a financial support point of view than we were that the courtesy of… other than one reply that said, “I am out of office and will return sometime in August” was the only reply.
Nick: Umm, Cheryl?
Cheryl: Go ahead, yes.
Nick: Have they replied at all to any of your e-mail?
Cheryl: No.
Nick: Okay.
Cheryl: Absolutely no response. And an auto office reply that says, “I’m on holidays,” is extremely unsatisfactory. So that’s something that I think APRALO would like to have mentioned at a higher level now.
Now the question of whether or not Adam joining us increased us back to quorum… Adam, unfortunately we are one under quorum at the moment. Unfortunately, as much as I’d like to accept you as part of the quorum, you’re not actually part just yet.
Adam: No, not yet.
Cheryl: laughter So I’m unable to. Unfortunately we…
Adam: Yeah, I should also go soon. I’ve been on another call for quite a long time and I’m feeling quite knackered 25…
Cheryl: That’s quite understandable, but unfortunately…
Adam: But… Yeah. It is nice to say hello to everyone.
Cheryl: Yeah, unfortunately even if I did want to try and count you, I can’t because you’re not actually signed over to us officially yet. Never mind.
Okay. I would obviously encourage people to also respond on the list to Wendy to take matters towards the Board meeting. Can I ask, with my apologies for last night’s executive meeting, did the executive raise anything that they needed to go to the ICANN Board meeting?
Sébastien: No, we didn’t go to… we didn’t have anything to add to our call yesterday.
Cheryl: Okay. Thank you very much for that, and thank you, both the vice chairs, for running that meeting in my inescapable absence, unfortunately.
Alan: There was an item in my report that needs to be done prior to the Board meeting. It’s Alan.
Cheryl: Sorry. Can you just go back over that then?
Alan: It’s the issue on fairness and openness within stakeholders groups. The Board may well finalize the instructions to counsel on bylaws at that meeting, and I would like to make sure it’s included.
Cheryl: Of course. Our statement on the fact that the stakeholder groups need to have…
Alan: Yeah.
Cheryl: …the same 56 criteria put on them. Yes. Now…
Alan: And the geographic one may also be on their agenda, I don’t know. Maybe Wendy can help.
Cheryl: Wendy, do we know if that’s on the agenda? pause
Alan: Is Wendy still on the call? I know she’s on Skype, but I don’t know if she’s on the call.
Wendy: I’m sorry, I was muted.
Alan: Oh, okay.
Cheryl: Yeah.
Alan: Is there likely to be any decision on geographic region working group at this coming Board meeting?
Wendy: I do not… I have not seen it on an agenda.
Alan: Okay, good.
Wendy: The Board has been focussed on the GNSO restructuring, getting updates on new gTLDs, processes, and we’ll be having discussions on that DNS 46.
Alan: Okay. Then we have a bit more time on that one.
Cheryl: Excellent. But we do, as you say, need to remind them that in our opinion, the stakeholders need to be under the same criteria.
Okay. Now…
Ron Sherwood joined
Cheryl: …as we are under our quorum, the items that are listed for decision at this meeting are in fact going to have to be not decided upon. And the ratification of the ALAC statement, we should be ratifying the RAA amendments statement tonight. It’s been out for public comment for the appropriate period of time. I can’t take a vote tonight if we’re under quorum. If we put it online, we have a seven-day vote requirement. How can we get this off our decisions list promptly? pause
Nick: Umm, Cheryl, if you… Perhaps one thing that could be done is to see if there are any objections to the current statement by any of the members who are on the call. If there are none, of course you could have the seven-day vote, but in the meantime, let the staff see the statement and say that it is up for a vote and the vote will conclude in seven days, but there is not an expectation of an issue. If you already have seven people who…
Cheryl: Okay. So assuming that we have a near majority in agreement, we can send the draft through and say it will be 48 at the end of the vote period. That seems like a reasonable way forward to me. Does anybody object to us going through that process then now? pause
Vanda: No.
Alan: No.
Cheryl: Beau, you’re the lead on this. You’re happy with that, Beau?
Nick: He’s probably muted.
Cheryl: I was going to say, “once he comes off mute.” laughter
Alan: It is something else to add to our list for the rules of procedure revision.
Cheryl: To come off mute?
Translator: Hawa agrees.
Cheryl: Excellent. Thank you, Hawa. I certainly…
Vanda: I guess everybody agrees.
Cheryl: I can’t… If anybody disagrees who’s on the call, which is at least seven of us in terms of voting ALAC members, make yourself known now. pause In the absence of that, we will proceed by starting a seven-day ratification vote and forward the existing RAA statement as a draft pending ratification. pause And when will we expect to see that? So that shouldn’t be too difficult to set up for tomorrow, should it, gentlemen?
Nick: Not… No problem. That’s very easy.
Cheryl: Okay. So we can look at closing that off by the 16th. Excellent. Okay.
The next item, which was actually for discussion/decision, the decision on whether or not we wish to make any statement on the terms of reference for the SSAC review. Robert’s no longer on this call so I can’t call on our SSAC liaison to brief us on this matter. Does anybody wish to bring forward any points or raise any suggestions on this? Do we wish to make…
Vanda: No, I haven’t a chance to read that.
Cheryl: It’s… As I say, it’s a part of terms of reference. We don’t necessarily have to respond. Do we have a burning desire to respond? pause If that’s the case, then I would suggest that we do not make that part of what is now a fairly busy September through to early October agenda.
So rather than take on an extra role, I’d like to move to what is going to be similar to our decision on the RAA amendment, and that is the fact that we need to choose, not need it to necessarily be a vote but we do need to choose – and here I’d be keen to hear the views of those members of the ALAC who are just joining us – between the two navigation website options, both of which are as PDF documents for reference off the meeting page.
Nick, do you wish to talk to this matter?
Nick: I’m sorry, Cheryl. Which is that?
Cheryl: Website choices.
Nick: Ah yes. This one Matthias should walk us through briefly, I think.
Cheryl: Okay. Matthias, the floor is yours.
Nick: He’s probably coming off mute.
Matthias: Alright, thanks. I hope you all…
Cheryl: Just before you start, Matthias, just before you start, Sébastien, can I just hand over to you for a moment? I’ll be back shortly… 48
Sébastien: Okay, no problem. Thank you, Cheryl. Go ahead, Matthias, please.
Matthias: Alright, thank you. I hope you’ve all seen the document attached to the website which contains an overview of the proposed navigation structure for the new At-Large website. It’s attached on the agenda item 3 for decision at this meeting as a PDF document. And for those of you who did not have a look at it, I encourage you to open this document to see the proposed structure. It’s the same presentation I’ve already given to you in Paris, but most of you probably don’t remember because it was really poorly… it was very difficult to see on the screen.
So here you have the proposed web structure. And, well, all we need to do in this meeting is to decide what kind of structure you would like, and then we can all go ahead and can implement this navigation structure.
So there are two different proposals – you see Option A and Option B. And there are two examples – the main site, the main ALAC site, and then as an example, a regional sub-site. This is only about the navigational structure – only about the heading and the left-hand side structure.
And, well, I don’t know. Nick, how do we go ahead? Do we just decide…
Nick: Yeah, there are two… I mean, as he says, there are two different ways of structuring the menu. Just so everyone knows, whilst we are populating the new menus, we will leave the old menu below it – so if you can’t find what you’re looking for in the new one, you’ll always be able to get to it from the menu below, just to make sure that people have a way to transition between the two menus. The biggest reason we wish to do this now is because we want to create microsites for each region within the At-Large site so that each region, when you select it, will have its own set of menus as you see. This is the way we can then transition a lot of the static content from the regional wikis into the At-Large site so that we can get to the point where regional community members may add their own news items and other items to the site as they wish.
The page, as you see, it’s simply two ways of looking at it. We figured we should give you at least two options. For my money, I think the second option is a little better because I think it will be a little more intuitive to someone who is either new to the community or not even a member but is interested in what At-Large does. And…
Vanda: Yeah, I agree. I agree, Nick, it is much more simple to reach things and understand what’s going on.
Nick: And of course, this is not the end. You know, if you like the second option better or the first option and you think, “Oh, we should add a menu item here” at some point, we can always do that.
Sébastien: It’s Sébastien. I will look on that. There are two items in the discussion – there is the layout of the page, and I agree with you and Vanda that the second, the Option B, seems for me better, and there is the way it’s written, where are the subtitle and titles and so on. And I think I prefer the A structure, yeah, the A headlines. That’s my…
Nick: Which part of A do you like?
Jacqueline Morris left
Sébastien: For example, you have… in A you have… umm… Wait, sorry. “How to join us?” Like I don’t think it’s on B. For example, you have different types… For example, in A, you have “How to join us?” And…
Nick: Ah, you’re talking about the horizontal bar.
Sébastien: Not just the horizontal. For example, you have in… I don’t… Here it’s you have “European At-Large Officer” in 1.2.2, close that. If you go to 2.2.2, you don’t have… you have “EURALO Board members,” and that’s not the same meaning, when really I prefer the A wording and I prefer the layout of the B.
Nick: Okay. So the horizontal bar in A you like better and the vertical menu…
Sébastien: Not just the horizontal but also… No, no. I… Once again even in the framing in the sentence, in the wording – sorry – of the vertical bar, I prefer A, but the organization, the boxes, the layout, it’s better on B.
Nick: Okay. Alright. I think I understand.
Sébastien: Yeah. For example, I like the orange dot, but I think “EURALO Board member” could be one, but I think on the A you have “At-Large…” No, you have… What is there? Uh, sorry. You have “European At-Large Officer.” That’s not the same meaning.
Jacqueline Morris joined
Sébastien: You don’t have that on B…
Nick: Right.
Sébastien: …and I would like to have that on B.
Nick: Okay. I’m not quite sure I follow you. I think the mistake here that we made is that we didn’t have exactly the same wording in both.
Sébastien: Yeah. It’s 55.
Nick: So am I…
Sébastien: But I may need to work with you on that.
Nick: Okay. So am I correct that you like the idea of B, but the menu items of A? You don’t want to lose any of the items?
Sébastien: Yes.
Nick: Okay.
Sébastien: You get it.
Okay. Any other comments on this website proposal? pause
Patrick: Yes, Patrick has a comment. Do you hear me?
Sébastien: Okay. Go ahead. Yes.
Patrick: Yeah. Well, I personally like the design B better than A, but with the same comments as Sébastien. One thing I would like to be sure is that you thoroughly test the layout with all the major browsers on the market, including the older ones because it’s a real issue to maintain the same layout across browsers and it would be quite unfortunate that there might be some menus not appearing because of unsupported JavaScript, blah blah blah, and just wanted to be sure that before putting the thing in production you will check that compatibility. Thank you.
Nick: Sure. Good point.
Sébastien: Okay. Thank you, Patrick. And I guess we are done with this point.
The next item, it’s… 43 “Input requested for GNSO Council restructuring.” Do we have something to add to what we already discussed when Alan made his report? Yeah, I guess we have to answer to the e-mail sent by Denise…
Cheryl: Sébastien, please continue. I did continue to listen but I did have to go onto mute and leave the computer, so I’ve carried the phone with me. It’s important that we respond to those very specific questions in the e-mail.
Sébastien: Okay. Who could take the lead to write the draft to answer those questions? I think it’s important to start by that.
Alan: I’ll take the lead, but I really do want people to comment on it. I hate to write these things and then after the fact, people, you know, say it was a sole work of me.
Cheryl: laughter I’m sure you’ll have the support of not just the executive on this. That would be greatly appreciated if you could do the wording though, Alan. That would be good.
Alan: I will do that. I’ll also point out, however, the pointed statement at the end, which says that new constit-… they would like to see new constituencies, particularly in the non-commercial venue prior to January. We need to start doing some brainstorming on whether in fact there are any new constituencies related to users that we should be trying to get coalesce.
Adam Peake left
Alan: There’s one obvious one in my mind and that’s representing people like Beau – that is consumer issues from around the… or consumer organizations from around form a constituency. I’m sure there are others, but I think we need to start doing some brainstorming and doing it very quickly if something’s going to happen in the next four months.
Cheryl: Can I, not as chair of the ALAC but as part of my other volunteer life, offer to be part of that brainstorming? I’ll be there as chair as well, but we have a brand-new national peak telecommun-… – not telephone – communication consumer body that’s formed in Australia and it seems to me that a number of other countries and regions may have similar organizations. So those organizations, ACCAN and a few others, joining together sounds like the beginnings of exactly that.
Sébastien: Okay. I summarize this point saying that Alan will give us a first draft on the answer to the question raised by Denise, and all the ALAC members and RALO members also have the right, even the obligation to help the finalizing of the document, it’s an important in the way the GNSO will be finally completely restructured. Thank you, Alan, for doing that.
Can we move to the items for discussion only? We are quite late. It’s… I don’t know, one and a half hour?
Cheryl: Yes, we are quite…
Sébastien: We…
Cheryl: I think it would be good if we could… we finish and if those that are on the call continue, and I will leave that your lead.
Sébastien: I wanted to ask how many time we can still stay on, because you may have other commitments and there are points even if we need to discuss it, we have no time. Okay. Let’s have 10 minutes more. Is it…
Alan: Yeah. I… It’s Alan. I can take 10 but not much more.
Sébastien: Okay. Then we take 10 minutes more, at… I will not say the time because it’s not the same for all of us, then 10 minutes and we stop.
Okay. The next two items, it’s probably made by Danny, and I just saw mail sent by I guess Beau about the first one. Beau, if you are still online, can you give us the discussion you have on the NARALO teleconf from yesterday? pause
Translator: Hawa and Rachida are in agreement.
Sébastien?: Thank you.
Cheryl: Thank you.
Matthias: Sébastien, I don’t think Beau is on the call.
Sébastien: Okay. If somebody maybe… May I ask Evan to tell us, or who else from the North American region? Uh…
Cheryl: Is Danny still on the call?
Sébastien: pause Danny, Evan, Darlene, if one of you are still here, or are here, you will be more than welcome to tell us what was going on on your…
Nick: You may be muted. If you’re talking, you may be muted, in which case you must hit star-7. pause
Sébastien: Okay. I will read what we received from Beau during the beginning of the meeting. “Yesterday the NA RALO agreed that this proposal from Danny Younger was significant and important. We submit it today for ALAC consideration. I will mention it on this morning's call and refer you to this note for detail.” Then what I suggest is that we… pause Evan? You are… 34
Evan: Hi there. It’s Evan.
Sébastien: Okay.
Evan: Can you hear me now?
Sébastien: Yeah, we are. We can hear you.
Evan: Okay. Thanks, Sébastien. Since I’m not as deep into the issue as either Beau or Danny, I will just briefly talk about what happened at the NARALO meeting. Essentially, Danny has sent out an e-mail to our list entitled, “Maintaining the Safety Net,” and it was talking about the grace period that exists between the time that a domain name expires and the time that it is made available for resale. And it was believed in some circles that there’s actually a policy that such a grace period exists between the expiry time and… to give the domain owner the chance to buy it before it goes back into the pool, and apparently that this may be understood by some people, but apparently it is not an actual policy and it is only followed by registrars literally on their whim.
And so Danny sent out a position paper that suggests that ALAC ought to be pressing ICANN to make what was called the “Redemption Grace Period,” to install that into actual policy and to make that a requirement because there already had been instances where the day after a domain expires, the registrar either reallocates it to somebody else or takes it on their own ownership.
Anyway, like I say, I was not as deep into the issue as Beau or Danny, but that is the best summary I can give of it right now.
Alan: It’s Alan. Just one clarification. There is such a guarantee that a domain will not be reused immediately between the registrar and the registry – that is the registry cannot let someone else have it, but there is no external guarantee beyond the registrar.
Evan: So essentially we put that forward to ALAC in the belief that this was an important issue that ALAC needs to raise at a policy level with ICANN.
Sébastien: Okay. I don’t know how to proceed with that, but I suggest that we keep that as a proposal and we may exchange on the mailing list on that and to try to find an agreement among the various RALOs and within the ALAC to push on that question. There is the document, it’s already on the website, on the wiki, then I think it could be good to read it again and to discuss this point after the mail sent by Beau just a few hours ago.
I guess you didn’t answer to discussion for the second point raised by D Younger, and I think I will leave that on the same venue that the point 1 of the items for discussion only because I would like to spend the last five minutes to the two last issues – it’s At-Large summit preparation and the Cairo meeting preparation and planning. We need to work closely on that before the Cairo meeting and during the Cairo meeting. The ExCom is currently working on first drafts for the organization of the Saturday and Sunday. We need a 45 more to be able to release that to ALAC members and to the RALO Secretariat. But if you have any inputs you would like us to add or to have in the agenda of the Cairo meeting, please feel free to send this to the ALAC internal list.
About the At-Large preparation, I guess it will be one of the major themes of the Cairo meeting, to be sure that we are ready to organize the At-Large summit at Mexico. But I think we need to work a little bit in advance and that the two, sub-working group and the working group, must at least meet by phone once or twice before the Cairo meeting.
Evan, may I ask you where you are, where we are on this subject?
Evan: What? In terms of…
Sébastien: 57
Evan: In terms of the planning?
Sébastien: In terms of the working group where… about the contents and the organization of the inaudible itself.
Evan: Actually there was a lot of disarray, shall we say, within the summit group because we were unaware until two weeks ago how many people would actually be able to be in Cairo for our planning meeting. There has been some discussion going on and that will be, shall we say, restarted in the next couple of days. But there has been a lot of uncertainty.
Is there a confirmation that there will be a day for summit planning on either the Saturday or the Sunday?
Sébastien: No, it’s one of the subjects that I just sent to my colleague from the ExCom, a proposal for agenda for this Saturday and Sunday. My suggestion is that we use the Saturday, 09 the afternoon, but if we need more, the Saturday on the working group on the summit and open to other ALAC members or RALO Secretariats who want to participate but working group on that subject. But the Sunday will be dedicated on the ALAC members, but two hours on the ALAC meeting open for final discussion, I put “final” into brackets, but final discussion on the summit with a proposal made by the working group the day before. And eventually some of the working group members who are not ALAC members will still work on the Saturday morning… sorry, the Sunday morning, and it will be final – in brackets once again – proposal for the organization and the agenda for the summit.
Translator: And a comment from Hawa, please, if possible.
Sébastien: Yes, go ahead, Hawa.
Translator: Yes, what I would like to say is that I really hope to see that we are in fact able to take the time to do some planning around the summit meeting for Mexico because, you know, we discussed that we were going to talk about this during the Paris meeting, during the Los Angeles, and we were not able to deal with it. You know, so now we’re saying that we’re going to deal with it in Cairo, and I just hope that we actually are able to go through with it this time.
Sébastien: Okay. Once again, for my fellow colleagues of the ExCom, I just… I sent before the meeting a first draft of the proposition for the agenda of the Cairo meeting for the Saturday and the Sunday, and we need to finalize this proposal to send it to the other ALAC and Secretariat members. Yeah, 33 it’s what I suggested in my proposal, but we have to finalize it.
But I guess, once again, if we want to be… to succeed during the Cairo meeting to finalize almost everything for the summit, we need to have some work, additional work done before and I suggest that the summit working group need to meet by phone before the end of this month at least once and maybe once in October too, and maybe a subgroup could work in between.
Cheryl: Yeah, I think that’s essential, definitely. Okay.
Are we moving to Cairo meeting preparation? I know there’s an overlap between what’s being discussed under summit preparation and Item 4.
Nick: So I’m sorry. Can I just check on what the proposal… The proposal is to meet on Sunday?
Sébastien: My proposal for the moment… Oh, the discussion is that how long time we need for, but the proposal to have the working group summit on the summit preparation on the Saturday and to have the ALAC OneDay meeting on Sunday, and within these days we’ll have two hours dedicated to the summit with the ALAC members, with all the ALAC members and well with the working group members too. And you have the Saturday meeting, they need more time to work. They could do it on Sunday morning…
Patrick Vande Walle left
Sébastien: …during the first part of the ALAC OneDay meeting.
Nick: Umm…
Sébastien: But it’s on the table of the ExCom and we have… 39
Nick: Okay. I can tell you that that won’t be possible because all the hotel arrangements have already been made for Cairo, so we won’t be able to have meetings on Saturday. There will be nowhere for anyone to stay. So the earliest that ALAC and the Secretariats who are attending will be is on the Sunday.
Alan: I thought we had decided at the last meeting that ALAC would always start meeting on Saturday now?
Nick: I don’t recall that but… I’m sorry, it’s just we just don’t have the rooms. We don’t have hotel rooms for that. So…
Evan: Are you saying that they’re booked up on the Saturday or that just ICANN hasn’t bothered to book them?
Nick: I’m saying that they have already made all the room arrangements and signed all the contracts related to the rooms.
Alan: But we haven’t even…
Sébastien: When you speak about the rooms, you speak about the meeting rooms or you speak about the bedrooms?
Nick: Hotel rooms, yeah. Hotel rooms really.
Sébastien: But the meeting rooms. I…
Alan: Does that mean if we want to stay a day extra at our expense, we can’t?
Nick: I don’t know if you could. If you could, you would have to do that entirely separately on your own with the hotel.
Evan: So Nick, you’re saying…
Sébastien: I think… My really… I think it’s a wrong way to work, and we can shorten the meeting before, we can shorten the meeting after, and we can decide that we have no time to work also, that we need to do the work for ALAC and we need to the work for the Cairo meeting and we need to prepare the summit. And I still put my proposal on the table, it’s on the table of the ExCom, and I will see what’s up.
Evan: Nick, 41 inaudible say not to do anything on Saturday, was there any consultation?
Nick: I’m sorry, but there’s a terrible echo.
Cheryl?: Yeah, everybody’s being… overtalking
Nick: Now I can’t really hear you.
Evan: Was… overtalking
Alan: Can you hear me?
Sébastien: Yeah. Alan, we hear you, but isn’t…
Vanda: There’s a lot of echo.
Nick: Actually, everyone… 04
Alan: Evan asked whether there was any consultation before making the decision that we’re not meeting on Saturday.
Nick: We start planning the meeting pretty early. Or I think everybody knows that we have to make hotel reservations and know how many people we’re going to book into the room blocks pretty early on. I…
Alan: Our chair’s been in place for a year. Earlier than that?
Nick: I don’t understand what that means, actually.
Alan: The question is whenever you started, were we consulted? If the answer’s yes, then I’ll be quiet.
Cheryl: Not to my memory.
Nick: No, nobody… I… Nobody asked me for anything in relation to the Cairo meeting and all of that.
Cheryl: It’s just been 04
Nick: I had to tell them at the beginning of August what was going on. And so I, considering the state of flux things were in – because at that time the only people coming were the 15 ALAC members – I had to give them a list of people on the 8th of August who were attending. That has since changed, the number of people, but I literally had at the beginning of August to tell them what we were doing.
Alan: But are those 15 scheduled to meet on Saturday?
Nick: No. No…
Alan: Well, forgive me but if I had been asked I would have said that’s a marvellous opportunity to start doing real policy work.
Nick: You know, I can certainly… if you want to say that we’re going to start routinely meeting on Saturdays, I can certainly put that forward. I don’t believe there is funding. I certainly didn’t budget for routinely meeting Saturday and Sunday when there are no RALOs meeting, and then everyone also going through until Friday. That was never something I envisaged when I even requested budget money.
Evan: scraping noises in background Okay, Nick, this is specifically I guess to do with the summit and the fact that 18 inaudible some overlap with ALAC… Where is this coming from?
Cheryl: I don’t know, but it’s untenable.
Alan: Maybe they’re trying to tell us we’re over time.
Vanda: laughter Well, I believe that we need to prioritize this meeting, so if you don’t have time allowed for that, we need to cut other issues, because this is commitment that we made and we need to proceed, and so that’s the consequence of that.
Cheryl: Vanda, I agree. I think that, as I said in Skype, that we will allocate a necessary amount of time to summit preparations, might I suggest come hell or high water. And if that means that we start on Sunday, Monday, or Thursday, it doesn’t matter, it has to be done. Obviously the prep work needs to be done by the subcommittees as well, but we definitely have to allocate the right amount of time to get this job done properly.
Vanda: Yeah, we’re going to have an opportunity to talk with the Board in one of our meetings so we can explain how hard it’s to do all of our work without some facilities to do that.
Alan: But it’s a bit too late…
Vanda: Yeah, but anyway…
Alan: …to fix the Mexico meeting by the time we meet with the Board.
Vanda: Yeah. Anyway, we need to cut something probably because not now all our issues will be able to be discussed during the meetings if we don’t have, you know, previous time, because this is added 21. So without that, the only way is to cut something.
Cheryl: That’s right. We’re just going to have to cut. So be it, that’s what we’ll have to work with.
Okay. There is another matter that relates to the Cairo meeting preparations. Now I had sent it at some unearthly hour this morning as text in the hope that it would have been put up as a background document page, and I’m sorry that it hasn’t. I simply was incapable of doing it today, so I’m going to ask your indulgence. We need to be aware as we are planning for Cairo…
French translator left
Cheryl: …and I’m asking the ALAC to support the activity that is being proposed to have a what is now called “trans-SO/AC meeting.” scraping noises in background
The background noise is unacceptable. Please mute everyone. pause Thank you.
At the suggestion Bertrand from the GAC, myself representing ALAC, the chair of the GNSO, the ccNSO, and another GAC representative, Manal Ismail, and Bruce Tonkin representing the ICANN Board had a teleconference actually late last week. The purpose was to explore how at the ICANN Cairo meeting the schedule could be expanded on to progress already made in Paris in terms of bringing what we’re calling now our cross-constituency meeting – in other words, the support organizations and the advisory…
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Cheryl: …committees together on major issues. Basically the goal is to develop a trans-… we first called it “trans-silo,” but basically it’s trans-support organization and advisory committee communication, plus the facilitation of general awareness within the community about a number of different issues that we are all interested in.
The proposal is not to necessarily stop the bilateral sessions, but rather to work smarter, not harder, when we have a number of items that are of mutual interest and focus. And with a shortened ICANN meeting and a now shortened amount of time 25, the important work of the summit I think is something we all need to support.
The proposal is as a result of this call, we’re proposing with the ICANN meeting organizers that we have a half-day joint session between the ccNSO, GNSO, ALAC, and GAC. It will be a public and open session as well. There’ll be members, the councillors, and there will also be a public forum opportunity. The role is to discuss progress including but not limited to new gTLDs including IDNs and the IDN ccTLD, to have a briefing on the President’s Strategy Committee consultation and on improving institutional confidence – I’m sure we’re all keen to have our say about that – and the second part of the proposal is that we have a second session on Thursday so that we can follow up with a report on the individual discussions that may have taken on through the week.
I actually see this now based on the conversation we’ve had in the last few minutes is an absolutely essential thing for us to support. It will allow us to do a good deal of policy and briefing work in a new forum but one in which we won’t be replicating, but we’ll be dealing with the other constituencies.
I don’t think we need to vote on this. I do think we need to have wholesale support from the members of the ALAC and the community that are here tonight or today in this call. And if I can ask you to give me that, I will go to the next meeting with the support of the ALAC for the proposal of a joint meeting as a half-day session on the Monday, which to me means we may be able to use the second half of that Monday perhaps for summit planning, and then a possible session on the Thursday as a follow-up.
I’ll invite any conversation and discussion on that in fairly short order because of the time that we’ve gone over today. pause Does anybody object to that proposal?
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Cheryl: Does anybody object to that proposal?
Sébastien: It’s very difficult to… It’s Sébastien. It’s very difficult to both have in-depth 21 discussion in the same time to learn that we will not be able to meet the right time, the right portion of time during the ICANN meeting and then commit inaudible to follow both your speech and what is happening on the Skype. But if I get this main part of your proposal, it’s that we really need to make as much as possible policy issue and discussion presentations shared by all the stakeholders and that’s a very good announcement for the overall meeting, and if we can start in Cairo, it would be great.
Cheryl: I just copied the proposal that each of us are taking to our constituencies into the Skype channel so people can indeed look at it at greater measure, and particularly those on the non-English channels can have a chance to look at it. I really think it is essential that we look towards improving our bilateral communications, but the opportunity to have a multilateral forum, which is the SOs and ACs in charge of it, is very important. Okay? So…
Sébastien: Yeah. And to… But one of the discussions was is it replacement for bilateral meetings, and my feeling is that it’s not really a replacement for the bilateral meetings. We will be able not to discuss some multilateral issue in the bilateral meeting, but I guess we still will have some bilateral issues to discuss with other SOs and ACs.
Cheryl: Okay. I’m going to call once more for objects to us proceeding with this. If there are none, I will continue to further the move for a multilateral or trans-SO/AC meeting on the Monday and a possible follow-up on the Thursday. Are there any objections?
Vanda: Yeah. No.
Sébastien: No.
Cheryl: Okay. I will continue that, and I believe it will give us a great deal of extra flexibility based on our time constraints.
Now I’d like to make it very clear that personal attacks, recriminations, and discussions of a critical manner of either staff or volunteers is absolutely and utterly inappropriate. The work that we all do should be mutually appreciated and I believe in the main is. Many of us are a little more tired and a little more cranky and a little more unwell at other times, and I think that might be a case here today when people have had some of their expectations somewhat disappointed and others have gone on to only do the best job they possibly can with the material that they have available to them at the time. So I would like to assure everybody, staff and volunteers, that working as one is the only way forward and that we really, really will, as we have undertaken to in this call, make sure that what happens in Cairo is enough to get the job done properly for summit planning. But the summit planning subcommittee must get a lot of pre-work done, which I’m sure they are aware of. We will make it fit – that becomes our problem.
If there’s no other matters of business for tonight, all of these things will now have to go online – there’s a couple of votes on very important matters that need to be discussed. And I’d like to thank you all for I think a very productive, even though somewhat shocking at times, meeting, and I’d also like thank everybody for spending additional time in the pre-call, which unfortunately did take us into a later evening or day for you.
Thank you also very much, Sébastien, for saving me as capably as you did while I had walk from the screening, because you can’t run these meetings unless you’re looking at the screen, and I appreciate that enormously.
Everything else goes online, and I expect we’re going to have a very busy few days.
Thank you all. Good morning, good day.
Sébastien: Thank you, Cheryl.
Vanda: Good morning.
Sébastien: Take care.
End of Audio
